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Nebraska Woman Escapes Death Penalty, Gets Life In Prison For 2017 Tinder Torture Murder
“The murder was coldly calculated, [Bailey] Boswell relished the murder, there was needless mutilation of the body, the murder was senseless, and Sydney Loofe was a helpless victim,” Judge Vicki Johnson said.
A Nebraska woman narrowly averted the death penalty in the gruesome 2017 murder of a hardware store clerk she met online.
Bailey Boswell was sentenced to life in prison for her role in the killing of 24-year-old Sidney Loofe, according to a sentencing order obtained by Oxygen.com.
A three-person panel of judges voted 2-1 against capital punishment. One judge stated the prosecution hadn’t met the necessary burden of proof to secure a death sentence ruling. The ruling was handed down in Wilber, Nebraska.
“The murder was coldly calculated, Boswell relished the murder, there was needless mutilation of the body, the murder was senseless, and Sydney Loofe was a helpless victim,” Judge Vicki Johnson said during Boswell's sentencing, according to KMTV. “The murder was coldly calculated, Boswell relished the murder, there was needless mutilation of the body, the murder was senseless, and Sydney Loofe was a helpless victim,” Johnson added.
Boswell, along with her boyfriend, Aubrey Trail, met Loofe on the dating app Tinder. Loofe's mutilated body was later found cut into 14 separate pieces and put in garbage bags that were scattered in ditches in southeastern Nebraska. She’d been strangled to death, prosecutors said.
Trail was sentenced to death, additional court filings show. He admitted to misleading investigators and said he had planned Loofe’s murder hours before the couple carried out the killing.
“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 during his sentencing, Nebraska television station KOLN reported.
At one point during the trial, Trail slashed his neck with what appeared to be a razor, shouting, “Bailey is innocent, and I curse you all,” before falling out of his wheelchair, and collapsing on the ground.
Trail, who sought to dispute his death sentence, later lost a bid to represent himself in the appellate process. All death sentences are automatically appealed in Nebraska, according to state law.
Doug Warner, the attorney general for Nebraska, alleged that Boswell had set up three different Tinder accounts to set up online dates with unsuspecting women and also purchased tools that could be used to dismember a body. Prosecutors also accused the couple of being obsessed with group sex, "killing and torture."
