COMMENTARY | The verdict is finally in for Missouri teen murderer Alyssa Bustamante. The Associated Press reported on Feb. 8 that the judge sentenced the 18-year-old to a “potential lifetime in prison.” Her sentence was life with the possibility of parole.
For those who aren’t familiar with the horrifying case, Bustamante, at age 15, lured 9-year-old Elizabeth Olten into the woods behind her house, telling her she had a surprise for her. She proceeded to strangle the girl, slash her throat and stab her. The body was dumped into a grave the teen had dug days before. She then wrote about the incident in her diary and headed off to church with a laugh.
Bustamante pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, but clearly the act was premeditated. She’d dug the grave in advance. It is possible that she hadn’t decided at that time exactly who her victim would be. As she told one of the officers, she “just wanted to know what it was like to kill somebody.” Afterward, in her creepy diary entry, she wrote that killing the girl was “ahmazing” and “enjoyable.”
While a life sentence sounds like she’ll be locked up for the rest of her life, that’s not the case. By some accounts, the teen may be eligible for parole in as few as 10 years; by others, the estimate is 35 years. It depends in part on whether she serves out her sentence in Missouri.
Considering the brutality of the little girl’s murder, the grave that lay nearby waiting on the corpse of a victim, the aloofness with which Bustamante described the act in her journal and her admission that she did this just to satisfy her own curiosity, it’s hard to believe that any amount of time will ever make this person safe to be released into society.
Had the case gone to jury trial, she could’ve been sentenced to life without parole. But because she pleaded guilty to lesser charges than first-degree murder, she was able to avoid facing a jury of her peers and to secure the possibility of being free someday.
The Olten family isn’t commenting on the outcome, but they must be horrified that the murderer was only sentenced to life with a possibility of parole. Their daughter committed no crime, yet received a death sentence. With certain offenses, it seems like plea bargains would be out of the question. Apparently, that’s not the case. But Bustamente’s attorney thinks her sentence was “harsh.”