Article originates from the Lincoln Journal Star
Bailey Boswell will not be the first woman in Nebraska to receive a death sentence.
Instead, she will be sentenced to life in prison without parole, a punishment announced at the Saline County Courthouse on Monday morning, for her role in the 2017 murder and dismemberment of Sydney Loofe.
Though Judge Vicky Johnson laid out the case why a majority of the three-judge panel believed the state had successfully proved the “exceptional depravity” exhibited by Boswell and her co-conspirator, Aubrey Trail, the judges weren’t in unanimous agreement, hence the sentence of life in prison.
Bailey Boswell is set to learn today whether she will be sentenced to death row for the killing and dismemberment of a Lincoln woman she lured to her death in 2017 under the guise of a date after meeting online.
If she is, Boswell would be the first woman in Nebraska to get the ultimate penalty.
Sydney Loofe’s disappearance Nov. 15, 2017, led to a multi-state manhunt for Boswell and Aubrey Trial, who in Facebook videos claimed to know nothing about it. Their cell phone records later led investigators to fields and ditches in Clay County where they made the grisly discovery of her remains left scattered in trash bags.
Separate juries later found Trail, 55, and Boswell, 27, guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder for luring Loofe to their Wilber apartment where they killed and dismembered her body.
In June, Trail was sentenced to death row.
At a hearing a month later, Saline County District Judge Vicky Johnson, Douglas County District Judge Peter Bataillon and Lancaster County District Judge Darla Ideus heard aggravating and mitigating evidence in Boswell’s case, where prosecutors alleged the killing of Sydney Loofe showed “exceptional depravity,” as outlined in state law.
And the defense sought to explain how Boswell, a high school star athlete in Leon, Iowa, and small-town girl before she left for college, had ended up with Trail, a conman twice her age, and involved in a killing.
Assistant Attorney General Doug Warner pointed to planning that Boswell was part of, including steps to conceal her identity when she posted Tinder profiles, and to a medium-sized sauna suit with the crotch cut out and a boxed sex toy found dumped near the remains, as proof the couple had carried out a sexual fantasy they’d told other women about in the months before the killing.
Warner also pointed to the more-than-necessary number of cuts to dismember Loofe’s body and superficial cut marks around the tattoo on her arm that said “Everything will be wonderful someday” as signs that Boswell and Trail relished the crime.
At the hearing, Boswell told the three-judge panel she was sorry for everything that happened to Loofe “and for my role in what happened to her,” and pleaded with the judges not to take her life for her young daughter’s sake.
“I believed he really loved me,” she said of Trail, who gave her gifts and money. “Later, I was afraid of him.”
Dr. Kirk Newring, a psychologist hired by the defense, said Boswell had turned to alcohol and drugs to deal with emotional abuse and verbal berating by a college coach, had been sexually assaulted in college and made to believe it was her fault and then suffered beatings and sexual punishments by her boyfriend, a football player who had seemed charming at first and later trafficked her on Backpage, a website that advertised commercial sex acts.
Which is how Trail found Boswell.
Newring described the relationship that developed as a “trauma bond,” where Boswell quickly became reliant on Trail for everything.
At a trial in October 2020, a jury found Boswell guilty of first-degree murder, conspiracy and the unlawful disposal of remains.
Trail was found guilty at trial in 2019 and on June 9 was sentenced to death by a separate three-judge panel.
Prosecutors said the two worked together to recruit young women in a conspiracy to kill and ultimately chose Loofe as their victim, and that Boswell lured her to their Wilber apartment the night of Nov. 15, 2017, under the guise of a date after matching on Tinder.
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