- Posted February 09, 2012
- Tweet This | Share on Facebook
COURT ROUNDUP
Missouri
Teen gets life with possible parole
in killing of girl
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- A central Missouri teenager who confessed to strangling, cutting and stabbing a 9-year-old girl because she wanted to know how it felt to kill someone was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Alyssa Bustamante, 18, pleaded guilty in January to second-degree murder and armed criminal action in the October 2009 slaying of Elizabeth Olten in St. Martins, a small rural town west of Jefferson City.
The judge also ordered the teen to serve a consecutive 30-year term in the armed criminal action charge.
Bustamante was 15 years old when she confessed to strangling Elizabeth, repeatedly stabbing her in the chest and slicing the girl's throat. She led police to the shallow grave where she had concealed Elizabeth's body under a blanket of leaves in the woods behind their neighborhood.
With her hands shackled to her waist and her feet shackled together, Bustamante rose and faced Elizabeth's mother and siblings before she was sentenced Wednesday.
The Olten family declined to comment to reporters, as did Bustamante's family.
Published: Thu, Feb 9, 2012
headlines Detroit
headlines National
- This Los Angeles lawyer found her calling as a death doula
- ACLU and BigLaw firm use ‘Orange is the New Black’ in hashtag effort to promote NY jail reform
- Artificial intelligence tools for brief writing and analysis are a small firm litigator’s new best friend
- Baker McKenzie partner drops suit seeking IRS documents on partnership scrutiny
- Family members sue networks after learning of loved ones’ deaths by seeing bodies on TV
- Ex-BigLaw attorney once ‘consumed with remorse’ over $10M client theft sentenced in new scheme