All language subtitles for M.360.S01E01.WEB.H264-RBB

Every person
that worked on this case

was traumatized at some level.

If you started out
as a search and rescue,

you know you have
a certain amount of time

before it's going to be
a search and recovery.

We start considering that
there may have been foul play.

She had been
painted as a monster.

But sometimes evil is
afoot in the world.

That's when I realized.

Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh!

At the flip of the switch,

you would get this
bloodthirsty almost animal.

That's just desperately wicked.

And she kept repeating,
he's going to kill me.

And he shoots my daughter.

That's about
the only time in my career

that I just wanted
to shoot him.

You can run,
but you can't hide.

Cole County is roughly
390 square miles.

One of the outlying
communities is St. Martins.

It's a slightly more rural,
smaller community,

a very solid community,
good people.

Rarely had calls out there.

Teenagers may be
driving too fast

or things of that order,

but really,
it's a nice community,

a good place to live.

On that Wednesday,
actually at 7:00 PM,

I was at one of
the local churches doing

a church security workshop.

I received a phone call
from one of my deputies

that said they had
a report of a missing child

in the St. Martins area.

Elizabeth Olten was
a 9-year-old girl,

by all accounts,
a very nice person.

She attended
a local grade school,

certainly was doing
fine in classes.

She didn't seem to be
unhappy with her family,

with her school, with anything
that she was involved in.

She was just a happy,
intelligent child.

Elizabeth Olten was our
neighbor at that time, in 2009.

And she lived four houses,
three or four houses down.

She is a girl that would
come over to our house

from time to time,
especially in the summer.

We have a swimming pool,
and she came over

and went swimming
a couple times.

We'd hang out at
the Olten house,

and sometimes Elizabeth
would be hanging out

with Emma, my little sister.

I get a call
from Elizabeth's mother,

and she's asking
about her daughter.

And I said, well,
I've not seen her.

I don't know anything about it.

And she said, well,
I can't find her.

And it's dark,
and she's never out at night.

And we went down there,
and we talked to her parents

and we talked to the police.

And that's when
I realized that--

the seriousness
of what was happening.

I didn't know if she was
at a friend's house,

but then, obviously,
we realized

that she's definitely missing.

Deputies are talking with
the mother of Elizabeth,

the missing child, and finding
out where she had been,

the last time people
knew about her.

The mother had stated
that her daughter,

she had been with some
classmates, twin boys,

down the road.

They lived with
their grandparents.

We just went
to the Oltens' house,

and we were playing
video games.

The sheriff showed up
and spent more time

asking questions,
more than anything else,

for a while.

And then that's when
we found out that

Emma did go over there
and knocked on the door

and asked if Elizabeth
could come out and play.

And then, you know,

Elizabeth hadn't
been home yet.

There's panic between,
you know,

Mom and brother for sure.

And, like, you know, what
could have happened to her?

Why wouldn't she be
home by now?

The older sibling,
which was Alyssa Bustamante,

had volunteered
to walk her home.

And she said rather than
walking on the road--

and the road has
no sidewalks on it.

It's a rural, paved road.

So rather than walk on that
in the approaching darkness,

they took the back routes
from the back of the homes,

through some farmland
and some wooded areas.

And Alyssa said that
she walked her to--

in sight of Oltens' home
and left her there,

with Olten walking home.

So we have that very short
time of being inside

of the house
and not seeing her again

and then never making it
to the home.

So at that point,
we're looking at perhaps

she got lost in the woods,
or she fell and hurt herself.

A couple hours later,
about the time

they really started
searching in earnest,

it started to rain,
which, of course,

made their search
more difficult.

It was a dark night.

It was not just cloudy,

but we had torrential rains,
great winds.

It was an uncomfortable time
to be looking for a lost child

out in the woods
and farm areas.

If you started out
as a search and rescue,

you know you have
a certain amount of time

before it's going to be
a search and recovery.

You know, you want to be able
to use things like helicopters

with forward-looking
infrared radar,

which normally is
available to us.

That first night,
the weather was too bad.

