MO - Elizabeth Olten, 9, St Martin's, 21 Oct 2009 #14

[UnicornTears]

Wow... A lot of posts have been made since I left for vacation before the holidays. I regret that I haven't had the time to read all the posts following the one that I made concerning the "autistic" factor. I will say though again that the reason it was brought up by me in the first place was that it was a comment made on another board by someone that claimed to know AB personally. My original intent was to query whether or not ANYONE ELSE here had come across that rumor. From reading several pages after my last, it seems clear that no one here saw the post I was referring to -- this doesn't surprise me considering how many pages of dialogue and posts "disappeared" into the ether shortly after facts started coming out about this case.

I've already stated that I'm no expert, and it seems unlikely that ANY of us are either. So it's probably best to agree-to-disagree on what does or does not constitute or qualify, medically speaking, as "aspie." Hell, the "experts" even struggle with this subject. IMO, in years to come, and with careful unbiased-study--we could learn a lot about those type of DD's that may surprise us, and hopefully we'll continue to gain understanding of them that will ultimately help us treat and diagnose them better and improve their quality of life.

It seems fairly clear though from reading "expert" opinion on aspie's that if there's one thing certain about them, it's that they come in widely divergent 'flavors'. And unless their diagnosis is made early on, it's feasible their symptoms could be overlooked depending on the symptoms severity and other circumstances. Especially if in their first few years of life they were particularly neglected, abused, and/or ignored, in addition to "high-functioning." The caveat once again being I'm just speaking hypothetically.

To respond to the question as to whether I knew anyone personally that had Aspergers, yes I do. My sister has it and I've known one other person that had it as well from high-school. With my sister we always knew she had some type of "emotional problems". But we were never sure what exactly the nature of them was. One time when I was about twelve she got very angry at me about something I had said to her(I forget now what it was) and she sunk her nails into me, drawing blood. But most of the time she seems relatively normal as long as you don't spend too much time with her. Most people that don't know her that well think she is just "shy" and maybe a bit of a loner or "withdrawn". When you get to know her though, it becomes more apparent that she has a fundamental difficulty dealing with people socially--almost child-like--and she has a tendency to be fixated on certain subjects and ideas.

Anyways, I was curious though hypothetically speaking WHAT IF she DID have some form of developmental disability. Would that matter to anyone? Should it? I mean we really know very little about this case other than what we've gleaned from publicly available online records, speculation, hearsay, conjecture and everything else but facts. If you look into some of the comments that council has made about the case like, and I'm paraphrasing--that they didn't even know how to proceed with this case, and that they didn't think they even had the requisite facilities to handle someone like AB, it seems to beg the question--what kind of person??? A teenage female offender? Certainly such a thing can't be that rare to elicit such a response. Maybe so, but it seems unlikely. There is more to this case than meets the eye IMO.

Granted what she did was horrible and disturbing. But how much better are we when we would take pleasure in administering her lethal-injection ourselves, or pulling the proverbial switch on her? Humanity as a whole is blood-thirsty and discounts the effect that witnessing violence, even the make-believe kind, can have on youths.

Now I don't mean any disrespect to anyone with my opinions, it just seems like we should have equal representation here at least until we start hearing actual evidence.


Happy holidays everyone!!! And I really hope I didn't ruffle too many feathers here... :/

 

[gliving]

Welcome back Unicorntears.

At allay your worries that someone might take pleasure in pulling the plug on Alyssa; she's not eligible for the death penalty.

I disagree with your opinion that humanity as a whole is blood thirsty. A good example is this forum Websleuths. Day after day I see posters sending prayers of peace to families dealing with loss.

 

[human]

Welcome back Unicorntears.

At allay your worries that someone might take pleasure in pulling the plug on Alyssa; she's not eligible for the death penalty.

I disagree with your opinion that humanity as a whole is blood thirsty. A good example is this forum Websleuths. Day after day I see posters sending prayers of peace to families dealing with loss.

I heard a program on public radio that said that they found that if soldiers did not have a commanding officer in their platoon or whatever it is called, soldiers would fire to miss or they wouldn't fire. They had to have someone in charge to tell them to do it.Soldiers have to have a tremendous amount of
"training" to have them operate in the military.

