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Teen has history of mental health issues

By Bob Watson bwatson@newstribune.com

Published: Thursday, November 19, 2009 3:15 PM CST

Only 15, Alyssa Bustamante now is an adult in Missouri's legal system.

By state law, the only way the courts ever can consider her to be a juvenile again is if she's found not guilty of the murder and armed criminal action charges the Cole County grand jury issued against her Wednesday afternoon.

She could be sentenced to a maximum of life in prison, without parole, if convicted of killing Elizabeth Olten, 9, a neighbor who lived only about a quarter-mile away.

Those in the courtroom Wednesday saw a quiet girl who said nothing - and was not asked to speak - during the morning hearing to determine if she should be tried as an adult.

She appeared at times to bite her lower lip during the morning hearing, but other times she seemed to focus her attention and concentration in both hearings on what the judges were doing, looking ahead to the judge through brown hair sweeping over her eyes.

Bustamante talked only briefly during the afternoon's arraignment, telling Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce that she had talked with Public Defender Jan King, and did not have money to hire her own defense attorney.

She showed little emotion or reaction during either hearing - even though much of the morning's evidence focused on her suicide attempt around Labor Day 2007, followed by a 10-day stay at the Mid-Missouri Mental Health Center in Columbia, her ongoing treatment for depression and her various attempts to hurt herself by cutting.

David Cook, Cole County's chief juvenile officer, said Bustamante had a “higher IQ” and was “able to do her school work if she put her mind to it,” but who told family and counselors she was “bored at school.”

Cook also described the 15-year-old as “articulate and able to communicate clearly,” but also was “clever in the way she phrased things,” including leading her grandparents to believe she was going to a concert at a Jefferson City church when she really was traveling with a friend to a concert in St. Louis.

Cook said Bustamante's grandparents - who have been her legal guardians since 2001 - provided “structure and emotional support” to Alyssa and her three younger siblings.

He said the teen's thick file of mental health counselor's notes and treatment information “didn't identify that she was a risk to others,” but focused instead on trying “to help her with her coping skills and identifying causes of her depression.”

While never pinpointing a cause of the teen's ongoing depression, Cook said, the notes showed counselors wondered if one root cause wasn't “separation from her mother.”

Born in January 1994, when her mother was just a teenager, Bustamante was 7 when her grandparents became her guardians.

According to court records found on the state's Casenet Internet site last month, but unavailable this week, that guardianship again was granted to her grandmother, Karen Brooke, in a Cole County proceeding in July 2005.

Other court records show Bustamante's mother, Michelle Bustamante, lived in Jefferson City public housing in 2005 and 2007, then in Lake Ozark in 2008 and in Crocker earlier this year.

Those records show the mother had some traffic tickets, legal battles over rent issues and three criminal convictions in misdemeanor cases - Miller County convictions in 2008 for driving while intoxicated and operating a vehicle in a careless and imprudent manner, and a Sept. 29, 2009, conviction in Dallas County for possessing less than 35 grams of marijuana.

Unsupervised, two-year probations were ordered in those cases.

There was no testimony given Wednesday about Bustamante's father or her relationship with him, although Cook said the teen's family kept her in contact with “her father's aunt.”

Ceasar T. Bustamante currently is serving a total of 10 years in prison at the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center, Pacific, on three Miller County assault convictions.


Teen charged with murder of Elizabeth Olten		Thieves target parked vehicles

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Thanks.

limerick54 wrote on Nov 21, 2009 1:04 AM:

" It's a shame that we can't use the firing squad when she is found guilty. "

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LD wrote on Nov 20, 2009 6:48 PM:

" Grabbing an electric fence is not mental illness, its a "hey look at me" attention getter. That just means shes stupid... Like, maybe stupid enough to kill a 9 year old to get attention.

Well, she got what she wanted, too bad theres no posibility for the death penalty and she'll be forced to live for free in a prison...

And tricking your grandparents. Honestly? Is that enough to call the girl clever or even give her credit for anyting more than lying?? Trash... "

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