Intent to Kill | The Murder of Tristyn Bailey

0:06 Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast where I tell stories of real crimes with real victims, whose cases are so shocking that many are left wondering how is this even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement corrections, and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator, dig deep into complex cases of evil acts, some so evil many feel they are unspeakable. Warning, Unspeakable is intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey, y'all, welcome back to another episode of Unspeakable. This is season three, episode five. I'm so glad that y'all tuning in and listening. I have been doing so much research I think I'm I think I'm gonna lose my mind. My whole desk is full of just episodes and suggestions from people. So, hey, if you have cases that you really want to hear me do, I am not too boogie for that, Okay, So email me at It's Unspeakable the podcast dot com. You go to the website, or you can email me, send me a message on Facebook, and I'll be glad to look into some of the cases that really interest you, because hey, after I all at your show, right, I just love doing true crime. So if you follow me on Facebook, by the way, you saw that there was an absolute tragedy that unfolded in my app. You know where I live. We

1:40 have an officer here. His name is Sean Kelly, and he was doing what officers do every day and putting his life literally on the line to go help somebody in a disturbance call. He showed up right here at the Petco. Literally, my daughters and I were turning in to go buy some stuff for putty jail. Y'all know my squirrel, right, We're going in to get some stuff. And it turns out a woman had gotten into a dispute with an absolute nut job who was chasing her and had chased another female earlier that day, and he just has a history of being a idiot. And Officer Kelly showed up to try to help this woman and ended up taking multiple rounds in his legs, as abdomen, and ultimately through his neck. And y'all, if I'm being honest, he's not doing too well. He's in the hospital right now. There's been no change in the days since this has occurred. And I don't know what you think it is to be someone who's willing to just put down your life for a stranger. But he absolutely met that challenge and he took that call, and honestly, the woman survived, and we don't know what would have happened if he hadn't shown up. So I had thought about, you know, maybe putting my own thing from a podcast where we might could donate to the cause, to his family, because I know they're going through a lot. I know his wife is dying inside right now. But I think what I'm doing instead is on my Facebook page if you feel so inclined to go help support this family during this time and

3:13 to do what you can, and if you can't do anything, that's fine too, but maybe a prayer. But if you financially would like to support, send some support or love his way. I'm going to put a link on my Facebook page that you can click. It's going to go directly through the police department, and you can go help to support Officer Sean Kelly in this time of need. So I just want to say right now on an open forum that my thoughts and my absolute genuine prayers are with him, with his family, and I pray that he survives this, and that he survives this with a quality of life that we would all hope upon someone who who answered the call to help someone when they were in need. So keep him in your prayers, y'all. Go check my Facebook, like I said, and I'll be putting some updates on there, and just keep him in your prayers, because he's the reason that we live in a society where we have safety and that we can make a phone call. We can dial three numbers and someone will show up with no questions asked to try to come and assist you. And I think that's a beautiful thing. Now that said, y'all blowing me up for some of this merch that I'm creating, And oh my goodness, I'm so thankful. Good Lord, have mercy. But guess what Facebook is tripping? Facebook. I don't know what they're doing, but something is wrong in the algorithm. I've had my it people check it on my end. It is not me. Okay, I'm trying, but look, if you're having some trouble, just send me a private message. I will make this happen for you. I'll need your email address if you have shirts

4:45 or cups or anything you want. Mama's gonna make it happen, just like I said, send me that message, I'll take care of it. Don't forget. I still work full time, so I'm checking these messages at night. But mam will make it happen. So get in touch with me. If there's something you want and you're struggling, don't give up because I'm so appreciative of the support that y'all continue to give me. And hey, if you're watching, if you're a patron member, look at this shirt. I'm posted this one yet. Can y'all see it? Youah boy? It's got the chick with the crime scene, you know, tie on her hair and the sunglasses, the aviators with the blood spatter, and I think it's kind of cool. So I'll be putting this one on the website soon too. All right, lots of messages for the case that I'm about to do. Lots of people wanted me to do it, and I said, well, hell, let me give the people what they want, So I'm gonna do this. I'm recording now. This is Mother's Day weekend that I'm actually recording this, and I thought, well, how fitting because this case actually started on Mother's Day, which is horrific in and of itself. But this is going to be the case about Tristan Bailey. And this one, I know has been big. It's been all in the news. A lot of people have been watching it, but I don't know that a lot of people went back and investigated or did research on the entirety of what went down in this case. I did it for you, so we're gonna back it up.

