Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: The Heartbreaking Story of Tristyn Bailey

Transcript

Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: The Heartbreaking Story of Tristyn Bailey · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan blood guilty to one
0:21
Speaker 1: of the most brutal murders in recent memory. And I'm
0:25
Speaker 1: talking about the murder of thirteen year old Tristan Bailey.
0:30
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags with
0:38
Speaker 1: me today is Dave mac He's a reporter, a crime
0:43
Speaker 1: reporter for Crime Online. David, you've at least had an
0:49
Speaker 1: insight into this case, and I think the whole country
0:52
Speaker 1: has for a while now. And we had an expectation
0:55
Speaker 1: that there was going to be a trial, that maybe
0:57
Speaker 1: some viable explanation could be offered up to us as
1:04
Speaker 1: to why someone would want to perpetrate this kind of
1:10
Speaker 1: act on this child. But I think that we're going
1:15
Speaker 1: to be left wanting I think you're one hundred percent right, Joe.
1:18
Speaker 1: Here we're talking about a thirteen year old girl and
1:23
Speaker 1: at the time of fourteen year old boy, and the
1:26
Speaker 1: crime is so heinous that the fourteen year old is
1:31
Speaker 1: going to be tried as an adult. He's now sixteen.
1:34
Speaker 1: You mentioned saying, I'm sorry, what does it really mean? Well,
1:36
Speaker 1: that's what he did yesterday. We're getting ready for the trial.
1:39
Speaker 1: Thought we might find some answers there, but no, we
1:42
Speaker 1: have a gruesome attack. Thirteen year old Tristan Bailey went
1:46
Speaker 1: out for an evening of celebration with her family. They
1:48
Speaker 1: got home around eleven forty five pm, and she was
1:51
Speaker 1: seen by a sibling around midnight. Tristan was supposed to
1:54
Speaker 1: be sleeping in her bedroom, but the following morning, Mother's Day,
1:57
Speaker 1: Tristan didn't come out of her room for breakfast and
2:00
Speaker 1: it was discovered she was not in her room. Tristan's
2:03
Speaker 1: mother calls nine one one around ten am and a
2:05
Speaker 1: search begins while police, friends, and neighbors search for Tristan
2:09
Speaker 1: on foot. Investigators locase security videos of the area and
2:12
Speaker 1: put together a timeline of what happened in the early
2:14
Speaker 1: morning hours. Security video shows Tristan walking in the neighborhood
2:18
Speaker 1: at twelve thirty am, about thirty minutes after her siblings
2:21
Speaker 1: are in her bedroom. At one fourteen am, Tristan Bailey
2:25
Speaker 1: is seen on video walking with what appears to be
2:28
Speaker 1: fourteen year old Aidan Fuci. At one forty five am,
2:31
Speaker 1: a home surveillance camera on Saddlestone Drive captures the two
2:34
Speaker 1: teams walking east on the sidewalk. At three thirty am,
2:38
Speaker 1: that same surveillance camera catches Aiden Fucci walking alone, heading
2:42
Speaker 1: in the opposite direction, carrying white Nike shoes. Minutes later,
2:47
Speaker 1: video shows Aiden Fucci entering his home carrying white Nike shoes.
2:50
Speaker 1: Tristan was not with him. Between the time Tristan is
2:54
Speaker 1: last seen on video Alive at one forty five am
2:57
Speaker 1: and when Fucci is seen on video going into his
2:59
Speaker 1: home less than two hours later, investigators say Fucci attack
3:03
Speaker 1: Tristan with a knife, stabbing her one fourteen times and
3:06
Speaker 1: then tossing the knife in upon. We have a gruesome
3:09
Speaker 1: attack that happened in a quiet neighborhood, a thirteen year
3:14
Speaker 1: old cheerleader in a suburb of Jacksonville, Florida, and a
3:19
Speaker 1: boy who is disturbed. He's got drawings of crazy stuff
3:23
Speaker 1: and he's told friends. Joe, He's told friends, I'm thinking
3:27
Speaker 1: about I could kill somebody and I will take them
3:30
Speaker 1: into the woods. I'll lure them into the woods and
3:32
Speaker 1: I will slice their throat. I will stab them to death.
