Original subtitles

One. Two. One, two.

Hey! Go, Greenside!

Tristyn was a cheerleader.

She would often post her in her cheerleading outfit.

She looked like your perfect, all-American young girl.

Happy and truly glowing.

Tristyn was very energetic,

and she was very inclusive to everyone on the team.

She was just the most caring person I've ever met.

She was a typical teenager.

She was very active on TikTok.

Tristyn was obsessed with TikTok.

She wanted everyone to see the best version of herself.

TRISTYN'S MOTHER, STACY:

SHE SOBS

It's an indescribable feeling when...

your child is missing.

There is nothing you can do.

Pure panic.

Pure panic.

13-year-old Tristyn Bailey was reported missing

around ten Sunday morning.

The family saw her at approximately midnight.

There are shocking details coming out about this case...

Really horrific, brutal murder.

'TikTok's role in Tristyn's case really was huge.

'So many people wanting to help to get justice.'

Everybody was speculating, people were commenting.

The motive, the why, and most importantly, the who.

This is the 14-year-old suspect.

The victim was only 13 years old.

This is horrifying to me. She was 13 years old.

It felt like the world needed to know her story,

they needed to hear her voice.

People talk about this, and they wonder...

how could something like that happen?

My name is Stacy Bailey, and I am Tristyn Bailey's mom.

Forrest Bailey is my husband.

And we have been together since college.

We have five children together.

In addition to Tristyn,

we have Sophia, Alexis, Britney and Teegan.

I always told our kids that the best thing that,

you know, they were ever given is a sibling.

It's just a very, very unique relationship.

The night before Mother's Day,

Tristyn and Sophia decided that they were going to make breakfast for me.

And I had very strict instructions

to not leave my room until breakfast was done.

It must have been, like, around 9:30,

and I was like, "I cannot sit in my room any more."

So I came out, and it was just Sophia making breakfast.

Stacy asked Teegan, who was downstairs,

to go and get a hold of Tristyn so that she could help out,

as had been the plan.

So he went upstairs.

He came down a few minutes later, he said he couldn't find her.

Nothing about it made sense.

Tristyn loved Stacy so dearly that knowing that it was Mother's Day,

it was an immediate sense of "something is really wrong".

She was a really good girl.

She had good grades, she had good friends.

So it was very out of character for her to just disappear.

I'm Britney Bailey Russell, and I'm the oldest sibling.

I got a call from Alexis, my sister.

"We can't find Tristyn.

"She's not in her room. Like, I think she snuck out."

13-year-old Tristyn Bailey was reported missing

around ten Sunday morning.

The family last saw her at approximately midnight.

I am Robert A Hardwick.

At the time of this investigation,

I was the elected sheriff of St Johns County.

We put the alerts out to the neighbourhood,

looking for Tristyn via social media, media,

any other type of platforms we can put it out,

and it gives a basic overview.

When they were last seen. Who, what, when, where?

It was to advise the community that we could use your assistance

because possibly, she was in someone's house,

we were hoping, just watching TV with another child.

Hey, guys. All right, so, I've got brand-new updates

for you in the Tristyn Bailey case.

My name is Annie Elise,

and I am a true crime TikToker who reaches 870,000 users.

When I first heard about Tristyn Bailey's case,

I knew that I wanted to spread awareness as fast as possible.

A 13-year-old girl was missing.

I knew something wasn't right.

There wasn't usually a lot of crime that happens in that area.

It was a nice neighbourhood.

It felt, like, close to home, in a way,

because we all can identify ourselves

in Tristyn or somebody we know.

She was so relatable.

Five days to my birthday.

Four days to my birthday.

Three days to my birthday.

'Her case took social media by storm.'

13-year-old Tristyn Bailey...

St Johns County in Florida. She was a cheerleader.

Everybody was worried about where she might be,

but nobody had any definitive answers in the beginning.

You have to triage every tip that comes in,

whether it's a social media platform or whether it's a phone call,

and that's exactly what our team was doing.

Through Tristyn's TikToks,

you could tell that she was extremely close with her family.

From the get-go, she always wanted to be the front and centre.

And actually, Britney and her have the same kind of personality.

They always fought for who was gonna get the most attention.

