The After Show: Swipe Right on the Devil

0:00Hello, everybody. It's Deborah Roberts here with some news to share. The first episode of The Scream Murder, a new podcast from 2020, is out right now. But if you wanted to get this early, all you got to do is subscribe to 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple. Our subscribers already listened to that episode weeks ago, ad-free. And this week, they're going to be able to listen to episodes one through five. As always, our subscribers have access to hundreds of 2020 episodes going back years completely ad-free. So if you're interested, subscribe to 2020fair she flew. Finding just the right one, and for years it will last. Wayfair shipping was free, and remarkably fast. What's this? Garland? A wreath?

0:50Essentials to host? Good thing she celebrates way longer than most. As her cart filled with magic and decor from the heart, Merry Christmas to all. Get your Wayfair head start. For holiday decor you can count on year after year, Wayfair delivers. Hi everybody and welcome to 2020 The After Show. I'm Deborah Roberts and as always it's good to have you with us. And today, let me tell you, we have got a fascinating and dare I say jaw-dropping episode for you. It's a bit of a turn from our usual offering, but I have no doubt that you are gonna be so intrigued by this program because we certainly are. We're taking a closer look at a new Hulu docuseries that's grabbing a lot of attention, Swipe Right on the Devil.

1:39And you can imagine what this is all about. It's a frightening play on the online dating world, but really a story of manipulation, of murder, and alleged witchcraft. Pretty bizarre stuff. The story centers around the disappearance and murder of Sydney Loof, a 24-year-old woman from Lincoln, Nebraska. Sydney disappeared after going on a date with a woman that she met on a dating app. It began as a missing person investigation and ultimately would expose a disturbing underworld that involved young women being recruited by a couple who claimed to be witches. And the only way they could unlock their supernatural powers was through murder. Yeah, as I said, it's pretty bizarre stuff. It sounds like something straight out of a Hollywood script, right? Well, it certainly caught the attention of

2:29Academy Award-winning director and producer Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, who worked on the project, and also another talented director. Today, we're going to get a look at this story because it's a three-part docuseries, and some of the creative minds behind it are going to talk to us about it and we're going to begin with director Brian Beagle who is here with us now. Hey Brian. Hey Debra. Hey welcome. Thank you. Wow this is this is some strange stuff. You've directed all kinds of genres from history to sports but this is a whole different level, isn't it? It is. It's a story that it's almost hard to put into words, like, without experiencing it firsthand and dealing with the characters for over a year and getting to know them,

3:16it's almost impossible for me to wrap my head around how bizarre the story is. And when you say characters, I mean, we're talking real life people. I mean, this is true crime. And I'm just curious how you learned about this story, because we obviously hear a lot of strange stories here on 2020, and sadly involving murder and, you know, women often who are entrapped. But this is something that is just really strange when you talk about witchcraft and almost like sacrificing really with these women. How did you even hear about this story? Yeah. So technically this was in the public domain. It was an undertold story. It had big splashy headlines back in 2017. And when I came across it, I just instinctively knew that there was more there. And I wanted to dive deep into unfolding this mystery.

4:09Because I don't even consider this necessarily true crime. It's more of a true crime mystery, right? It's not a whodunit. It's a whydunit. Yeah, and that's the thing that gets us too. Because it's mind-blowing stuff when you talk about manipulation, of course, a dating app, many people can relate to that. Witchcraft, a so-called coven and young women who are vulnerable. A lot of elements here that I guess would appeal to people who appreciate true crime. But also, as you said, a wide on it too. What did you make of it once you began to dig into it? You said you knew there was so much more there. And there's a couple, there's a woman who's, as we said, swiping right, having no idea that she's about to swipe into something deadly.

