A Florida teen who brutally killed a 13-year-old cheerleader with a knife was sentenced to life in prison on Friday morning. The judge said he did it just to “feel what it was like to kill someone,” which was a stupid reason.
Aiden Fucci, 16, stabbed Tristyn Bailey 114 times and then dumped her body in a wooded area near Jacksonville in 2021. St. Johns County Circuit Judge Lee Smith said that Aiden Fucci got the maximum sentence because the murder was so brutal and planned.
“This didn’t happen because of greed. It wasn’t done to get back at someone or get even. Smith said, according to News4Jax.com, that it was not a crime of passion.
“It wasn’t a crime that he did it because she turned him down. It wasn’t done in a rage that couldn’t be stopped. It didn’t make sense. He also said, “There was no point.”
Smith said, “It was done for no reason other than to satisfy this defendant’s inner desire to know what it was like to kill someone.”
The judge said that he took Fucci’s age into account when deciding how to punish him. He pointed out that his brain wasn’t fully developed when he killed the woman at age 14, WFLA.com said.
Smith said that the teen killer’s strange lack of a reason for killing his classmate showed that he didn’t do it on the spot and had instead planned to kill her.
“She died a terrible, painful death at the hands of someone she trusted… “It’s likely that her own suffocating lungs stopped her from screams,” Smith said.
“There was a lot of planning ahead of time in this case.”
He also said that the killing was “close up, personal, and shocking.”
During the investigation, Fucci’s friends told police that in the months before the murder, he openly fantasised about violence and murder, and that he chose the cheerleader out of anger.
He would often draw pictures of bodies that had been cut up, and he is said to have boasted about the murder while he was in jail.
Fucci pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in February. In a handwritten letter that was read in court, he said he was sorry for the death.
“I’m sorry that you didn’t get to know her that long. “I’m sorry that you didn’t have any long-term relationships with Tristyn,” he wrote.
“I’m sorry I caused all this pain every day for the community, and I’m sorry. I know my apology won’t fix anything or bring her back, but I hope it helps in some way.”
During a sentencing hearing on Wednesday, Fucci’s family asked the judge to be kind to the teen.
“I’d die not being able to spend time with him sometime before I go,” Aiden Fucci’s grandmother, Deborah Spiwak, told the court.
Meanwhile, Bailey’s heartbroken mother said that the troubled teen was “beyond saving.” She said that thoughts of her daughter’s last moments alive had been keeping her up at night.
Fucci had faced 40 years to life and was not eligible for the death sentence because he committed the crime as a minor.
Fucci was set to be tried as an adult but unexpectedly entered a guilty plea on Feb. 6, the day the trial was scheduled to begin.