6:01 Okay, This case starts on Mother's Day, May ninth, twenty twenty one, and of course in Florida. It seems like everything happens in Florida. Man. But Tristan Bailey was thirteen years old and just y'all, a little teenage girl, everything that you expect a teenage girl to be. I've watched lots of videos and pictures and really tried to check her out and see what she was about. And she's a thirteen year old white female. She's got brown hair, she's got a mouthful of braces. Honestly, when I looked at her, I almost saw my own daughter. She was the run of the mill. And I don't mean that in a negative way, but she was your girl. Chasing her American dream at thirteen and what that looks like for a thirteen year old. She was one of five children, so she came from a big family. Her parents' names were Stacy and Forest Bailey.

6:48 And she lived in Durban Crossing in northwest Saint John's County and she was a student there. But mainly what really took a lot of her time was she was a cheerleader and a comp heditive cheerleader. So if you go look up any pictures of her, you're gonna see in her sparkly little outfits and her little high ponytail, and her and her big bows and the glitter and the pomp and circumstance that goes along with being a competitive cheerleader. And when her family was describing her, and a lot of videos that I watched, this chick, this little Tristan was a little ball of fire or a little spitfire. She had no fear. She was a go getter. She was she was out there. She was in your face, but just a positive kid embracing the life that was that she was given. Her family was everything that you would expect to see in a Hallmark movie. You know what I mean?

7:42 Just mom, is this tiny little thing with her little glasses and her blonde hair. Dad's super tall. All of her siblings well put together people, just what you you know, just everything you would want a family to be. Their tight knit, they love one another, they support one another. It's a two household that gave hugs and love and sugars and kisses and told everybody how proud they were of one another. Now, Tristan went to Patriot Oaks Academy, and based on everything that I saw about her and that her research, she was a kind girl. She was described as a kid that was always willing to defend her teammates and her cheer squad, and if someone got hurt, she would step up and be there to support them and tell them, look, it's gonna be okay. You know. She was in seventh grade and she was doing well in school academically, she was doing good, and she was involved in multiple of those cheer teams. Now where this all started was they all the Bailey family went to dinner on Saturday evening, May eighth, twenty twenty one, And after they went to dinner, they went as a family to visit the oldest daughter and at her adult home.

8:50 And you know it was just a couple hours later they were at home. Tristan's sister last saw Tristan speaking with an unknown white male wearing a backwards white baseball cap on a video chat in the garage at approximately midnight. So she's up, she's snapping, she's chatting, she's doing all those things that kids are doing these days. Nothing out of the ordinary. Now, her sister and her family said the last thing that they saw her wearing was what they believed to be a white cheer skirt and dark shorts, and the siblings said that nothing. Again, nothing seemed strange. They go to bed that night, she's being a little typical teenager. And then they wake up Mother's Day morning. So the siblings go in and they say, hey, we're gonna make breakfast for mom, and they start working in the kitchen and that's when they go to wake up Tristan. Now, Tristan was the baby of the family and they treated her that way. Okay, she probably got a lot. I got the gist that she got away with more than what you know, the older kids probably got away with. But she was sleeping and they go to wake her up. When they went in her room, they couldn't find her, Like, what the hell is Tristan? Right, So they start the house. They go all throughout the house. They can't find her anywhere. They start panicking, right, where is she? She's not outside, she's not in any closets, she's not in the bathroom. They can't find her on the grounds. And you know, nowhere seemed disturbed or that there might have been any type of foul play. So Tristan's dad,

10:22 his name again is Forrest. He searched the immediate immediate area of the North Amenities Center, but did not locate Tristan. So he then created a social media post requesting the community's assistants with finding Tristan, where is my daughter? And looking at it, they did everything I think a family would do. I don't think they did anything strange. I think they were, like, you know, just wanting to find their baby girl. So when they weren't able to find her, it was roughly one fifty nine PM on Mother's Day that they called and said, hey, we can't find our daughter. Now. Her mom, Stacy is the one who made the nine one one call and said, look, we need an officer out here and we need her fat and need one fast, we can't find our daughter, and she did identify it as Tristan. She said, my daughter's thirteen years old. She's approximately five foot four and one hundred and thirty pounds, So you know this wasn't some you know, ginormous girl running the streets. I mean, she's a little girl, you know, that's not a big person. And she's in school. She's a kid. She's attending her seventh grade class. And the last time that we've seen her is midnight that, like I told you, her siblings saw her and she was supposed to then go to bed and be asleep in her room. But she's not there. She told the dispatcher.

