Editing Alyssa Bustamante

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|image = [[File:AB.jpg|thumb|288px]]

|crimes = [[Murder]]  

|goals = Kill Elizabeth Olten (succeeded)

'''Alyssa Bustamante''' (January 28, 1994-) is a woman from Missouri who beat, strangled, and slit the throat of 9 year old girl, Elizabeth Olten.

Like many teens, she was deeply involved with social media and had pages on Myspace, Twitter, and Facebook

She had a YouTube account under the name Okami Kage (Japanese for "Wolf Shadow") and filled out her profile. Under her hobbies, she listed killing people, cutting.

She had been treated for severe depression and had tried to commit suicide. Her Twitter account stated that she was "somewhere I don't want to be". On the photo of her with smeared lipstick, she is pointing a finger at her head like a gun, and in another photo many little red cuts are visible on her inner wrist.

A Tweet a few weeks before the murder read "This is all I want in life a reason for all this pain".

Her YouTube account featured several videos of her and her brothers, mostly just engaging in horseplay or mimicking ''Jackass'' stunts, but one in particular was disturbing, ''Idiots Getting Electrocuted by Electric Fence.'' In it, Bustamante and her two younger brothers are standing in front of an electric fence. She gives the camera a grin and grabs the fence as she grimaces. Well aware of the pain it causes, she nonetheless convinces her younger twin brothers, 9, to do the same. The screen reads "this is where it gets good this is where we see my brothers get hurt".

When Elizabeth Olten left to go home, she'd been playing with Alyssa Bustamante's half sister, who lived a few doors down. The six year old and the nine year old pals hung out, and then, when Olten started her journey home, she was allegedly diverted by Bustamante who called Olten on her cell phone, and redirected her back to Bustamante's house.

Allegedly, Bustamante had then led Olten into the woods. Olten, who was afraid of the dark, would have trusted the older teen. They played together and were friends. But, Olten couldn't have anticipated that she would be brutally killed slashed on the neck and arms and then fatally stabbed.

The young girl's body was found in a grave. Bustamante admitted to digging two graves a week before the murders, giving rise to speculation that her twin brothers were the original intended victims. But a detail from the press conference gave people further pause. When Cole County prosecutor Mark Richardson was asked why there were two graves, and whether one or both graves had been used for Elizabeth, he said only, "No, I can't tell you that right now."

The autopsy revealed that Olten had been strangled, her throat and wrists had been slashed and she'd been stabbed.

Missouri State Highway Patrol Sgt. David Rice said that Bustamante's motive was simple and terrifying; after the murder, a friend of Bustamante's came forward, saying that Bustamante had told her that she wanted to know what committing a murder would be like.

Jennifer Meyer went on KMOV in St. Louis. "I was at her party, and she kind of just took me off to the side randomly and she's like, 'You know, I wonder what it would be like to kill somebody', because I guess she was mad at one of her friends there, but it just seemed kind of strange," Meyer said. "But you wouldn't logically think one of your friends would kill somebody."

Alyssa was arrested, and charged with first degree murder in the death of Elizabeth Olten. She appeared in court on November 17, 2009, where the judge ruled that she should be tried as an adult. Despite her confession to the crime, as well as having led the police to Elizabeth's body, she has entered a plea of Not Guilty. She is being held without bond.

 

A trial start date of May 16, 2011 has been set for Alyssa Bustamante. There, she will stand trial charged as an adult with first degree murder for the horrific slaying of her young neighbour, 9 year old Elizabeth Olten.

After previous issues that delayed the trial of Alyssa Bustamante, she was finally set to face the murder charges, with a trial due to start in January 30th, 2012. Instead, Alyssa pleaded guilty to the charge of 2nd degree murder and armed criminal action.

There was an audible gasp heard in the courtroom when the now 18-year-old Alyssa admitted to taking a knife to throat of Elizabeth Olten and slitting it, then strangling her with her bare hands afterward. Her defense team tried to offer a number of excuses for what cause Alyssa to perform this horrid, haunting act, including the fact that she was on the anti-depressant Prozac as being a contributor, which she had begun taking in 2007 after a suicide attempt, and had started an increased dosage just two weeks prior to Elizabeth's murder. They recounted a family history of drug abuse, suicide attempts, and mental disorders, and said that her mother had abandoned her and her father was in prison, to try to explain the mental state Alyssa was in when she brutally murdered Elizabeth Olten.

Psychologists for the defense described Alyssa as psychologically damaged and "severely emotionally disturbed. They testified that she suffers from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_depressive_disorder major depression], and also suffers from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_personality_disorder Borderline Personality Disorder], which is a psychopathic personality structure secondary psychopaths that is characterized by chronic feelings of emptiness, interpersonal relationship difficulties, black or white thinking splitting, suicidal or homicidal ideation, instability of moods which swing and rotate from intense extremes of anxiety, hopeless depressivemess, and irritibility, inappropriate displays of anger, identity disturbance, severely impaired ability to empathize, severe impulsivity, self harm, exceptional manipulative behaviour and tactics, lying even compulsive or pathological lying in some cases, pathological narcissism, attention seeking behaviour, aggression, verbal exhibitionism, and sexially sedictuctive or provocative behaviour. Though the details of Alyssa's mental stability were quite disturbing she had previous suicide attempts, a history of self-harm including over 300 cuts on her body, as well as self-inflicted cigarette burn marks the most disturbing, and the most damning evidence presented was a journal entry that Alyssa made in her diary after the murder. She wrote I strangled them and slit their throat and stabbed them now they're dead. I don't know how to feel atm. It was amazing. As soon as you get over the oh my gawd I can't do this' feeling, it's pretty enjoyable. I'm kinda nervous and shaky though right now. Kay, I gotta go to church now. lol.

After days of very emotional testimony in the court, Alyssa broke down and cried for the first time in over 2 years of court proceedings, while the prosecution was making an impassioned plea for the judge to give her a life sentence. Alyssa, who had been staring at the floor impassively while the prosecution recounted her crime, broke down when grandparents got upset and stormed out of the courtroom. Alyssa's grandparents were not the only ones to have an emotional breakdown after the judge's announcement that he would hand down a sentence the next day, the grandmother of the victim, Elizabeth Olten, yelled out I think Alyssa should get out of jail the same day Elizabeth gets out of the grave!.

On February 8, 2012, Alyssa Bustamante gave a final statement before the judge handed down her sentence; If I could give my life to bring her back, I would, Alyssa addressed the court, while family members of her victim, 9 year old Elizabeth Olten, wept, I just want to say I'm sorry for what happened. I'm so sorry. She was then sentenced to life imprisonment, with the possibility of parole.