4:57Yeah. So that would be Sidney Loof. And the story really centers on, for the first time, I believe the world will get to know who Sidney Loof really was and what happened to her. There's been coverage in the Midwest about this story, but no one really knows who she was at heart, how much she loved and cared for her family and her friends and for her life to be taken away at such a young age is tragic. And the viewers will get to know her through her own diary entries, through exchanges with Bailey Boswell, who trapped her in, through her Snapchats, through first-person interviews from her friends, and most importantly from her family. Well, tell us a little bit about who she was because she lived in Nebraska, fairly

5:51small town, but she wound up moving because she was a lesbian and she wanted to try to meet other people. A fairly lonely woman, you reveal that in the show, in that she's looking to find love. And so she goes on this site and finds somebody, she even posted something, ready for my date. So she was somebody who was sort of excited to step out into life, wasn't she? Young woman. Yeah, she was. She came from a really small town, Neely in Nebraska. And she wanted to expand her horizons. She wanted to explore her sexuality. And so she moved to Lincoln, where it's a little more realistic to meet somebody of the same gender. And she was also quite vulnerable and a bit lonely. And so she went on Tinder looking for that connectivity

6:39and that love and belonging, like most of us want and need in life. And so that's her essence. She was a beautiful soul looking for a connection. And unfortunately, what happened to her is the worst possible thing that could happen to anyone going on any dating app. Right. Well, she had one date with this person that she meets online, somebody named Andre, and then she's supposed to have another date and then she disappears. Her family doesn't hear from her and suddenly everybody knows something is up. And then there's this investigation and her friend Brooklyn is really quick thinking. I mean, she knows about the date. What leads her to try to flesh this out? Yeah. So I like to say that it was a task force of friends and family and investigators who all

7:36sort of pieced this together. Which happens a lot, by the way, in these true crime stories that we report on at 2020. Yeah. But Brooklyn was really instrumental in she literally opened up a fake tinder account and she kept swiping and swiping until she saw audrey's uh face or a posting of hers and then so she connected with her on tinder and she got her actual phone number and it's pretty clever yeah she She was doing her own investigation behind the scenes. And then she told the Loof family, she has the phone number of who Sidney was last with, and she handed it over to the Lincoln Police Department, and off they went. That's really pretty amazing. And as I said, in a lot of our 2020 reporting, family members,

8:26friends sometimes just sort of take charge and she really didn't. She was crucial in breaking this case, wasn't she? She was. I mean, even the detectives would say she was the first big break that they got. They had been scratching their heads like, where would this girl go? The crime scene didn't look like she was kidnapped. Like, she just vanished after a date. And if not for the hard work of her friends, specifically Brooklyn, they were just coming up against dead leads. Well, what we learn in the reporting that you do is so much more about how this woman fell into this trap. So stay put because we want to talk about this Audrey. When she swiped and found Audrey, who was this person? Well, when we come back, executive producer Christopher St. John is going

9:15to join us to talk more about that discovery and what the two of you learned while the cameras weren't rolling. So stay with us. Don't go anywhere. is cut in half. The First 48 has been telling those stories on A&E for two decades. Now it's a weekly podcast, and you can follow it right now wherever you get your podcasts. Each week, The First 48 takes you inside the critical first two days of a homicide investigation. The interrogations, the dead ends, the breakthroughs that crack a case wide open. Every hour matters. Every lead either holds up or falls apart. Real detectives, real cases, real stakes. Listen to and follow The First 48 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

10:11That's The First 48. This show is sponsored by Over My Dead Body Operation Sideswipe, a podcast from Audible. A trucker merges onto I-10 in New Orleans. He checks his mirrors, the lane is clear, and then boom, impact. A pickup truck scrapes down the side of his 18-wheeler. Multiple passengers inside. One man flees the scene, and the driver of the pickup doesn't seem all that upset. It didn't feel like a regular accident, because it wasn't. Across the city, truckers were getting sideswiped all on the same stretch of the same freeway, and behind most of the cases was one personal injury lawyer, a Hollywood stuntwoman-turned-attorney named Vanessa Moda. In Over My Dead Body Operation Sideswipe, you'll hear how fake accidents led to real consequences