11:37 According to her best knowledge, that Tristan had not snuck out of the house the night before, but her cell phone wasn't there, and when they're trying to call her phone, it's going straight to voicemail. That right there, as a mama, just made me get a pit in my stomach. Whenever you know your baby's not where they're supposed to be and then that is going straight to voicemail. If you know anything about a teenager, their phone is their life. You know they're not going to go somewhere without their phone, and they're certainly not gonna let it die and not have a charger on them. I mean, good god, I'm a teacher. You should see the kids. They may not have their homework, they may not even know, you know, what day it is or the last time they ate, but by god, they know their phone and where it is. So that's just that's that's alarming. Now. Something that was additionally alarming was that she said Tristan's cell phone locations like to follow her, and her snapchat locations were turned off. And this is kind of weird. And I only know this because of my own kid, but kids these days follow one another like their locations. So I know we'll be sitting at the table, you know, eating or something. I'll here due to dude on my own daughter's phone, and I'm like, what is that? Because it sounds like whenever, you know, I track my family members and she'll say my daughter will be like, oh that's that's you know, easy, or one of her friends, that's easy. She just left her house. She's got, you know, something to go do. I'm like, how do you know she left her house? Oh, I'll follow her on snapchat. It tells me her location update, like, are y'all stalking each other? It's weird. We didn't do that back in my day. But the fact that this was turned off

13:09 it was alarming too. Now. Tristan also, according to her family, had a Life three sixty app but she had stopped sharing her location. Not good, right, So the dispatcher said, you know, miss Stacey, I need you to go room by room while you're on the phone with me, and I need you to go check the house. And her mom is emphatic, We already searched the house. We looked everywhere. But hey, you remember that John Beday Ramsey episode where they swore they searched the house and then lo and behold, there's the baby dead in the bottom of the house. You know, it doesn't hurt to go check again. So I thought I would stop real quick and teach you all a little something about something.

13:50 So if you're watching me, if you're a patron member, I'm gonna hold this up. You're gonna see I'm holding a flip chart with a whole bunch of colors on it and all sorts of questions and things. So if you're a patron member and you're right now. You see like super colorful, lots of questions, lots of these what we call determine it suffixes and things of that nature. Hey, if you're not a Patron member and it's kind of weird, I'm in the middle of the episode, but go go on there to go to unspeakable the podcast dot com, or go get on Patron and you can watch me podcast if you want so you can see kind of the things I show and reference. But anyway, when you call nine one one, I thought i'd explain this to you, so I teach nine one dispatch certification. But you know, when you call in, we have to determine first of all, is this a lost person, a runaway? What exactly is going on here? And so there's a lot of questions that are going to be asked. And as I go later on in this episode, I actually have the transcript of what was asked of the mom stacy. But you know, the thing is when it comes to a missing person, especially when they're a juvenile. You know, kids are not allowed to disappear. Adults, you absolutely legally can disappear and nobody can say anything about it. But a kid, a thirteen year old no freaking way. They can't take care of themselves, they don't have money, they can't drive, so it's very odd when they go missing that it would be just normal, right, There was no foul play or there wasn't something that's going on behind the scenes there.

15:11 So I will go over it, like I said, a little bit later, I'll go on and tell you a little bit more about how nine one is going to process that call. But when further questioned, Stacy gave more information about Tristan and said that she had begun hanging out with friends in the neighborhood and that she had participated in cheerleading for three different cheerleading squads. I mean, this was like her life dream, you know, it was to be as competitive as she could in this cheer in this cheer world. And when questioned about hey, how was Tristan acting before she went to bed or that night, and mom said she was fine, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. She said, you know, she was a little bit standoffish lately, and that she had been going to her room a lot. But I mean, hell, if you're a mom of teenager, especially teenage girls, you know exactly what that's about. They got hormones going on, and they get sassy, and they get snotty, and they get you know, they want their alone time and they go up in their room and you're not cool enough to hang out with. I don't find that to be out of the ordinary, that she was behaving that way, And according to her mom, Tristan never said anything about wanting to leave or wanting to harm herself.

16:18 She simply was just gone and there was nothing to explain it. There was nothing that would have even tipped the parents off that hey, maybe she ran away. So the only thing that the mom could come up with was that Tristan said that she felt like she couldn't do anything right and so maybe she felt like she was being a failure of some sort. But Tristan did not take any medications for depression, no anxiety, nothing. Mom advised that Tristan did not have a steady boyfriend either, so it wasn't like there was some male that might have just swooped in and took her, taken her, took her tooking her. Good God, y'all, thank god a podcast and I'm not of any importance. But when asked about her friendship group, mom said, look, she communicates with several friends from school, but again nobody on the radar that would be conceived considered dangerous of any type. The last thing that Tristan had done was she went with some friends and attended this neighborhood thing they called food Truck Friday, and the friends parents had driven them to the event, but the parents had also picked them up, so it wasn't like they walked to this and then left on their own accord and nobody knew what happened to them. Tristan simply up and vanished and was not discovered as gone until that morning when they were doing their their breakfast cook for the mom.

