A 15-year-old Missouri girl who admitted to killing her nine-year-old neighbor told investigators she did it simply because she wanted to know what it felt like. Alyssa Bustamante pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the 2009 death of Elizabeth Olton, a child who lived just four houses away. To those who knew her in the small rural community of St. Martins, Missouri, Bustamante seemed like a troubled but otherwise ordinary teenager.
Friends described her as sweet and well-liked. She wrote poems, made jokes, and regularly attended activities at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Her grandparents had legal custody of her and her three younger siblings, after her mother’s drug and alcohol abuse led to criminal charges and jail time, and her father was imprisoned for assault. The family had moved from California to Missouri to start over.
But beneath the surface, Bustamante was struggling. She attempted suicide in 2007 and spent ten days in a psychiatric hospital. She was prescribed antidepressants, but continued to self-harm, and friends said she frequently showed the scars on her wrists. Online, however, she presented a much darker side.
On Twitter, she wrote about her disdain for authority. On YouTube and MySpace, she listed her hobbies as “killing people” and “cutting. ” She also posted a video in which she tried to convince two of her brothers to touch an electrified fence. Elizabeth Olton often came over to the Bustamante home to play with Alyssa and her siblings.
The night she disappeared, her mother, Patricia Price, said Elizabeth begged to go to Alyssa’s house. That was the last time Price saw her daughter alive. When Elizabeth didn’t return home by 6 p. m.
, her mother realized something was wrong. The next day, FBI agents questioned Bustamante and confiscated her diary. During the investigation, authorities found a shallow hole behind the Bustamante house that looked like it could be a grave. The teenager told the FBI she simply enjoyed digging holes.
Later, investigators found a second shallow grave, this one covered with leaves. Elizabeth’s body was inside. Bustamante was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. An entry in her diary, which she had tried to conceal by blotting out the blue ink, was recovered by investigators.
In it, she described her feelings after the killing. In court, Bustamante admitted to strangling Elizabeth, cutting her throat, and stabbing her in the chest. She then buried the body in the hand-dug grave. In 2012, weeks before her first-degree murder trial was set to begin, she accepted a plea deal on the lesser charge of second-degree murder to avoid the death penalty.
As part of the agreement, she may be eligible for parole in 30 years.