3:35
Speaker 1: At fourteen. That's how he's talking to friends. It always
3:39
Speaker 1: amazes me. I think that looking back on my career
3:42
Speaker 1: as a medical legal death investigator and the stuff that
3:46
Speaker 1: I was exposed to, certainly from a professional perspective, but
3:51
Speaker 1: the things that I've viewed out there that I would
3:53
Speaker 1: come in contact not just on a weekly basis, but
3:57
Speaker 1: on a daily basis many times, these things that you know,
4:00
Speaker 1: you you don't want to talk about, you don't want
4:04
Speaker 1: to kind of expose particularly your loved ones too. But
4:08
Speaker 1: yet you'll have a boy essentially that longs, that actually
4:14
Speaker 1: longs to perpetrate something like this. They don't understand, I
4:18
Speaker 1: think the depths of sorrow they're about to unleash on
4:24
Speaker 1: a family. Why this question, you know, you never actually
4:27
Speaker 1: get an answer to most of the time, But you know,
4:30
Speaker 1: for a moment, you pause and you think, did she
4:32
Speaker 1: have an awareness? And I think that she did. Obviously
4:35
Speaker 1: she certainly had an awareness. They were walking together. They
4:38
Speaker 1: were ambling down that sidewalk which is caught on CCTV
4:42
Speaker 1: together headed toward that wooded area. What for a moment
4:46
Speaker 1: did she think the end game was going to be
4:48
Speaker 1: in her innocent mind at that moment in time. But
4:51
Speaker 1: yet that he has been having fantasies about this and
4:54
Speaker 1: thinking about it and expressing this to individuals within his
4:59
Speaker 1: circle goes to an entirely different level. You begin to
5:02
Speaker 1: think what seed was planted within him that would drive
5:07
Speaker 1: him to this where he would not just do it,
5:11
Speaker 1: but be prepared to do it in advance. You think,
5:15
Speaker 1: was he fantasizing about this for a protracted period of time?
5:20
Speaker 1: How many other people are out there that he had
5:22
Speaker 1: kind of sized up, maybe in his own way profiled
5:25
Speaker 1: if you will. Is this somebody that I could get
5:28
Speaker 1: alone just for a moment to indulge this fantasy, And
5:32
Speaker 1: of course it's very primal. You don't know that he's
5:35
Speaker 1: thinking beyond that from an evidentiary standpoint. You know, things
5:38
Speaker 1: that we're going to look for as forensic scientists that
5:42
Speaker 1: would be automatic tie backs. He's not thinking anywhere beyond
5:48
Speaker 1: that moment, that thrill that he receives. Some people used
5:52
Speaker 1: to use the term thrill killer. That term came up,
5:55
Speaker 1: I think in the late fifties. Perhaps we've heard about
5:58
Speaker 1: thrill killing for for some time, and was this merely
6:02
Speaker 1: a thrill killing or is it something that's much deeper
6:05
Speaker 1: and much darker? And it's certainly I think at least
6:08
Speaker 1: it's certainly evidence that evil certainly does exist. We know
6:13
Speaker 1: the one thing that we do have Joe's We do
6:15
Speaker 1: have a timeline. Ten o'clock that morning, Tristan's mother calls
6:18
Speaker 1: nine one one reports her daughter missing and again remember
6:22
Speaker 1: they thought she was in bed, so ten am she's
6:25
Speaker 1: reported missing. They start looking. Late in the afternoon, Florida
6:27
Speaker 1: Missing Child aloerd has issued six o'clock. A resident who
6:30
Speaker 1: had been on a run reports a dead body. Eight
6:33
Speaker 1: o'clock that night, the Sheriff's office announced the body found.
6:36
Speaker 1: They preliminarily identified her as Tristan. The sheriff says her
6:40
Speaker 1: death was horrific Joe. When the investigators search Aidan Fuci's home,
6:47
Speaker 1: they find a buck brand knife sheath, a pair of
6:51
Speaker 1: wet white Nike shoes with blood on them, a T
6:55
Speaker 1: shirt with blood on it, a white piece of paper
6:58
Speaker 1: with handwriting with possible blood on it, and a pair
7:00
Speaker 1: of wet blue denim genes in the laundry basket. They
7:03
Speaker 1: also find blood and dirt on the drain in the
7:06
Speaker 1: bathroom sink next to Aiden's bedroom. How is it possible
7:09
Speaker 1: for forensics to pull the blood in whatever out of
7:13
Speaker 1: genes that have already been washed well, sometimes within the
7:17
Speaker 1: context of the structure of the gene. Talking about if
7:20
Speaker 1: you don't use the right kind of detergent, something that's
7:25
Speaker 1: going to eradicate a lot of the proteins there associated
7:28
Speaker 1: with blood. There can always be something found that is
7:33
Speaker 1: not initially recognizable. Forensically, we talk about things relative to
7:38
Speaker 1: and I know the sounds rather simplistic, but we talk
7:40
Speaker 1: about things from the perspective of we can see things
7:43
Speaker 1: that can be seen with the unaided eye, and then
7:46
Speaker 1: things that have to be seen with the aided eye.
7:48
Speaker 1: And not many people have heard that phraseology before, but
7:52
Speaker 1: it's certainly a term that is used regularly in the
7:55
Speaker 1: medical legal community. And what that means is that if
7:59
Speaker 1: I look at an area questioned area, for instance, on
8:03
Speaker 1: a pair of blue jeans, even if they are wet,
8:06
Speaker 1: there might be a stain there, a question stain that
8:10
Speaker 1: will stand out above the rest. Because even if you
8:13
Speaker 1: get an area that has been previously supersaturated with blood,
8:18
Speaker 1: you apply water to it, the water will have an
8:21
Speaker 1: appearance that is specific to it. In the nature of water. However,
8:26
Speaker 1: as we know, you can still appreciate an underlying stain.
