The Vampire’s Cult: The Untold Story of Obsession, Control, and a Shocking Small Town Murder

• Author: Chet Hardin
• Genre: True Crime
• Publication Date: August 4, 2026
• Publisher: Sourcebooks

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for providing me with an ARC of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

A self-proclaimed vampire.

His harem of “witches.”

And the small-town murder that shocked America.

When twenty-four-year-old Sydney Loofe disappeared after a Tinder date, the quiet town of Wilber, Nebraska was stunned. Days later, her dismembered body was found scattered across nearby fields―and the horrifying truth began to emerge. Sydney hadn’t just met the wrong man. She had crossed paths with a deeply disturbed psychopath and his dangerous accomplice.

In The Vampire’s Cult, investigative journalist Chet Hardin exposes the twisted world of Aubrey Trail, an aging con man who presented himself as an all-powerful being, and Bailey Boswell, the woman who called herself his “queen.” Together, they lured vulnerable young women into a spiral of sex, theft, and psychological manipulation―with deadly consequences.

Through exclusive interviews, firsthand reporting, and chilling detail, Hardin unravels the making of a modern cult―and the social desperation that feeds it. In an era defined by false realities and toxic charisma, The Vampire’s Cult reveals just how easily darkness can disguise itself as devotion.

I’ve been dipping a toe into true crime for years, and I have become a lot more selective about the type of true crime books I read and the podcasts that I listen to. Reading The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold a few years back had completely changed how I approach true crime stories. I prefer books that center the victims rather than glorifying or detailing the entire life of the people committing the crime. 

There is a lot to appreciate about Hardin’s style in this book, although Hardin is a writer who is new to me, so I don’t know much about his signature style. There were a few things that I would have liked to see but didn’t, but there was more about it that I did find intriguing. To start with, Hardin adopts a clear tone that doesn’t even attempt to ‘pretty up’ the crimes of this bizarre cult. He does talk a little bit about the background of each character, devoting significantly more time and some more empathy towards the victims. I was hoping to see more about what led these people to participate in this sick, heinous cult more than anything else, but it wasn’t explored as much as providing a detailed accounting of the events and the people involved. 

I did like how straightforward this was. Sources are credited, and the author makes it clear where the information came from, such as from the family of the victims, the victims themselves, law enforcement, and news media. The research done for this book is thorough and meticulous, and it reads like a fictional story even though this is grounded in facts from the case. I just kept thinking, “this can’t be real,” because the facts are so bizarre. An older, unattractive man ropes young women into his schemes, which include various crimes including theft and murder, and proceeds to psychologically manipulate these women to the point where it became a cult. 

As I mentioned earlier, I would have liked to know what pushed these people to engage in a cult and do things they normally wouldn’t. There’s a big element of kink involved in the cult, but it’s more like the 50 Shades of Gray kink, aka not actually kink but physical and psychological manipulation, and I wish it had been made more clear that while some of their behaviors could be described as kink, the circumstances involved ensured that this wasn’t going to be a healthy, fully consenting account of kink as opposed to what it really was: abuse.

This was a really engrossing story, although I really struggled to put myself in a mindset where I could understand how these people just accepted the beliefs of this ‘cult,’ even though these women were accomplices to the cult, they were also victims. The women who bought into the weird ideas that Aubrey Trail presented—he was a 500-year-old vampire, drinking blood, and his own personal version of kink where the women had to be naked in the house at all times, one woman had to wear a collar and act like a cat on all fours, and heavy psychological abuse. But what really kept me hooked was wondering why these women would willingly submit to this man who didn’t seem to offer them anything positive.

I read this as an audiobook, narrated by Charles Linshaw. He did a wonderful job with the story, narrating in a grave tone of voice to match these heinous crimes, and managing to keep his voice steady even through the worst behaviors. His voice was engaging and kept me reading long into the night.

Overall, this was one of the most bizarre true-crime stories that I’ve read. Hardin did a great job with telling the story of these events, although he didn’t delve into what made these women willingly fall under the influence of Aubrey Trail. His ‘harem of witches’ were both victims and perpetrators, although I had more trouble extending empathy to them than to the young woman who died at their hands. I had no empathy for Aubrey, and I make no apologies for this. He’s evil personified, and the unusual circumstances he created led to the death of an innocent young woman. My heart broke for her and her family, especially since she was dismembered and her body parts strewn about her small town in Nebraska, which is unimaginably cruel. They never gave a thought about what they were doing and the wide circle of people who have been hurt by their actions, and that’s what this book was able to do—let the people closest to Sydney Loofe talk about her life, not simply her death, and focus the reader’s empathy to Sydney as a woman who met the wrong person on a dating website and got sucked into a dangerous, deadly dynamic of kinky sex, manipulation, and crime. Regardless, this was an outstanding example of a true-crime story that is centered on the victims rather than making the perpetrators seem like anything other than an evil man and his devoted, brainwashed, and manipulated group of female accomplices.

Bottom line: Truth is stranger than fiction, and this fast-paced true crime story proves it with a twisted web of abuse, manipulation, and crime culminating in a heinous murder, although I would have preferred to see a bit more of an exploration into *why* these people did what they did, rather that simply *what* they did.

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