A Florida woman has been jailed for zipping her boyfriend into a suitcase and leaving him to die of suffocation, despite a history of domestic and alcohol abuse.
The sentence was given in Orlando by Circuit Judge Michael Kraynick to Sarah Boone, 47, for killing Jorge Torres, 42, in 2020.
The arrest report says that Boone was charged with second-degree murder after police found videos on her mobile that showed Torres screaming from inside the suitcase that he could not breathe and calling out Boone’s name over and over again.
After a 10-day trial, Boone was found guilty of second-degree murder of Jorge Torres by a jury that met for only 90 minutes on October 25. Boone said she had been a victim of domestic violence by Torres and turned down an offer of a plea deal with a 15-year sentence.
At the hearing, Torres’ family members said that his death has caused a lot of pain for them.
Olivia Torres, Sarah’s sister, said, “Sarah deserves to rot in jail.” “Sarah has hurt people for a long time.”
In her own statement, Boone listed all the ways she said Torres abused her over many years. She also said she did not like how her trial was run or how the media covered it, but she asked for forgiveness for what she did.
“I forgive myself for becoming attached to a bad guy.” I tried to break the spell… “I loved him no matter what,” Boone, who has been in jail for 58 months, said. “This did not happen by accident.” Please forgive me, Jorge. Let me off the hook, Torres family.
Boone first told investigators from the Orange County Sheriff’s Office that she and Torres had been drinking a lot and playing hide-and-seek at their home in Winter Park, Florida, on February 23, 2020.
That is when they thought it would be funny for Torres, who weighs 103 pounds (47 kg), to climb into the suitcase. Winter Park is close to Orlando.
She told police in an arrest report that she went to sleep because she thought Torres could get out of the suitcase on his own after drinking with them.
She thought Torres was in the suitcase when she woke up the next morning but could not find him. The arrest report said that when she opened the suitcase, she found him not moving.
In a court document, prosecutor William Jay said, “She chose to keep Torres in the suitcase even though he said he could not breathe in it to scare him.” “She hit him with a baseball bat after that.”
Police offered Boone a plea deal that would have given her 15 years in prison if she admitted to a lesser charge of manslaughter. Boone turned it down.
During her trial, Boone said that she felt threatened by Torres because of past violent incidents between the two of them and that she kept him in the suitcase to protect herself.
The arrest report says that Boone said, “Yeah, that is what you do when you choke me,” in one of the videos from that night. “That is how I feel when you cheat on me,” she said.