Nebraska native Sydney Loofe was looking for love, or at least for some fun, while scrolling through Tinder back in 2017. But the resulting date quickly went wrong, and she never made it back home. The new three-part Hulu true crime docuseries Swipe Right on the Devil tells the harrowing tale behind Loofe’s 2017 murder, how she was lured into a satanic BDSM ritual for so-called witchcraft, and how her murder led to authorities uncovering a years-long scheme run by two cult leaders. It tells the story, in part, through interviews with surviving women who escaped the cult weeks prior to her murder.
The docuseries marks the first time the Loofe clan is sharing their side of the story, along with Nebraska investigators and an FBI agent assigned to the case. Loofe’s mother Susie Loofe wrote on Facebook that her family had been contacted by at least 100 production companies looking to make a documentary about the murder before putting their trust in Imagine Documentaries.
Swipe Right on the Devil director and executive producer Brian Beigel tells TIME that Loofe’s “mysterious disappearance” quickly became a far more “complex [story] than the headlines suggested.” Beigel, who previously worked with FBI officers while helming the ESPN 30for30 documentary The Counterfeiter, spent approximately three years immersing himself in the Loofe case. The experience forever changed his views on the occult: “As a documentary filmmaker, I'm naturally skeptical and always looking for evidence, but I also believe there are aspects of the human experience we don't fully understand,” he says. He spent years talking with the man convicted of Loofe’s murder and hearing firsthand from the women he drew into his orbit. “I wouldn't say this experience made me a believer in the supernatural, but it did make me more open-minded about what might exist beyond the physical world.”
A Meet-cute gone awry
Loofe, a 24-year-old hardware store clerk at Menard's in Lincoln, Neb., first connected on Tinder with a woman she believed to be named Audrey. Loofe went on two dates with “Audrey.” But she never came home from the second one, on Nov. 15, 2017. When she didn’t show up for work the next day, Loofe’s coworkers called the police to do a wellness check at her home; the officers found her car in the driveway and her purse still in her apartment. Loofe was reported missing.
It was then that one of Loofe’s friends took matters into their own hands: They created a fake Tinder profile to find Audrey, who seemed to be the last person Loofe had made contact with. Loofe’s friend matched with Audrey and gave her details to investigators, who soon discovered that the phone number belonged to a 23-year-old woman named Bailey Boswell. The search for Loofe continued.
Her family held out hope that she would be found unharmed. But their prayers went unanswered. Loofe’s remains were found in garbage bags on Dec. 4 along the state highway in rural Clay County, Neb. She had been dismembered into 14 pieces, in what seemed to be a ritualistic manner. Her left upper arm was never recovered, and her internal organs were still missing. Authorities then set out to find out what really happened to the woman her family described as “the crystal-blue-eyed girl with a soft heart”—and why.
A self-proclaimed vampire and his witches’ coven
Boswell’s social media apps were just the beginning of the disturbing investigation. Boswell turned out to be part of a couple with Aubrey Trail, 51, a self-declared vampire. The duo shared an apartment and both had extensive criminal histories, including theft and financial scams, across various states. Loofe was just one of the many targets that both Boswell and Trail had found on Tinder to try to lure into their makeshift “coven” under a cult-like manifesto.
A trio of women in their early 20s, all of whom have chosen to remain anonymous, testified in court and later in Swipe Right on the Devil that they had each met Boswell on Tinder, and were soon also introduced to Trail. They were showered with expensive clothes, spa treatments, and drugs, and given weekly allowances ranging from $150 to $200. The cost? Participating in group sex with Trail (“Daddy”) and Boswell (“Mommy”), while also helping the couple sell stolen goods. The women each testified that Trail would call himself a “vampire,” and claim that he had supernatural powers such as being able to fly and read minds. Trail also told the women that they were all now “witches” belonging to his cult, with Boswell as their leader.
Both Trail and Boswell claimed they were practicing witchcraft and black magic with required ritualistic violent acts to gain entry to their coven. Trail told the members of the “coven” that they would have to torture someone and complete a killing in order for him to gain more power as their messiah; he also wanted to film the murder and share the profits of the snuff film with each of them. The women claimed they left Trail’s cult shortly thereafter in November 2017, right before Boswell lured in Loofe.
After authorities discovered that Trail was connected to Boswell, they searched the couple’s home and found a BDSM dog leash, duct tape, “a sauna suit with the crotch cut out, zip ties, a hatchet, a plastic drop cloth smeared with blood, and a book on anatomy.”
