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Former homicide detective Fil Waters doesn’t use the term “psychopath” loosely. But that’s exactly how he would describe 16-year-old Aiden Fucci, who recently pleaded guilty to stabbing his 13-year-old classmate 114 times.
“In this case, this is an act of pure evil,” Waters said in an extended interview with Law&Crime’s Sidebar podcast. “This individual decided that he was wanting to fulfill some need that he had to go out and kill someone.”
On Monday, Fucci confessed to killing cheerleader Tristyn Bailey in early 2021. This didn’t surprise Waters, who said there was a “treasure trove of evidence.”
“The 12 sheets of evidence that they accumulated in this case, recovered, was amazing,” the veteran detective said. “It was irrefutable. And they even recovered the weapon.”
The list continued: “They’ve got trace evidence, they’ve got digital evidence, they’ve got videos, they’ve got res gestae statements,” Waters pointed out. “I don’t know that I have seen a case, at least in recent history, that has this many affirmative links that kind of closed the loop. And you’ve got the full picture of what happened here in this particular murder.”
After being taken into custody, Fucci allegedly told officers that he and Bailey were arguing when he pushed her to the ground and she hit her head. When he started to cry and punched the back of the seat, the officer asked him if he was okay. Fucci responded: “I’m going to get arrested for this bull****.” Waters said these res gestae statements, the legal term for the narrative Fucci shared with officers, are “critical.”
As were the scratches and cuts reported on Fucci’s body, which point to defensive wounds, to Bailey trying to defend herself before succumbing to her injuries.
“It looks like he may have a cut to his hand and that may have been in the midst of the stabbing,” Waters noted. “I’m telling you, almost every stabbing case that I have worked where there was this volume of stab wounds, the suspect has inadvertently cut themselves because once they start getting into it, especially when you’ve got … 114 stab wounds, he’s not really looking at where he’s going with this.”
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Waters distinguishes Fucci as a psychopath because the teenager had “talked about wanting to do something like this, killing somebody, seeing how it felt,” according to statements from some of his classmates.
Waters’ definition of a sociopath is a person who “commits a crime of murder and feels justified in what they did.” A psychopath, he said, will commit a sociopathic act and enjoy what they’re doing.
“When you talk about 114 times that he stabs this girl, this young lady — clearly for me he defines himself as a psychopath,” Waters continued. “He was enjoying what he was doing.”
It’s possible there was also a sexual component, Waters suggested.
“I noticed in that in the litany of the listing of all the evidence, they took a sexual assault kit test,” he said. “I don’t know that he actually committed the act, but I think that there was a sexual component to this murder and may have fulfilled some sort of excitement in that area for him.”
Now that Fucci has pleaded guilty, the case is expected to go into sentencing.
“I know there’s a mandatory 40 years,” Waters said, “but I can’t imagine the judge giving just the mandatory minimum on this case.”
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