We couldn't use
a great deal of the aircraft.

And so we're taking
the assumption that

she could have fallen
and injured herself

or, in the darkness,
gotten a little lost.

And it's not a good place
to be lost in.

The woods are very thick.

There's a lot of undergrowth,
a lot of brush.

The creeks are full
of water and running

at a good rate of speed.

So in a situation
like that, again,

you want to start looking at
a search and rescue operation.

We got local fire departments,

and we set up a grid search
with teams.

The way we do that is
we pull up maps of the area

and we crosshatch it,
covering literally

every square inch
to every square yard,

all the way across it,

from east to west
and north to south.

There was so much underbrush
that it's hard

to fight your way through.

You've got people that
were willing to get down

on their hands and knees
and crawl through brush.

This is hours and hours
and hours of work by people

in horrific conditions,
and yet,

the rescuers did not give up.

We just kept looking.

But we didn't find her
or any indication of her.

And we had to eventually
call for that night

because it simply became too
dangerous to be in the woods.

We were just
totally in the dark

about what actually happened.

Her father was in jail.

A lot of people were
thinking the same thing.

Perhaps somebody he knows
had kidnapped her.

By the next morning,
we had also started

having a dual command post.

One command post was
search and rescue.

The other command post
became investigative.

They had about
300 people were out

looking, trying to find her.

People we know,
friends of ours,

everyone was out
trying to find her

because we couldn't
really figure out

what could have happened.

We were all just flabbergasted.

We had a good
couple hundred volunteers,

not counting the fire
department personnel,

the law enforcement personnel,
ambulance crews.

Everyone wanted to volunteer.

We partnered with the Missouri
State Highway Patrol,

and they set up checkpoints
and literally stopped

every vehicle
that came through

and asked what people
had seen.

We had no visual
sighting of her.

One of the other aspects
that kept us on task

in this, certainly, limited--

big area, but limited--

was the fact that
she had a cell phone.

We can't locate the phone,
but yet we have

a broad area that
it's pinging in.

We knew that the area
we were searching that

that phone was in that area.

We kept tracking,
looking for that,

until eventually, the battery
on the phone died.

We had almost gotten
to the point of purely

search and recovery because
the weather had been so bad,

the likelihood
of her surviving

to that point was pretty low.

So we start considering that
there may have been foul play.

That's where you start
looking at, well,

who is the person
that had last contact?

And the natural
outflow of that is

where you would start looking
at a person of interest.

So the last person
to see her had been

15-year-old Alyssa Bustamante.

Elizabeth Olten's brother
came over and was

asking where Elizabeth was.

And we didn't know.

We had no idea.

Why are you asking us?

He said, well, because
she left and was with Alyssa.

I'm like, I didn't know that.

So we asked Alyssa,
and Alyssa kind of

brushed it off and said,
well, yeah, she was.

But then she left
and went home,

or she thought she went home.

Alyssa was going to a church
function at that time.

So Karen took Alyssa
to the church function,

and Elizabeth Olten's mother
then got concerned

and was asking us, you know,
what happened to Elizabeth?

The FBI wanted
to talk to Alyssa

because they had
been called in

since this was
a missing minor.

They got her out of school

and took her in
for questioning,

and she answered all their
questions for quite a while.

They paid a lot
of attention to her

right from the beginning.

I was there
when she was born,

so I got to cut the cord
when she was delivered.

Her mother was just 16.

And she was the teeniest
little baby, so sweet.

As babies go, she was
very happy and cheerful.

She seemed like
a pretty good sister.

Like, she, you know,
tried to show us

the way with some things
and help us out.

And, you know, I never
really, you know,

thought anything bad of her.

Then they moved to Missouri.

I guess you'd
call her a tomboy.

She liked playing outside.

She liked climbing trees.

And we had quite a few
trees around,

and she climbed them all.

I definitely remember
as she got older,

she was more of like
a recluse, almost,

you know, staying in her room,

doing her own thing,
more, like,

depressed and definitely darker.