8:30
Speaker 1: Now if you apply some type of detergent to that
8:33
Speaker 1: area and begin to scrub it. How many folks in
8:36
Speaker 1: the audience have ever had the experience of saying, you
8:38
Speaker 1: know what, I can't get to stain out. It's set
8:42
Speaker 1: in at this point in time, and many times, no
8:45
Speaker 1: matter how much you scrub it, you might get it
8:47
Speaker 1: to diminish to a certain degree, but it takes time
8:52
Speaker 1: to eradicate that the essence of the blood itself, everything
8:56
Speaker 1: that's associated with various components of blood, and it will
9:00
Speaker 1: be deep within the fibers of this material. And so
9:04
Speaker 1: the next step, then, after you've kind of visualized this
9:08
Speaker 1: area to suspect area, you're going to apply any type
9:12
Speaker 1: of reagent that they have that is going to give
9:14
Speaker 1: you an indication that there may or may not be
9:17
Speaker 1: blood there, that something that will be reactive. You begin
9:21
Speaker 1: to think about things like luminole perhaps, or you think
9:25
Speaker 1: about things like amto black. They're applied to specific areas.
9:30
Speaker 1: If you can get a sample that's viable, and then
9:33
Speaker 1: you can do a DNA profile on it. We have
9:35
Speaker 1: the linkage of her parents, and we can take swaps
9:39
Speaker 1: from the parents. We can build a DNA profile and
9:42
Speaker 1: say definitively, pretty much definitively, then let's see what the
9:46
Speaker 1: phraseology is generally used. It's within a reasonable scientific certainty, right,
9:50
Speaker 1: and so you can actually say, Okay, this is in fact,
9:55
Speaker 1: this is in fact Distin's blood. And if that's the case,
9:58
Speaker 1: the bigger question has to be asked, how in the
10:02
Speaker 1: world did this thirteen year old girl's blood wind up
10:10
Speaker 1: on this kid's pants, or on his shirt, or on
10:13
Speaker 1: his shoes, maybe on the sheath or maybe even a weapon.
10:38
Speaker 1: There are certain cases out there as an investigator when
10:43
Speaker 1: you show up that when you see the devastation at
10:49
Speaker 1: out of scene and what has happened to a young
10:54
Speaker 1: life like this, you want answers and you want them quickly.
11:01
Speaker 1: First off, I think that if you're a parent, you
11:03
Speaker 1: look at this and you say that could be my child.
11:07
Speaker 1: And secondly, there's an urgency to it too, And the
11:11
Speaker 1: urgency is that if someone would do this, is the
11:20
Speaker 1: rest of our community. Is the rest of the city,
11:23
Speaker 1: the county or they at risk as well, because if
11:25
Speaker 1: they will go to these links to literally rip a
11:30
Speaker 1: young life to shreds, no one else is safe. And
11:34
Speaker 1: that's why there was such a push and such a
11:37
Speaker 1: concerted effort to determine what had happened and to get
11:41
Speaker 1: this person off the street. I wanted to back up
11:44
Speaker 1: just a minute because when we were breaking down the timeline,
11:47
Speaker 1: I might have rushed over what we were dealing with there,
11:50
Speaker 1: because you're starting with first report at ten am on
11:54
Speaker 1: Sunday morning of hey, my daughter is missing. My thirteen
11:57
Speaker 1: year old daughter. I thought she was in bed, she's
11:59
Speaker 1: not here, and so immediately the police start pulling the
12:04
Speaker 1: investigators start pulling everything they can along the street from
12:07
Speaker 1: the standpoint of security cameras and things like that. I'm
12:10
Speaker 1: sure they were doing cell phone tracking. You hear about
12:13
Speaker 1: that a lot, and they were able to They being
12:16
Speaker 1: the investigators, were able to basically using the footage from
12:20
Speaker 1: the neighborhood in this cul de sac, they were able
12:22
Speaker 1: to actually see Tristan walking down the street with this
12:27
Speaker 1: I was going to say unidentified individual, but based on
12:30
Speaker 1: the neighborhood size and things like that, they were pretty
12:33
Speaker 1: much able to zero in on a possible suspect, not
12:37
Speaker 1: suspect at the time, but the person walking with her.
