Kacie Woody

My Towns Murder Case

This blog is a little more difficult to write than the others have been. This story hits close to home. When I say that, I mean it quite literally I’m afraid. This is the murder of Kacie Woody. She was a girl who attended the same school I did. I never went to school with her, but we did know her name and I know people who knew and went to school with her. It’s the one tragic story we have that everyone knows in my town.

At the time Kacie was 12 years old, she played the saxophone in the school band (something you won’t read about, but I know because of my band teachers), and was attending Greenbrier Middle School. She was well-loved by her classmates, as well as her family and friends. 

Her father, Rick Woody, a Greenbrier Police officer, worked late at night, and her brother was taking night classes at college. Kacie was left alone most nights but her family thought she could take care of herself. With the nights alone, she became lonely and she lived too far out for her to see any friends regularly. So she turned to an online chatroom to keep her company. It was a Christian teen chat room. That is where it all began. She met two boys and they became instant friends. One of the boys was named David; he was 17 years old and lived in California. The other was named Scott; he was a 14-year-old from Atlanta, Georgia.

Kacie had a strong connection with David. They talked almost every day. She told him about how her mother died from a car wreck involving a horse in the road. He confided in her telling her about his aunt’s car wreck that happened in Arkansas and how she was doing badly in the hospital. They became each other’s best friend and leaned on each other for support. After a couple of months, they started talking on the phone. Her father knew that she talked to boys on the internet but when Kacie shared how David was turning 18 soon, he began to worry about the friendship and told her to stop talking to him altogether. But let’s be real, when you have someone you care about and you’re told to stop speaking to them, you’re going to keep talking to them. 

As Kacie and David’s relationship had been getting closer but more forbidden. Kacie had found Scott, and they also became close quickly. Except for this time, Kacie and Scott became more than friends and they soon became an item. She told David about Scott and he said he wanted to remain friends. David had mentioned coming to Arkansas to see his aunt at the hospital and wanted to meet her but Kacie turned him down. She told her friends that she never intended to meet Scott or David in person.

Kacie had a photo of Scott in her locker. Her friend Sam noticed it and got concerned. If Scott had sent her that picture, then he knows her address. Who’s to say that David didn’t have her address too.

On December 3rd, 2002, her brother came back from classes to find she wasn’t there. He called his dad to see if he knew where she was. He didn’t know where she was; he came home immediately to figure out what had happened. When he got home, he had found the computer on with a chat screen opened in the middle of a conversation. He also found her shoes, coat, and glasses bent with one frame broken. He knew that wherever Kacie had gone, it wasn’t because she did it willingly. 

He got together a search team, and the town started to look for her. Everyone was worried but no one had even come close to finding her by the next morning. It wasn’t until the police talked to her best friends that they had a lead. Her friends told them about Scott, but how they had never met him or seen him in real life. The FBI got involved at that point and looked at Kacie and Scott’s conversations. They traced his computer to where he told Kacie he lived. Scott was telling the truth. 

Scott had police show up at his home. His mom answered the door. His parents knew nothing of Kacie nor that Scott even had a girlfriend. Scott, hearing what had happened, was worried about Kacie but had proven he was in Georgia the night of her disappearance. 

After finding out that Scott was who he said he was, the girls remembered David, and so they told the police about him and how he was talking about coming to Arkansas. The police checked around local motels and hotels for any leads. They found a car with a California license plate and asked the reception desk about who from California had been staying there. The vehicle registration belonged to David Fuller and he had booked the hotel room for the week. Some odd things that the receptionist had mentioned about him were that he turned down maid service and was angry about the poor internet connection. When they entered his room, it looked like no one had even slept there. They found camouflage clothing and rubber gloves in his room. They checked his phone number with Woody’s phone records and it was a match. 

After checking out David’s background, they discovered he was 47 years old and was married with two children. He also had recently used his credit card at a storage facility. At 6 p.m. on December 4th, police arrived at the storage locker, where the door was closed but unlocked. The police opened the door, and the world stood still. A single gunshot rang out through the air. No one knew what to do. SWAT came soon after and tried to negotiate for three hours trying to communicate with whoever was inside. Eventually, SWAT gave up and they entered the room.

Inside they found David Fuller and Kacie Woody’s bodies. Kacie was tied up with chains to the rental van he had kidnapped her in. She had been shot in the head. David was found with a self-inflicted gun wound. He had raped and then shot Kacie. 

It turns out David had been to Arkansas more than that one time. He had come twice to spy on her and to rent the storage facility. He claimed to be a traveler that bought expensive cars and sold them but needed a place to store them temporarily. David had kidnapped Kacie by using chloroform. When doing an autopsy, it appears that she may have been unconscious from the moment he captured her to the moment she died. I know that’s not super reassuring but hopefully, she was not awake when all of those horrible things happened to her. 

Her father has since set up the Kacie Woody foundation, where he educates parents and children about the dangers of talking to strangers online and internet predators. 

This blog was harder than I thought to write. I am so sorry for the loss of Kacie. She seemed like a wonderful person, and I wish I had never gotten the opportunity to write this story. I thank you for your efforts in teaching people about internet dangers. I also thank you, officer Woody, for your service every day as a police officer. 

You may have heard of her story, or if you haven’t you might have seen that her story is going to be told in a new show Man with a Van on Investigation Discovery. The episode was aired on Thursday. Her story was actually on an episode of Web of Lies which is also another show on Investigation Discovery. That episode was aired in 2014. I will have a link to that episode at the bottom if you want to watch it for yourself.

Here is the link to the Kacie Woody Foundation: http://kaciewoody.homestead.com/ https://www.facebook.com/kaciewoodyfoundation/

Here is the link to the 2014 Investigation Discovery episode: https://www.investigationdiscovery.com/tv-shows/web-of-lies/full-episodes/age-sex-location?fbclid=IwAR2LTbRcY0TKEB6l1yHPF5V5zbuW3ULzwG1T5SRuiALdR13MxSil54KMM_o

These are links to the Arkansas Democrats stories of Kacie Woody and they are definitely worth the read. It goes into such depth of her case and the people who were affected by her murder. https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2003/dec/14/evil-door/ https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2003/dec/15/entryway-danger/?f=news-arkansas-specials-caughtintheweb https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2003/dec/16/running-out-time/?f=news-arkansas-specials-caughtintheweb https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2003/dec/17/not-forgotten/

Here is the links I used for my research on this: https://katv.com/news/local/story-of-conway-child-murder-to-be-featured-on-investigation-discovery?fbclid=IwAR2kLQDzcwCGK5Tz1uW1s9SdcCMyUVEiBV67O-E5IBimRJvMfLYea9PAxLs https://talkmurder.com/kacie-woody-the-internet-predator-that-murdered-her/