And it was definitely hard
because, you know,

you remember her as, like,
you know, a happy,

you know, sister.

And you can kind of,
you know, also see her

transitioning into someone
that's not very happy.

I think it was about
the same time she was going

through puberty,
and she had a real hard time

with that
because of being a tomboy,

she wanted to be a boy.

And all of a sudden,
she's developing,

and she didn't really
want to develop.

So she had a real, what I
would consider a dark period,

going through the goth stuff.

I couldn't get her
to wear anything

that wasn't black or dark.

We'd go out, like,
monster hunting, you know.

She made us believe
that there were

actually monsters out there.

After school,
the kids come--

get home on
the school bus at 4:30.

Alyssa wanted to go
out in the woods,

so I said, yes, you can
go out in the woods.

That's something
she did real often.

She went out at
about 5 o'clock.

She came back at
about 6 o'clock,

and it was just getting dark.

She went right
upstairs to her room,

which is a little unusual.

A couple hours later,
about 7:30,

8 o'clock, the sheriff was
here and started looking

around for Elizabeth
and started asking

questions of our family.

My first contact
with Alyssa,

you would think that
this is the person

that would be a good babysitter
for your children.

She was engaging,
good eye contact,

positive body language,
comfortable with adults,

and seemed responsible.

We tried to help
as best we could

because we still
were wondering,

what the heck is
going on here?

We never saw Elizabeth.

We used the FBI's
evidence recovery team

to execute the search warrant,

and they went through
with a fine tooth comb.

Goodness,
there must have been 30

law enforcement people
on this property,

including, you know,
local people, FBI people.

And then you get
the search of the bedroom.

And you start
finding out that,

well, there's
a lot of darkness.

When you think of a child

writing something on the wall,

you think of a little kid
with a crayon

or a paintbrush
or a magic marker.

You don't think of a teenager
immortalizing that which

is aberrant to society, looking
like there's blood on the wall

or writing horrific
statements on the wall.

They were focusing
upstairs on Alyssa's room.

And I mean, looking back,
I don't know why

I didn't catch something,
but we really didn't.

I just--I didn't catch a thing.

But they were taking pictures,

and that's when they found
her diary.

It turns out that that was
absolutely crucial to the case.

She hid so much of herself
from even her closest contacts,

but she surely shared
her heart in her journal.

One of the investigators
with my agency

was looking at the diary,
and as he's going through it,

on the last entry
on the last page

that she'd done anything on
was a large section

that had been
scrawled over with her pen,

so it was just
all blacked out.

And honestly, he took a 20,000
candlepower flashlight,

put it under it,
and you could clearly read

what was written on the page.

She's killed someone,
strangled her,

stabbed her,
and cut her throat.

I remember when my detective
shared it with me.

And...

It's a confession.

It's a written confession.

I would say we were in the 95
percentile that this is it.

We've got her.

When Alyssa was 7,
and right before the boys--

her younger brothers
turned three years old,

her mother came to California

because she split up
with her husband.

We soon discovered that
her mother was a drug addict,

and what had been going on
in Missouri was not good.

The kids were not
very well cared for.

There was one
particular night

my husband had called me
to tell me that

he went over to see the kids.

We'd gotten them a little
trailer so they could have--

Michelle could have
a little privacy.

We were hoping that would help.

Anyway, it was a disaster.

And so beer cans were all over.

And she was not--

she was there, but she was--

I think she was
passed out on the bed.

And so, um...

I really didn't want to take
these children away

from their parents, but we did.

We had to.

One of the things that
the state-appointed counselor

said from the testing
she had done with Alyssa

is that she wanted me
to be aware that there was

a possibility that her behavior

was going to get
a little bizarre.

And I was really glad
she told me this,

because it did.

We would be out,
like, at a store,

and she would just go
down on the ground.

Now, bear in mind she was
8 years old at this time.

And she would act out things
like a 4-year-old would do,

like she was a giraffe
or a donkey or whatever.

Or she would chase in and out
of the clothes at the store.

