Tinder killer said he 'picked the wrong person' after murdering Nebraska woman
Aubrey Trail, convicted of killing Nebraska store clerk Sydney Loofe after a Tinder date, reportedly said he regretted choosing a victim with strong family and friends who led investigators to him.
Aubrey Trail, convicted of murdering Nebraska store clerk Sydney Loofe, reportedly told a filmmaker that he did not regret killing her but regretted choosing the wrong victim. According to filmmaker Christopher St. John, Trail said, « I picked the wrong person, » a remark St. John described as chilling because Trail appeared to fault his choice of victim rather than the crime itself. The comment is explored in the new Hulu true crime docuseries « Swipe Right on the Devil, » which features interviews with Loofe's loved ones and investigators, as well as recordings of Trail from death row.
Loofe, 24, thought she was heading out for a second date with a woman she had met on Tinder. A cashier at Menards, a home improvement store, she lived alone in an apartment with her cat, Mimsy, and according to friends had been yearning for a relationship. The woman she met on the app used the alias « Audrey, » which investigators later traced to Bailey Boswell, then 25. After matching and exchanging messages, the two went on a first date and planned a second for the following day. Loofe was excited enough to tell her friends immediately. She was never heard from again.
When Loofe did not show up for her morning shift, her family requested a welfare check. Police found her car in the driveway, her work clothes and purse laid out, and her cat unfed. Her friend Brooklyn McCrystal, who knew Loofe had been on a date the night before she vanished, created her own Tinder profile to find Audrey and exchanged numbers with her. McCrystal passed Boswell's information to police. Loofe's friends also gave investigators her final social media post, a Snapchat selfie captioned « Ready for my date. » St. John said McCrystal provided the first major break in the case.
Police tracked a burner phone registered under a fake name to hotels in the area. Surveillance video and a state-issued ID presented at check-in helped identify Boswell as « Audrey, » and the footage showed her traveling with an older man, Trail. The Lincoln Journal Star reported that Loofe's phone last pinged near the apartment Boswell and Trail shared, which smelled strongly of bleach when investigators obtained a search warrant. The couple had paid their rent early and left. On Nov. 29, 2017, they released a social media video denying any involvement, with Boswell saying she had dropped Loofe off at a friend's house after their second date. The pair were arrested on Nov. 30, 2017, near Branson, Missouri, on unrelated federal fraud charges.
On Dec. 4, 2017, investigators searched a roadside ditch near Edgar, Nebraska, after using cellphone data to trace the couple's movements. They recovered car keys, a phone, a label bearing Loofe's name, and her dismembered upper arm, which bore a tattoo reading « Everything will be wonderful someday. » According to the Lincoln Journal Star, garbage bags contained her clothing. Court documents state that surveillance video captured Trail and Boswell at a Lincoln Home Depot on Nov. 15, 2017, buying tools investigators believed were used to dismember Loofe, hours before her death. Investigators believed the pair lured Loofe through Tinder before killing and dismembering her.
Trail, then 52 and described as a con man, was convicted of strangling Loofe with an electrical cord in 2017 and cutting her body into 14 pieces. Witnesses testified that the couple had solicited them for group sex and talked about the occult and gaining « powers » through killing. Trail called himself a « powerful warlock » and the leader of a sex cult. Director Brian Biegel said the prosecutor told jurors the pair had « four arms, four legs and one mind, » a description he said reflected how they fed off each other's darkness. St. John said investigators described the pair as being in a frenzy, looking for an available target, and that Loofe fit the profile of someone trusting.
7