12:40
Speaker 1: They had a loose identification of who they thought it
12:43
Speaker 1: might be. So you've got the entire neighborhood outlooking for Tristan,
12:48
Speaker 1: and the police are bearing down on who's with her
12:52
Speaker 1: because they see them go into the woods together and
12:55
Speaker 1: they see one coming out alone and identify buying who
13:00
Speaker 1: that individual is their first course of action. How do
13:03
Speaker 1: they do that, Joe? How did they track that person
13:06
Speaker 1: that they're following and try to figure out who is
13:08
Speaker 1: this person that goes into the woods with Tristan and
13:10
Speaker 1: comes out without her? Very simply put, it's it's cell
13:14
Speaker 1: phone data. You know those things that these instruments that
13:18
Speaker 1: can be used for good and bad, that are tracking
13:21
Speaker 1: our movements all along the way, and so every time
13:25
Speaker 1: you make a movement that they have the so fine tuned, now, Dave,
13:29
Speaker 1: where there are tools that you can use to identify
13:31
Speaker 1: how many steps and individuals taken. Can you imagine that
13:34
Speaker 1: to get an idea their progression tracking them along a pathway,
13:40
Speaker 1: and they don't have it fine tuned to the point
13:43
Speaker 1: where it will give you absolute data, but it will
13:47
Speaker 1: be a fantastic approximation. That was the key. You think
13:51
Speaker 1: about how all this kicked off relative to the mother
13:54
Speaker 1: calling it in. But you have to back up kind
13:57
Speaker 1: of just a little bit before that, because the way
14:03
Speaker 1: Triston's mother became aware that Tristan was not there is
14:07
Speaker 1: that her siblings had actually gone into the bedroom to
14:11
Speaker 1: wake her up. I don't know what her common habits were. Well,
14:14
Speaker 1: I can tell you that morning it was it was
14:16
Speaker 1: Mother's Day. It was they were going to cook a
14:18
Speaker 1: big breakfast for mom. Yeah, I know. And that's that's
14:21
Speaker 1: the heartbreaking part of it. The siblings are excited about this,
14:25
Speaker 1: you know, they want Tristan to be involved in this.
14:27
Speaker 1: They celebrate mom and they walk in and can you
14:30
Speaker 1: imagine their reaction these kids when they walk in there
14:33
Speaker 1: and and sister's not in there, Well, immediately they're going
14:38
Speaker 1: to be line for mom. You know, I don't know
14:40
Speaker 1: about in your family and my family. When my kids
14:43
Speaker 1: were little, it was a big deal. Mother's Day was
14:45
Speaker 1: a big deal because you want to take care of mom.
14:47
Speaker 1: You want to demonstrate to her home how much you
14:49
Speaker 1: love her, do little things for her like cook breakfast.
14:52
Speaker 1: And so immediately parent panic absolutely sets in. We're not
14:57
Speaker 1: talking about even a sixteen year old here, Dave. We're
15:00
Speaker 1: talking about thirteen year old. This is a child and
15:03
Speaker 1: she's gone. She's not there, and there's no signs of
15:07
Speaker 1: any kind of forced entry break in. It's not like
15:11
Speaker 1: her bedroom window is necessarily has been broken out in
15:16
Speaker 1: order for somebody to have come in to snatch her.
15:19
Speaker 1: So you begin to develop this narrative as an investigator,
15:22
Speaker 1: and of course this is going to point back to
15:26
Speaker 1: this digital evidence that's there, that is going to be
15:30
Speaker 1: tracking all the way along, and you begin to narrow
15:33
Speaker 1: down your list of suspects who might have had accessibility
15:36
Speaker 1: to her, who was in her friend group, if you will,
15:40
Speaker 1: who might have had the potential to lure her outside
15:44
Speaker 1: of that home, and what did they use in order
15:47
Speaker 1: to lure her, And of course their darkest spheres came
15:51
Speaker 1: to fruition as the investigation starts with the missing person
15:56
Speaker 1: family members. Sorry, at midnight and ten am the next morning,
15:59
Speaker 1: she's gone, So we already have that window. We know
16:01
Speaker 1: it took place in that time period, and then her
16:04
Speaker 1: body was found. Now, Joe, I don't even really know
16:09
Speaker 1: how to ask you this, and I don't want to
16:12
Speaker 1: offend anybody, but I'm trying to picture what it would
16:17
Speaker 1: take to actually cut a person. I've never stabbed a person.
16:23
Speaker 1: I see it in movies, we talk about it on
16:25
Speaker 1: the show. But we've got a hundred and fourteen stab wounds, Joe,
16:32
Speaker 1: We've got thirty five stab wounds to the head and neck,
16:37
Speaker 1: And the question I have for you is, according to investigators,
16:42
Speaker 1: around forty nine defensive stab wounds on her hands, arms,
16:46
Speaker 1: and face. How do you figure out defensive wound versus
16:51
Speaker 1: non defensive wound when you're doing an examination of remains
16:55
Speaker 1: that have been subjected to sharp four's injuries and the
17:00
Speaker 1: sharp word's injuries come in three different categories. It's generally
17:03
Speaker 1: whether we look at them. First off, you have puncture
17:06
Speaker 1: wounds that can range all the way from an ice pick.
17:10
Speaker 1: When I first started working in the field, old guys
17:13
Speaker 1: used to carry ice picks in their boots or in
17:16
Speaker 1: their shoes. They would carry them as primarily a defensive weapon,
17:20
Speaker 1: or inside their sock. You imagine how uncomfortable that was. Well,
17:24
Speaker 1: a puncture one can range all the way from an
17:26
Speaker 1: ice pick to somebody being impaled on a piece of
17:29
Speaker 1: rebar on a tree branch. That's a puncture wound, and
17:32
Speaker 1: even down finer than an ice pick. We refer to
17:36
Speaker 1: needles as npws, which are actually needle puncture wounds. You'll
17:40
Speaker 1: see them abbreviated in medical records is npws, and that
17:45
Speaker 1: goes to like administration of drugs perhaps sometimes then the
17:49
Speaker 1: next category we have our incized wounds, some people would
17:54
Speaker 1: say slices, but incized is more accurate. And in size
17:58
Speaker 1: wind can be everything from a surgeon making an incision
18:03
Speaker 1: to start some type of procedure, for instance, or it
18:06
Speaker 1: can range all the way up to somebody being decapitated.