I don't think people have the killer gene as some people try to say. There is a lot more evidence to the contrary , but I can't remember what it is.

I, too, know people with autism of all kinds, including Asperger's. Temple Grandin has a couple of excellent books, if you want to read, that are fascinating. Temple has autism.

Alyssa has something wrong with her. But autism isn't one of the things, I am sure. Social interaction is not their thing.

She simply does not belong with the general public. It's a bummer, but for now, we don't know how to fix her, do we? And we can never fix Elizabeth and we can never fix anyone else if Alyssa decided to experiment in the future.

 

[LadyRider]

Someone was working on a time line. Will it be posted here?

 

[LogicalMinds]

Granted what she did was horrible and disturbing. But how much better are we when we would take pleasure in administering her lethal-injection ourselves, or pulling the proverbial switch on her? Humanity as a whole is blood-thirsty and discounts the effect that witnessing violence, even the make-believe kind, can have on youths.

Now I don't mean any disrespect to anyone with my opinions, it just seems like we should have equal representation here at least until we start hearing actual evidence.


Happy holidays everyone!!! And I really hope I didn't ruffle too many feathers here... :/

snipped....

well I find it unfair for people to keep coming here and acting as if people here are blood thirsty and/or trying to get Allysa the death penalty..

THE DEATH PENALTY IS OFF THE TABLE..HAS BEEN ...FEDERAL LAW...SO NOT EVEN RELEVANT HERE

as for "equal representation"?? what?? The fact is that more people here are not all that sympathetic to Allysa...these boards are not a jury or a courtroom...we don't have to have equal numbers here

LOL>> yeah...consider me ruffled

I feel this is misleading and unfair "But how much better are we when we would take pleasure in administering her lethal-injection ourselves, or pulling the proverbial switch on her? "

how inhumane would it be to allow this sociopath out to kill someone else??
that seems really inhumane to me

:furious::furious::furious:

 

[ynotdivein]

Bumping for Elizabeth.

Fellow WSer cecybeans posted the following on one of the Caylee Anthony threads (KC & Family Psyche Profile #10, post #54), and kindly agreed to let me re-post it here. I thought it was relevant to our attempts to figure out what brought AB to this point. Food for thought at least:

"I'm certainly no expert, but I've been fascinated with the field and how it is beginning to dovetail into neurophysiology the more we learn.

I have no idea what causes sociopathy, whether it is genetics or environment or a little of both. But an analogy comes to mind that I always use when contemplating what it must be like.

When children are very tiny, they look at the world very instrumentally, as if everything in it is an extension of themselves and exists simply to satisfy their own wants and needs. This is natural survival instinct for a being that is helpless to satisfy their own requirements and depends on others for sustenance and safety. Eventually they begin to separate sensations into awareness of other discrete entities, first their caretakers and then other people. Children begin to develop empathy for others around 4 or 5, I believe, although that is probably an average. When they do that, they are not in the self-absorbed prison in which all feeling is about themselves and they then have the latitude to and the joy of contemplating their own feelings or what others may feel. This development allows us all to become effective parents, sibling, friends and members of society if we are able to assign the same value for others' as we do for our own feelings, needs and wants.

However, many adults have difficulty transferring that feeling of empathy to others, even if they are not sociopaths. A dysfunctional domestic environment can kind of burn out the nerve endings and make people numb to normal feeling. Addictions can mitigate the ability to consider others' needs as equal to our own. There are a lot of things both physical and environmental that can disturb that equilibrium or warp it.

Since sociopaths' brain activity is started to be studied with fMRI's and other tools, it is becoming clear to scientists that they process information differently, even if the cause is undetermined. Maybe this will help us understand the differences between them and ourselves and even the different degrees of functioning among sociopaths and other personality disorders.

Sociopaths appear to exhibit the most severe dysfunction in terms of inability develop emotionally and become empathetic to their environment; they are always stuck in the prison of themselves and their own needs and wants. It makes them potentially dangerous to others, but there is something profoundly pitiful about them, as if they are strangers in a strange land, unable to be normal and forever cursed with imitating life instead of experiencing it fully.

