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New York, 3:28 AM
Sun Nov 22
12 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/20/09
"Update: Following a two-day search, Elizabeth's body has been found. Police have a juvenile person of interest in custody have haven't released his name. All they'll say is that he knew Elizabeth, lived not far away, and was older than the girl. "
"His"/"he" .. so sexist and judgmental, the press! :p
11/20/09
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11/20/09
"Now, with all these cameras focused on my face,
you'd think they could see it through my skin.
They're looking for evil, thinking they can trace it,
but evil don’t look like anything."
11/20/09
But has anyone ever seen the movie Heavenly Creatures or know the true story it's based on? In it, two young teenagers kill one of their mothers. Now, one of those girls is a successful and seemingly normal crime novelist. Another is a nun.
This story makes me sick, but it's impossible to know if this girl could be rehabilitated. She might be a psychopath for the rest of her life. Or she might change.
11/20/09
Sorry, but prison is not just for rehabilitation. It is also for punishment.
11/20/09
11/20/09
Second, children are regularly punished. It is part of child-rearing. Misbehavior is met with punishment; this is how social mores are developed.
Third, the punishment should fit the crime. While I don't believe that a 16 year-old should serve 15 years for selling crack cocaine (partially because I feel that drug sentences in general are overly harsh), for the crime of matricide - the killing of one's on mother - through bludgeoning someone to death with a rock, the person who commits such a heinous crime should be punished, even if she is 27 months younger than the age of majority.
The legal age of majority is an arbitrary number, evidenced by the fact that 16 is old enough to be entrusted to drive a 2,000 lb. vehicle, 18 is old enough to be conscripted into military service and used to be old enough to smoke and drink, yet, until a quarter century ago, suffrage belonged to those at least 21 years of age. Now, 18 is old enough to vote but you need to be 21 to drink or smoke.
Before you can make an assertion like yours, you must first answer "Who is a child? Are a children equal children? Should any child ever be punished?"
#tips
11/20/09
This also reminds me why I no longer want to write about this stuff after 5 years of doing it professionally. After a while, teen killers - hell, killers in general - all seem to fit the same templates. And yes, it's incredibly depressing.
It's a good thing they are trying her as an adult. The only good place for this kid, sadly, is probably jail. And unless the depression overtakes her and she succeeds at suicide, she'll continue to run game on the people around her in there, too.
11/20/09
11/20/09
You realize that the fictional character Patrick Bateman was a serial killer only in his own mind, don't you? He never actually comits any of the murders--they're just deranged fantasies.
Although his motives parallel those of this all-too-real teen killer: For Bateman, too, the fantasy of killing people was the only way he could summon any sort of passion, ie, "feel something." That's how I always interpreted the book, anyway.
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11/20/09
@KentuckyBabe: Ah, I glossed over that paragraph. That's the kind of corroborating evidence I was talking about.
I went to an Innocence Project function this weekend, and obviously I'm still in the mood.
11/20/09
My good southern mama will argue that a middle name is how you can separate the serial killers from the rest of us; she advised me to never go out with anyone whose middle name was Dean, Dale, or Wayne.
Dailene. Girl never had a chance.
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11/20/09
While I'm not advocating for lowering the age of consent law to 10, (in this case I think it's wise to try her as an adult) I think we can all agree it's a pretty arbitrary number. You don't know how fumed I was at 13, that I couldn't vote for Al Gore in 2000 not to mention that I would have been way more informed than half my mother's friends who "didn't like the way Al Gore talked."
11/20/09
I don't think children are inherently good or innocent. I think they are, however, inherently children, and trying them as adults is stupid and vindictive. Meanwhile, a child who's clearly seriously mentally ill presents yet another layer of complexity. We know almost nothing about this child's full story. What she did was horrendous, but compounding the tragedy by rushing to judgment serves no purpose.
11/20/09
I'm not saying I was an adult at 13 but are not 13yrs old capable of doing adult-like (whatever that means) things and committing adult like crimes. The consequences of one's actions are not different/better when that person is a teenager.
11/20/09
Even with the gift of hindsight, I'm not sure if anyone could've gotten a read on that girl. She seems like a sociopath in the truest and most textbook sense.
Another blogger's accumulated some more info regarding the story here, including some of Bustamante's tweets:
"drinking generic dew and chillin at mah house:)" (Jul 27)
"ahh! we just got kittens! they’re adorable
"holy shit, i almost died last night xD" (Aug 4)
"addiction takes over your whole life. it’s not something easily overcome, therefor i embrace me addiction." (Aug 27)
"encompass’d with a thousand dangers; weary, faint, tremblinng with a thousand terrors; i in a fleshly tomb, am buried above grounnd. – William Cowper" (Sept 9)
"the world goes by my cage and never sees me." (Sep 13)
"bad decisions make great stories.." (Sep 17)
"this is all i want in life; a reason for all this pain." (Sep 28)
"drivin in a car bitches." (Sep 30)
And on the morning of Elizabeth Olten’s murder:
"sittin in classss. bored as fuck. i miss my cell phone :,["
Reading this, two things become apparent:
1) With hindsight, sure, you can read into these messages and construct a story. But I've got 80 people I follow on Twitter who fill my feed with this sort of self-involved rhetoric every moment of every day from the time I wake up to the time I fall asleep. I can't feign shock that this sort of online behavior was overlooked when I myself am confronted with it every day.