In the trailer for Swipe Right on the Devil, one of the women claims that Trail told her after meeting on Tinder that he and Boswell “knew witchcraft and had 12 women [and] needed a thirteenth to complete the coven.” Another survivor describes how Trail had “rules” for the coven which included being naked while around him and allowing him to watch lesbian encounters. The documentary features a segment in which one of the women tells an officer that to be in the “the inner circle,” he said she would “have had to kill somebody and take their soul.”
“While this is fundamentally Sydney's story, it's also about the other young women manipulated by Aubrey Trail and Bailey Boswell at a vulnerable time in their lives, when they were searching for something universal: love and connection,” says Beigel. “They spoke candidly about the challenges of finding queer relationships in their conservative Midwestern communities, and how Bailey exploited that loneliness through Tinder. Once drawn into their world, they found themselves trapped in a disturbing web of manipulation, witchcraft, and demands to kill as a path to supernatural power.”
Beigel’s fellow executive producer and Imagine Documentaries executive Christopher St. John adds that the team behind docuseries was “struck by the bravery of the three women who tell their stories at the center of this series.” St. John continues, “They lived through such an incredibly traumatic experience, but they still believe it’s valuable to share the story, whether in court or on camera.” He says the team elected to tell the story in three episodes because they had too much material to do the story justice in a feature-length film, and even still, there were elements that didn’t make it into the final cut. “Hopefully, viewers will really get an accurate sense of their thinking and where they were during this intense period of their lives.”
A swift confession before a tumultuous trial
Trail confessed to Loofe’s killing right away, but maintained that her death was an accident. He told the police that he had engaged in consensual BDSM acts with Loofe and two other women, with the participants paying him $15,000 to film. Trail said that he had strangled Loofe with an extension cord during an erotic act and did not intend to kill her. Following her death, Trail dismembered Loofe’s body to avoid getting caught. He emphasized that Boswell was not part of the crime at all. During messages uncovered throughout the investigations, Trail is shown telling Boswell that he should be the one taking all the blame, and that she should change her narrative to come across as another “victim.”
During the three-week trial, Trail yelled out in court that Boswell was “innocent” and then slit his throat with a shank; the trial was put on hold as he was rushed to the hospital and recovered. Trail also suffered from two heart attacks and a stroke over the course of the case being presented to a jury. He changed his story during the trial, telling the jury that he killed Loofe out of fear that she would “expose my lifestyle.”
Trail was found guilty on all counts of first-degree murder, conspiracy, and improper disposal of human remains. He was sentenced to death on June 9, 2021. Trail currently is on death row and petitioned the state of Nebraska in August 2023 to set his execution date; Trail is 10th in line on death row for the state. The first and only execution via lethal injection in Nebraska took place in 2018, with the execution of convicted murderer Carey Dean Moore. Trail’s appeal in 2025 was denied.
It was during Trail’s time on death row that he started to open up to Swipe Right on the Devil filmmaker Beigel. Over the course of a year, Beigel sought to gain Trail’s trust and participation. “Ultimately, that persistence gave us something rare in true crime: 360-degree access to the story, allowing us to explore its many layers and conflicting perspectives,” explains Beigel.
Boswell stood trial in September 2020. There was ample physical evidence for the case against her, including DNA found on a latex glove that was in the same trash bag as Loofe’s remains. Boswell was found guilty on all counts of first-degree murder, conspiracy, and improper disposal of human remains in October 2020, and was sentenced to life imprisonment in July 2021.
“I don't see Swipe Right on the Devil as another true-crime retelling. It's a discovery of a mystery, unfolding for the first time through the firsthand accounts of those who lived it,” says Beigel. “This isn't a whodunnit: It's a whydunnit. What really happened to Sydney Loofe, and why? The series explores the unsettling collision of ancient witchcraft beliefs and modern digital dating culture. [These are] two killers who, by their own accounts, would have continued killing had they not been caught so soon.”
Loofe's legacy
Sydney Loofe’s family launched the Sydney Loofe Foundation in 2019. The foundation has raised more than $30,000 to be awarded in scholarships and $26,000 to be distributed to community causes. “Sydney, with a ‘y,’ never stopped to ask ‘why’ when it came to helping others,” the Loofe family wrote on the foundation website. “Although she often struggled physically, financially, and emotionally, she opened her home and heart to others. And those who knew Sydney knew of her love of family, her affinity for animals and pets (especially cats), her interest in fishing as a pastime, her fascination with beautiful crystals, and her soft heart…Sydney Loofe was a unique child of God, one who proudly had this tattooed on her arm, ‘Everything will be wonderful someday.’ Her family holds tight to the faith that indeed in heaven, that is true.”