And of course, people that
are around at that time

are looking at me, like,
well, aren't you going

to do something about this?

You know, this behavior
is rather odd.

I don't know that
any of us can understand

what it feels like to have
a parent, not just one,

but two parents abandon you,

and not just once,
but over and over.

She wouldn't trust us
with her feelings.

She thought
she had to hide them.

Because, you know,
her experience

with adults in her
early life was such that

when she did share, it--

bad things happened.

We eventually moved
to Missouri.

I only saw her cry once,
one time.

It was after one of the times
her mother had left.

This was a little bit
before Alyssa turned 12.

She was in her bedroom, in bed,

and she had the covers
over her head.

And I could hear her crying.

And I went in
and I lowered the covers,

and we cried together.

And--because we were both sad.

To have--to have a child
that's an addict

is very difficult
for a mother, a parent.

And for Alyssa, it's her
mother, and she loves her.

And she's left her again.

And I think that in her mind,
it was hopeless,

and wasn't going
to get her life together.

And she finally
had to face that.

Her mother wasn't coming back.

I guess she decided that it
was more than she could handle,

and that's when
she attempted suicide.

Once we tried
to get help for her,

she was diagnosed
as being bipolar.

And that's sort of explained
her behavior in a lot of ways,

that she was down
and up and so on.

And she would self-harm.

You can definitely see
the scars on her arms

and, like, you know,
how fresh they were sometimes

when she would cut herself.

And she would definitely
get in, like, dark moods

where she wouldn't really
talk, or, you know,

you could tell that
something was bothering her.

When I looked at some of
the things she was looking up,

she was looking up more ways
of how to kill herself.

But at that point,
she was at school.

We sent deputies
to take her into custody.

As a 15-year-old,
they just wanted us

to bring Alyssa to the FBI
office on Friday morning,

which is what we did.

Alyssa and I went in,
and we were being questioned

by the sergeant,
as well as they had

a juvenile officer there.

If you don't mind if
I sit here so I can write--

Yeah.

'Cause I'm going to be
taking a lot of notes, so.

OK.

We really want to know,
did you do it?

Which the diary gave it to us,
but we want to hear her say it.

But we also want to know why.

Finally, he started asking
her more pointed questions

and pretty much
putting things--

I remember thinking,
wow, why is he--

why is he saying this stuff?

At that point,
I was still 100% sure that

Alyssa had nothing to do
with anything.

If somebody had asked me,
it was 100% sure

I knew that she was not
involved in that.

But her denial then
was contrary to

what the facts were that
she was confronted with.

And they told her
that they had found her diary

in which she mentions
what she had done.

When you're doing an
interview or an interrogation

with an individual, you're
trying to get to the point

that the situation is set up
where the only thing

where they sense relief
is the truth.

Oh!

That's when I realized.

Oh, my gosh.

Oh, my gosh!

And I just had
a breakdown right there

in the middle
of this whole situation.

And I turned just to get out.

I just--I couldn't breathe.

You saw how shocking it was
to the grandmother.

Can you imagine finding out

that a person
of your own blood

has acted out this horribly?

It was like something
out of a movie.

And all of a sudden,
you're in it,

and it's not where
you wanna be.

She confessed.

And honestly, it was shocking
to the two investigators

that were in there, to hear her
coldly lay out what she did.

This girl didn't care
who she killed.

She cared that she killed.

That's frightening.

So at that point,
she gave directions

to recover the body.

The grave site,
that was under a tree

and some brush in the area.

When the body was recovered,
it was in a shallow grave.

It was covered
with some debris.

A lot of leaves were falling
at that time of the year.

People had walked right there.

So it's not that
that area wasn't covered.

It was covered.

They, of course,
found the cell phone.

The autopsy report
is sufficient on all

of the injuries, the violence,
the anger demonstrated

by the method of death.

It's incredible to me
that a 15-year-old girl,

as an outflow of her life,

was wanting to destroy
other people,

was wanting to do it
brutally.

And I think that we need
to remember that for most

of us in society,
this is so aberrant

that we are not going
to understand it

because we're not that way.

