ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. — WARNING: The following story contains graphic content.
The State Attorney’s Office on Wednesday released new documents regarding the investigation into the murder of 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey.
The St. Johns County teen was found dead on Mother’s Day after being reported missing by family that morning.
Aiden Fucci, a 14-year-old who attended school with Tristyn, is facing a first-degree murder charge in her death.
The State Attorney’s Office is prosecuting Fucci as an adult after the medical examiner found that Tristyn had been stabbed 114 times.
The night Tristyn disappeared
The new documents give a closer look at what happened the night Tristyn was killed, including interviews with family and friends.
It was Tristyn’s mother who first contacted the Sheriff’s Office to report her daughter’s disappearance sometime after midnight May 9, and provided deputies with a list of Tristyn’s friends and their possible locations.
One of those friends, a classmate of Tristyn and Fucci, told St. Johns investigators that the pair had been hanging out at his house and left together around 1 a.m.
Deputies then went to Fucci’s home on Castledale Court to speak with him, being that he was “the last person seen with Tristyn,” the report stated.
Fucci initially told investigators that he left that mutual friend’s house with Tristyn and they walked together until she turned onto her street.
When asked why it took so long to get home, Fucci told detectives he walked around alone for a while, telling deputies he kept walking until he got home between 3 a.m. and 3:30 a.m.
Fucci said he got ‘pissed’
Fucci agreed to show deputies the path they took and got into their patrol car.
While driving the route he and Tristyn took, deputies said Fucci admitted that Tristyn did not turn onto her street.
They had continued walking together on North Durbin Parkway.
When the two passed Leith Hall Drive, Fucci told investigators that Tristyn grabbed his penis, which made him “pissed” and an argument ensued. That’s when he told authorities that he pushed her hard to the ground where she hit her head and left her there, according to the report.
While in the patrol car, the report states Fucci at one point began crying and punched the back of a seat saying, “I’m going to get arrested for bullshit.”
Action News Jax reported that video surveillance captured two people matching their description and the timeframe walking in the neighborhood around 1:45 a.m. Video surveillance at Aiden’s home showed him enter his house around 3:30 a.m.
During a search for Tristyn, documents show a neighbor found her clothed body in the woods near a retention pond while out for a run near the cul-de-sac of Saddlestone Drive and alerted authorities.
That location was .3 miles from Fucci’s home.
‘It could have been me’
Tristyn, according to deputies, was found with significant injuries to her head and other trauma.
Deputies obtained a search warrant to gather evidence at Fucci’s home where they found several items that tested positive for Tristyn’s blood.
In the hours following her disappearance, investigators interviewed dozens of people from Tristyn’s neighbors, to her friends, their parents, and acquaintances.
In one interview, a female classmate told detectives Fucci asked her if she could sneak out of her house the same night Tristyn disappeared but that her mother had said no. The girl told investigators that when she informed Fucci she could not sneak out, he called her several derogatory names.
She later told detectives, “It could have been me.”
‘Might go to jail’ for ‘something big’
Early in the investigation, deputies conducted an interview with Fucci’s cousin who reported that he was usually at her house multiple times a week. The female minor told investigators the last time she had seen her cousin was Thursday, May 1, but said she had spoken to Fucci after he sent her a photo of himself from the backseat of a patrol car.
In the Snapchat photo, which was quickly shared among many of he and Tristyn’s classmates, Fucci can be seen in the backseat of a police cruiser holding up a peace sign with the caption, “Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?”
When asked if she had ever witnessed any odd behavior from Fucci, detectives say his young cousin stated Fucci once told her, “We might go to jail sometime in our life” and that, for him, it may be for “something big.”
Friends: Fucci ‘wanted to kill someone by stabbing them’
Two friends told investigators that Fucci told them “on multiple occasions that he wanted to kill someone by stabbing them or slitting their throat,” according to documents.
One of those friends also told investigators that Fucci said he was going to kill someone and they “should expect it to happen within the month.”
The friend also said that Fucci said “if he were to kill someone, it was going to be planned, he would find a random person walking at night, drag them into the woods, and stab them,” the report said.
Those same two friends said that the Buck brand folding knife that investigators recovered was identical to one that Fucci would carry.
A Buck brand knife with a wood and brass handle was found in the pond where Tristyn’s body was found. The SAO said the tip of the knife was bent and broken. It was later confirmed to be found on Tristyn’s body during an autopsy.
Satanic drawings found on Fucci’s desk
During the investigation, detectives found disturbing drawings that Fucci had created.
Fucci had Satanic and violent drawings in a notebook of his, and on his desk, the report said.
A drawing of a nude female with her arms cut off, blood coming from the wounds, and red X’s over her breasts and genitals laying on Fucci’s desk, a detective observed.
In Fucci’s notebook, the drawings had Satanic elements, including a pentagram.
©2021 Cox Media Group
Sign Up
