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Various mental health professionals testified over the course of the two-day hearing that Bustamante suffers from major depression and displays the features of a borderline personality disorder. Some also said she shows early signs of a bipolar disorder. Bustamante began taking the antidepressant drug Prozac after a suicide attempt on Labor Day 2007 at the start of her eighth grade year. Her dosage of the medication had been increased just two weeks before she murdered Elizabeth. Bustamante's attorneys presented evidence from a psychiatrist who testified that Prozac could have been a "major contributing factor" in the slaying
-- a theory rejected by a prosecution psychiatrist who insisted there was no scientific evidence of Prozac causing homicides, or even increasing aggression. Catlett noted that Bustamante had taken responsibility for her actions in her guilty plea last month. But he suggested the murder might have been averted if a Jefferson City mental health care facility had done a better job of treating her. Asking for leniency from the judge, Catlett said: "Mental illness can cause disastrous effects." Each time defense attorneys elicited testimony about Bustamante's troubled childhood, prosecutors countered by asking the mental health experts to describe what Bustamante had told them about the murder. Those mental health officials testified that Bustamante told them she dug a grave several days in advance of the killing, then used her younger sister to lure Elizabeth outside with an invitation to play. Bustamante led Elizabeth into the woods by telling her she had a surprise for her. Bustamante sliced Elizabeth's throat -- as the child apparently tried to resist
-- with a knife that had been hidden in a backpack. Bustamante also strangled Elizabeth to the point of unconsciousness, then repeatedly stabbed Elizabeth in the chest. She was buried in a shallow grave.
[Associated
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