She would practise and learn a routine that she saw on TikTok

and come to me and say, "Let's do this one together."

She was always fun and full of life.

I remember Tristyn wanted to join the Allstar cheer team.

The Allstar gym is very competitive.

Tristyn's determination to get on that team was insane.

She had to get her splits, or a back walkover, or something,

and she put her mind to it and accomplished it.

I was so proud of her for putting in the effort

and her being so excited and so happy.

We had police officers that were at the house.

We had police dogs trying to get scents of Tristyn to search for her.

People that had planned to celebrate Mother's Day

showed up to begin searching.

We had a tremendous outpouring of support.

We're less than 24 hours into this entire case.

Our investigative team is interviewing all kinds of witnesses.

My name is Kurt Hannon.

I was assigned as the case agent,

which is the primary person that's in charge.

The biggest keys for us in this kind of investigations

are who did Tristyn last have contact with?

At some point that night,

her sister had seen her on Facetime with someone,

and she knew it was a boy.

And we kept getting more information

that Tristyn was at his house that night.

He was the first suspect in this case.

I knew of him.

I think he was kind of involved in the wrong crowd.

I think Tristyn liked him.

I didn't really like that she liked him,

but it wasn't really my decision to make.

I think Tristyn snuck out that night

so she could see the teenage boy that she liked.

My name is Jennifer Dunton.

I'm an Assistant State Attorney here on the Seventh Circuit.

And my role in this case was lead prosecutor.

Deputies go to this boy's house and start questioning him

about whether he had seen Tristyn.

He wasn't supposed to have friends over, but he had friends over.

He told law enforcement Tristyn came over shortly after midnight.

They told us they had another friend over.

The other friend's name is Aiden Fucci.

I don't think Tristyn and Aiden Fucci knew each other very well.

They definitely had minor conversation, but not very many.

He told law enforcement

that Aiden and Tristyn had hung out a little bit at the house,

outside for a while.

He said he woke up the next morning assuming all was OK.

He saw the missing child alerts for Tristyn,

reached out to Aiden,

cos he knew that he had left his house with her the night before.

And Aiden said he walked her home

and denied knowing anything was wrong.

Because her friend had introduced Aiden Fucci's name,

he became another suspect.

Tristyn Bailey, just 13 years old,

her parents reported her missing.

Hours go by.

Everything is just saturated

with people looking for this little girl.

And nothing is producing positive results.

Everyone is searching everywhere for 13-year-old Tristyn.

Make sure that wherever you go,

at least one person knows where you are at all times.

Please be safe, and let's pray for Tristyn and her family, please.

We're gonna go make contact with Aiden at his house.

Aiden came out, his mom came out.

He admitted that he had been at his friend's house

the night before, seeing Tristyn.

Aiden Fucci said what happened that night.

They were walking back...

..and they parted ways,

Tristyn going to her home, he going back to his.

He showed up at home between 1:30, 1:45 at the worst.

His mom actually interjected and volunteered that,

you know, "You got home after three in the morning."

She knew, she had seen her surveillance cameras.

I'm Vic Micolucci.

I was a local news anchor and investigative reporter

for 14 years in this area.

This is a really quiet residential neighbourhood.

Lots of homes that are close together.

A typical person would be able to walk

this relatively short distance in 20, 25 minutes.

He was gone for about two hours.

And that was really suspicious.

Deputies started questioning him. "Why the delay?"

He made some comments about how he was just walking around.

His timeline wasn't making any sense,

and so we asked Aiden where he and Tristyn went,

to try to retrace the steps.

Deputies asked him to point out

where he broke off with Tristyn and she went home.

And as he's telling that story,

he suddenly volunteers, "Well, she didn't actually turn on her street.

"We kept walking."

He indicates that there was an intersection that they stopped near.

He said he pushed her down, where she had hit her head.

And he just walked away

cos he was so mad that she had touched him in that manner.

Deputies look around at that intersection in the area

where he says she fell down, hit her head and was hurt.

There's no blood. It just doesn't make any sense.

Things are not adding up.

We were hanging on to both the friend and Aiden

cos we weren't quite sure what their involvement was yet.

In Florida, we can detain a suspect

until law enforcement can quell their suspicions.