11:00and how this scheme led to betrayal and even murder. Listen to Over My Dead Body Operation Sideswipe wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can get all episodes early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Welcome back to 2020 The After Show. I'm sitting here with Brian Beagle, who directed the Hulu docuseries Swipe Right on the Devil. And also joining us now is executive producer Christopher St. John, who worked on this project as well. Chris, I'm going to grab my headphones here, since you are joining me remotely, and check in with you. How are you? I'm well. How are you, Debra? Good, good. So let's start off, first of all, by talking about the fact that you worked at

11:532020 many years ago. Somehow we never worked together, but I guess we crossed paths through the hallway, maybe, many years ago. I think we did. I was just a lowly production associate. So I was the beginning of my production career. But yeah, 2020 launched me into documentary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And back then we were doing all kinds of stories, rarely did true crime. And of course, we do a lot of that now. Let's talk about what brought you to this project, because you've covered, as I said to Brian, you both have worked on all kinds of other projects, but this one is, I have to say, particularly chilling and bizarre and evil in nature. What sort of attracted you to it? Brian said he knew there was more to this than we saw

12:38at the surface. What about yourself? Yeah, well, I work with Ron Howard and Brian at Imagine Documentaries, and we make all sorts of docs and true crime as well. But we actually don't do a lot of true crime because the story needs to hit a high bar. the twists and turns and just the kind of like unbelievable background of this particular story, we immediately jumped on it. And I think for us, aside from, you know, the headline of Witchcraft Cult, there was a lot of characters involved that were just, it's like a really rich character driven story, which is something we're always looking for. And the mystery of it all too. So let's talk about this Audrey. It turns out it wasn't Audrey. It wasn't a real, that wasn't her real name. Her name was Bailey Boswell. She was

13:35a 31 year old woman who was living with her boyfriend, whose name was Aubrey Trail. He was a 51 year old. Yeah. A little confusing. Tell us a little bit about these two and what you discovered about them. Yeah, so Aubrey Trail was a 51-year-old man with a long history, criminal history. And his girlfriend, Bailey, had less of one, but also had a record. And the two of them had been using Tinder to find sexual partners for the two of them had been using tinder to find sexual partners for the two of them not individually and that had as we pulled on as the frankly the investigation and then us subsequently making the show pulled on these threads we discovered that they'd been luring women into what amounted to a bit of a sex cult.

14:26And they used Bailey as bait for lonely young women in Nebraska. And they would arrive at the door and be introduced to Aubrey, who they were not expecting, and kind of were seduced is maybe the wrong word, but coerced into these relationships, where that got, frankly, more and more twisted as time went by. Yeah, really twisted, because when you talk about them claiming to be witches, and as kind of a cult, as you said, how was this supposed to work? So they meet these women, it wasn't going to be, you know, they all just sort of move in happily ever after. It seems so. And that what really what we discovered is that it was, it wasn't that these women would show up, and they were immediately recruited into some sort of

15:23witchcraft cult, they would show up, and they would be told what they were immediately recruited into some sort of witchcraft cult. They would show up and they would be told what they wanted to hear, that they were attractive and beautiful and likable. And they actually started a relationship. And it was a bit of a slow burn where Aubrey's involvement was introduced slowly. And then ultimately, at some point, when things had gotten a little more serious, Aubrey started to introduce these somewhat strange beliefs about occult and black magic and the fact that he could read minds or see people when they weren't in the room. And that was all tied into other rules of the household, like these young women weren't allowed to wear clothes in the house.

16:09They had to call Aubrey Daddy. There were all sorts of rules that ultimately degraded the women but kept them feeling trapped. And yeah, it got to the point where the screw was turned and Aubrey and Bailey ultimately started suggesting sacrificing people in order to bring these women into a world that they said existed, but as you watch the show, may or may not have. Yeah, really pretty bizarre stuff. And Brian, we started off talking about Sydney and getting a chance to know her, but she wasn't the only woman that is revealed in this series. There are other women, too, that you both sit down, and I want to get your take on them. Just getting them to sit down and talk, number one. Brian, let me ask you first, and then Chris, you chime in if you would, about how hard it must have been to try

17:08to get them to recall something so difficult. Yeah, so it was Katie, Anna, and Ashley. And when we approached them, they were apprehensive. They had lived through a very traumatic experience. They were introduced to Aubrey's beliefs in witchcraft. They were promised that they would have superpowers. And so they were struggling with whether they should speak on camera or not. And so it was through building relationships and trust with them that allowed them to open up to us and reveal what is just shockingly, amazingly crazy what went on inside Aubrey's house in Wilbur, Nebraska. And the girls believed as much as they wanted to and Some of them thought about implementing Aubrey's dark magic into their lives. Did they talk about trying to leave ever?

