Aubrey Trail who hacked Tinder date into 14 pieces given death sentence
LINCOLN, NEBRASKA—A man who murdered and dismembered his Tinder date before slashing his own neck in court during his trial received the death sentence Wednesday, June 9. Shortly before sentencing, he managed to expose his own lies while making a last statement.
Aubrey Trail, 54, a thief and a con man, was convicted of strangling to death Sydney Loofe with an electrical cord in 2017. He subsequently hacked her body into 14 pieces and dumped them in a string of rural roadside ditches. Several witnesses testified in court how Trail and his girlfriend, Bailey Boswell, 27, had solicited them for group sex and talked of the occult and acquiring certain "powers" through killing. Investigators were reportedly able to track down the suspect after a friend of Loofe showed them her final social media post. It was a selfie shared to Snapchat captioned, "Ready for my date," as she was expecting to meet Boswell for a second date, Fox News reported.
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“The state has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the murder of Sydney Loofe demonstrates extreme depravity by the ordinary standards of morality and intelligence,” Judge Vicky Johnson said.
Loofe's family was sitting in the front row of a packed courtroom in Saline County on Wednesday. Trail got a chance to make a final statement before Judge Johnson rehashed facts of the case and read the death sentence. Taking to the guilty stand, Trail spoke directly to the family of his victim, who was just 24 at the time of her death.
“Almost everything I’ve said before was a lie unless it benefitted me,” Trail said, before claiming Sydney Loofe hadn't died of erotic asphyxiation during a consensual encounter as his attorneys alleged. He also said he did not lure her to his apartment with intentions to kill her.
“I lured her there to try and pull her into our group. But once I sat Sydney down and explained to her our criminal activities and group sex I knew I had made a big mistake," he told the court.
According to Trail, Loofe freaked out and so he zip-tied her hands, took her into a bedroom, and strangled her to death with an extension cord. “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,” Trail said. “She did nothing but reject my lifestyle and threaten to expose it and I killed her for it.”
During sentencing, the judge noted that Loofe's murder showed exceptional depravity, thereby warranting the death penalty. The death sentence wasn't a surprise for Trail's attorneys, as much as his final statement was. “I did believe his testimony at trial was true but I do think deep down he wanted to give some solace for the Loofe family,” Defense Attorney Joe Murray said, as quoted by KSNB Local 4.
Trail's attorneys said that despite filing an automatic appeal to the death penalty, they don't believe their client will fight his sentence beyond the first appeal. “To be quite frank I could care less what you do to me here today,” Trail said in his statement.
Meanwhile, his girlfriend and co-conspirator Bailey Boswell is due to appear in court at the end of the month in front of a three-judge panel. The prosecution will try and prove that she should also receive the death penalty for her involvement, KSNB reported.