So, we put them both in the back of a police car.

They still have access to their phones.

They're detained, they're not free to leave,

but we're not taking anything away from them.

Aiden, he decided to make some Snapchat videos,

making a big joke of it.

This clip started going viral because of Aiden's behaviour.

He decides to post, joking about in a cop car.

He's sick.

He was more concerned with bragging on social media

that he was being questioned by the police.

He makes my blood boil.

Mocking the situation.

There was absolutely a very strange disconnect,

and you could see that

this kid was not living in the same universe that we are.

Aiden posts something to Snapchat with the banner of...

All the kids in school, they all see that,

begin to suspect that Aiden had something to do with it.

They start, you know, resending that post out to everybody else.

On TikTok, it spread like wildfire.

This just shows how little he cares about the entire situation.

This is a piece of garbage that we're dealing with.

You're sick.

A friend of his who he just been with the night earlier was missing.

He had no sort of sympathy, not at all.

These young kids will do anything to go viral.

They will do anything.

He makes the comment along the lines of, "Hey, Tristyn, if you see this,"

you know, "feel free to walk out of the..." and then he stops there.

He stopped himself short of saying "the woods".

It was pretty... It was...

I'm still in disbelief of it.

Like, how can you be so callous?

That showed us that he's communicating about Tristyn

and her whereabouts...

..and that was really suspicious.

RINGING TONE

A gentleman that lived in the area had gone out for a run.

He finished his run, and he went to go check behind the woods.

He saw that there was a person that appeared to be dead.

SIRENS WAIL

We sent people over immediately.

Based on the description we had,

our detective team immediately made a tentative ID

of Tristyn Bailey's body.

It was obvious that she was deceased,

and it was obvious that there was trauma to her body,

that she had not died naturally.

There were visible stab wounds.

My team made the instantaneous, you know, determination

that we were now working a brutal, horrific murder.

I got a text from my sergeant asking me to come to the Baileys' address.

The worst part of my job is doing a death notification

to the parents of a child.

A whole bunch of police showed up, and they...

They asked me to...

..to go inside with them.

And I kept saying no...

..cos I knew.

I knew at that... I knew at that moment.

We went into a bedroom,

and that's when Kurt Hannon told us that they had found her.

They were able to kind of confirm that they'd done an identification.

It was Tristyn.

She was no longer alive.

Upon learning that Tristyn was dead and wasn't coming back,

things were just an absolute blur.

Stacy was feeling guilty,

thinking about how she is the parent,

and she didn't know Tristyn was gone.

My point with Stacy was,

"Hey, do you remember when you were a teenager?"

All the things that we do as teenagers

that aren't necessarily very smart or very safe,

but you don't deserve to die for.

St Johns County Sheriff's Department says

the search for a missing Florida teenager has been called off.

We have located a body

that is preliminary identified as Tristyn Bailey.

Once Tristyn's body was discovered, everybody wanted to post about it.

Please pray for her and her family.

It breaks my heart, it really does, especially for Tristyn's family.

You have the loss of a life.

There is no way to pay back that family

for what has happened to them.

Heart-wrenching new details on the murder

of St Johns County teenager Tristyn Bailey.

According to the autopsy report,

she was stabbed 114 times as she fought for her life.

Let that sink in for a minute.

That's 114 times that this poor girl was stabbed.

That number, in itself, is just astronomical

and really hard to comprehend.

How do you tell somebody that their daughter was stabbed 114 times?

Like, that... I had no idea how to do that.

The detective, they shared to us

how she died...

and then how many stab...

..how many stab wounds.

And I think the whole family...

..couldn't process how...

..somebody could do that to somebody else.

It was a complete loss to the family.

It was very, very difficult to take in.

She had a large number of defensive wounds,

meaning that she had fought back, and fought back hard.

Tristyn fought for the things that were important,

and she fought hard for her life.

Once the details came out that Tristyn had been brutally murdered,

people are panicking.

People are really, really scared.

It's affecting all the children, it really is.

I did not want to...

be, sorry, be around my friends or anybody

because hearing it come out of someone else's mouth

made it real for me.

The pressure was on for law enforcement.

Find what happened and secure that community.