And I thank God that
we're not that way.

On that particular night,
I had a big church activity.

And so I was preparing.

I had to bring the treats,
and we were

going to be teaching dancing.

And Alyssa was going.

And I remember she asked
if they could go over

and see Elizabeth,
and we said no,

because it was already 4:30,
and we needed to leave.

Then I think she came back
and asked if they could--

her and Emma could just
go out in the forest

for a little bit
and come back.

So they went.

And we agreed that
they could do that,

and that's where we thought
they were that night.

Later, it was obviously
discovered that

Emma went over
and got Elizabeth,

and then they went
out into the woods.

And then I guess they
ditched Emma and kept going,

you know, out in the woods.

While Alyssa was walking
Elizabeth home, at one point,

out of view of anyone else,
she started to strangle her,

and she found that
the girl was too strong.

And when she was resisting
being strangled is when Alyssa

had said that
she pulled the knife out,

the kitchen knife out
and began stabbing her.

She stabbed her repeatedly
and cut her throat.

The brutality of it is just--
is shocking to the conscience.

And of course,
the question there is,

where does the 15-year-old
get this anger?

I don't know.

So at that point, for her,

she'd done
what she wanted to do.

She'd seen the light
of life go out--

go out of a person's eyes
by her hand.

That's just desperately wicked.

She was in the vicinity of
the grave that she had dug.

She drug her to that grave,
placed her in it, buried her,

spread some debris over it,
walked back home,

threw the knife
in the dishwasher

and turned the dishwasher on,

and went to her room
like nothing else had happened,

wrote some information
down in a diary,

and then thought better
and scratched it out.

I distinctly remember
the front door slamming open

and Alyssa running
up the stairs

like a herd of elephants,
which she didn't normally do.

I had met her briefly
that first night.

She appeared to be
concerned that

Elizabeth did not
make it to her home.

In retrospect,
you look at her and you go,

wow, she's thinking
she pulled this off.

She's thinking that
she's gonna walk on this.

She's thinking that
we'll never figure it out.

And it seemed with her that
it's like flipping a switch.

She would be this nice,
normal person

that people were dealing with.

And then at the flip
of the switch,

you would get this
bloodthirsty almost animal.

She's detained
as a juvenile,

and then the application is

made to try her as an adult.

And when that goes through,
then she's charged

as an adult
with first-degree murder,

premeditated murder.

We have to remember that
regardless of your age,

there's got to be
accountability.

We had a 15-year-old
that demonstrated

all facets of evil.

And she's accountable
for her actions.

If you act like adult, you
can be charged like an adult.

And that's what
happened in her case.

The lawyer for a teenager
accused of killing

a 9-year-old neighbor
says his client

shows signs of
depression and tried

to kill herself two years ago.

It wasn't
the Alyssa that I know.

She was on some
kind of a high drug,

as far as I could tell,
from the medications

that we were giving her, that
the doctors were giving her,

and that I allowed them
to give her.

She should have been
institutionalized so that

we could protect her
and anyone else while

we went ahead and messed around
with what's going on

in her brain as a 15-year-old.

I think that maybe
it was the medicine

that kind of drove her,
you know,

crazy, I guess you would say.

Was she mentally ill?

I don't think so.

I'm not a psychologist
or a psychiatrist.

But it doesn't seem so
because she functioned

in everyday society well.

But yet there was
that side that when

the switch was thrown, she was
willing to do what she did.

On her Twitter page,
15-year-old accused killer

Alyssa Bustamante lists
her location as

"somewhere I don't wanna be."

That somewhere is now
a jail cell,

as a Missouri teen
awaits trial

for her role in the death

of 9-year-old Elizabeth Olten,

who prosecutors say
Bustamante strangled

and stabbed in
a premeditated murder.

She had premeditated
murder as a charge

because she planned it
by digging the grave.

She planned it
by taking the knife,

and she planned it by waiting
for the opportunity

to get this little girl alone
and brutally kill her.

That defines
premeditated homicide.

