Sydney Loofe believed she had found a promising connection online. Instead, the 24-year-old was drawn into a deadly plot involving a Tinder date and her boyfriend, a couple whose fixation with witchcraft and violent crime would ultimately cost her life.
Loofe’s case is explored in the Hulu documentary Swipe Right on the Devil. In November 2017, she was killed by Bailey Boswell and Boswell’s boyfriend, Aubrey Trail. Weeks afterward, investigators found her dismembered remains in various locations along county roads near Wilber, Nebraska, according to court documents.
Boswell and Trail reportedly assumed Loofe would be an easy target because she had no close family living nearby. But her loved ones quickly alerted authorities. One friend went so far as to create a Tinder account to track down the woman Loofe knew by the name “Audrey,” the documentary says.
Both suspects were eventually arrested and convicted in separate proceedings. Trail has since made additional disturbing allegations about the killing, claiming in the documentary that the couple committed the murder as part of a witchcraft ritual intended to “take her soul.”
Here is what is known about Sydney Loofe’s murder—and the current status of Bailey Boswell and Aubrey Trail:
“Bad Path” Led Bailey Boswell to Aubrey Trail
Boswell grew up in Leon, Iowa, where she was known as a standout basketball and track athlete. Her friend Madison Blades told The Associated Press that Boswell later “went on a bad path,” one that eventually brought her into Trail’s orbit. Trail had a criminal record and an interest in occult practices.
Before Loofe’s death, Boswell and Trail portrayed themselves as successful antiques dealers. According to the outlet, they acquired gold and silver coins with fraudulent checks and presented themselves as high-stakes buyers.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Nebraska said the pair persuaded victims to help purchase coins at prices far above what Boswell and Trail had actually paid. Both were convicted of transporting stolen property across state lines and ordered to pay more than $407,782 in restitution.
Bailey Boswell and Aubrey Trail Recruited Women to Coven Through Dating Apps
Prosecutors said that during the summer and autumn of 2017, the couple also began using dating applications to find young women for what authorities described as “dominant-submissive sexual relationships.” The arrangements reportedly involved grooming, physical and sexual abuse, and repeated conversations about witchcraft and the occult, according to court records.
Authorities said Boswell and Trail attempted to persuade some of the women to help plan and take part in torture and murder, allegedly for sexual gratification.
Ashley Hills, one of the women who spoke with producers of Swipe Right on the Devil, said she lived in fear of Trail. She alleged that he beat her and other women when they disobeyed him, required them to remain naked inside the home, and demanded that they seek his permission before doing anything.
Hills also recalled Trail telling her she could become the 13th member of his coven if she agreed to torture and kill another person, according to People.
Sydney Loofe Disappears After Date With Bailey Boswell
In November 2017, Boswell encountered Loofe on Tinder. Boswell used the name Audrey while communicating with Loofe, who worked at a hardware store in Lincoln, Nebraska.
The two women met for the first time on Nov. 14 and arranged another date the following day. Loofe never made it back home afterward, according to court records.
Friends and relatives reported her missing on Nov. 16, one day after she failed to return from the date.
Desperate for information, Loofe’s best friend, Brooklyn McCrystal, set up a Tinder profile under a false identity in hopes of locating the woman known as Audrey.
“I was trying to figure out who she was,” McCrystal testified, according to Nebraska Public Media. She said she felt “actually very excited” after matching with Audrey and obtaining a phone number.
McCrystal turned the details over to police, who traced the Tinder account to Boswell. After the couple became persons of interest, Boswell and Trail uploaded a video insisting they were not responsible, then fled with another woman, Kaitlyn Brandle.
In the Nov. 29 video, Boswell addressed Loofe’s family, saying, “I just want the family to know I’m truly sorry,” according to The Associated Press. She also insisted, “I didn’t have anything to do with this.”
Brandle later testified that, in the days following Loofe’s killing, Boswell and Trail began discussing the possibility of torturing and murdering additional women, KLKN TV reported.
Sydney Loofe’s Remains, Cause of Death Revealed
Then, in December 2017, after analyzing Boswell and Trail’s cell phone activity from Nov. 16, authorities began to search county roads and ditches near Wilber. They discovered Loofe’s dismembered remains discarded in plastic trash bags. One of the bags contained a severed arm with a distinctive tattoo that was a match to Loofe, authorities noted in the court records. Several items recovered from the disposal sites, including a latex glove and towel, were also found to have Loofe’s blood.
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The medical examiner determined that 23-year-old died of homicidal violence by strangulation.
During a search of Boswell and Trail’s apartment, investigators also found bottles of bleach, duct tape and a human anatomy book, per the court records.
Aubrey Trail, Bailey Boswell Are Arrested For Murder of Sydney Loofe
The couple was arrested in Missouri and charged with premeditated first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and improper disposal of human skeletal remains.
Though Trail initially denied killing Loofe, he later admitted to strangling her in what he insisted was a consensual act, leading to her accidental death, People reported. He insisted that Boswell had nothing to do with the death.
Trail made the same claim in a much more dramatic fashion during his 2019 trial, when he slashed his neck with a shiv and shouted, “Bailey is innocent, and I curse you all,” according to The Associated Press.
Trail was convicted and sentenced to death in 2021, telling the court he had killed Loofe because she failed to embrace his lifestyle of group sex and crime.
“I lured her there to try and pull her into our group,” he said in court, according to KOLN. “But once I sat Sydney down and explained to her our criminal activities and group sex, I knew I had made a big mistake.”
“The truth is I killed her because of her reaction to what I had told her. I had no doubt she’d tell people what I told her,” he added. “She did nothing but reject my lifestyle and threaten to expose it, and I killed her for it.”
Though Boswell’s attorney argued that she did not participate in the killing, it took a jury less than four hours to also convict her of the crime in 2020.
Where is Bailey Boswell Now?
Today, Boswell, 32, is serving out a life sentence at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women, according to prison records reviewed by Oxygen.
She managed to avoid the death penalty after a three-judge panel was unable to reach a unanimous verdict, People reported. Boswell had pleaded for her life to be spared for her young daughter, who was being raised by her mother Priscilla Boswell.
“I don’t think she deserves to die,” her mother told the court, according to KOLN. “Her daughter loves us and so do the rest of us.”
Where is Aubrey Trail Now?
Trail, now 60, remains on death row at the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution.
Though he waived his right to appeals and petitioned the state for an execution date in 2023, the state did not possess the lethal injection drugs needed to carry out an execution, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Trail has also recently revised his account of the crime, telling Swipe Right on the Devil, that Boswell had wanted to carry out the crime because she “wanted to be a witch more than anything in the world” and could only do that by taking someone’s life.
“We dwelled on it for months, so I decided to let her kill Sydney and take her soul,” he said in the documentary, per People. “There was no erotic asphyxiation, there was no accident.”
He added that the two had also planned other killings before their arrest.
“Bailey’s aspirations were to be the world’s greatest female serial killer,” he said. “My aspirations were to do whatever the hell Bailey wanted me to do. We would’ve killed until we got cuffed.”
His only regret, he said, was choosing a victim who had been so loved by her family and friends.
“We thought Sydney would be the perfect person, but it turned out that we picked the wrong one,” he said in the doc. “She had a family that gave a damn, so they reported her [missing] immediately.”
Oxygen reached out to Boswell’s attorney for comment on the allegations, but did not receive an immediate reply.
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