Florida woman who put boyfriend in suitcase sentenced to life in prison for murder

A Florida woman was sentenced to life in prison Monday for stuffing her boyfriend in a suitcase and letting him suffocate amid domestic violence and alcohol abuse.

District Judge Michael Kraynick sentenced Sarah Boone, 47, in Orlando for the 2020 killing of 42-year-old Jorge Torres.

A jury deliberated for just 90 minutes on October 25 before convicting Boone of second-degree murder in the death of Jorge Torres following a 10-day trial. Boone had insisted that she herself was a victim of domestic violence at the hands of Torres and had rejected the offer of a 15-year sentence.

Torres’ family members testified at the hearing that his death tore them apart.

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

In her own testimony, Boone endured a litany of abuse from Torres that she said spanned many years, condemned the way her trial was handled and reported by the media, but asked for forgiveness for her actions .

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

Initially, Boone told Orange County Sheriff’s Office investigators that she and Torres had been drinking heavily and playing hide-and-seek at their Winter Park, Florida, residence on February 23, 2020, when they thought it was going to be fun for the 103 – Pound Torres to climb into the suitcase.

They had been drinking and she decided to go to sleep, assuming Torres could get out of the suitcase on her own, she told investigators in an arrest report.

When she woke up the next morning, she didn’t find Torres, but then she 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 could be heard screaming from the suitcase that he couldn’t breathe and repeatedly calling Boone’s name, the arrest report said.

“She decided to keep (Torres) in the suitcase when he said he couldn’t breathe it in to terrorize him,” prosecutor William Jay said in a court filing. “Then she hit him with a baseball bat.”

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

During her trial, Boone testified that previous violent incidents between her and Torres caused her to sense the 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 cell phone videos from that night, according to the arrest report. “Oh, that’s how I feel when you cheat on me.”