We used to call the mentally ill evil and warehouse them, we used to house the mentally disabled the same way. We have come a long way in understanding the psyche, but we have a long ways to go. I think the double-edged sword with sociopaths is that they are often loved by their family, and that can make people blind to what they are capable of doing. But the fact they are loved by others, and appear to be such a common phenomenon, may make it easier to study the condition with compassion, understand it better, and perhaps someday create an effective treatment, or at the least, come up with better strategies to help them and us contain their toxic sides.

It does not change the evil that they can do, and we must always be on guard for that. Imooooooo."

 

[UnicornTears]

how inhumane would it be to allow this sociopath out to kill someone else??
that seems really inhumane to me

:furious::furious::furious:

You are not the only one who is upset about this case. I'm literally sickened to think that this is one situation--amongst many others that weren't nearly as obvious--that could have been prevented. If only we as adults in AB's life had been more tuned-in and paid more attention to things she had said and done. In most cases that have achieved media attention as of late, the only warning we had of something like this happening was perhaps them being treated for depression/anxiety or other behaviors that could easily be attributed to teenagers/adolescents in general(e.g. moodiness, apathy, drug-experimentation, rejection of societal norms, etc). If my child had been routinely cutting themselves and had attempted suicide on more than one occasion before the age of 15, it would seem intuitive that I'd drop everything else until I found out what the problem was, or died trying at least. We always talk about the proverbial "cry for help": how much more of a cry for help could you make than AB did, and yet still get a pretty clear impression that no one really is invested in your care or welfare...or indeed is even listening to what you're saying.

I'm not blaming anyone in particular. Rather, I'm blaming everyone that contributed to her being able to commit such an act like this in virtually full and unobstructed view. Those people IMO are any adults that up to this point discounted the gravity of her disregard for her own life, and the degree of her sadness and despair. AB's behavior should have been deeply troubling to anyone that knew her and cared about her, and it should have elicited serious and overriding concern from those people. I don't know that wasn't done, or why if it wasn't. But if it wasn't, the only explanation I could see for that would-be negligence is that parents/guardians, teachers and others are so jaded when it comes to the potential seriousness of teen depression and the outward signs of destructive behavior they exhibit these days, that they just overlooked it as "normal". It's hard for me to rationalize or explain it...

Certainly I'm not suggesting that AB be given a "free ticket" back into society, at least until such time that she could be properly evaluated and determined to be successfully "rehabilitated"--If such a thing coulb be done with assurance at some future date. My argument here is that I don't believe children are inherently or intrinsically evil; or that there is some genetic defect that guarantees a predisposition to murder or criminal behavior. IMO, 9 times out of 10 these are behaviors that are learned and that are allowed to grow. And whether it was 'learned' because of upbringing (or lack thereof), or some other variable, doesn't really make much difference in the context of the end result. Ultimately, the adults and other environmental influences that they are subjected to, i.e. parents, teachers, etc., (and I suppose to a degree, society at large) play a HUGE part in the development of an individual, IMO. That it's possible these kids are in some situations legitimately able to grow up thinking no one cares about them or how they feel, or the pain they're experiencing, is absolutely reprehensible.

This case is interesting in the potential issues that could be brought to light by it and resolved, but I've had to take a bit of a step back because it's affecting me on a personal level like no other media story has. And that's made worse by the fact that as time goes on, the chance for us to learn any kind of lesson from this is greatly reduced.

I can see things from both sides of this case's perspective, and in that way it seems there is very little potential for positive outcome here: EO is still dead no matter how you look at it, and the chance AB will get the kind of care that she should have had in the first place grows more and more highly unlikely--it's a lose-lose situation... :banghead:

Lets be sure and give our kids a big hug tonight before they go to bed, even if we're upset with them for whatever reason, and even if they try to run away from us while were doing it. Let's make sure they know we love them beyond any shadow of a doubt in their minds.

 

[LogicalMinds]

SNO one here is saying that Allysa should get the death penalty so there is really no need to pretend that JMO

I do hope Allyssa is locked away for good...for the safety of all. Just imagine if she ever had a baby....that is a scary thought. I don't care if they want to study her like a bug or just keep her locked up. Either way society is better off without her JMO

Yes, hug your kids...but hope that their little friend's older sister is NOT a sociopath...JMO that makes this case so horrifying..what a shock to think that a playmate's sister would kill a little girl...over NOTHING...oh yeah , she wanted to see what it "feels like to kill"..

