Teen cheerleader butchered by schoolmate with murder obsession
Florida student Tristyn Bailey, 13, crept out to meet 14-year-old killer who boasted of his deadly fantasy
It was the morning of Mother’s Day and Stacy Bailey was being treated to a special breakfast prepared by some of her children. But they noticed that the youngest child, Tristyn, 13, hadn’t joined them for the special meal at their home in the quiet suburb of Durbin Crossing, in St Johns, Florida. When they checked Tristyn’s bedroom, she was missing. She had gone to bed the night before – but vanished in the night. And their fears grew when she failed to answer her mobile phone.
The hardworking student at Patriot Oaks Academy was a cheerleader with a contagious laugh and a big smile. The youngest of five siblings, she had a brother and three sisters. The close-knit family, including Stacy and dad Forrest, referred to themselves as the “Bailey 7” and would regularly get together for “Bailey fun day Sundays”. But on that Mother’s Day – 9 May 2021 – their lives changed forever.
The previous evening, the family had been out and arrived home at 11.45pm.
Tristyn headed to her bedroom and everyone else went to sleep. At about 10am the next day they realised she was missing and the police were called.
Many houses in the suburb had security video and police trawled through footage to try to trace Tristyn’s movements. It appeared that instead of going to sleep, she had left the house. But why?
Residents abandoned their Mother’s Day plans to join the hunt for the teen, who had been wearing her white cheerleading skirt and a dark top. Her desperate father begged for help on social media and groups of volunteers scoured the area.
CCTV showed her at about 12.30pm heading to the home of a friend of one of her schoolmates, Aiden Fucci, 14.
Fucci had messaged her, inviting her to hang out, and it seemed she’d been persuaded to sneak out in the early hours to join them. The friend said Fucci and Tristyn had left the house soon after their arrival. Cameras captured them together at 1.14am, and again at 1.45am as they walked down a cul-de-sac towards a wooded area.
An hour and 45 minutes later, Fucci was seen on CCTV film carrying his white Nike shoes as he returned alone.
When questioned, Fucci, who lived less than
‘Did you stay to watch her die? Did she cry for her mother?’
a mile from the Bailey home, claimed he’d walked with Tristyn for a while but had carried on without her when she went home.
Some of his fellow students told investigators that Fucci would talk about “killing people” and had told friends a few weeks earlier that he was going to kill someone within a month. He had sketched a sadistic-looking character holding a knife, and admitted to others that he had fantasies about hurting strangers.
It could have been all talk, of course, but as police questioned Fucci, his story kept changing. At one point, he got into the back of the patrol car to show officers where he’d
walked with Tristyn.
Police car selfie
In the police car he took a selfie which he posted on Snapchat with the message, “Hey guys has inybody [sic] seen Tristyn lately?”
One reply read, “You were with her Aiden u know what happened to her.” As Fucci was pressed for more details by officers, he claimed he and Tristyn had an argument after she’d “grabbed his penis” – but he wasn’t interested so he pushed her to the ground and walked off. Police
continued to question him – with his parents present – and he soon became the prime suspect in Tristyn’s disappearance.
At 6pm that day, a body was found in the woods Tristyn had been seen heading towards in the last recorded video footage of her. Sadly, the hunt for the teenager was over.
The body showed Tristyn had been stabbed 114 times. At least 49 of the cuts were defensive wounds, showing how she’d tried to fight off her attacker before being overpowered. She had been stabbed in the head, neck, shoulders, arms, hands and back.
Police divers also found a Buck knife with a wood and brass handle in a large pond about 140 feet from where her body was found. It was a match to her injuries. The tip of the blade was missing – and the fragment was found lodged in the teenager’s skull.
A sheath for a Buck knife was found in Fucci’s bedroom at home, along with a shirt, and shoes with blood on them.
Hours after the body was found, Fucci was charged with murder.
The community was in deep shock. Locals later tied ribbons of Tristyn’s favourite colour –teal –
round nearly every tree or pole in the neighborhood in her memory. They held candlelit vigils – and were in disbelief about the schoolboy killer in their midst.
Fucci’s mother, Crystal Smith, was charged with tampering with the evidence after video footage came to light that showed her picking up her son’s jeans and scrubbing off the blood stains. She has pleaded not guilty and faces trial this month.
Just before his trial for firstdegree murder was due to start in February, Fucci, now 16, changed his plea to guilty. He apologised to the Bailey family but offered no explanation as to why he had killed Tristyn.
Horrific death
During a high-profile sentencing hearing in March, the Bailey family wore teal and made emotional victim impact statements. Tristyn’s second eldest sister Alexis dropped 114 teal-coloured stones into a glass jar – each representing a stab wound on her sister’s body. At the end of the statement, each member of her family placed a white stone in the jar, to represent what they had lost.
Alexis fired questions at Fucci about her sister’s suffering. “Did she scream out for help or was she
paralysed with agony? Did she cry for my mother? Did she beg you to stop?” she demanded. “Did you hear her lungs gargling with blood? Did you stay to watch her die? Did you watch the life leave her eyes?”
Tristyn’s mother Stacy wanted Fucci locked up forever. “She fought, and our beautiful daughter suffered for so long as he took no mercy,” she said, describing how she is constantly tortured by the thought of her daughter’s last moments. “Aiden Fucci you have destroyed me, you have destroyed my family.”
Stacy said she had left her daughter’s room untouched and can’t even wash the laundry in fear she’d lose her scent forever.
As a juvenile Fucci wasn’t eligible for the death penalty, but sentencing him to life in prison, to be reviewed after 25 years, a St Johns County judge described it as one of the most shocking cases of his career. “Tristyn Bailey was conscious, she was aware, and she was doing everything she could to fend off this attack,” he said. “She suffered a painful, horrifying death from someone that she trusted.”
He said Fucci’s behaviour before the killing had shown a heightened level of premeditation and it appeared the crime was committed simply to satisfy the “defendant’s internal desire to feel what it was like to kill someone”.
In a letter of apology Fucci said he would miss spending time with his family, and his mother’s “lemon pepper chicken”.
Tristyn’s death continues to cause anger and disbelief, but at her memorial service her family shared words she once used to describe her cheerleading squad. “You mess with one of us, you mess with all of us because we are family.”
A sentiment that might help unite the shattered community.
‘She did everything she could to fend off this attack’