A Florida woman who zipped her boyfriend into a suitcase and left him to suffocate was sentenced to life in prison on Monday.
Sarah Boone, 47, was sentenced on one count of second-degree murder by Circuit Judge Michael Kraynick in an Orlando courtroom in the 2020 slaying of Jorge Torres, 42. She was convicted last month after a 90-minute jury deliberation.
Boone initially portrayed his death as a game of hide-and-seek gone wrong after a night of heavy drinking on Feb. 23, 2020, at their apartment outside Orlando. She told detectives she figured the 103-pound Torres could extract himself from the suitcase after he was zipped in on a lark, and that she went to sleep.
The next day, remembering where he was, she found him unresponsive when she opened the luggage, she told detectives at the time. But in cellphone video Boone shot, Torres could be heard saying he couldn’t breathe and begging for help. Police said the videos showed Boone laughing.
“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 had been offered a plea deal that would have reduced the charge to manslaughter, with a 15-year prison sentence, but turned it down. She testified during her trial that Torres had been abusive and that she had acted in self-defense by not letting him out.
“Yeah, that’s what you do when you choke me,” Boone said, according to an arrest report. “Oh, that’s what I feel like when you cheat on me.”
With News Wire Services
