Aubrey Trail: Disturbing details emerge as cult leader who dismembered Tinder date slashes own throat in court
WILBER, NEBRASKA: Aubrey Trail, the alleged cult leader accused of killing a woman during a disturbing sex act, is set to be sentenced to death despite his lawyers demanding a mistrial.
The 56-year-old suspect grabbed headlines when he slit his throat in court and yelled "curse you all" -- something that his attorney said would never leave the jurors' minds. Attorney Ben Murray argued in the Saline County District Court that the 2019 outburst could not be erased from jurors' memory by admonition or instruction. Therefore, he insisted, the incident warranted a mistrial.
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Trail was found guilty of first-degree murder alongside his former girlfriend Bailey Boswell, 28, for killing Sydney Loofe, 24, in 2017. The victim's dismembered body was found in a south-central Nebraska field three weeks after she was reported missing from her job as a clerk at a Lincoln, Nebraska store. In contrast to his attorneys, Trail has demanded an execution date be set for him.
This is Sydney Loofe’s chilling last photo before meeting a tinder date who turned out to be a 52 year old felon named Aubrey Trail who strangled and dismembered Sydney along with his girlfriend Bailey Boswell. pic.twitter.com/6tCiiw3R2M
— Christopher Duett (@BethuneTheory) December 1, 2019
According to The Sun, Trail and Boswell were self-professed leaders of a counterculture group of young women based in a house the former rented in Wilber. The duo is said to have lured Sydney via the dating app Tinder. Murray told jurors at the start of the trial in June 2019 that there would be a testimony of torture, witchcraft, vampires, and unusual sex acts, per the Lincoln Journal Star. Boswell was also convicted of first-degree murder but was spared the death penalty and sentenced to life in prison instead.
Trail, however, was sentenced to death by a three-judge panel in June 2021. His lawyers have been trying to appeal the ruling ever since, arguing that he unintentionally killed Loofe while indulging in a sadomasochistic consensual sex act. They said Loofe was killed after Trail and Boswell failed to recruit her into their cult. The lawyers challenged Trail's first-degree murder conviction on multiple fronts, also insisting that the death penalty was excessive. As mentioned, they argued that the 2019 razor-blade incident should lead to a mistrial. However, the State Supreme Court rejected that argument.
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A witness was being seated to testify during the third day of a three-week trial when Trail shouted, "Bailey is innocent, and I curse you all.” He subsequently slashed his neck with a razor blade he had managed to smuggle into the courtroom from his jail cell, according to 3NewsNow. The shocking spectacle brought the trial to a screeching halt and Trail was rushed to a local hospital as he bled from his neck.
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"As with these other defendants, we will not permit Trail to benefit from his own bad behavior during the trial," the Supreme Court said in response to the mistrial request. "While dramatic, the incident was not of such a nature to create irremediable prejudice." Boswell avoided becoming the first woman to ever be sent to Nebraska's death row after she received a life sentence in November 2021. Meanwhile, Trail's demands for an execution date were refused as he's represented by counsel, The Sun reported.