18:09
Speaker 1: That could be an incised wound, all right. And there's
18:12
Speaker 1: multiple little variations beneath that category. And of course that
18:15
Speaker 1: brings us to stab wounds. And stab wounds are a
18:19
Speaker 1: category where we term them, and this is kind of
18:22
Speaker 1: how we separate stabs from in sized wounds. Stab wounds
18:27
Speaker 1: themselves are generally more narrow and deep, okay. Slices or
18:33
Speaker 1: in sized wounds are shallow, okay, shallow and long, all right.
18:38
Speaker 1: So that's kind of how you delineate between two. And
18:41
Speaker 1: when you begin to think about this kind of number,
18:43
Speaker 1: when you're getting into those numbers that are above about
18:47
Speaker 1: thirty okay, and we're way in excess of that, sometimes
18:52
Speaker 1: it's very difficult and the more to begin to understand
18:57
Speaker 1: what is and is not a singular wound, because you
19:00
Speaker 1: can have wounds that are communicating, and that's one of
19:03
Speaker 1: the like when I say communicating, if you've got someone
19:06
Speaker 1: that is attacking someone, they're Obviously they're in very close proximity,
19:10
Speaker 1: and every time that knife is driven in, you'll have
19:14
Speaker 1: injuries where the intersection of certain injuries are it's hard
19:18
Speaker 1: to delineate between the two. You can have overlapping injuries,
19:22
Speaker 1: so something that you might be counting as one might
19:25
Speaker 1: actually be two if you were to look at it
19:28
Speaker 1: in reality. And that is important. See people think a
19:31
Speaker 1: lot of people would say, well, Morgan, why is it
19:33
Speaker 1: so essential, Well, you're telling the story of what happened
19:39
Speaker 1: to the poor victim. The victims certainly can't speak for themselves,
19:42
Speaker 1: and the accused is going to have every person in
19:45
Speaker 1: the world speaking on their behalf and they don't have
19:47
Speaker 1: to say anything in court. But you want to be
19:49
Speaker 1: able to tell the victim's story. And that's why it's
19:51
Speaker 1: so important when we begin to count these things out
19:53
Speaker 1: in the Morgan, and trust me, it's it's hard. You
19:56
Speaker 1: don't want to do it, but it's something that is essential.
20:00
Speaker 1: And you get to that point, you have to assess
20:02
Speaker 1: the injuries themselves. And we're just talking about on the surface, Okay,
20:06
Speaker 1: When we open the remains and we begin to look
20:10
Speaker 1: at the track of these stab wounds, those are going
20:14
Speaker 1: to be kind of classified as shallow or deep. There
20:18
Speaker 1: can be a medium thickness to them. What you're trying
20:22
Speaker 1: to do is assess what kind of damage, because you
20:24
Speaker 1: can have a stab wound, for instance, that passes through
20:27
Speaker 1: the top layer of skin. Obviously we have the epidermis,
20:30
Speaker 1: the dermis, subcue fat, and then you're going through that level,
20:33
Speaker 1: maybe some muscle, and you get to a rib, well,
20:36
Speaker 1: the stab wound itself will abruptly stop right whereas if
20:40
Speaker 1: that stab wound were to be moved, say just two centimeters,
20:45
Speaker 1: you might go through the intercostal space, which is the
20:48
Speaker 1: muscular area between the ribs, and now you're into the organs,
20:52
Speaker 1: you're into the heart, and the lungs, liver depend upon
20:55
Speaker 1: where the wound is actually associated are identified, and so
21:00
Speaker 1: you have to take the measure of all these and
21:03
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting method of examination that we will
21:07
Speaker 1: use in this way. If we do this, we can
21:09
Speaker 1: avoid showing graphic photos in the morgue because you know,
21:12
Speaker 1: stab wounds. When you're trying to display these things, they're
21:15
Speaker 1: going to be viewed by the defense and by the court.
21:19
Speaker 1: I guess it's very prejudicial because they're so very gory.
21:22
Speaker 1: But what we will do is we'll take a plastic
21:25
Speaker 1: overlay after the body is cleaned, and we will lay
21:30
Speaker 1: that over the body. And did you know that we
21:33
Speaker 1: can take a marker and we can actually do a
21:36
Speaker 1: hand rendering of each one of these injuries, and then
21:42
Speaker 1: you peel this up, okay, And so you have this
21:46
Speaker 1: representation on clear plastic of these injuries being drawn out,
21:52
Speaker 1: and you can overlay that on say an anatomical model
21:56
Speaker 1: without showing gore, okay, without going over the top, and
22:00
Speaker 1: say these are the injuries that this victim sustained. And
22:04
Speaker 1: you don't ever have to get into that prejudicial stuff
22:06
Speaker 1: that involves all of those Corey photographs. Now some of
22:09
Speaker 1: them are necessary, and in Tristan's case, there's any number
22:14
Speaker 1: of things that we can probably tell about what the
22:17
Speaker 1: dynamic of this event was, and that's going to be important.