17:41 So more personal information, you know, came about after that phone call law enforcement arrived. That's pretty much the end of the nine one one call. And whenever law enforcement got in there, they started asking more questions, more, you know, a little deeper, a little more leading, so that they could find out more about what Trisan was like. So after leaving her house, Tristan was said to be hanging out with this kid named Trey Absher And I'm going to say the second because there's a father and there's a son with the same name, and so I don't want to become confusing. So after a little bit further investigation, the police identify a friend by the name of Trey Absher and the first name of Trey is Doaphus. I believe d o f fis not a real traditional name, So if I've said that differently than you've heard elsewhere at my apologies. But Deputy Maloney, who was one of the deputies that was helping to investigate where Tristan could possibly be, went and met with Trey and he says, Tristan, Yeah, Tristan was actually at my house the night before she disappeared, and she had shown up with another boy named Aiden Fuci, and they came over, we hung out, and then about one o'clock in the morning they left. Trey also said that when Tristan came to his house, she was very tactical, if you will, right. She snuck around the north side of the house to avoid the security cameras that they had at their residence. And he said that Tristan and

19:11 Aiden left the house together and at the same time. Now, I don't find that to be extremely horrific. Okay, that's what kids do. They're going to try to avoid the cameras because they don't want to be in trouble and they don't want to get caught. Now, when asked what was Tristan wearing when he saw her, he says, Tristan was wearing a black and gray T shirt with the word pink across the front and black sweatpants, so a really good description of what she would be wearing last time she was seen. Deputies went now and said, Okay, we're gonna go meet with this Aidan guy at his residence and let's find out what he's got to say for himself. So they show up at the house and they ask Aidan some questions. So he says he and Tristan were at Dauphus or Trey's house and they left together around one o'clock like the other friend had said, So their stories line up with the consent of his mother and that her name was Crystal Smith.

20:03 Aiden showed Deputy Maloney where he and Tristan went after leaving Dopphus's house, because they went on a walk. Now, Aiden said that after he and Tristan left Trey's house, they walked to North Durban Parkway and then he said, so he's kind of like walking it out for them, giving him a map, right, and he said that Tristan then turned onto Cloisterbain Drive to go to her house, and he said he walked around North Durban Parkway and he arrived home around three to three thirty that morning. Now, I'm going to kind of throw this out there. I find it weird that these young kids are walking around three o'clock in the morning, so just outside looking in, I'm kind of starting to get the picture here that the parents of Tristan didn't know that she snuck out of the house. They didn't strike me as the kind of family that would allow that. They didn't let her just be this latchkey kid running around, But obviously she got out of that house and they didn't know about it. Now, about the time this questioning is happening, there's also a search that's going on around for Tristan. And remember she's a juvenile. We handle those differently than adults. Adults can disappear. Juveniles cannot. They cannot take care of themselves. They're considered kind of at risk individuals, if you will. So unless they are considered you know, at risk, like severely at risk, meaning a five year old, right, a five year old can't take care of themselves in any way, shape or form. A missing person is more of what we were dealing with at this point with Tristan. So she's not really young, she doesn't have any medical

21:33 problems, she doesn't have any mental problems, but she's certainly too young to be out on her own to disappear without any questions. So Deputy Maloney asks Aidan, Hey, man, I'm gonna need you to clarify something about your timeline. It kind of seems odd that it would take you two hours to walk from Trey's house to your house, because when you're looking at where he says he was walking, if you look at Google Maps, the walking distance would have been about one point four miles, and if you're walking, that would relay relate to about a twenty eight minute walk. This took him two hours, So they're like, man, can you kind of can you kind of clarify that a little bit? Right then, though, Aiden changed his story. Rut Row, Right, here's a clue. Why would you change your story? So now he says that he and Tristan continued walking north along North Urban Parkway, but they actually got into an altercation because Tristan grabbed his penis while they were walking. He says that he forcefully pushed Tristan to the ground, which caused her to strike her head. Okay, well that's way different. Right at first, we were just walking around. Now all of a sudden, oh yeah, I forgot she grabbed my penis and so I had to push her to the ground again. A thirteen year old boy here, we're talking about our fourteen Actually she's thirteen. So when asked where did

23:06 this happen aiden, he says, this happened near the six hundred block of North Durban Parkway, just north of Leith Hall Drive. So m I don't know much, but I know bullshit when I hear it. Y'all stay tuned. I might get me a singing contract, but I'm gonna go ahead and call bullshit right here. Let me tell you why a young boy, a fourteen year old boy, is getting his junk grabbed by a teenage girl and he gets so mad that he pushes her down. I'm not buying that. Sorry, I'm not buying that. And I don't mean to be ugly, but come on, your fourteen year old boy walking around at three thirty in the morning with a girl of the opposite sex, and she grabs your junk, according to you, and you get so offended you shove her to the ground. Sorry, that dog ain't hunting for me. I don't believe that for one second. It just doesn't. That doesn't jive for me. So it just seems really convenient to go from walking right, they're just walking.