2) At the end of it all, Bustamante was resuming life as normal. A typical day in her world, unfazed by her actions, completely numb. I believe her when she says that she committed this horrifying act to see "what it felt like." This simultaneously simplifies and complicates the situation.
Simply, she must be removed from society, at least until remedied. But trying her as a juvenile means that regardless of what the jury finds, she could be released again in only 6 years, which to be frank, I'm not comfortable with knowing there's potentially a time limit on her treatment - especially upon reading that Bustamante dug two graves.
While I agree that trying her as an adult can be vindictive if she's immediately just cast aside, the benefit of the situation is that if she's given to a mental care facility, they can hold on to her as long as they feel it takes to properly rehabilitate her.
There's a chance that day may never come, but at the same time, we're as responsible for everyone else in society as we are for Bustamante. Given the rules that the justice system has to work within, this might be as close to justice as we can offer.
11/20/09
11/20/09
You're getting into the nurture vs. nature debate.
The entire biological function of a human changes throughout its life, not just at that age. Alzheimer's is a prime example of the physical aspects of the brain evolving long after tweenster dreamster days.
I believe in mental illness, but I also believe that there is a combustible combination of lifestyle demands/foreign substances entering the body (think hypoglycemia if you eat the wrong nutrients) that can impact decision making.
Even consider hormonal issues with the mythical period in women.
I think his positing whether a number is arbitrary is both valid and a starting point for discussion.
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11/20/09
"the world goes by my cage and never sees me." (Sep 13)
"bad decisions make great stories.." (Sep 17)
"this is all i want in life; a reason for all this pain." (Sep 28)
I'm pretty sure this was around the time she decided to do it and started planning. Those three tweets in that time span just scream:
"no one pays attention to me, or so I like to believe"
"if i do something horrible, people Will pay attention and I'll be all over the news as a killer!"
"if i kill someone and get put in jail or in a MH institution, I'll have a reason to be miserable and hate everything"
I'm pretty sure that by the time of the tweet on the the 17th she had thought about what she could do and how. By the 28th I'm pretty sure Elizabeth's fate was sealed. Seems like the murdering cunt was already commited to and probably excited about getting it done at that point. Sorry, I had to call her that to make me feel better. I'd rather kick her in the face.
11/20/09
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11/20/09
Even though they have the ability to commit adult-like crimes, they may NOT have the ability to discern how far off the social mark they are. Crazy stuff is par for the teenage course, and that's why decisions on mental maturity can be nothing but one case at a time. That said, this poor girl is a sociopath and is, sadly, irredeemable.
The worst part of this article is that last sentence. I remember when my girls were that age. Breaks my heart.
11/20/09
11/20/09
Obviously, for her own and others' safety, she needs to not be in society for a good long time, if ever again. Please note that John Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity nearly 30 years ago, and is still in an institution.
11/20/09
Also, do you genuinely believe that all of someone's thoughts go on their Twitter feed and Myspace page, or that everything they say there is true?
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On the topic of the Twitter feed, I agree with you that what someone's tweets do not necessarily reflect their true thoughts or intentions - that's why I wrote that "I can't feign shock that this sort of online behavior was overlooked when I myself am confronted with it every day." Everyone writes tweets like Bustamante and I can't hold anyone guilty for not taking it seriously.
I think you and I are on the same side on this one, it's just that ironically, in order for Bustamante to get the sort of long-term attention and mental health care she will undoubtedly need for many years to come as her mental state continues to develop, she needed to be charged as an adult.
You might find that unfair, but as much as there is a responsibility for Bustamante, there is an even greater responsibility to prevent this from happening again. If that means that there's a possibility that Bustamante might not be able to rejoin society, and the trade-off is that we won't lose another Elizabeth Olten, I can sleep with that at night. It's on Bustamante at this point to earn her position in the world.
11/20/09
11/20/09
However, we probably then need to stop referring to what we have as a justice system, and just call it an incarceration system.
11/20/09
Sick and sad.
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11/20/09
You know that stuff mired in ironic denial but when you take an objective look at their behavior, they are anything but ironic? Remove the pose and the tone and they are what they are, Popeye.
Anytime I ever hear someone say they didn't know a person would do/done something I say to myself, "Bullshit, you all saw and knew something and just hoped for the best to the point of denial..."
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Or something you do?
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#speakup
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11/19/09
I mean, whenever someone calls to sell me a recurring charges scam, I don't cry to the phone company.