A 16-year-old boy was sentenced to life in prison on a first-degree murder charge for the death of a 13-year-old Florida cheerleader who was found repeatedly stabbed and slashed to death on Mother’s Day 2021.
13-year-old girl found with horrific wounds
On Mother’s Day, May 9, 2021, the body of 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey was discovered hours after she was reported missing by her family. Authorities discovered that she had been repeatedly stabbed and slashed.
Triston Bailey was a student and cheerleader at Patriot Oaks Academy in St. John’s, Florida, located just south of Jacksonville, USA Today reported.
After the discovery of Tristyn’s body, an autopsy found 114 stab or cutting wounds about her head, neck, shoulders, arms, hands, and back, with at least 49 of them defensive wounds, the medical examiner said, according to an unredacted warrant affidavit released by the state attorney.
Teenage boy had fantasies of killing, commits gruesome crime
Friends of Aiden Fucci, as well as his girlfriend, told investigators that he often talked about killing people. They said he specifically spoke of planning to drag a random person into the woods and stab them.
A friend of Bailey’s said that, on the night of her death, then 14-year-old Fucci asked for her number. He was a fellow student at Patriot Oaks and lived near her.
Fucci called Bailey and convinced her to leave home and meet him at a friend’s house. Surveillance video footage from a nearby residence showed two people that are believed to be Fucci and Bailey walking east to the area where her body was later found at a retention pond.
Forty-five minutes later, the same surveillance camera appears to show Fucci walking back alone and carrying his shoes.
Authorities later found clothing stained with blood, as well as a hunting knife believed to be the murder weapon in a nearby pond.
Fucci was arrested on May 10, 2021. He posted a selfie on social media of him in the back of a patrol car, giving a peace sign with the caption, “Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?”
Teenager sentenced to life in prison
Now 16 years old, Fucci pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for stabbing Tristyn Bailey and leaving her body in the woods at the end of a cul-de-sac near her house on Mother’s Day 2021, People reported.
On Friday, March 24, 2023, Judge R. Lee Smith sentenced Fucci to life in prison and called the crime “heinous, atrocious and cruel,” adding that the slaying “was committed in a cold, calculated manner.”
Because Fucci is still a juvenile, he was not eligible for the death penalty. However, Fucci will be eligible to have his case reviewed in 25 years, which will allow a judge to consider a lesser sentence, according to The Florida Times-Union.
Tristyn Bailey’s mother addressed the court during the trial, saying: “Aiden Fucci made a heinous decision on May 9, 2021, and took the very life that I brought into this world.”
“Please do not for one second think that he could be rehabilitated at any point,” Stacy Bailey told the court on Wednesday. “He is beyond saving.”
