St. Louis–based investigative journalist Chet Hardin previously worked alongside author Toni Natalie to expose notorious “Hollywood sex cult” NXIVM in The Program: Inside the Mind of Keith Raniere and the Rise and Fall of NXIVM. Now, he’s turned his attention to another charismatic con man with malicious intent in The Vampire’s Cult: The Untold Story of Obsession, Control, and a Shocking Small-Town Murder, out August 4 from Sourcebooks.
The Vampire’s Cult is Hardin’s attempt to unravel and understand the twisted relationship between aging con artist Aubrey Trail and a young woman named Bailey Boswell, who claimed to be his queen among a “harem of witches.” The pair drew several other young women into their toxic atmosphere, including 24-year-old Sydney Loofe. While the true details of who did what remain murky amid the lies and boasts of Boswell and Trail, the result remains the same; Sydney Loofe was murdered and dismembered. It took authorities three weeks to locate her remains, which were hidden and scattered about 60 miles from Wilber, Nebraska, where Trail and Boswell were living at the time.
Hardin first heard about the case during Trail’s trial for the murder, when his Nebraskan mother-in-law sent his wife a link to a news story about how Trail had slashed his throat in the courtroom. (Trail survived the incident)…