They promised me that day

that they would get to the bottom of this.

At this point in the investigation,

law enforcement really wants to question both boys,

Aiden and his friend, more fully.

We brought them to our station,

and we put them in two different interview rooms.

During police interviews,

Aiden Fucci chooses not to speak any further.

Aiden's friend continued to cooperate with law enforcement.

And we were able to rule him out as a suspect in this case.

He began to reveal

a more disturbing side of Aiden...

his personality.

He later told us that Aiden sought out the real video clips

of violence online, beheadings...

real killings, not anime, not video games.

His friend thought it was disturbing,

but it's their friend,

and they didn't really think he would ever act on it.

Everybody was wondering why nobody said anything

to the police at the time.

Oh, my God, if these kids

or anybody would have spoken up or told somebody,

like, this little girl could have possibly been saved.

Aiden had a bad reputation.

His friends told us he had anger issues.

I noticed Aiden would get into physical fights

with other people,

students or just people we all knew in the area,

and then he would get into verbal fights with teachers

because he did not like anybody having authority or power over him.

I think he was the type of teenager

that would make parents very concerned.

We identified another friend...

and they provided a lot of information.

They'd identified that Aiden loved knives,

and there were two in particular that he always carried.

This is what had happened to Tristyn Bailey.

Aiden had talked about wanting to kill somebody.

Saying that he was going to drag someone into the woods.

He kept telling people he wanted to kill a person..

But everyone stated nobody took these things seriously.

To me, the red flags in the Tristyn Bailey case

came directly from Aiden Fucci himself.

He said that he was going to stab somebody to death,

he was going to drag them into the woods.

Why didn't they say anything?

Why didn't they tell a teacher, a parent, a law enforcement?

Had anybody that heard some of the things he was talking about,

had they felt that there was somebody

that they could have reached out to,

and say, "I think there's something seriously wrong here,"

maybe it would have changed the direction.

A lot of us looking at this case were quite upset.

These kids spent their whole lives chatting to each other online,

but when it came to that really crucial information

about Aiden Fucci's dark fantasies,

if only they'd spoken out,

maybe Tristyn would still be alive here today.

Aiden is now in an interrogation room.

The cameras are on,

and they are rolling, like they always are in Florida.

He asked for his parents.

Information that we overhead later became important in the case.

With his comment, "How is that my problem?"

It's just that lack of remorse,

the lack of empathy, the lack of caring,

the lack of any kind of human emotion that...

it's indescribable.

His parents asked what happened that night,

and he shares the same story that he gave earlier.

As the conversation goes on between Aiden and his parents,

we start noticing a little bit of manipulation by his mom.

It's a bizarre exchange.

The significance of this only emerged later in the investigation.

We begin the execution of the search warrant at the house where he lived,

and we were looking for specific pieces of evidence

that might lead us to be able to figure out

what happened with this case.

Things we include in the warrant are things that include blood.

Crime scene technicians locate several things of interest.

In Aiden's bedroom...

..there was a white shirt

that appeared to have blood stains on it.

We tested on site, it's a presumptive positive test.

They find these wet jeans.

They run some tests on them,

and they determine that that is in fact blood on the jeans.

During the course of this search, we find white Nike shoes.

Blood was present on all of these items.

That evidence is sent off here in the State of Florida

to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Biology Lab.

We put a rush on it.

They were able to find Tristyn Bailey's DNA profile

on Aiden's shoes.

In addition to that, in his bathroom,

the sink, the pipes and the drains are tested,

and those were testing positive for blood.

They took those swabs to the sheriff's office.

It's blood that belongs to Tristyn.

I went to the vigil with my mom.

And all my friends from school were there,

and all my friends from cheer were there.

We had to really.... INHALES SHAKILY

..really think about the fact that she's gone.

I was amazed by the amount of people that were there

and the amount of people that, you know, used their time to go.

I still feel so grateful

that I have people surrounding me that are like that.

We didn't know the exact story of what happened,

so it was really confusing and really hard for us all.

Video surveillance played a huge part in this case.

We are very grateful that in this neighbourhood,

almost every door had a Ring camera.

When we start putting everything together,

we see Aiden's stories weren't consistent.