Parents watch their kids and warn them, they protect them...but if a 9 year old kid can't visit a little playmate's house a few doors away in the afternoon what are people supposed to do?? Wrap their kids up in cotton wool and keep them locked in their own homes??
oh at the top of this site there is a link to a case...of a 15 year old boy who is now ? 33 and wants out of prison...and they are encouraging people to write and protest his parole bid ...what is the difference between him and Elizabeth?? nothing as far as I am concerned

 

[UnicornTears]

do you think this creep should be allowed out now?? I don't

No, I certainly don't think that person should be let out of prison--nor do I think there's a snowballs chance in hell he ever will be--even without the petitions. Not knowing more details about the AB/EO case I can't see any similarities between them except the ages of the perpetrators and victims.

IMO It's one thing to say that you committed a murder because you wanted to know what it would feel like(which by the way I'm not convinced was the real motivation)---as horrible as that is---and something completely different to kill because your mind for whatever reason derives sexual gratification from literally chopping up and raping a child--very different motivations...that's just my opinion of course.

When and if additional evidence about the EO case comes out, it may be more clear that the motivation was not so much that AB merely wanted to see what it was like to kill someone, but rather closer in line with current theories about the evolutionary origins of homicidal ideation.

I hope that rather than just consigning AB to solitary confinement for the rest of her natural life and throwing away the proverbial key, that we as a society if not now, at some point look deeper into these tragedies so we might avoid feeling they're destined to happen with no warning or for no reason whatsoever. The notion that some people are "just evil" is bulls*it IMO and is the easy way out that doesn't require us to take any responsibility for what's happened.

To just touch on AB's potential Developmental Disorder for a second, I was never suggesting that that DD was the cause of her committing this murder, but rather that the DD could have contributed to the other factors that led her to think such a thing might be rational in the first place.

Polls and research over the last decade have determined that a good percentage of male AND female adults think about committing a murder for various reasons every year--they just don't follow through with it; for AB it was only after having been essentially ignored several times by people she trusted to tell about her fixations, that she decided to actually put her plans into action. Real sociopaths don't tell others they are thinking of murdering someone, they just do it and then later on all their friends go on tv and say, "omg I never thought so-and-so could do such a thing...he/she seemed so normal!" I remember that according to JM, on at least one occasion AB had stated to her that there were "some girl(s?)" that she was having problems with. I think it's possible AB felt threatened by EO. Perhaps AB believed her grandparents liked EO more than they did her. I don't know. Once again it makes me wonder though, if that were true, would it make any difference to people that might be potential jurors in her trial? Would such a detail even be admissible?

 

[Prof]

There is no reason to suggest that anyone thinks that AB should be let out now or any time in the next couple of decades either IMO --In what thread was that suggested? I am confused

 

[human]

There is more and more brain research coming out about what happens to children. There is a McHale from Florida that has done some really interesting research on co-parenting. There is research on co-parenting and the development of conscience. This apparently happens in the first 3 years of life.

Maybe those synapses can be fixed someday. With more and more brain research, we are learning a lot about what is good parenting.

McHale feels that parenting should be taught starting in middle school.

I wonder if some Americans would stand for it. I feel if we don't do something with the knowledge that we have, more and more Alyssa's will be out there.

 

[JLMcKenna83]

There is more and more brain research coming out about what happens to children. There is a McHale from Florida that has done some really interesting research on co-parenting. There is research on co-parenting and the development of conscience. This apparently happens in the first 3 years of life.

Maybe those synapses can be fixed someday. With more and more brain research, we are learning a lot about what is good parenting.

McHale feels that parenting should be taught starting in middle school.

I wonder if some Americans would stand for it. I feel if we don't do something with the knowledge that we have, more and more Alyssa's will be out there.

While I agree that parenting skills should be taught to people younger and younger every year ( it is now 13 year olds who are becoming parents for carp's sakes!) I don't believe that the American public is ready for it. They have sex ed classes.. teaching children on how to protect themselves, yet the number of cases of kids becoming infected every year continues to rise. 1 out of 4 teenagers today has an STD. I believe that by teaching parenting to children in middle school, it won't prevent bad parents. It will however make more children believe that have become entitled to have children.. because they took a class on it. I honestly feel that if you are a person under the age of 18 who has a child, you should be required to attend parenting classes throughout the pregnancy, or risk losing your child to DSS. I also believe that after the child is born, they should be checked on by DSS at regular intervals to check on the welfare of the baby..