Bustamante has
pleaded not guilty,

but a dark picture of
the teen has emerged online.

In this video,
Bustamante shown touching

an electric fence while
encouraging her younger

brothers to do the same.

I knew about
the electric fence video,

but I guess, as a kid,
we didn't really think--

we didn't know anything about,
like, YouTube or much then.

I guess it's not really

even a big deal for us

because, I mean, people
could see that and be like,

oh, wow, like, she's forcing
them to touch this

electric fence
when, in reality, like,

we're growing up,
you know, around horses

and around, you know,
that type of stuff.

Like, you know how many
times we accidentally

touched an electric fence?

And it's, like--
it's just a little shock.

It's not, like, oh, wow,
like, that really hurt.

Joining us now
from St. Louis is

Jennifer Meyer,
who is best friends

with Alyssa Bustamante.

Did she ever, in any
conversation with you,

talk about wanting
to hurt somebody else?

Yes.

In one conversation
we had back in January,

she just pulled me
off to the side

and basically
told me, you know--

she said, I wonder
what it would be like

to kill somebody.

I thought it was
kind of strange,

but I just dismissed it,
I guess.

I wouldn't really think that
my best friend would do that.

She had been painted
as a monster.

Awaiting trial,
she was in jail.

And because she was a minor

and because there was
ill feeling against her,

they thought she was
in danger in jail,

so they kept her
in solitary confinement

for a year and a half.

And by this time,
she was ready to do anything

to get out of solitary.

So when her attorney suggested
that they offer a guilty plea,

she went along with it,
just because

she knew that
she'd get out of it.

At that point, she elected
to enter a plea of guilty.

In Alyssa's final statement,
I think that

as best she could, that
she truly did feel remorse.

Granted, she was
under the influence

of extra medication,

but I think that
as best she could,

she really did feel
the remorse.

And if she could have
switched places,

she would have.

Since she was pleading
guilty, there was a sentence.

And the judge
basically gave her

the maximum sentence she could.

It was like two 30-year terms

to be run consecutively.

I look at all the cases
that I've been involved in,

in 34 years
of law enforcement.

This was one of the two
most difficult cases

that I was ever involved in.

Every person that
worked on this case

was traumatized at some level.

But I can tell you that
the technician for the FBI

that brushed the soil
from Elizabeth's face was,

at that same moment,
recognizing

she had a 9-year-old
daughter at home.

I just never, ever,
in my wildest dreams,

imagined that Alyssa
would have the capability

to do what she did that night.

Never, never
in my wildest dreams.

Sometimes it's not
that anyone failed her.

She was getting counseling.

She was involved
in a local church.

She had grandparents
that cared deeply

for her and her brothers.

But sometimes evil is
afoot in the world.

And in this particular case
with her,

that's what I think was there.

So I know that, you know,
on the outside,

people definitely see her
as, you know, a villain.

And, like, you kind of, like,
see her like that a little bit

on the inside of the family,
but she's still family.

And, you know, with the things
that happened to her and stuff,

it's hard to put, you know,
all the blame on her

and not, you know,
other circumstances.

She didn't have remorse
at that time.

She has remorse now
because now she has matured

and finally understands

what it was she has done.

She is much better now.

She doesn't have to take drugs.

And where she is in prison,

she still needed
rehabilitation,

and she's gotten it.

If her life
changed dramatically

and they could document that
it changed dramatically,

I would say you might have

a more sympathetic
parole board.

In this case, I don't know
that she can change.

You have hopes,
but I don't think she can.

It's so aberrant
to the average person

that you can't
make sense of it.

I'm not so naive
to think that there's

no evil afoot in the world,
because there is,

and I know it
because of people

like Alyssa Bustamante.

To shoot two people
six times each?

I can't even climb
into that darkness.

The creepy dude was
most likely right there.

They assume that

the murderer knows
the victims.

Everyone is a suspect.

Gabby Petito
never goes outside.

Did Brian Laundrie
have something to do

with the disappearance
of these two girls?

This blew my world apart.