Florida woman sentenced to life for zipping boyfriend into suitcase, suffocating him

[December 03, 2024]  By CURT ANDERSON

A Florida woman was sentenced Monday to life in prison for zipping her boyfriend into a suitcase and leaving him to die of suffocation amid a history of domestic and alcohol abuse.

Circuit Judge Michael Kraynick imposed the sentence in Orlando on Sarah Boone, 47, for the 2020 killing of 42-year-old Jorge Torres.

A jury deliberated only 90 minutes Oct. 25 before convicting Boone of the second-degree murder of Jorge Torres after a 10-day trial. Boone had insisted she was herself a victim of domestic violence at the hands of Torres and had rejected a plea deal offer of a 15-year sentence.

Torres' family members testified at the hearing that his death has torn them apart.

“Sarah deserves to rot in jail,” said a sister, Victoria Torres. “Sarah has caused a lifetime of pain."

In her own statement, Boone went through a litany of abuse by Torres she said occurred over many years, decried the way her trial was handled and covered by the media, yet asked forgiveness for her actions.

“I forgive myself for falling in love with a monster. I tried breaking the spell ... I never stopped loving him," said Boone, who has been in jail for 58 months. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. Forgive me Jorge. Forgive me Torres family.”

At first, Boone told Orange County Sheriff’s Office investigators that she and Torres had been drinking heavily and playing hide-and-seek on Feb. 23, 2020, in their Winter Park, Florida, residence when they thought it would be amusing for the 103-pound (47-kilogram) Torres to climb into the suitcase. Winter Park is a suburb of Orlando.

Sarah Boone is led off in handcuffs as she glances back at supporters in a courtroom of the Orange County Courthouse in Orlando, Florida, on Monday, Dec. 2, 2024. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel via AP)

They had been drinking alcohol and she decided to go to sleep, figuring that Torres could get out of the suitcase on his own, she told detectives in an arrest report.

When she woke up the next morning, she didn’t find Torres but then remembered he was in the suitcase. She unzipped the suitcase and found him unresponsive, the arrest report said.

Boone was charged with second-degree murder after investigators found videos on her cellphone in which Torres is heard yelling from inside the suitcase that he couldn’t breathe and repeatedly calling out Boone’s name, according to the arrest report.

“She decided to keep (Torres) in the suitcase when he said he could not breathe in it to terrorize him,” prosecutor William Jay said in a court filing. “She then struck him with a baseball bat.”

Boone rejected a plea offer from prosecutors that would have imposed a 15-year prison sentence in exchange for her guilty plea to a reduced manslaughter charge.

During her trial, Boone testified that past violent incidents between her and Torres caused her to perceive a threat of imminent harm and that she acted in self-defense by keeping him in the suitcase.

“Yeah that’s what you do when you choke me,” Boone said in one of the cellphone videos from that night, according to the arrest report. “Oh, that’s what I feel like when you cheat on me.”

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