Ashley Hills testified that she was 20-years-old when she “swiped right” on a Tinder account under the name Jenna in July 2017.
Within a week, she learned “Jenna” was really Bailey Boswell and that Boswell was in a “sugar daddy” relationship with an older man named Aubrey Trail. Hills, testified in the Bailey Boswell trial, that it was Trail who she first met. Hills testified that she believed everything Aubrey Trail told her. Including testimony about witchcraft and plans to kill.
She said on their first meeting, Trail drove her to his apartment in Wilber, they had small talk and Trial showed her pictures of scantily clad women on his phone. She left a few hours later with $200 Trail had given her. Hills said she was tasked with deciding if she’d like to be a part of their “sugar daddy” arrangement.
A day or so later, she and Boswell went and got their nails done, ate lunch and picked out lingerie at Victoria’s Secret with money Trail gave them. Then, Hills and Boswell went back to the Wilber apartment where Trail asked them to model their lingerie for him.
Later the three engaged in sexual intercourse. Hills said it was at that point she decided she was going to be a part of their arrangement. “I liked the idea of being taken care of,” Hills told the jury.
She said she got $200 every week, and got everything else she wanted paid for as well.
In exchange, she had to spend a day each week at the Wilber apartment and follow the house rules. Hills said the rules were to be honest, ask Trail for permission, check in with him every three hours, to not talk to any other men and to call Trail “daddy.”
She said there was also a rule that they were supposed to be naked inside the home, but she never was made to follow that rule. If she didn’t follow the rules she would be punished. Trail would whip her and choke her with a belt.
Then, she said Boswell and Trail started talking about witchcraft. Trail told Hills that he had a group of 12 witches called a coven and she could be the 13th, but in order to get your powers you had to take a life.
Prosecutor Sandra Allen asked Hills what she was thinking when they started talking about this. “I can’t really recall,” Hills said. “Probably how crazy it was but I think my mind got caught up in the what ifs of life.” Hills said she believed it then, but she doesn’t now.
Hills was told Boswell was in charge of all the other witches; she was a healer who could heal people from heart attacks. She was told Trail was a vampire who could fly and read minds. Hills said at the time, she believed everything Trail told her.
Hills said she believed she was going to become a witch too, and was willing to kill someone to do it. She said they even picked out a woman that they met at the Walmart in Beatrice that she was going to kill but she didn’t go through with it.
Hills told the jury they had a plan for what would happen with they killed someone. “He said it would be somewhere in the woods and Bailey and I would have our blindfolds on and our heads down in the backseat with the other person in the front seat with him,” Hills said. “It was my understanding when we went out there everything would be set up like a tarp to do everything over.”
Hills said she and Boswell would do the killing while Trail watched and cleaned up afterwards. Hills said Trail showed her a kill kit that he said belonged to Boswell. She said the bag contained a sauna suit and other tools.
The prosecution showed Hills a photo of the sauna suit box found in Clay Center with Loofe’s body and Hills said it looked like the one in the bag.
Hills said Trail told her she would get her own kill kit that would be replenished after every kill. The prosecution asked if Boswell was engaged in these conversations and Hills said yes. Hills also said she, Boswell and Trail would also often talk about how they liked to torture people.
Hills described Boswell as “joyful” during these conversations. “She would smile and giggle and her eyes would light up,” Hills said.
Hills said the next time they talked about killing someone, their planned victim was Anastasia Golyakova, another woman Trail and Boswell met online. Golyakova was part of the sugar daddy arrangement, and Trail said she wasn’t following the rules so they wanted to kill her. Hills said Boswell was excited to do this because Golyakova “was annoying.”
She said their plan was to kill Golyakova on an antiquing trip to Pennsylvania. They would dump her body along the way. Hills said at that time, she was “ready for it,” but she said she didn’t know why she felt that way. It was shortly after this, in September 2017, that Hills said she got out of the group.
Hills said she was in a fitting room at TJ Maxx while shopping for their trip to Pennsylvania with Boswell when she had a panic attack. At that point she left the fitting room and told Boswell she “was done.”
Hills said she never met Sydney Loofe and only heard Trail and Boswell could be involved when the police came to her door.