Alyssa Bustamante admitted to killing a 9-year-old girl in 2009, and the reason shocked police
Cole County Sheriff’s Department (2)
Alyssa Bustamante and Elizabeth Olten
The brutal 2009 murder of Elizabeth Olten remains a thorn in the side of the Missouri community, partly because of the crime itself, but also because of the motive.
The reason Elizabeth’s teenage killer committed the crime, she said, was because she wanted to know what it felt like to kill.
The shocking case made headlines again earlier this summer when the killer, Alyssa Bustamante, who was 15 at the time of the murder, was denied parole.
The murder and Bustamante’s bid to be released eventually forced lawmakers to change Missouri state laws regarding juvenile criminals convicted of murder when Gov. Mike Parson signed legislation that Elizabeth’s family had advocated for.
This is what happened:
Cole County Sheriff’s Department
Elizabeth Olten
The Murder of Elizabeth
Patty Preiss called police on Oct. 21, 2009, after her 9-year-old daughter never returned to the family’s St. Martin’s, Mo., home after visiting a friend that evening. Police eventually found the young girl buried in a shallow grave with her throat slit. She had been stabbed and strangled, local Fox 2 reported.
The disturbing motif
Police were led to Bustamante after finding “written evidence” at the crime scene that implicated the teen — who was a neighbor of Elizabeth’s — in the killing, according to ABC News reporting at the time. After an investigation, authorities also discovered Bustamante’s social media pages, which contained references to her desire to know what it was like to kill someone, as well as a journal in which she confessed to the crime.
“I just killed someone,” the teen wrote in her diary, according to ABC. “I strangled them, slit their throats, and stabbed them, and now they’re dead. I don’t know how to feel right now. [at the moment].”
She added: “It was ahmazing. Once you get over the ‘ohmygawd I can’t do this’ feeling, it’s actually quite fun. I’m a bit nervous and shaky now though. Kay, I have to go to church now…lol.”
Cole County Sheriff’s Department
Alyssa Bustamante
Detectives interrogated Bustamante for more than two hours as she confessed to the crime. The teen’s grandmother was in the interrogation room when her granddaughter confessed to the murder. The grandmother burst into tears and ran from the room in shock.
According to local newspaper KOMU, Bustamante was sentenced to life in prison in 2012 after pleading guilty to second-degree murder.
“The world has lost an innocent girl who hoped to become a teacher and a veterinarian,” her family said in a statement, according to the newspaper, adding that they found it “extremely difficult” to cope with Bustamante’s conviction.
How the case changed Missouri law
New legislation signed in the summer of 2024 appears to make Bustamante’s life sentence permanent.
Because Bustamante was a minor at the time of the murder, she was eligible for parole thanks to a 2014 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. According to CNN, the court ruled 5-4 that no minor could be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole — even for murder. However, Missouri lawmakers passed a bill in 2021 that would not apply to minors who committed first-degree murder.
In 2024, Pason signed a bill that expanded the law to include juveniles convicted of second-degree murder, local station ABC 13 reported. Elizabeth’s family had been a strong advocate for the legislation.
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