A Florida woman called jail the best experience of life as she was sentenced to life today after killing her boyfriend by trapping him in a zipped-up suitcase in 2020.
Sarah Boone, 47, of Orange County, Florida, was convicted in October of second-degree murder after leaving her boyfriend Jorge Torres Jr. to suffocate to death in a zipped suitcase. A judge sentenced her to life in prison on Monday afternoon.
During her sentencing hearing, Torres’s family members gave victim impact statements. But first Boone addressed Torres’s family at the hearing, recounting her allegations of abuse against him before apologizing to his loved ones.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Words do not define my shame, and I don’t know what else it is that I can say to convey to the Torres family how this happened.”
“Everyone suppose that this is one of the worst experiences of my life, and it’s actually been one of my greatest,” she added of her arrest and jailing.
“If I were not beaten to death, I was going to work myself to death on the outside. And I never had time to get back into my Bible and to pray and to be with the Lord. And I, being here incarcerated, have had time … to get closer to God to reacquaint myself to him.”
Torres’s sister, Ana Torres, gave a victim impact statement on behalf of herself and her siblings in court.
“I myself, for the first year, woke up screaming every morning or night wishing I was having a nightmare, only to wake up to remember all over again that my father is gone and I’ll never be able to hear him say he loves me ever again, to know my siblings have been affected in such a way that they are now different,” she said.
Torres died in February after he and Boone were drinking alcohol and playing a game of hide-and-seek, according to a statement from State Attorney Andrew Bain. Boone told officials that Torres climbed in the suitcase, and she then zipped it shut, Bain recounted. Boone said she then went upstairs and slept.
When she woke, Boone called 911 and claimed to have found Torres unresponsive in the suitcase. When police arrived at her home, they found him dead lying next to the luggage.
Boone told police she didn’t think he was actually stuck inside the suitcase, However, video footage that Boone recorded herself shows her taunting and laughing at Torres as he told her he couldn’t breathe and begged to be let out, according to Bain.
“I can’t f****** breathe, seriously,” Torres said in the video.
“That’s what you get,” Boone responded in the video. “That’s what I feel like when you cheat on me.”
In court, Boone told the jury she did not mean to kill Torres. Instead, Boone said that she acted in self-defense after Torres previously abused her.
“I wanted him to try to understand how I felt so maybe he could progress and be a better person,” Boone said when a prosecutor asked why she didn’t unzip the suitcase, according to local outlet WESH.
Boone’s testimony “contradicted by statements she made and video evidence showing her mocking the victim,” Bain said.
Meanwhile, Dr. Julie Harper, a psychologist who evaluated Boone, was called to give a statement by Boone’s attorney during the sentencing hearing.
Harper said Boone’s early life – including a poor relationship with her mother and her father’s death when she was in high school – influenced her relationship with Torres.
“There’s a power imbalance that I think was very seriously misaligned, as her brother and the property manager of their apartment had verified they saw her being abused, physically abused in serious ways, or the effects of the abuse… Ms. Boone handled things on her own and when other people with healthier boundaries probably…she stayed long past when it would have been smart for others — or others would have said to leave,” Harper said.
Boone’s current attorney James Owens said she was “shocked” after the jury found her guilty, according to WESH. The jury deliberated for less than two hours before convicting her.
“She felt like, you know, she had a defense, as you know,” Owens said. “So she’s just in shock. She said she would call me tomorrow morning so we’ll talk some more after she’s had some time to think about it, I’ve had some time to think about it. We’re obviously very disappointed.”
