Modelbehavior63: The Catfishing Murder of Kacie Woody

In a 7th grader's bedroom in Arkansas, there were a couple of crumpled notes in the trash can. Her name was Kacie Woody, and she was 13. On those notes she'd paired her name with a boy's name and worked out the love percentage. There were 2 boys. One was Scott, a 14-year-old from Alpharetta, Georgia. The other went by Dave Fagen. Dave said he was 18 and lived in San Diego.

Kacie Woody and the House at the End of Griggers Lane

Out past Holland, Arkansas, there's a dirt and gravel road called Griggers Lane, and if you drive to the end of it, you run right into the Woody family's little gray house, where the road stops. Rick and Kristie Woody had 2 boys, and then Kacie came along and nearly died as a baby from lung problems.

The family was coming home from a baseball game one night when a couple of horses ran out onto the highway. Rick hit one, and it came through the windshield on Kristie's side and killed her. Kacie was in the back seat, and she saw. She hated horses from then on, and she wrote a whole poem about that night.

Kacie brought her worn-out tape of Grease to every sleepover and sang every song, and she had a big honking laugh. Her favorite color was yellow. That fall she emailed a friend all fired up that her new sweatshirt was yellow, because yellow was the best color in da world. Rick worked nights as a Greenbrier cop, and Kacie was used to being home alone some nights, usually with the front door unlocked.

Modelbehavior63: Kacie Woody in the Yahoo Chat Rooms

Calling her friends in town from out there cost you long distance, so Kacie ended up on the family computer every night. Her screen name was modelbehavior63, which is Model Behavior, the Disney movie, plus her brother Austin's football number.

She met a boy named Scott in a chat room that spring. He said he was 14 and lived in Georgia, and his picture was a grinning kid in a football uniform, and Kacie hung it in her locker.

Kacie met Dave that summer in a chat room for Christian teens. His profile said he was 18 and lived in San Diego, and if you pulled up his picture, you got a guy with long, wavy, sandy hair. Cathy Frye, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter parts of this story comes from, said he looked like a younger Fabio. Once Scott came along, Dave slid into being Kacie's friend. He even called Scott, and the first time, Scott's mom answered and asked who was calling from California and whether it was a salesman, and the second time his dad answered and told Dave he was not a kid and not to call back. Scott's parents clocked him fast.

Kacie told her dad Dave was turning 18, and Rick said that was too old and she had to stop talking to him. After Kacie messaged Dave that her dad said no, he switched to calling the house. Kacie would call and hang up, and he'd call right back and pay the long distance himself. Her friend Samantha Mann got on some of those calls, and if you ask Sam, he talked like her dad trying to act cool, with words like groovy and wicked. He asked Sam how old she was, and when she said 13, he said, "Oh... cool."

Kacie Woody and Dave's Dying Aunt

Dave told Kacie his aunt in Arkansas had been in a car wreck and was in a coma, and she only had a few months. Kacie lost her own mom in a wreck, and she was sure her mom was an angel now.

Kacie's friend Jessica Tanner was sleeping over one night in November when Dave called and said he was driving to Arkansas because his aunt was getting worse, and every time the girls tried to hang up, he told them he'd been driving for hours and needed the company. Then they heard what sounded like somebody walking around behind the house, and at the end of a dead-end road in the woods, you don't get a lot of foot traffic. They shoved a dresser in front of Kacie's bedroom door. Kacie told Dave she was scared somebody was in the house, and he said nobody was there. The noises stopped. Nobody knows who was out there.

December 3, 2002: The Night Kacie Woody Went Quiet

Sam went to the school counselor that Tuesday and told her Kacie was handing her number out online, and the counselor warned Kacie about meeting people from the Internet. After school Kacie asked Sam if she could spend the night, and Sam said no, since you don't do sleepovers on a school night. Two other girls said no too, and Kacie never said why. She laughed that big honking laugh and hugged everybody goodbye at the bus.

That night her dad was on shift and her brother was at the college library, so Kacie was home alone. She put on her Baby Girl sweatpants and a gray sweatshirt and sat down at the computer.

She was on the phone with Dave and messaging Scott at the same time. Dave told her his aunt was about to die. Kacie typed to Scott that tonight Dave's aunt was going to meet her mommy. Scott asked if she was okay, and Kacie typed back "yah." That was 9:41.

Scott kept typing for 35 minutes, and if you read what he typed, he went from asking if she was mad at him to typing prayers into the chat box, and then he called her house from Georgia, and nobody picked up. That 14-year-old did everything right.

A family friend staying with them noticed her room was empty around 11:30. When Rick got home, both of Kacie's coats were hanging over a kitchen chair, including that brand-new yellow one, and her shoes were by the computer where she always kicked them off. It was 39 degrees and pouring. Rick was already sure somebody had taken his little girl.

How Investigators Found the Man Behind Dave Fagen

State police investigator Karl Byrd got there before dawn and found Kacie's glasses under a pile of towels in Rick's recliner with a lens popped out. Nobody knows if the man knocked or walked right in, since that front door usually wasn't locked.

The next morning, Jessica turned to Sam and said, "Omigod, Sam, what about Dave?" About then, an FBI agent was unfolding 2 crumpled papers from Kacie's trash can. One said Kacie Rene Woody loves Scott G. The other said Kacie Rene Woody loves David Leslie Fagen.

If you were a David Fagen, or any David, or any D.F., or anybody from California, Conway police wanted to know if you were in one of their motels. The Motel 6 manager remembered a David Fuller from California, who'd pitched a fit over the Internet and stomped off to the library with his laptop. He'd also rented a silver Dodge Caravan in Conway, and he was so jumpy at the counter that the clerk wrote down his plate and his motel room number. Give that clerk a raise. His cell number was on that form, and Kacie's house had called it over and over.

Dave was David Leslie Fuller, and if you put his real face next to that Yahoo picture, you'd see a balding 47-year-old with a mustache from outside San Diego. He flew into Little Rock in October and stayed at that same Motel 6, and police believe he spent that trip watching Kacie. In November he bought a gun and told his own kids it was for target practice, then flew back and rented the biggest unit at a Conway storage place and told them he bought cars for a living. Back home he bought chain and a bottle of chloroform.

Guardsmart Storage Unit 313

Fuller's credit card showed a charge that day from Guardsmart Storage in Conway. Conway police Sergeant Jim Barrett showed up a little after 5 with a couple of FBI agents. Jim lifted the door of unit 313, and there was the silver van with the engine running and the radio on, and as he stepped inside, a shot went off. Jim and the agents backed out and called for help, and you had cops standing in the sleet for more than 3 hours with no idea whether Kacie was alive or dead before SWAT went in.

Fuller was dead at the back of the unit. He'd shot himself the second Jim opened that door. Kacie was in the van. He had chained her wrists and ankles to the floor. He raped her, and he shot her in the head.

His gate code showed he pulled in at 10:15 the night before, the same time Scott was calling her house. Agents found Kacie's poem about the night her mom died saved on Fuller's computer, and Karl Byrd believed that dying aunt was a mind game aimed right at her. He told Cathy Frye, "Kacie was the one who was going to meet her mother."

Remembering Kacie Woody: Where the Case Stands Today

Kacie was buried in a yellow dress her grandma made. It was her favorite. She's next to her mom, and if you go out there today, her headstone says I Am an Angel.

There was never a trial, since Fuller died in that storage unit, and the FBI found he'd been working on 3 other girls around Kacie's age. Rick let the FBI use Kacie's story to train officers, and he and her friends started the Kacie Woody Foundation to teach families about online safety, and her brother Tim became a cop, and in 2021 he was telling his little sister's story to Arkansas kids.