All this is imo.. as usual..

 

[vjlaw]

I am not sure parenting classes would help kids who already have issues with love and affection stemming from their own upbringing. You can teach the motions that go with affection but you can't make them bond or feel the affection. We seem to get more and more single parents even though there seems to be more information about that not being a good thing. We offer single parents money to get an education so they can get a better job. I don't think kids think about their responsibilty to be able to support a child and to plan for its future before they even have a child. They don't think about the person they hook up with as a potential parent and if that person is someone who should be a parent. In AB's case her mother was 15 when she was born, so MB probably needed parenting classes in elementary school. jmo

 

[AndresEscobar]

There is no reason to suggest that anyone thinks that AB should be let out now or any time in the next couple of decades either IMO --In what thread was that suggested? I am confused

It was never suggested.

 

[I AM THE 14 CAR]

Interesting !

 

[vjlaw]

okay, I have been trying to look this up with no luck.....so at this point, it is RUMOR, but my friend swears there was a wedding anouncement in yesterday's print version of the JC News Tribune for an M Bustamante. Mamma remarries? Has anyone else heard this?

ETS: If no one else can confirm this, and if I can't get a look at the paper myself, I will delete this post.

I thought the wedding announcements are in the Sunday paper in the Style section of the Jefferson City News Tribune. I threw mine away before I saw this post. Sorry I can't help with this.

 

[vjlaw]

I found the marraige records in the Sat. Jefferson City News Tribune. Ab's mother's name is Michelle. The bride in this record was a different first name but the same last name. She is also another town. So I don't believe it is AB's mother in the marriage record.

 

[W8nC]

I found the marraige records in the Sat. Jefferson City News Tribune. Ab's mother's name is Michelle. The bride in this record was a different first name but the same last name. She is also another town. So I don't believe it is AB's mother in the marriage record.

In that case, I should probably delete my earlier post, as it has nothing to do with this case.

Sorry everyone.....just starving for information here, lol.

 

[sleepface11]

Polls and research over the last decade have determined that a good percentage of male AND female adults think about committing a murder for various reasons every year--they just don't follow through with it; for AB it was only after having been essentially ignored several times by people she trusted to tell about her fixations, that she decided to actually put her plans into action. Real sociopaths don't tell others they are thinking of murdering someone, they just do it and then later on all their friends go on tv and say, "omg I never thought so-and-so could do such a thing...he/she seemed so normal!" I remember that according to JM, on at least one occasion AB had stated to her that there were "some girl(s?)" that she was having problems with. I think it's possible AB felt threatened by EO. Perhaps AB believed her grandparents liked EO more than they did her. I don't know. Once again it makes me wonder though, if that were true, would it make any difference to people that might be potential jurors in her trial? Would such a detail even be admissible?

Do you have anymore info on that statistic? sounds interesting. Also, I agree that AB felt threatened or even jealous of EO. IMO something traumatic happened to AB at an early age added to the shuffling around and parents in jail. Whereas EO had parents who were there and had not abandoned her fueling some sort of resentment in AB. I do not think she will be released, the only child killers i can think of that have been released were 13 or younger when they committed a crime.

 

[LogicalMinds]

Michael Hernandez made no secret of his fascination with death, gore, mutilation...and told kids about his desire to kill..

he was popular and outgoing....with a career goal...."serial killer"...and he killed his little friend simply because he could, wanted to see what it "felt like"

~~~

As for Allyssa and Elizabeth....I have not heard that she was "jealous" of her or anything....just that she wanted to see what it "felt like" to kill someone

Like Michael she may have picked a smaller, weaker victim....easier that way

Also..there is nothing to say that poor Elizabeth had such a stable upbringing...after all her own dad was doing time in prison just like Allyssa's (no, I am not saying that to put down poor Elizabeth, it certainly wasn't her fault)

I do feel that Allyssa had no real "reason" other than her own twisted mind/sociopath mind and heart to do this