Elizabeth Olten's killer identified

UPDATE 11/18/09

By News Tribune and Associated Press

15-year-old Alyssa Bustamante has been certified to stand trial as an adult in the homicide of Elizabeth Olten.

Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem ruled this morning that the crime was serious and vicious and the state had no adequate facilities or services to treat the teenage suspect if she were to remain in the juvenile court system.

The girl was identified in court by her juvenile defense attorney only as Alyssa. She was immediately arrested on an adult charge of first-degree murder following the judge’s ruling.

♦

“If I had a child, I would want the community to be there to support me.”

People of all ages came out to honor the memory of 9-year-old Elizabeth Olten of St. Martins, Missouri, on Wednesday afternoon. If they didn’t attend the service at Concord Baptist Church, they stood along Horner Road near the entrance to Hawthorne Memorial Gardens, where she was laid to rest.

Meanwhile, an as yet unidentified 15-year-old neighbor girl sits in jail, charged with her murder. Her attorney, Kurt Valentine, said Elizabeth’s death has put Jefferson City in turmoil. “In the local high school, friends of both sides have been getting into arguments and had fights over this case,” he said. Quite clearly, a lot of people seem to know the girl’s identity.

She was arrested last Friday after leading authorities to Elizabeth’s body, police said. Hundreds of people had searched the area last week after she disappeared. The Cole County Sheriff’s Department said she was well concealed in heavy woods and foliage.

On Tuesday, I received an e-mail that proffered information and a trail for me to follow. As an inquisitive sort of guy, I did just that. What I found was the name of the girl who now sits behind bars and a photograph of her from an Internet social site called SingSnap that bills itself as “the biggest, baddest and best singing community in the world.”

If you Google SingSnap, it says that it’s “a free online karaoke community where you can sing and record from a large variety of karaoke songs and comment on other karaoke enthusiast’s” material.

Of course, that led me to her profile by searching for her screen name. She has been a SingSnap member since October 22 of 2007 and she’s made a total of 8 recordings. The profile includes her name.

This placed me in a perplexing situation. Should I reveal her name or not? In a unanimous 1979 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protects the rights of journalists to use the names of minors in stories deemed newsworthy as long as the information is lawfully obtained and reported truthfully. In the case of Smith v. Daily Mail, the court struck down a West Virginia law that had been previously used to prosecute two newspapers from the state that printed the name of a 14-year old junior high school student who allegedly shot and killed a 15-year old classmate.

OK, I guess that protects me - sort of - but I just received an e-mail from a concerned reader who cautioned, “Nancy Grace has her picture and her name also and she stated she is not allowed to disclose any of it by law until she goes to court and is deemed to stand trail as an ADULT. You can be in some serious trouble over this, why would you want to put yourself in that situation for a ‘story’ on a blog?”

Because of these mixed signals, I was not going to reveal her name, but news is now leaking, so I will compromise. I will give you her SnipSnap screen name, along with other social sites she belongs to. Here, I’ll tell you her first name is Alyssa. If you are interested, look for yourself.

A month ago, Alyssa wrote a tweet on her Twitter account. A tweet is a post or status update on the microblogging service. She goes by the namealyssadailene. This was the entry dated September 28: “this is all i want in life; a reason for all this pain.”

On September 9, she wrote, “encompass’d with a thousand dangers; weary, faint, tremblinng with a thousand terrors; i in a fleshly tomb, am buried above grounnd. - william cowper”

She also has private Facebook and Myspace accounts. On Facebook, her name is, well, her real name. On Myspace, she goes by alyssaheartsyou<3.

Several bits and pieces of information, whether factual or not, have surfaced online and in rumor mills. In one text, an alleged friend wrote, “She told my friend that she wanted to commit a murder to see if she could get away with it”and, “She told this to many kids at her school”.

The messages continued…

it was her sisters best friend

she killed her little sisters best friend

Word also leaked that she had not only planned it, she dug the grave the week before. All names have been removed.

can you see this

im here saddened ..

ok

yes I can see the chat, but not NG

I have this information only cus I have actually talked to the murderer online sitting at my ex gfs house

shes on Singsnap as Wolf_Heart

there is a picture of her there too

She planned the murder

my friend Jennifer told me all of it this afternoon

she lives there

her boyfriend helped her bury the body

she told someone she did it for fun

shes a monster

no not really

parents are ?

Allysas mom is a drug abuser

She lives with her grandmother

She should get the chair

that grandmother must be beyond herself with emotions too

imagine her little sister

oh absolutely

it was Allysas little sisters best friend

that grandmother must be beyond herself with emotions too

imagine her little sister

oh absolutely

it was Allysas little sisters best friend

It was a murder plain and simple

she killed her to see if she could get away with it

I’ve sent you a private message.

Oh BS….. 15 yr olds know right from wrong !!!…..they can’t get away with saying a 15 yr old is not compitent to stand trial !!

she slit the girls neck and wrists according to my source

When I called the Cole County Sheriff’s Department yesterday, I was told that the deputy in charge is Colin Murdick. He was in a meeting and chose not to talk to me. Instead, I was instructed to e-mail him the information I had received, which I did, minus the sender’s address. I wrote a nice letter explaining to him that I, in no way, wanted to hinder the investigation by revealing anything still left unpublished. Here was his entire response:

No comment

Rather terse. Anyway, please feel free to look around for more information. In the meantime, this is a picture of the alleged suspect from SingSnap. I covered her eyes. Remember, whoever committed this heinous crime has not been officially named yet. The girl behind bars will remain there until November 18, when a judge will decide whether to charge her as an adult or not. Until then, she is still a minor and only a suspect.

JUDGE OPENS ADULT CERTIFICATION HEARING TO PUBLIC

Alyssa Bustamante video:

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