Aubrey Trail (left inset) in a Taney County Sheriff’s Office mug shot, (right inset) Sydney Loofe in a Facebook photo, (right) Bailey Boswell pictured in court (Justin Wan/Lincoln Journal Star via AP)
One of the two found guilty of murdering 24-year-old Sydney Loofe, a hardware store clerk who was lured to her death through Tinder in 2017, unanimously lost out on a bid to overturn a 2021 life sentence at the Nebraska Supreme Court.
Bailey Boswell, now 30, had argued in her appeal that the prosecution won first-degree murder and conspiracy convictions based on graphic trial photo evidence of Loofe’s dismembered body which biased the jury against her, but the court found the evidence was not only relevant to the charged offense but also showed the motive behind the violent strangulation murder committed by Boswell and a 58-year-old death row inmate. death row inmate Aubrey Trail, Boswell’s then boyfriend.
In the opinion, Justice Stephanie Stacy reportedly concluded that “there is no merit to any of Boswell’s assigned errors regarding the trial court’s evidentiary rulings,” and that the challenged evidence was “relevant and probative to show Boswell’s motive and intent for engaging in the conspiracy and committing the murder with which she was charged,” the Associated Press and KETV reported.
The “sex and witchcraft evidence” presented at trial, the high court observed, showed that both Boswell and Trail “recruited and groomed young women to participate in the planned torture and killing of another person by using sexual control and punishment, gradually testing the boundaries of obedience, and introducing and normalizing discussions of occult rituals, torture, and murder,” according to News Channel Nebraska’s account of the ruling.
Aubrey Trail was sentenced to death in June 2021 and Boswell was sentenced to life in prison without parole in November 2021 when only two of three judges on a panel decided that she deserved the death penalty. Under Nebraska law, a panel “must unanimously agree” on capital punishment, otherwise the sentence is life in prison.
The cases against Trail and Boswell established that the killers lured Loofe to their Wilber residence on Nov. 15, 2017, strangled her to death and used a hacksaw and tin snips they purchased from Home Depot just a few hours earlier to dismember her remains into 14 pieces, dumping those remains in trash bags across rural Nebraska.
Trail, also remembered for the startling moment he slashed his own throat in court and loudly insisted on Boswell’s innocence, had claimed that he and Boswell wanted Loofe to join their cult. Trail claimed Loofe “freaked out” and he decided to kill her because he was worried she would tell authorities about the “lifestyle” he and Boswell were living.
While Trail and Boswell were still persons of interest, they released a bizarre video together.
“Hi, good morning,” said Boswell, then 23, wearing a hoodie and sunglasses. “I’m Bailey, Audrey on Tinder and a few other names because I have warrants.”
She said she and Loofe went on a date in Lincoln, ‘smoked weed’ together, and ‘had a great time.’
‘I dropped her off at home,’ Boswell tried to explain. ‘Picked her up the next night at her house. We drove around and smoked weed again.’
‘I gave her my number. We were planning to go to the casino that weekend,’ Boswell further claimed.
During Boswell’s trial, witnesses said that she and Trail talked about ‘gaining powers’ by killing innocent people. It was also claimed that Trail boasted about drinking Loofe’s blood and bragged about her strangulation murder, carried out with an electrical cord.
Boswell’s trial judge, Saline County District Judge Vicky Johnson, remarked at sentencing that Loofe’s murder was ‘coldly calculated’ and that Boswell ‘took pleasure’ in the ‘completely unnecessary’ killing.
‘Ms. Loofe was needlessly mutilated by Trail and Boswell as part of the plan to satisfy her sexual desire,’ the judge said. ‘The mutilation was not done as an afterthought to hide the body.’
Aubrey Trail, for his part, more than welcomed the death penalty initially — not only saying he ‘could care less’ about what happened to him, but urging the state to set an execution date.