Teen Murder Suspect Was Indicted, Wanted to Know 'What It Felt Like to Kill'
Alyssa Bustamante allegedly strangled, stabbed and slit the throat of victim.
Nov. 18, 2009— -- A police officer testified today that the 15-year-old girl accused of killing her 9-year-old neighbor confessed to the crime, saying that she did it so she would "know what it felt like to kill someone."
Alyssa Bustamante was indicted today in a Missouri courtroom on a first degree murder charge stemming from the Oct. 21 slaying of Elizabeth Olten after a judge determined she could be tried as an adult. If convicted, Bustamante could be sentenced to life in prison.
The judge entered a "not guilty" plea on behalf of Bustamante, who sat speechless and shackled in the courtroom.
The court documents also revealed for the first time the violence of Bustamante's alleged attack on the young girl. Court papers state the Bustamante strangled Olten, slit her throat and stabbed the girl while she was dying.
Bustamante also is charged with armed criminal action for allegedly using a knife in the attack.
She is being held without bond in Cole County jail.
Earlier a grim portrait of Bustamante emerged based on dark writings on the Internet including a YouTube profile in which "killing people" is listed under the girl's hobbies.
Several messages on what is believed to be the suspect's Twitter page, which have now been erased, poetically discuss "addiction," "terrors" and the feeling of being caged and "buried." Another post talks about pain and the author's search for a reason for it.
On the girl's YouTube page, a video appears to show the suspect with her brothers purposefully shocking themselves on an electrified fence.
Olten's body was found in a wooded area near her home on Oct. 23 after the suspect led police to it. She had vanished Oct. 21, but it wasn't long after that police found what Cole Country Sheriff Greg White called "written evidence" that led them to Bustamante.
"We were able to obtain some physical evidence, and through some analysis of some of the evidence and in all honesty some written evidence, we were able to develop a person of interest," White said last month. "Once we reached that person and interviewed them, ultimately, they led us to where we've recovered Elizabeth's body."