22:20
Speaker 1: You'd mentioned the defensive wounds. When you say defensive wound
22:25
Speaker 1: or when it's stated as defensive wound and it is
22:27
Speaker 1: identified by the pathologist as such, there's one key thing
22:32
Speaker 1: that you have to have with it. You have to
22:34
Speaker 1: have hemorrhage, because if an individual has a defensive wound,
22:40
Speaker 1: that implies that they are aware enough to defend themselves.
22:44
Speaker 1: So if they're blocking where they throw their arm up
22:46
Speaker 1: in the air and that the blade of that knife
22:50
Speaker 1: passes through that area, you're going to have en dwelling
22:53
Speaker 1: hemorrhage there. Because you can stab someone in the arm
22:57
Speaker 1: post mortem, there's not going to be any hemorrhage there.
22:59
Speaker 1: That's not evidence of a defensive act. That's just a
23:04
Speaker 1: post mortem insult. And some of these would probably be
23:07
Speaker 1: postmortem on her, some of these injuries that she has sustained.
23:10
Speaker 1: From an overall perspective, I don't know with this many
23:14
Speaker 1: wounds how long she could have survived. And then you
23:18
Speaker 1: have this migration that takes place by the perpetrator where
23:23
Speaker 1: once you get past her defensive ability, you're now into
23:27
Speaker 1: the torso. And then once you get past torso, you
23:31
Speaker 1: begin to describe all of these where she's been attacked
23:34
Speaker 1: about her head. You think about this, you think, well,
23:36
Speaker 1: it was he laying on top of her, was he
23:39
Speaker 1: cradling her while he was doing this? Did he have
23:42
Speaker 1: her in some type of pose while he was doing this?
23:45
Speaker 1: How much of this was done anti mortem which means
23:48
Speaker 1: before death? How much of it was done harry mortem,
23:51
Speaker 1: which means to turn the throes of death and how
23:53
Speaker 1: much of this stuff was done post mortem. So there's
23:56
Speaker 1: a lot to assess on many levels when you begin
23:59
Speaker 1: to talk about stab wounds. It's not as I hate
24:04
Speaker 1: to refer to gainst that wounds as simplistic, because I
24:07
Speaker 1: can be highly complicated. But when you get up into
24:12
Speaker 1: edged weapon events, there's a certain amount of intellectual sophistication
24:17
Speaker 1: that has to be in place on the part of
24:19
Speaker 1: the individual is making the determination about these because it's
24:22
Speaker 1: such a dynamic event. Forty nine defensive stab wounds. I mean,
24:26
Speaker 1: she was struggling fighting off her killer. Forty nine Nearly
24:31
Speaker 1: half of the stab wounds were defensive, and when you
24:33
Speaker 1: look at it like that, you realize this girl gave
24:36
Speaker 1: everything she had to take down that assailant who just
24:40
Speaker 1: wouldn't stop. We do know something about Tristan and her
24:44
Speaker 1: athletic pursuits. She was a competitive cheerleader, and she's not
24:48
Speaker 1: somebody that that would have just, I don't think, just
24:53
Speaker 1: kind of gone quietly. And that's kind of evidenced in
24:57
Speaker 1: the perpetrator and what was left behind him, because he
25:00
Speaker 1: did have marks on his hand, which some of these
25:05
Speaker 1: could be associated with her attempting to fend him off.
25:08
Speaker 1: They're out in a kind of a wooded area, so
25:12
Speaker 1: some of that stuff might be scratching himself on the
25:15
Speaker 1: local flora that's out there, whether it's some type of
25:18
Speaker 1: foreign or something like that. But tree branches, that sort
25:21
Speaker 1: of thing, low growth scrub. That's the key here, I think,
25:25
Speaker 1: and that's why it's so very important anytime the police
25:29
Speaker 1: take someone into custody, particularly this soon after the fact,
25:35
Speaker 1: you want to take as many photographs of and I'm
25:39
Speaker 1: not talking listen, I want every all of our listeners
25:42
Speaker 1: to understand I'm not talking about mug shots here, not
25:45
Speaker 1: talking about mugshots. I'm talking about where you have this
25:49
Speaker 1: individual essentially stripped down to their underwear, and you take
25:54
Speaker 1: images of all the planes of the body. You know,
25:56
Speaker 1: you're going to take anterior shots, posterior shots. You're going
25:59
Speaker 1: to go up and down the arms. You're gonna look
26:01
Speaker 1: at the neck. You're gonna ask them to hold their
26:03
Speaker 1: head back. If they've got long hair, which he did
26:05
Speaker 1: at that point in time, pull your hair up in
26:08
Speaker 1: the back. We want to see the back of your neck,
26:10
Speaker 1: up and down, the arms, the hands, both aspects of
26:13
Speaker 1: the hands. I want to take detail photographs of your nails.