Aiden and Tristyn were at the friend's house.

The friend said, "Hey, it's time for you guys to leave."

and Aiden and Tristyn left at about 1:10 in the morning.

And they started walking.

Surveillance footage from neighbours' cameras

show her walking with Aiden Fucci overnight from Saturday into Sunday.

We were able to obtain video footage from the amenity centre.

They walked along the main road...

..so walking north.

They passed by the road that leads to his house.

They kept on walking.

And what we found was the two figures, clearly Tristyn and Aiden,

walking towards the area of the woods -

ultimately where Tristyn was found.

Her final resting place.

Several hours later, Aiden Fucci, or this male figure,

running now in the opposite direction,

when he appeared to be carrying shoes in his hand.

And so, that's clearly different than his story

of just casually wandering around the neighbourhood.

It was obvious in this video that there's only one subject,

and it did not appear that Tristyn was with him.

The time difference between when he was last observed walking east

with Tristyn, and then running back west away

was about an hour and 45 minutes.

So we now knew,

after we've, you know, located Tristyn

and building this case

and finding out all the details we could find out,

during this timeframe is when Aiden murdered Tristyn.

We actually have arrested a suspect by the name of Aiden Fucci,

a 14-year-old.

He's currently in custody charged with murder.

Hearing of a 14-year-old boy committing

such a horrible, heinous murder on a 13-year-old girl, it was scary.

I feel like every case with a child is horrific.

The victim was only 13 years old.

This is the 14-year-old suspect.

I just can't comprehend being 14 wanting to kill someone.

After we learned that the sheriff's office

had arrested the person responsible,

it allowed us to realise that that threat was gone.

But yet, deep down, you're trying to understand...

why.

During the course of the search at Aiden's house,

we found a Buck brand knife sheath that was empty and had no knife.

So we still have this murder weapon that we're missing,

and that's obviously a key part of the investigation.

Here we have video as detectives

with the St Johns County Sheriff's Office found it.

They pulled it out in a pond...

One of our divers located a Buck brand folding knife.

That knife was tested, and it indicated a presumptive positive

for the presence of blood.

They take it to their offices,

and they find that it matches the sheath

that was discovered in Fucci's bedroom.

The knife was sent off to forensics, and it was tested for DNA,

and we were able to obtain DNA from Tristyn on both the handle

and on the blade of the knife.

We now have the murder weapon.

Our digital forensic examiners are poring through

the interior and exterior footage from Aiden Fucci's residence.

That morning, after deputies first made contact with Aiden

and his family, Crystal goes back inside.

Aiden is off with the deputies.

She goes right upstairs.

She is seen taking Aiden's jeans from a laundry basket.

She takes them to the sink...

..and she's feverishly washing whatever is on them.

It kind of explained the very damp nature of the jeans.

It was clear to us that she was trying to get rid

of whatever evidence she saw on those jeans.

It offers that explanation as to why Crystal Smith is saying

to her son, and getting him to agree,

that he was wearing khakis when this happened.

I can only imagine that she wanted to protect her child.

But at what cost?

It was at the cost of my child.

Which just begs the question,

how far would you be willing to go to help your child?

I would never help my son cover up a heinous crime.

This is insane.

She was charged with tampering with evidence.

Now son AND mother are going to court.

Aiden Fucci,

the 14-year-old charged with first-degree murder

in the killing of a 13-year-old neighbour and schoolmate

is now in the juvenile wing of the Duval County Jail.

Debate was raging about what should happen when a child kills a child.

Do you think

that he should still not serve life in prison?

There's a petition going to get him tried as an adult,

which I will link in the comments.

They've a week to decide if they're gonna charge him as an adult,

so we would find out some time next week.

The state attorney's office received calls

from around the country and from around the world,

with social media demanding that we charge Aiden Fucci as an adult.

If Aiden Fucci had been tried as a juvenile

here in the State of Florida, what that would have meant was,

he being 14 years old,

the maximum he would have gotten was seven years,

which would have put him at 21.

Anybody can look at this case and know that that is not appropriate.

We looked at the facts,

we looked at the law, and I gotta tell you,

the adult system is where this case belongs.