24:10 Now he's a victim of sexual assault, and about three minutes of an interrogation that gets me a little bit of an attitude. There, have you ever been around a thirteen year old boy? Hell? Have you ever been a thirteen year old boy? I mean, hey, Jemothy, you're in here. Lean into the camera, say hi to the people. Jem Yeah, get on the micro quick. I'm doing this. I didn't plan it. Hey, Kelly, Hey, I've never been a thirteen year old boy, have you? Yes? Okay, you're thirteen years old. Okay, you're walking in the dark with a girl who has snuck out, and you have snuck out and she grabs you're willy wonka, what is your reaction? Actually, at thirteen, I've been freaked out, but I'd have tried to like play it off like I wasn't breaked out. Yeah, I'd have been pretty freaked out. Yeah, but you're gonna push a girl to the head violently, I mean, push your girl to the ground violently. No, No, I know you're not. You're gonna be like Na, she just grabbed me. I'm not even gonna Yeah, I mean that would have you know.

25:15 This never happened to me. I mean, I know, but I'm just saying, you're thirteen years old. I'm not pushing her down at that point. No, And if you are, it ain't violent. No, you're gonna be a Romeo. That's right. Okay, if you're listening right now, thank you. So I'm getting off all right. So you know, and I know that you're like Jesus Kelly, their kids, I know that. But I'm just telling you, I'm you're out with a chick when you're not supposed to be beyond the means that your parents know where you are. It's not like y'all are out on a Sunday walk headed to church, you know what I'm saying, Like you had intentions to be a little bit sneaky while you're out there. I'm just I don't know, I'm just it doesn't fit for me that you would be just abhorred by the fact that she would touch you sexually and then you throw her to the ground. It just doesn't fit for me. Maybe you're different than me. It doesn't fit.

26:11 And then he goes from just walking with her and taking her home to becoming a sexual assault victim so violated that he threw her to the ground in minutes of an investigation at the first second that hey, your story's not quite lining up. Okay, sure if you were an innocent bystander who was sexually assaulted by this girl, I feel like that would have come up first in your discussion with the police. Look, I don't know what happened to her. All I know is that we were walking. I thought we were friends. She grabbed me in my private area. I was super uncomfortable, and so I was like, look, we gotta go, we gotta separate out, and we went our separate ways. I just don't see you violently throwing her to the ground and then what like put yourself then what Okay, you threw her to the ground. She touched you know, she touched your dang, you threw her to the ground, and then what you just it's like snap two and walk the other direction. And y'all don't say anything else to one another. It's just the touch and go like whatever, bro, no, no, you know. And this is probably why no one will ever let me be a detective, because I would be like, all right, bullshit, sign next, let's try again. I don't believe it now. Something that's made me jump that quick to that conclusion too, is honestly, I do know more about him right than these investigators would know. And I know that this is not you know, this isn't some some choir boy. Okay, and I'll admit that total transparency. I know more about this kid than than these investigators did. But again, I've also been around thirteen year old boys, and I just I'm not I'm not buying buying that bill, that bill of goods there, it's just not working. So you know. Also,

27:42 and I know this is ugly. I'm an adult, so I'm don't. I don't know how to say this nicely, but like he was not as he was esthetically challenging to look at. I just don't find that women would be or girls would be flocking to him for I mean, he's covered in pimples, he's got acne everywhere, looking straight up like his mama fetting with rocks with a slingshot. I mean, like, come on, this is not some some you know Rico swabe here. And when he's prodded further with questions, they're like, okay, so you pushed her down, and then what he says, Oh, he's not sure if she got up because he was actually really dizzy too at that time. He was super dizzy, right, And they're like, you were dizzy, Yeah, I'd been smoking smoking weed at Tray's house earlier. Okay, all right, so now you snuck out, you went to Tray's house, you got high, and then you went on a walk, and then she touched you, and then you threw her to the ground. But you don't remember any of it. Sounds like a solid story. Sounds like a kid that's about to get to tension and he's just grasping at straws right to try to get himself out of trouble.