26:15
Speaker 1: I want to see if any of your nails are chipped,
26:17
Speaker 1: because you know they're going to be doing that. The
26:19
Speaker 1: more with the victim, this is the deal. This poor
26:22
Speaker 1: child's rest and she'll never heal. He will, and you
26:28
Speaker 1: have to capture that moment in time where you freeze it.
26:34
Speaker 1: That's the beauty of photography when it comes to crime
26:36
Speaker 1: scene and documentation of crimes, is that just for a
26:41
Speaker 1: moment in time, you freeze time, You freeze the healing
26:46
Speaker 1: process if you will. I know some people find that ridiculous,
26:49
Speaker 1: but you know your own kind of this continuum where
26:52
Speaker 1: the further the perpetrator moves down that timeline and natural
26:57
Speaker 1: healing process it's going to take place. So it's it's
27:00
Speaker 1: so very important that you get to them early where
27:02
Speaker 1: you can document all of the stuff, so that you
27:04
Speaker 1: have a record of this going back, going back to
27:09
Speaker 1: the point where when this thing goes to trial, that
27:12
Speaker 1: you can actually document it and say this is what happened.
27:36
Speaker 1: It's hard to find the right hadget of I think
27:39
Speaker 1: when talking about this case descriptively, it's very very difficult.
27:47
Speaker 1: I do know this, I do know this, This perpetrator
27:54
Speaker 1: attacked interesting so very viciously that when and they conducted
28:01
Speaker 1: her examination, her postmortem examination, they did postmortal X rays,
28:09
Speaker 1: which means that a medical examiner took portable X ray machine,
28:13
Speaker 1: had her remains on a table much like they do
28:16
Speaker 1: in the hospital, and began to take full body X
28:19
Speaker 1: rays of her. And when they developed that film, when
28:24
Speaker 1: they developed that film, they put that film up on
28:27
Speaker 1: that lightboard in that morgue and they looked at it,
28:30
Speaker 1: and there in her skull was a tiny triangular shaped
28:38
Speaker 1: radio opaque mass. I know what it was. It was
28:44
Speaker 1: a tip of a buck knife. She was attacked with
28:47
Speaker 1: such force that the tip of this knife was actually
28:50
Speaker 1: broken off in her skull. Sometimes things are just beyond description,
28:54
Speaker 1: aren't they. I'm speechless. It just it hits your heart
28:58
Speaker 1: at such a level that I couldn't even I know,
29:01
Speaker 1: we're doing a program, and I couldn't even speak. Joe
29:04
Speaker 1: aiden Fucci, his friends knew about his fascination with knives.
29:08
Speaker 1: He had two that he actually named Picker and Poker.
29:13
Speaker 1: And the one that you're talking about where the tip
29:16
Speaker 1: little triangle had broken off, that was from the knife
29:19
Speaker 1: he called Poker. To back up and set the stage
29:23
Speaker 1: for all that occurred. They're in the same neighborhood, they
29:26
Speaker 1: go to the same private school. They do what thirteen
29:30
Speaker 1: and fourteen year olds do. They sneak out in the
29:32
Speaker 1: middle of the night, not to do any kind of
29:34
Speaker 1: crazy harm, just because they're ten feet tall and bulletproof.
29:37
Speaker 1: They're hanging out doing what they're not supposed to do.
29:40
Speaker 1: But Aiden has an actual plan and once he gets
29:44
Speaker 1: her to the woods, according to his statement to police,
29:47
Speaker 1: he tried to kiss her. She rebuffed him, she pushed
29:51
Speaker 1: him back, and that's where all of what then happened began.
29:56
Speaker 1: So a fourteen year old trying to kiss this thirteen
30:00
Speaker 1: year old cheerleader, she rebuffs him, he attacks. When police
30:04
Speaker 1: went looking for evidence, they found the knife inter retention
30:10
Speaker 1: pond near where Tristan's body was found, And of course
30:14
Speaker 1: we talked earlier about the clothing that was found in
30:16
Speaker 1: his home. Aiden's mother was charged with trying to cover
30:19
Speaker 1: up this crime. She knew what she was doing when
30:22
Speaker 1: she washed his bloody jeans, which is why they were
30:24
Speaker 1: wet when police got there. So you've got all of
30:27
Speaker 1: this going on. The police have figured out Aiden Fucci
30:31
Speaker 1: is now their suspect, but while her family and friends
30:34
Speaker 1: are still looking for her, they haven't found her body yet.