They did charge 14-year-old Aiden Fucci as an adult

and with first-degree premeditated charges.

The only thing that really remains is when it comes to sentencing...

They cannot do the death penalty because of his age,

but that still does carry a maximum of life sentence.

That change was very impactful.

We knew that the state attorney's office

was really focused on getting justice.

In all cases, we have pre-trial hearings

to advise the judge of the status of the case.

It was Aiden Fucci's very first pre-trial,

it was his very first court appearance.

Um, he was on Zoom.

He was acting very bizarrely on camera,

kind of acting like he didn't know where he was,

saying things about demons.

He was trying to prove a point that maybe he wasn't all there,

and maybe it was something he could use as a defence.

He was on the Zoom,

and we heard him saying some pretty interesting statements

that have me questioning what's his motive here.

His behaviour is so incredibly different

from the videos that we saw in the back of the police car.

With that video, in my opinion, I think it's full of crap.

I called the detectives and said,

"You need to pull his jail calls,

"before court and after court,

"and let's compare them to how he acted in court."

Our attorney's office realised very quickly

he had extremely coherent conversations with his mother

before and after his appearance.

The calls were ultimately turned over to the psychologist,

and that was fake, and ironically, it never happened again.

We came to the courthouse ready for jury selection on Monday...

..and we found out that morning that he was not gonna go to trial.

Entering a guilty plea as charged.

He was going to enter a plea of guilty.

It's a really big deal to enter a plea of guilty.

I think the defence is going to have a very hard time

expressing remorse with their client.

It was clear how overwhelming the evidence was,

and that by accepting guilt, it was the first step

in potentially having a reduced sentence.

The victim impact statement allows the Bailey family

to tell the court how the crime impacted them.

My daughter fought for her life,

and we were going to fight alongside her for her justice.

Aiden Fucci made a heinous decision on May 9th, 2021,

and took the very life that I brought into this world.

Stacy Bailey's was extremely emotional.

This jar now holds 114 stones,

one for each of the 114 stab wounds that my sister had to endure.

My daughter Alexis did an amazing job.

The victim impact statements from Tristyn's friends and family

were so heartfelt.

The only outcome here is for him to pay

with his own freedom because he took the freedom of Tristyn.

I cannot wait for Tristyn to get justice.

This crime, it was committed in a cold,

calculated and premeditated manner,

and it was heinous, atrocious and cruel.

He just wanted to kill somebody for the sake of killing somebody.

Complete and total disregard for human life.

Mr Fucci, I adjudicate you

guilty of the premeditated first-degree murder

of Tristyn Bailey.

I sentence you to life in prison.

When that information was released, it went absolutely viral.

He was sentenced to life in prison.

I hate this kid.

He deserves to rot and deserves to be punished.

I am so, so, so happy with Aiden Fucci's sentencing.

You know what you did, and now you've got hell to pay.

Was it enough?

I mean... I...

Nothing brings her back.

So as much as it is great that he's put away

and won't be able to do this to anybody else,

it doesn't bring our sister back.

Crystal Smith was charged with tampering with evidence.

She pleaded guilty to that charge.

She was sentenced to 30 days in jail and community service.

Tristyn is remembered exactly how she left this world -

bubbly, happy, loving, warm.

On TikTok, many people still talk about it,

and we all know that Tristyn's case will never be forgotten.

One of the things we wanted to do

was start a foundation and give back,

and that foundation starts with the spirit that Tristyn had.

We've been able to work with a phenomenal programme

that teaches young ladies and women about situational awareness,

so how you avoid even getting into a situation

where something negative could happen,

and then also self-defence techniques.

Also, we want to encourage more conversations,

open up an avenue that should a child ever feel like

they're being preyed on or being put in a bad situation,

that they understand they can go to a trusted adult and share.

"Here's what's happening." How can they get some help?

I will never forgot how appreciative she was for anything.

The first thing she would always say to me is,

"Thank you, Mom, for spending the weekend with me,"

or "taking me shopping" or just "spending time with me".

You wanted to be with her, next to her, like her.

I wish everyone could have met her.

There's...

There's not a way to describe the laugh.

There's not a way to describe the smile.

I-I'll...

cherish those memories forever.

Tristyn's strong!

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