28:55 Denial, denial, denial. So you know, you're high enough to not remember what happened after you shoved her to the ground, but you're not high enough to forget that you were super disturbed that she supposedly grabbed your penis randomly while you were walking, right, And so they're like, okay, well, then what did you do afterwards in this high state that you were in. Oh, he just walked around a while alone. He was quote looking at the stars. What like, just what? What? In the actual fuck? I'm just gonna say it. This is the part of stories that people leave out that it's just like and then he went for a walk and we don't know what happened. No, he's an idiot. He says he pushed a girl down, and then he wouldn't he went stargazing. You went stargazing, Like, oh my god, get the f out of here, all right. So remember the search that was going on during this investigating.

29:53 This investigating involved the Saint John's County Sheriff's office, and they had their aviation unit out when they started bringing out choppers and stuff to look for somebody. It's serious business. I don't have this to be a one hundred percent stat but I do know this, financially speaking, minimum, it's gonna cost roughly four hundred dollars minimum. And that was years ago to even lift a chopper off the ground to go do a search. For somebody taxpayer dollars, you got overtime, you got fuel, you got the equal you know, if you were like putting it all in there. So they're really worried at this point if they've got aviation looking for her. Now they also had an additional other resources out, but they were just fine. There was just a negative result. They weren't finding her. And so what happened next was there's a sergeant, Sergeant Gams. He ordered what we would call a ping order for Tristan's cell phone, and they're like, we need to try to figure out where was she geographically the last time that she was seen, because they believed, hey, she's gonna be with that cell phone, even if it's not turned on, even if she stopped doing her location. Where was her last location? Right, let's find her? All right, I want to teach you a little something. What is a ping order for a cell phone?

31:03 Now again, y'all know I'm a nine one one girl, right, So basically a ping is what you're going to see in the movies. And they do it totally dumb because it's not how it really works, right, nine one one. They're in the dark, which is weird, but they're in the dark, and where is she? Let me just press a button and ping. Here she is, and it's gonna flash, and oh my god, she's standing right there next to that rock. Okay, it doesn't work like that here in the real world. It's a little more difficult. So we have different types of pings that can happen, but this one would be probably done as an emergency ping, and so these are done whenever life is considered to be in danger. We got a kid telling a story that's not jiving. We can't find the girl. Notifications are turned off, all right, this rut row right, we got a red flag here. Now, if you do an emergency ping, you know that's because we think life is in danger here possibly, But beyond that, you would have to have a court order or a subpoena to be able to just ping somebody's phone.

32:00 Luckily, today, with the advancements in technology, warrants and all of that are done electronically, so detectives don't have to go back to the office, type up a warrant, find a judge, get them to sign it. Now they can really just send it electronically and within minutes, really a judge can read over and decide, yeah, we're going to go ahead allow this or not. And y'all that's a good thing if you know your rights. People love to say they know their rights, but then when you question them on them, they don't know them. They have no clue what their rights are. They just know that they don't like the police getting to do anything right that might get them in trouble. But in this situation, this was an emergency. They couldn't find her. But you don't want people the police being able to just search and find you at whim. And I'm pro police, but I'm also pro rights right and so you should be able to live your life without being you know, tracked. So these pings are covered by search and seizure laws. So that's why those steps would have to be taken.

32:54 And usually if you're wondering, we can't you know, in the movies, it tells you exactly where they are and you can just see the dot moving. In real life, we can only get within twelve hundred and fifteen hundred meters of where this person might be or where the phone might be. So if you wanted to kind of put that into perspective, you're looking at three like linear football fields. Okay, the of the area that they could be. Put yourself in a place like New York. By the way, you're not how difficulty they're like just paying a phone. You always hear people say that, why don't they just ping the phone? Okay, three football fields, y'all. You also can go up, you know what I'm saying. So they've got these tall buildings and places you don't know where the hill somebody is. That's not a lot of that's a huge area to search when you're looking for a cell phone. So how does this happen really physically?

33:44 And I'm gonna make this kind of simple, but it's gonna be done through cell phone towers and through cell service. So we call it triangulation. And I don't want to get all deep into it, but if you want to know, I'd like to teach you. But we call it triangulation obviously the shape of a triangle. And basically, you've ever been driving down the road and you're talking to someone on the phone, life is good, and all of a sudden, that's your conversation because what's happening is you're losing the connection to the tower and then you have to move forward and then boom, you're back up again, right and you've got full service and you're able to talk to somebody. That's because your cell your cell phone is jumping from tower to tower to get your service. And that's how we can hone in on your location through a three point you know, a three point check, and obviously we'd be able to tell what direction you were traveling because of which tower you were jumping to. So it's more than just press a button in nine one one. It actually takes a little bit of work, but we can get it rather quickly with today's technology. Now they're doing the ping check on the phone. And based on Aiden's statements of FUCI statements, Detective Maloney's here said, look, I think we have a crime here. I think I need to go ahead and advise him of his constitutional rights. So you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say cannon will be used against in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one won't be provided for you. Do you understand these rights? Now?

