Lincoln, Nebraska. Sydney Loofe was a 24-year-old young woman living in Lincoln. She had enviably blonde hair and striking blue eyes.
She lived in a duplex. She saved her sister’s life once. She enjoyed fishing. She collected crystals. She had a cat she named Mimsey who she adored and had got off Craigslist for just $20.
She was passionate about creatures great and small from a very young age and loved going to the local zoo to see all of the amazing animals.
She dreamed of growing up to be a marine biologist or working at an animal hospital, and she had a lot of other dreams she wanted to fulfill. Sydney had a bit of a tough time in college and she wasn’t quite sure what path she wanted her life to take.
She ended up moving on and working at a store called Menards, which is a home improvement store. Sydney liked her job a lot, and she always greeted customers with her dimpled smile. She also made some close friends at work.
Sydney was extremely big-hearted and compassionate to those around her. She did everything she could to help anyone in need.
Even though Sydney didn’t have much by way of money and she often grappled with some of her own personal problems, she was always there for others.
Sydney had a tattoo on her arm that said, “everything will be wonderful someday.” Sadly, Sydney’s life ended in such a cold-blooded and barbaric manner.
Facebook; Sydney smiles in the photo above
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Sydney had a supportive family and she was close to her parents and her two siblings, Levi and MacKenzie.
She would text her mom every night without fail, at around 10:30. She would hang out with her sister and cook dinner with her or watch Netflix.
On Thursday, November 16th, 2017, Sydney didn’t come to work. Sydney was always on time and eager, except for on the occasional days the depression she struggled with got the better of her, but she would call in sick not let anyone down.
Her coworkers started to panic as the minutes ticked by, and some of them even went to her home to see if she was there.
Leah Shaw, who was part of the human resources team at Menards would later say in court, “I remember standing at the entrance where she’d come in watching to see if her car came into the parking lot and it never did.”
As evening arrived, Sydney’s family became concerned too, because they couldn’t get a hold of Sydney.
Facebook; Sydney snaps a selfie, above
So, Sydney’s mom Susie drove out to her place on Friday morning, and she was disturbed by what she found.
Her car was sitting right there, parked in the driveway. Her bag was placed right on the counter as if she was still home. Every single light in her place was on in broad daylight.
Nothing was out of place, which further added to the mystery of where Sydney was. Then, Sydney’s mom Susie realized Mimsey was left behind with no water or food.
She knew something bad had happened to her because Sydney would never do that to her beloved cat. If she was going somewhere, she would have arranged to have her taken care of.
Susie contacted the police, and they started looking into what could have happened to Sydney. They were able to determine the last place her cellphone was active was in a city called Wilbur.
They also pieced together that Sydney had been heading out for a date she met on Tinder, the night before she failed to show up to work.
Sydney wasn’t secretive about her online dating life. In fact, she had told several of her closest friends exactly who she was meeting up with.
She had even given one of her friends this person’s phone number.
Snapchat; Sydney sent the above photo, with the caption “Ready for my date” right before she disappeared
Sydney was supposed to go on a date with another young woman named Audrey, and the police not only had her phone number, but they also had photos of her too.
Unfortunately, Audrey’s number was a dead end. It was fake, and it was not connected to a real phone…just an app.
Despite something that seemed to be a big setback, it didn’t the police long to figure out what Audrey’s real phone number was.
When the police spoke to Audrey, she was not forthcoming and tried to avoid giving them any personal information about herself.
She claimed she had dropped Sydney off at some friend’s house after their date, but she had no idea where this friend of Sydney’s actually lived. She also said that was the last time she saw her.
Police learned that Audrey wasn’t Audrey at all. Her real name was Bailey Boswell, and they started digging into her further. They didn’t buy the story she was trying to sell them about Sydney being dropped off randomly.
As the investigation continued, the question of where Sydney had gone was still a pressing issue and one that took a few weeks to solve.
Sydney was found on the 4th of December, butchered to bits, and dumped in garbage bags along several different rural roads.
Snapchat; Sydney is pictured above
Sydney had been sliced apart with a saw into 14 different pieces…one of which was never found.
Her left arm from her shoulder to her elbow is still missing, along with most of her organs.
She had bruises on the backside of her head, wrists, and along the inner part of her thigh.
Her cause of death was determined to be strangulation. Either someone had strangled her to death with their hands or used something to strangle her with.
While police had been looking into the woman Sydney went on a date with, Bailey, they were able to find hotel surveillance footage showing not one, but two people Sydney had been with her in final hours.
Facebook; Sydney is pictured in the above photo smiling
Bailey, who was in her 20s, was dating a man in his 50s named Aubrey Trail, and he was seen alongside her checking into and out of various hotels in the area in the days around when Sydney disappeared.
Authorities collected footage showing them from November 17th through November 22nd. They also visited the basement apartment in Wilbur the pair had been renting (remember, this city was the last place Sydney’s phone had been in).
Their landlord said their apartment smelled of bleach so badly, she could smell the fumes from upstairs. She also explained the smell started the day after Sydney went on her date, and when she was shown photos of Sydney, she was pretty positive she had seen her at their apartment.
Authorities searched the apartment, and they found several bottles of bleach and evidence that a major cleanup had occurred there.
Facebook; Sydney smiles, above
Video footage of Aubrey and Bailey shopping at a Home Depot in Lincoln the day Sydney vanished also was uncovered by police, and they suspected what they purchased was used to dispose of her.
Aubrey later admitted to police that he strangled Sydney to death with an electrical cord at the apartment, but he tried to claim it was some kind of twisted fantasy gone wrong, and that he had paid Sydney $5,000 for it.
He also maintained Bailey’s innocence, insisting she only helped clean up Sydney’s body and dump her. He said he did drain out all of Sydney’s blood before he cut her up.
Regardless of what role Bailey did or did not play, she was charged with first-degree murder, along with Aubrey.
The two were also charged with conspiracy to commit murder and improper disposal of human remains.
When Aubrey’s trial began, and at one point, he took out a sharp object, sliced his through, and screamed, “Bailey is innocent, I curse you all!”
He then decided not to come back to the trial at all in the following days, even though he recovered from the injuries he gave himself.
It only took a jury three hours to decide that Aubrey was guilty, and this summer, he was sentenced to death.
As for Bailey? She was also found guilty and sentenced this week. Three judges struggled to determine what Bailey’s fate should be.
Nebraska law requires that a judge takes into consideration aggravating circumstances when deciding if someone should get life in prison or the death penalty.
The three judges ultimately ruled that Bailey will get life in prison since they couldn’t agree on if what she did was considered “exceptional depravity.”
