On the day she went missing, May 9, 2021, Tristyn Bailey was meant to assist her mother, Stacey, prepare a delicious Mother’s Day brunch. Her father Forrest recalled the day at a memorial ceremony a year later, saying that Tristyn’s sister Sophia had already began cooking the lunch before they realised anything was wrong.
Forrest Bailey reportedly told the service, “shortly after that, our day was destroyed.” The family of 13-year-old Tristyn, a seventh-grader at Patriot Oaks Academy, contacted the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office at approximately 10 a.m., prompting an immediate missing person’s notice. At 1.15 a.m., Tristyn was last seen at the Durbin Amenity Center in northwest St. Johns County. According to the warning, she was last seen wearing a white cheerleading skirt and a dark top.
Her corpse was discovered at 6 o’clock that evening in a retention pond at the end of Saddlestone Drive, south of Jacksonville. The sheriff’s office ultimately determined she had been stabbed 114 times, including 49 self-inflicted wounds to her arms and right hand. According to Sheriff Rob Hardwick, who spoke to The St. Augustine Record, the murder was particularly gruesome and violent. It’s our greatest fear, I’m sorry to say,” he remarked. Aiden Fucci, a classmate of Tristyn’s, eventually confessed to killing her over two years later. Everything you need to know about the terrifying case is below.
Selfies taken on Snapchat
While police were still looking for Tristyn that night, they arrested Aiden Fucci, a 14-year-old student who lived half a mile from where the corpse was discovered. While riding in the police car’s rear seat, he snapped a selfie and uploaded it to his Snapchat account.
The caption stated, “Hey folks, has anybody seen Tristyn lately?” Videos sent to Snapchat while Fucci was in the police car were eventually made public by the State Attorney’s Office. Grinning for the camera, Fucci exclaimed, “We’re having fun in a f***ing cop vehicle.” It appears that Fucci is alone in the police car in a subsequent Snapchat video in which he says, “Guess who’s in a f***ing cop car… tripping, guy.”
Later, the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office released surveillance footage showing Fucci and the murdered teen strolling together on the night she was slain. In subsequent footage, he can be seen jogging along by himself. Authorities searching Fucci’s residence the night he was arrested discovered a Buck knife sheath in his bedroom, bloodstained white Nike sneakers, a T-shirt, and a white piece of paper with suspected blood on it.
Fucci was arrested and imprisoned without bail on a second-degree murder accusation. The stab wounds found in Bailey’s body matched the description of a Buck knife found in a pond nearby. According to an arrest record acquired by The Florida Times-Union, “the defendant’s tale altered multiple times but [he] finally made several admissions.”
His mother, Crystal Smith, was charged with tampering with evidence after she reportedly washed the blood from her son’s pants. A warrant for Ms. Smith’s arrest states that surveillance footage from inside the house shows her washing her pants, and that blood evidence was also discovered in the sink drain.
The allegations against him were increased to first-degree murder around three weeks after his first arrest. According to State’s Attorney RJ Larizza, “the ultimate conclusion is that premeditation might be inferred, particularly from just the sheer amount of stab wounds that Tristyn Bailey had to suffer.”
Frightening daydreams
The St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office reported in July 2021 that Fucci had confided in acquaintances about having fantasies involving murder and mutilation. As quoted by First Coast News, a companion reportedly informed deputies that the suspect had expressed a desire to cut someone’s neck because he believed it would provide him satisfaction.
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