Catherine Rusoff
The Nebraska Supreme Court upheld the murder conviction and life sentence of a woman in the 2017 death and dismemberment of a Nebraska hardware store clerk.
Bailey Boswell, 30, was convicted in 2020 of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and improper disposal of human remains in the death of a 24-year-old Sydney Loofe. Boswell’s co-defendant and boyfriend at the time of the murder, aged 58 Aubrey Trailwas convicted of the same charges in 2019 and sentenced to death in 2021.
Prosecutors said Boswell and Trail planned to kill someone before Boswell met Loofe on the dating app Tinder. Boswell planned a meeting with Loofe, a cashier at a Menards store in Lincoln, to lure her to the apartment where she was strangled.
Eric Gregory/Lincoln Journal Star via AP, Pool, Archive
The FBI and other authorities spent three weeks searching for Loofe before his dismembered remains were found in December 2017. Loofe’s body was found cut into 14 pieces and left in trash bags in ditches along rural roads in southeastern Nebraska .
Loofe was still alive when Trail and Boswell were captured on store surveillance video buying the tools police think they used to dismember her, prosecutors said in court documents.
In her appeal, Boswell challenged prosecutors’ admission of evidence at her trial, including photographs of Loofe’s dismembered body, arguing that the gruesome photos only served to turn the jury against her. Boswell also objected to the testimony of several women who said Trail and Boswell talked about hidden fantasies and expressed a desire to sexually torture and kill women.
During Boswell’s sentencing hearing, Doug Warner, the assistant attorney general, pointed to a photo of Loofe’s severed arm, with a tattoo that said “Everything will be wonderful someday.” CBS affiliate KMTV reported. Warner said some of the knife marks around the tattoo had nothing to do with the dismemberment.
Warner cited the “apparent pleasure in the defendant’s murder, the unnecessary mutilation of the victim, the senselessness of the crime, and the helplessness of the victim.”
KTV
Boswell’s defense attorney argued at her trial that she was forced by Trail to agree to Loofe’s murder and dismemberment.
Judge Stephanie Stacy wrote for the high court’s unanimous ruling Friday that “there is no merit to any of the errors attributed to Boswell regarding the trial court’s evidentiary rulings.”
Shortly after Loofe’s disappearance, Boswell and Trail initially posted a video on Facebook in which they maintained their innocence KMTV reported. Boswell said in the video that she and Loofe did drugs at her house before she dropped Loofe off at a friend’s house. Boswell said they planned to go to a casino that weekend, but she hasn’t heard from Loofe since.
The video was deleted a few hours after it was posted on the “Finding Sydney Loofe” Facebook page.