18:13Yeah, so they weren't technically held against their will Aubrey has this saying about free will like he wants a witch to have free will. And in that free will, it helps them gain their powers by making certain, let's just call it human sacrifices. But it wasn't exactly free will because they felt trapped. They were afraid for sure. I think that there was a real fear and also and also a real connection to Bailey. Like they they these were young women who were all looking for love and they thought they had found it in Bailey and they had to accept this secondary presence who was scary. And I think that, as Brian said, a lot of them, I find them incredibly brave because they both spoke at a trial, which I think we're going to get to, but they also spoke

19:13to us because they found it important to let people know this story. And they're still struggling with some of the decisions they made. They don't fully understand why they did what they did. And I think that that's something that we as the as the producers of this show were struggled with as well it was like what is the power that aubrey had i mean i don't think he's a witch but i do think that he has a some kind of a superpower some persuasive powers he knows how to let people hear what they want to hear he has some persuasive superpower yeah one thing that was kind of striking is that anna spoke Persuasive powers. He knows how to let people hear what they want to hear. He has some persuasive superpower, yeah.

19:47One thing that was kind of striking is that Anna spoke about herself in the third person. Was that kind of her way of distancing herself from what had happened? Yes. Anna, as much as anyone, was really traumatized by her experience. She was only 18 years old when she met Aubrey and Bailey. And through self-help and through a lot of therapy, she can't even refer to herself as Anna. So she took on a new name, Jaya, which she now calls herself because she doesn't want to go back in her mind to those days when she was sort of under the spell, if you will, of Aubrey and Bailey. How do you think they were able to survive this ordeal? I mean, because we're going to get back to Sidney here, who obviously did not. How were they able to survive? I think it's like Chris said,

20:42these were incredibly brave women. I mean, underneath their vulnerabilities and their longing for love and companionship and just a sense of belonging, they were also truly brave. And their actions dictate that, as you'll see in the show when they take the stand and they testify. I would also just say that they, I think they got very lucky. I think that there was a lot of luck involved, the timing. I think that for some of them, the spell did actually break and they got away as far as they could. But I think that they were really fortunate because they were in a potentially extremely dangerous situation. Well, clearly because Sidney was eventually found, her remains were found and pretty gruesome stuff. I mean,

21:31in multiple trash bags. I mean, she had been dismembered. She had had a tattoo at one point that read, everything will be wonderful someday. Kind of a sad irony there because that was the way investigators were able to identify her, right, Chris? That's right. Yeah, a sad irony there, because that was the way investigators were able to identify her, right, Chris? That's right. Yeah, it was the lyric, a song lyric of something, the song that she loved. And it was a way for her to remind herself during times when she was feeling a little bit down that like, this too shall pass, things will get better. And of course, in this case, tragically, it didn't. It did not. Well, we're going to take another break. And we need to talk about the rest of

22:11these two, because ultimately, Boswell and Trail were arrested. And after we come back, we're going to talk about not only that, but the shocking moments that would happen inside the courtroom. So you two stay put and don't you go anywhere. We'll be right back. and for years it will last. Wayfair shipping was free and remarkably fast. What's this? Garland? A wreath? Essentials to host? Good thing she celebrates way longer than most. As her cart filled with magic and decor from the heart, Merry Christmas to all. Get your Wayfair head start. For holiday decor you can count on year after year, Wayfair delivers. Welcome back to 2020 The After Show. I am here with director Brian Beagle and executive producer Christopher St. John, who are giving us a look, a behind-the-scenes look,