30:37
Speaker 1: He's in the back of the squad car and he's
30:39
Speaker 1: heading to the police department where they're going to question him,
30:43
Speaker 1: and he's snapchats. He takes a picture from the back
30:45
Speaker 1: of the squad car and he actually snapchats a picture
30:48
Speaker 1: and said, and he captions it. Hey, guys, anybody's seen
30:52
Speaker 1: Tristan lately. The level of horror that this extends too,
30:57
Speaker 1: I don't know that I can adequately describe it. Let's
31:00
Speaker 1: start with a knife. The knife itself. I think if
31:04
Speaker 1: he looked at this from the perspective of a prosecutor,
31:07
Speaker 1: which I am, not me, it goes to preparation. You know,
31:11
Speaker 1: you're thinking about this. You've got this with you, how
31:13
Speaker 1: convenient and with Tristan. She's thirteen, As you had mentioned,
31:19
Speaker 1: there's an innocence to that. You know, at that age,
31:21
Speaker 1: many of us, including me, I'm chief among centners, snuck
31:25
Speaker 1: out when we were teenagers. That's what teenagers do, and
31:29
Speaker 1: there is a level of innocence to it. You're beginning
31:31
Speaker 1: to sense adulthood and you've got a kid that's older
31:35
Speaker 1: than you, that's paying attention to you. It's no fault
31:37
Speaker 1: of hers. What she didn't realize is that this this
31:42
Speaker 1: person that she was with, he wanted to use her
31:46
Speaker 1: for his pleasure in that moment, to completely destroy her.
31:52
Speaker 1: And he did. And the fact that one of the
31:55
Speaker 1: more chilling aspects to this is that his mother had
31:58
Speaker 1: an awareness of this because she had talked about how
32:01
Speaker 1: the clothing was wet, you know, went to search the area.
32:04
Speaker 1: It's not like she just threw it in the washing machine.
32:07
Speaker 1: She took these pants over to a sink and began
32:12
Speaker 1: to scrub them. Think about that, just for a second.
32:16
Speaker 1: She knows that this thirteen year old child has been
32:19
Speaker 1: slaughtered and here she is. Man. I know everybody will say, well,
32:24
Speaker 1: you'll do anything to help your children, but just let
32:27
Speaker 1: this resonate just for a moment. You're now attempting to
32:32
Speaker 1: what you have to at least have some inkling of
32:36
Speaker 1: scrub her blood out of your child's pants because you
32:44
Speaker 1: want to, I don't know, protect him, protect him, or
32:51
Speaker 1: you want to facilitate him getting away with it. I
32:55
Speaker 1: think that that's a question that should be asked. I
32:57
Speaker 1: don't know if it'll ever be answered. Like many things,
32:59
Speaker 1: in this case, Steve, And that's what happens when somebody
33:02
Speaker 1: pleads guilty at first he pled not guilty, getting ready
33:05
Speaker 1: for trial, getting ready to get a jury together. You
33:08
Speaker 1: mentioned it to start everything, Joe, he said. He says,
33:12
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, my bad. That doesn't explain anything. I don't
33:17
Speaker 1: know that it provides any kind of solace for the
33:19
Speaker 1: family at all. And all I'm doing is sitting here thinking,
33:23
Speaker 1: I get it that a mom at protecting her son.
33:26
Speaker 1: But how can that mom who's protecting her son not
33:28
Speaker 1: think about the other family and their daughter who's not
33:32
Speaker 1: coming home. How do you not have that kind of
33:35
Speaker 1: empathy and sympathy, Because there's something really wrong there with that. Yeah,
33:40
Speaker 1: I think that there is. You had mentioned these advances
33:43
Speaker 1: that he alleged he attempted to kiss her, she pushed
33:47
Speaker 1: him way, you know, the story changed. He claims that
33:49
Speaker 1: she aggressively grabbed at his crotch and he pushed her
33:53
Speaker 1: down and maybe struck her head. Then he puts forth
33:57
Speaker 1: this idea that this child, thirteen year old, was involved
34:01
Speaker 1: in some connection to drugs in some way, like someone
34:05
Speaker 1: would have done this to her, like this child would
34:08
Speaker 1: have owed somebody money. So they're going to make a statement,
34:11
Speaker 1: and it's so far flung at that point in time.
34:14
Speaker 1: I can only imagine that when the police were interviewing
34:18
Speaker 1: him and they begin to get these stories and they're
34:20
Speaker 1: listening to it, they know, they know, they're just waiting
34:23
Speaker 1: for him to go full in and admit to what
34:28
Speaker 1: he has done. And of course that that didn't happen.
34:33
Speaker 1: It didn't happen until he's standing in front of the
34:35
Speaker 1: judge and he admits to it all and he pleads guilty.
34:39
Speaker 1: He doesn't face the death penalty. Joe at sentencing, the
34:42
Speaker 1: best he can get his life in prison or is
34:45
Speaker 1: it forty years? Is it one of those things, Well, yeah,
34:47
Speaker 1: it's it's going to be forty to life. An interesting
34:50
Speaker 1: side note here is that since he committed this brutal
34:54
Speaker 1: homicide at such a young age in Florida, is not
34:57
Speaker 1: eligible for the death penalty. It carries a forty years
35:00
Speaker 1: sentence minimum forty years to life. But here's the thing,
35:04
Speaker 1: after he starts serving his sentence twenty five years from now,
35:09
Speaker 1: he'll be eligible for a review. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
35:16
Speaker 1: and this is Body Backs