Woman jailed for life for killing boyfriend by zipping him inside suitcase and leaving him to suffocate
3 December 2024, 14:30
A woman has been jailed for life for zipping her boyfriend into a suitcase and leaving him inside for hours until he died of suffocation.
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Sarah Boone, 47, of Florida was sentenced by Circuit Judge Michael Kraynick on Monday in Orlando for the killing of 42-year-old Jorge Torres in February 2020.
Boone was charged with second-degree murder after an investigation found videos on her phone in which she is taunting Torres, who is in the suitcase and can be heard yelling her name and saying he couldn’t breathe, according to the arrest report.
“Yeah that’s what you do when you choke me,” Boone said in one of the videos from that night, according to the arrest report. “Oh, that’s what I feel like when you cheat on me.”
Prosecutor William Jay said in a court filing: “She decided to keep (Torres) in the suitcase when he said he could not breathe in it to terrorize him. She then struck him with a baseball bat.”
The 47-year-old was convicted in October after a jury deliberation of just 90 minutes following a 10-day trial.
She had insisted she was herself a victim of domestic violence at the hands of Torres and claimed that past violent incidents caused her to perceive a threat of imminent harm meaning she acted in self-defense.
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.
Torres' family members testified at the hearing with his sister Victoria saying: “Sarah deserves to rot in jail… (She) has caused a lifetime of pain."
Despite accusing Torres of repetitive abuse and complaining about the way the trial was handled, Boone also asked for forgiveness from Torres’ family in her own statement.
“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 in their Winter Park, Florida, residence.
She said they thought it would be amusing for the 103-pound (47-kilogram) Torres to climb into the suitcase.
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.
She said when she woke up the next morning, she didn’t find Torres but then remembered he was in the suitcase and found him unresponsive, the arrest report said.
