A Florida woman accused of killing her boyfriend by zipping him up in a suitcase and leaving him there overnight took the stand Tuesday in her defense.
Sarah Boone was arrested back in 2020 in connection to the death of boyfriend Jorge Torres Jr. At the time, she claimed the two were playing a drunken game of hide-and-seek, and that she fell asleep after zipping him in. When she awoke the next day, she said, he was dead.
She was charged with second degree murder.
Per FOX 35, testimony from witnesses for the prosecution claimed Torres’ body showed signs of blunt force trauma. Her defense team, meanwhile, has alleged Boone suffered from Battered Spouse Syndrome, saying Torres’ death was in self-defense.
Giving testimony, Boone said she was introduced to Torres at a bar by a mutual friend, after she stopped trying to “patch things up” with her then-husband. “I never thought he would interested in someone like me,” she said of meeting him, calling him “handsome,” “funny” and “smart.” The two quickly moved in together after her divorce, she said, and were together for 3.5 years before his death.
On February 23, 2020, Boone said the pair had plans to enjoy their day, “relax and go with the flow” after cleaning up the house that morning … and started drinking. With her son coming to stay with her the next day, Boone said she decided they should stay in that night, and picked up some more wine at Publix.
As they kept drinking, per Boone, they also worked on a puzzle, did some art and listened to music. At that point, she said they were intoxicated, before he tapped her on the knee and said, “You’re it,” initiating a game of hide and seek. “I looked over and I saw him settling himself in the suitcase,” said Boone, “In my head I said, ‘Oh man, we’re obviously not going to be going to sleep anytime soon.'”
“He was trying to get himself flat so I couldn’t tell he was there,” she continued. “I zipped him up, we thought it was funny and were joking about how he was small enough to fit inside of the suitcase.”
Boone said she moved the suitcase around while he was in it, as the two continued to laugh, before she zipped him up inside. “He thought it was funny,” she said, claiming they kept laughing as she did so, before she grabbed her phone to record “for him to understand that right now I feel safe and right now I have the ability to actually speak to you in a manner that normally I would not have the ability to do.”
She acknowledged she knew he could not get out at the time … but also said she didn’t remember even making the video the next morning. She admitted she was angry and wanted him to feel some “uncomfort.” Per Boone, “his tone changed” the longer he was in the suitcase and they began arguing, claiming “the things that [Torres] was saying very much frightened me and cursing at me and threatening me.”
“It got very heated very quickly … my fear was that he was going to break out of the suitcase … his hand started to come through … so I shook the suitcase, trying to get his hand to go back in, shaking it, telling him, ‘Please stop doing this to me!'” she continued, saying she was “always” in fear and believed he “probably would have made me unrecognizable or I would have lost my life.”
Boone then admitted to grabbing a baseball bat and “was trying to poke his hand to go back in,” saying she “hit his hand” with the bat, causing bruising. When his hand wouldn’t retract, she kept poking around the suitcase. “So in your mind, did you prevent him from attacking you?” asked defense, as she said, “Absolutely,” claiming he said “he was foing to f–king end me.”
Boone said his hand finally went back in and that’s when she turned the suitcase upright. She testified she believed he could breathe inside the suitcase, adding she didn’t believe he could die and never wanted to kill him. Then, she went upstairs, called her ex husband and “ended up going to sleep.” Boone said she believed she woke up around noon the next day.
“I figured Jorge was downstairs drinking or looking for jobs or may have just left,” she said, saying it was “very quiet” when she went downstairs and she began to look for him. “I saw the suitcase and remembered about the night prior and I unzipped the suitcase …. I don’t think I’ve experienced anything like that before. I was aghast and just can’t describe the feeling of terror, to a certain degree.”
“And he was still in there,” she recalled, saying she then unzipped the suitcase fully and began screaming his name and trying to do CRP while checking for a pulse. “He was purple,” she said, telling the court she called her ex, told him she thought Torres was dead and asked him to come over.
She also denied putting Torres in the suitcase herself, before pushing it down the stairs.
“Jorge was very passionate, Jorge was nice to me, on the good days. Jorge complimented me. Jorge and I were two bodies with one soul, he and I would always say,” she said of the victim, who she also claimed had good and “bad” traits.
One of those bad traits, she said, was him drinking all day … adding that he would “quite often” get violent with her. Photos were also shown to the court of numerous injuries she said were caused by the victim, including one occasion she claimed he “stabbed me in the leg [and] I almost bled to death.”
She detailed several alleged attacks and claimed he was jealous, saying he would even sometimes “go with” her to the bathroom. During another alleged occurrence, she claimed she hit him with a metal curtain rod in the forehead, but was “not allowed to go to the hospital.” Boone said he also threatened to make her “unrecognizable” in one incident, accusing her of being intimate with her ex-husband.
Photos also purportedly showed him taking a bat to her television during one alleged outburst, before allegedly he passed out on the couch, bat in hand. She also claimed he would threaten to leave the gate on the property open so she could find her blind dog’s “bloated body” in a nearby lake or run over.
She admitted she lied to police after Torres’ death, saying she was “extremely fearful of being arrested.” She added she was “always fearful” of Torres because of his alleged history of abuse, saying their relationship “wasn’t fun anymore” because she knew “something was going to happen to me, one way or another.”
Under cross examination, she was asked how quickly she went upstairs after the second video in which he was calling for help. Prosecutors wondered if she called 911 to let them know Torres was stuck in a suitcase, with Boone telling them she did not.
She was also asked again about lying to police — admitting she wasn’t truthful about causing some of the injuries on Torres’ body — and said there were times in the past where she went to the hospital and “tell them things that were not true.”
Revisiting the night of the alleged “hide and seek” game, Boone stepped down from the stand to demonstrate how she zipped the suitcase shut. She was also asked if she did “anything to escape the predicament you zipped him up in?”, with Boone saying “No,” before prosecutors rested.
According to her arrest affidavit, Boone told deputies the couple had been drinking during the night, and agreed it would be funny if Torres climbed inside the suitcase. She said she passed out on the bed and woke hours later to find him unresponsive inside, before calling 911.
Police found his body lying near the blue suitcase, noting a small laceration on his lip and bruising around his eye, Click Orlandoreported. Boone gave deputies consent to search her phone, where they found two videos; they showed Boone laughing while Torres repeatedly told her he couldn’t breathe, investigators said.
The video in question, seen above, shows Boone laughing, taunting Torres Jr. and accusing him of abusing her and cheating while he struggled to get out, telling her he couldn’t breathe.
“For everything you’ve done to me. F–k you. F–k you. Stupid,” she can be heard saying, as he tells her, “I can’t f–king breathe, Sarah.”
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out!” she says at one point.
While being interrogated, Boone claimed she didn’t remember making the videos and said she didn’t believe Torres Jr. was stuck inside the suitcase when she went upstairs.
“I didn’t completely lock it. I opened it with one finger, I left enough in there for him to get out. And I wasn’t planning on going upstairs and going to sleep,” she told police. “My intention was not to leave him in there. I thought he was okay. That’s how we are with each other. Nobody understands our relationship.”
In a hearing last month, her newest attorney, James Owens, told the judge they plan to use the “battered spouse syndrome for the defense.”
Per CourtTV, the trial has been delayed 17 times, as eight of Boone’s attorneys have withdrawn from the case over her alleged behavior.