35:05 It probably read to him in juvenile terms here in Livingston. You know, we have like juvenile ways of saying and adult ways of saying it. I don't know. They don't have it written down. They just said that they were a advise of their rights. So instead of a saying you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say, Kennon will be used against you in a court of law, they could kind of dump it down a little bit, right, So listen, you don't have to speak to us right now. If you don't want to. Anything you do say, we're gonna take it and we can use it against you, you know, kind of make it easier for them to understand. Now. Aiden decided he would invoke his rights and he declined to provide any further statement at that point, and his parents now were like, we want an attorney. All right, hey, I'll give you this. If it's your kid, you'd want an attorney too, because this ain't looking good. But I also know this.

35:49 Parents know their kids. If they're actually parenting, you know your kids. I know when my kids are not up to snuff one hundred percent on what they're telling me. I think the parents apply knew that something was up at that point. I think they were like, uh, oh, our little bastard is showing his true colors. Here. So at this point, there's another detective that's helping out, and her name is Kimberly Paluso, and she's with a special victims unit, and she arrived to the scene where you know, all of this was going down, and Detective Paluso advised that she spoke with Aiden food she and she spoke with that friend Trey absher and learned additional information, she says. Aiden stated that Tristan could be with a drug dealer who was in his twenties that she talks to through Snapchat, or she could be on a path by the North Amenity Center where teens are known to go use drugs. Wow, what a jump here, What an exponential jump.

36:49 We went from just hanging out to smoking front dope at our friend's house to now getting our willie pulled, to throwing her down, to not knowing what happened to now she's hanging out with a drug dealer that she met through Snapchat. Wow. Talk about a wild goose chase. All right. So Aiden also stated that Tristan's friend, who he identified as Shilah, would have more information about this. Done right, go check with Shilah now right. Then, Aidan tried to call Tristan several times, but her phone was going straight to voicemail. I'm calling bullshit there too. You threw her down, you never checked on her. But now that we know she's missing, all of a sudden, now you're gonna try to call her now, I don't know all right now. When talking to Trey, Detective Peluso got this information that they showed up at the house and that Tristan didn't stay very long and then they left and Aiden went with her. He also said that he thought Aidan dropped Tristan off at the front of her neighborhood and continued walking to his house.

38:00 Now why he would think that, I don't know, other than he just like, oh, I guess this happened, or if Aiden had said no, this is what happened. Right, So Tray believed that Tristan got caught outside of her house by her sister and then left to go meet with a drug dealer. Do you see how like this is getting completely whackado Like it's totally going off into left field from a missing person to now we have drug dealers and sexual assaults and all this other crab all right. He did say that that drug dealer was in the early twenties, and so the detective. Tray allowed the detective to review his Instagram and his Snapchat accounts to access Tristan's profiles, but whenever she looked, she wasn't able to see any recent postings to Instagram, but she did notice that Tristan's last Snapchat post was approximately sixteen hours prior. Well, you know, these kids, they're snapping everything everything, you know, every few minutes, there's pictures and snaps and all that. But sixteen hours have now passed and there's no communication. We need to remember that. So Corporal Justin Ackerman, who was also of the Special Victims Unit, was also working that case, and he attempted to make contact with two other friends that they found of Tristan's, and their names were Samantha and Lena Creole. So Ackerman advised that whenever he went to the house, nobody was there, but he was able to get in touch with a man named Jerry Creole, who was Samantha and Lena's father. He was able to

39:35 get him on the phone. Jerry tells the detective that Lena contacted Trey earlier and was told Tristan and another boy snuck out in the middle of the night and were hanging around the North Amenity Center. So we do know now multiple kids are saying, yeah, they snuck out together. He also said that the two boys went home, but Tristan went somewhere else because she was wanting to go hang out with this twenty two year old drug dealer and got a name. Now the name was supposedly Carlo. Now you see how it takes time to get all these little pieces, and I wanted to do this story kind of an investigative standpoint, not just blanket over kind of what happened.

40:20 So now we've got a name, Carlo. But also remember they were getting that that ping and that subpoena on Tristan's cell phone to figure out, hey, what's the last bit of communication where could she possibly be. So the investigators identified Tristan's cell phone number, which I actually have here. What her number was, I'm not going to read it out in case the family still has it by some chance, but it ended an eight one two five, And they figured out that her cell service was through AT and T. So Sergeant Alexander had previously requested that her phone was to be pinged, and so the communications shift leader. Her name was Ramona Davis. She forwarded the mobile locator results, which is the pings for the cell phone, and he got those by email. The email said, all right, we have results of the last ping of the phone. And it y'all, it's not a map.

