A man convicted of the gruesome murder and dismemberment of a 23-year-old woman he lured through the Tinder dating app is set to be executed in Nebraska.
Aubrey Trail – who shocked the court when he slashed his own throat during the trial – admitted he strangled Sydney Loofe with an electrical cord in 2017 when the store clerk was repulsed by Trail’s offer to loop her into a lifestyle of group sex and fraud.
“I had no doubt she would tell people if I let her go,” Trail said during his sentencing last week by a three-judge panel.
Loofe disappeared after a Nov. 15, 2017 date with Trail’s girlfriend, Bailey Boswell. Police found Loofe’s body cut up into pieces and wrapped in plastic bags in Clay County 19 days later.
Trail didn’t apologize to the victim’s family members when he spoke from a written statement at his sentencing on Wednesday, The Lincoln Star reported.
“I realize nothing I can say here will change in the least what I did to Sydney three and a half years ago,” Trail said.
“I won’t say I’m sorry, as that would be an insult to you after what I put you through[LM1] … and I won’t ask for forgiveness as I don’t believe there is such a thing.”
The killer had previously claimed Loofe died during rough consensual sex. He was eligible for the death penalty, prosecutors said, because of “exceptional depravity” that included implying to investigators he and Boswell drank Loofe’s blood, the AP stated.
In statements in court, he admitted that he lied to cops and planned to kill Loofe hours before the murder, but said his girlfriend Boswell wasn’t in the room at the time he killed her.
Loofe and Boswell connected on Tinder the first time four days before her death, the Journal Star said. They met in person once before the killing, according to the report.
When Trail slashed his neck during a 2019 court appearance, he yelled “Bailey is innocent and I curse you all!”
His sentence will be automatically appealed under state law. The last two executions in the state were 1997 and 2018, according to the AP.
Boswell is still awaiting sentencing after an October conviction on first-degree murder and other charges. She could be the first woman in Nebraska history sentenced to death.
With Post wires