Mo. teen described as thrill killer by prosecutors

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — A Missouri teenager who confessed to murdering a young neighbor girl was described as a thrill killer by prosecutors and a mentally disturbed child by her defense attorneys as a judge heard arguments Tuesday on whether she should be sentenced to life in prison or something less.

The small courtroom in Missouri's capital city descended into chaos as Prosecutor Mark Richardson was making an impassioned, final request for a lifelong sentence for Alyssa Bustamante, who pleaded guilty to murdering 9-year-old Elizabeth Olten in October 2009.

Bustamante's grandmother, tears flowing from her eyes, stormed out of the courtroom, followed by her grandfather. That prompted Bustamante — who had been staring blankly downward as Richardson recounted her crime — to begin silently crying for the first time in her court proceedings that have spanned more than two years.

Then as Cole County Circuit Judge Judge Pat Joyce announced that she would reveal her sentence on Wednesday, Elizabeth's grandmother interrupted and cried out from her wheelchair.

"I think Alyssa should get out of jail the same day Elizabeth gets out of the grave!" declared the grandmother, whom a prosecutor later identified as Sandy Corn.

The disorder capped what was an emotional, two-day sentencing hearing highlighted by repeated references to words Bustamante — then age 15 — had written in her diary on the night she strangled, slit the throat and repeatedly stabbed Elizabeth. Bustamante wrote that it was an "ahmazing" and "pretty enjoyable" experience, ending the entry by saying: "I gotta go to church now...lol."

"The motive has to be the most senseless, reprehensible that could be in humankind, and that is to take a life for a thrill," Richardson said.

Richardson recounted in the courtroom how hundreds of volunteers had searched for Elizabeth near the rural town of St. Martins as Bustamante calmly lied — at least initially — to investigators about the girl's whereabouts.

The prosecutor urged the judge to impose the maximum for second-degree murder — life in prison with the possibility of parole — and an additional 71 years in prison for armed criminal action, which he said would have matched the remaining life expectancy of Elizabeth. Richardson also urged that the sentences be served consecutively, meaning that the 18-year-old Bustamante would be an elderly woman before she ever got a chance at parole.