41:09 Okay, it's going to give longitude and latitude. We're gonna go straight Lewis and Clark here, okay. But it gave the actual location of where the phone, you know, last was, and they said the accuracy of this they believed to be twenty five hundred meter radius, okay. And when they located where the center of that radius would have been, it would have been within a wooded area south of this nursery called Loop Nursery, which was on Racetrack Road. The data source for this was also historical, which means that the cell phone was no longer actively sending signals, so it was not tracking anywhere. It was dead or it was off because the phone was no longer being located. Now we have what's called exigent circumstances, which means that, okay, let's say we go up to a high house and we're let's say we're looking for somebody I don't know, and we walk up to a house to knock on the door, and right when we're knocking on the door, were hear help, help, Help from inside of the house. We as police do not have to go get a warrant, okay, to go try to help this person. It's called an exigent circumstance. We can go straight into that house to go help that person based on the screams of help.

42:20 Well, that's kind of what this report was. Was called it's an exigent request, And they wanted thirty days of Tristan's cell and call text detail records because what they were going to try to do is an attempt to find a pattern in her communication. Because patterns tell us a lot, right of who do you normally talk to? Hey, what if she spoke to Aiden every day and then randomly sixteen hours ago they stopped communicating, that would be a clue, right, because she's always talking to this person now silence. So if there was a deviation from the pattern, then they might could go, you know, go forward and see who was she talking with and where might she have been between May eighth and May ninth. All right, So when they got the report, the text detail records from at and T.

43:10 They were unable to actually open them due to technical complications. And I know, because of the movies, we like to think everything is like click and boom and there it is, but it doesn't work like that. Technology fails sometimes you just can't get what you're looking for. They could not get into into the messages. So the detective at this point said, you know what, I'm gonna go ahead and relocate myself and he went back to what's called the unified Command Center. And if you're not familiar with that, if we have multiple agencies working on something, there's going to be one area that we go to where everybody can kind of meet up and can exchange information and kind of go from there. About that time, the detective that I'm discussing received an email from the Sheriff's Office communications and it had a photo attachment of a Snapchat message and in that message there was Aidan Fucci in the backseat of a patrol car. And I know you're thinking, Okay, dumb kid, right, they must have put him in the back of the police car and he's trying to be cool with this picture or he's scared with this picture. Well, no, that's not what happened. Yeah, he was in the back of the police car, but he was taking a selfie in the police car and holding up a peace sign. A selfie and a peace sign. He seems really disturbed, right that his friend is missing selfie in a peace sign and you can kind of see it reflected in the control of the patrol car divider. And within the snapchat message there was a banner. You know,

44:44 he can type through a message, and it said, Hey, guys, has anyone seen Tristan lately? You want to talk about a punk ass bitch move, that's one of them. I don't even care if you're fourteen years old. What are you doing? You're that cool, You're that cool. Five minutes ago you were a victim of her sexually assaulting you. Now you're in the back of a police car throwing up a peace sign. Hey guys, anybody's seen Tristan? Jesus now. That message appeared to have been forwarded a couple of times. I know they said at least twice, and kids the same age started responding to that. One of them and I'm quoting, said wtf Aiden Like even other kids recognized this was ridiculously horrific. Another one said, you were with her aiden, and you know what happened to her.

45:37 You want to talk about other kids holding the kid's feet to the fire. They were straight and blasting him on snapchat. He thought he was being cool and the other kids were like, not cool, bro, you were with her? Where is she? I like that. I like when kids freaking half grow a set and they're like, no, bro, you're not cool. You were with her? Last Oh my god, not only did they throw him under the bus, they went the doom, the doom and then put that bitch and reverses said cuckoo ka kink and ran his ass over. Okay, because they were like, you were with her. Now at this time, investigators are like, all right, we need to go ahead and get aid and cell phone. We gotta seize it because I bet you there's gonna be more more information for the investigation right there in that phone. All right now. I know you're like, oh my gosh, you know, keep going. I want to know more. Well, I would love to, but there's so much more. I swear to you, I have probably thirty eight more pages of stuff that I want to get through because I want to give you the nitty gritty. I want to tell you all of it, the stuff that's good, the bad, the ugly. We're gonna get there, all right. You just gotta give me some time, like a like a fine wine. It's gonna take some time. But there's a whole lot more to this case. I'm gonna give every bit of details to it, and look, there's a lot. I don't like this kid.

46:45 I think you can tell by my attitude. I don't like this kid, and I don't think you're gonna like him either. But look, I'm no cactus, but I know a little prick when I see one. W