Diary entries made by teenage murderer Alyssa Bustamente in which she described her pleasure at killing her nine-year-old neighbour Elizabeth Olten have been read to a shocked courtroom.
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| Alyssa Bustamante (left) was 15 years old when she repeatedly stabbed Elizabeth Olten (right) to death |
Alyssa Bustamante was 15 years old when she repeatedly stabbed Elizabeth Olten to death before calmly writing about the "pretty enjoyable" murder in her journal.
While a search was launched for the missing girl in the small town of St Martins, Missouri, Bustamante then went off to a youth dance at her church.
Elizabeth's parents wept as the diary entry, which the killer later attempted to scribble out, was read to the court by a hand-writing expert during a hearing to decide her sentence.
"I strangled them and slit their throat and stabbed them now they're dead," the entry read.
"I don't know how to feel atm [at the moment]. It was ahmazing. As soon as you get over the 'ohmygawd I can't do this' feeling, it's pretty enjoyable.
"I'm kinda nervous and shaky though right now. Kay, I gotta go to church now...lol [laugh out loud]."
Elizabeth's body was found under a pile of leaves in woods behind Bustamante's home.
Bustamante is being sentenced as an adult for the crime after confessing to second degree murder and armed criminal actions. She told officers she committed the murder "to know what it felt like".
In another diary entry read to the court, written a week before the murder, Bustamante complained that her mobile phone had ran out of battery, meaning that she could not tell her friends about her feelings of anger and frustration.
"If I don't talk about it, I bottle it up, and when I explode someone's going to die," she wrote.
On her YouTube page, she listed "killing people" among her hobbies.
Prosecutors have said that the evidence shows that Bustamante pre-meditated the crime - digging a hole in her garden, which was apparently intended as a grave; and encouraging her younger sister to ask Elizabeth over to their grandmother's house to play.
Weeping as she described how she had told the nine-year-old to return home in time for dinner at 6pm, Elizabeth's mother Patty Preiss pleaded with Cole County Circuit Judge Pat Joyce to give the killer the maximum sentence.
"So much has been lost at the hands of this evil monster," Mrs Preiss said. "Elizabeth was given a death sentence, and we were given a life sentence."
Cook County Circuit Court heard that she had a history of depression and self-harming, and had once attempted suicide by overdosing on pain killers and carving the word "hate" into her arm.
Bustamante was being raised by her grandmother and legal guardian, Karen Brooke, at the time of the killing after being abandoned by her drug addict mother and father, who is serving time in jail.
Asked during the hearing if her granddaughter appeared different on the evening of the murder, Mrs Brooke said that she seemed happier.
Bustamante's lawyers suggested that an increased dose of the antidepressant Prozac, which the teenager had been proscribed to help with her mood swings, may have contributed to the 2009 crime.
They are fighting for the teenager, who recently turned 18, to be given only 10 years in jail, rather than the maximum life sentence.
The hearing continues.
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