23:15and an in-depth look at the Hulu's docuseries Swipe Right on the Devil. Christopher Aubrey wound up giving a confession on video. So these two were arrested in the death of Sidney Loof. And, you know, Aubrey was playing pretty coy for a while. And the FBI sort of played a little bit of a game. They wouldn't speak with him. But then he started talking and his confession kind of happened in a bizarre way. Tell us about that. Yeah, Aubrey, as we mentioned earlier, will tell anybody anything he thinks they want to hear. And he is constantly trying to manipulate and pull strings, and he's constantly trying to figure out the best way forward for himself. Ultimately, he confessed to the crime because investigators had been interrogating him and he had been running them around constantly, basically, and trying to to manipulate them into a better deal.

24:15And they were given the advice, stop talking to him, just step away. And they did. They shut the door and they walked away and they didn't come back for weeks. And it made him angry and it made him, if not desperate, a little bit. He looked for a new way to regain power and he started calling local news outlets. And he he called a reporter out of the blue from prison and stunning stuff and confessed to the murder of Sidney Luft. He described an entire kind of scenario that doesn't seem to have actually happened, but he did say that he had killed her. It's pretty striking stuff, Brian. And we've seen that in a lot of the other episodes that we've covered on 2020, where the suspected person, and in this case case the police truly believe that they have the right person under arrest likes the attention and they wind up sort of you know giving themselves up because

25:11they want the attention i mean in this case it seems like the same kind of psychological profile it is but it also isn't like aubrey is a very manipulative person and he had ulterior motives for confessing. And you'll learn that when watching the show. And I also can say, I talked to him on the phone for over a year and getting to know him and getting inside his mind, which took his story on a very wide path and allowed us the access that we had to get inside his head. And what did you think trying to get inside? I mean, what did you learn about him? I learned that he's a very twisted person. He's scary. He's manipulative. And he has a belief system that most people would not really understand.

26:05So there's some pretty creepy stuff, including in the courtroom, you know, dramatic stuff that I think will shock viewers. Yeah, there is an event that happens in the courtroom that that we don't want to say too much about here. But but ultimately, I think is an unbelievable twist. That's that's truly truly shocking and was shocking for people present in the room that day. And it was all about, again, Aubrey trying to take control in a situation where he had none. And it kind of sends the investigation and the trial off in a whole other direction. Pretty shocking stuff. I think viewers will really be stunned by. Chris, Brian said something about getting to know him a little bit more and his

26:50obviously kind of a twisted mind. But what you also reveal is a little bit about his background and who he, I mean, maybe not necessarily portraying him sympathetically, but giving a sense of who he is. Why was that important to you? You know, I think that we, that I personally, and that we at Imagine Documentaries think it's important to show characters in their, as their full selves, as fully three-dimensional as possible. And we did that both with the victims, the young women who were pulled into the craziness of Aubrey and Bailey's household. But we tried to do that with the culprits as well. I don't think it makes them necessarily more sympathetic. It certainly doesn't excuse the awful, awful things that they did. But

27:38it gives you a fuller picture of this world that they were occupying and maybe provides some small... Maybe understanding or just somehow figuring him out? Maybe just an attempt to understand what is going on in this man's head, which I'm not sure, even now, two years later, I have any idea of what's going on in this guy's head. How about you, Brian? Yeah, I'm glad you asked because I think Chris hit on something important, which is the understanding of it all. This is the first time that viewers or the world basically will understand what happened to Sidney Loof. There have been so many questions and so much speculation, but the work that we did with Imagine and the help of Hulu and the collaboration, we've uncovered

28:32quite a unique story, one that is almost like too unbelievable to believe. Right, right. It almost feels like it had to be scripted. One other thing that was pretty strange is hearing Aubrey talk about the murder and said something that he doesn't regret the murder, but the person he and Bailey chose to murder. What do Loof particularly was because that got him caught. Her family cared so much about her. Her friends, as we discussed, did their own little investigation that they reported her missing within, I believe, 24 hours. And that speaks to the testament of how Sidney was loved. And that's Aubrey's regret that he chose the wrong person. He chose someone who had a family that really cared about her.

29:30Chris, I'm curious, you know, when we cover these stories, it's always hard, especially when there's such disturbing, chilling, disgusting things that happen. And in this case, it certainly did happen. Give us a sense of how you went about trying to present this so that it was something that the audience could pay attention to, but without being so horrified. It's an excellent question because it's, the story is horrifying. The specifics are horrifying. Some of the footage we had access to is horrifying. And ultimately it's a constant one decision after another of how to, what to include, not to include. And we tell the full story. We're not hiding anything. But we don't need to get into some of the most grisly details, if you understand, at

30:20a certain point, right? So I think that for us, the more important question than like what the details are is the why of it all. Why would something like this have happened? Why was Sydney so vulnerable? Why did she get, why was she the one who was killed? And I think that this is a testament to Brian's reporting going into this really got aubrey to tell us on camera on a zoom uh from death row where he sits today um why he did it and he he hasn't said that anywhere else he didn't say it in the. He didn't say it in a trial. He didn't say it to investigators, but he said it to us and it's in, it's in the show. Um, and it's a chilling reason. You will learn more about what that's all about. Um, when, when we see it, but do you,

31:16do you come away from this to both of you come away from this with more questions or do you feel like you kind of finally understand this case? I think that I understand it as best as I can. I think that we did a really good job breaking down what happened and to a certain degree why it happened. I think that there is a dark part of both Aubrey and Bailey that we'll never quite reach. And you, Brian, do you feel that you came away with more questions or do you feel that they're answered? I feel like from an investigative standpoint, we've answered all the tragedy that happened to Sydney? I can only understand what they say to me, but I'm not in their minds and in their hearts. So my only question would be like, how do they?

32:20How do they sit with this? You know, we try to really have a focus in our 2020 episodes about the victims. I mean, not just about the crime and the perpetrator, but really honoring the victims. And it seems that you both really made an effort in this case to not just talk about these grisly things that happened, but you're talking about a family, you know, you're talking about a woman, you're talking about other women who were affected by this. And it seems like that was a big focus of what you were working on for this project. Yeah, it was. And I'll just add that in a strange way with a dark setting of a story, there were more heroes than there were villains, right? Sidney's family, her friends, the detectives, they all came together and they helped shine Sidney's light

33:12on what would otherwise be a very dark setting. And I think that comes through in the show and ultimately it's a takeaway and a testament of who she was. How important was that to you, Chris, to shine that light? It was absolutely fundamental. I think that the reason we were universal story about the vulnerability that arrives when you long for belonging, which is something that we all feel. The Loof family, I think, felt slightly betrayed by the initial coverage of this story. They felt like their daughter who had been murdered was painted as a witchcraft cult member. And in truth, she was anything but. She was a young woman going out on a date. And as one of our investigators says, like before she hung up the phone,

34:18she was dead, like that was it. And so I think it was very, very important for us to tell that that story to describe the circumstances that allowed a situation like this to Arrive arise and and yet honor the victims. I think that that more important than than Talking to someone on death row is to remembering the people that that they they touched Well, clearly you do that in this piece. It's a fascinating, fascinating three-part series. Thank you both, Brian and Chris, for being with us today. And you can catch Swipe Right on the Devil out now on Disney Plus and Hulu. Again, thank you both for coming in and thank you listeners for choosing to spend your time with us today. And of course, you can always find 2020

35:01on Friday nights on ABC and you can stream episodes just like this one anytime on Disney Plus and Hulu. Thanks so much and have a good day, everybody. I'm going to stick with whatever's in the public domain. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for a 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes. May slow when network is busy. See terms. Twas many nights before Christmas, and one woman knew she needed a Christmas tree. So to Wayfair she flew, finding just the right one and for years it will last. Wayfair shipping was free

36:11and remarkably fast. What's this? Garland? A wreath? Essentials to host? Good thing she celebrates way longer than most. As her cart filled with magic and decor from the heart, Merry Christmas to all. Get your Wayfair head start. For holiday decor you can count on year after year, Wayfair delivers.