A Florida woman was sentenced Monday to life in prison for zip-lining her boyfriend in a suitcase and leaving him to die of asphyxiation during a history of domestic violence and alcoholism.
District Judge Michael Kraynick handed down the sentence in Orlando to Sarah Boone, 47, for the 2020 murder of 42-year-old Jorge Torres.
The jury scheduled a 90-minute Oct. 25 before convicting Boone of the second-degree murder of Jorge Torres after a 10-day trial. Boone insisted that he himself had been sexually assaulted by Torres and rejected a request for a 15-year sentence.
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Torres’ family testified in court that his death had torn them apart.
“Sarah has to give birth in prison,” said another sister, Victoria Torres. “Sarah has caused a lifetime of pain.”
In his speech, Boone confronted Torres’ abuse that he said took place over many years, criticizing the way his case was handled and the media’s coverage, but he apologized for his 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. Please forgive the Torres family.”
Earlier, Boone told Orange County Sheriff’s Office investigators that he and Torres had been drinking heavily and playing hide and seek on February 23, 2020, at their Winter Park, Florida residence, when they thought it would be fun for 103.-pound (47-kilogram) Torres to climb into a suitcase. Winter Park is a suburb of Orlando.
They had been drinking and he decided to go to bed, thinking Torres could get out of the suitcase on his own, he told detectives in an arrest report.
When he woke up the next morning, he couldn’t find Torres but then remembered that he was in the suitcase. He unzipped the suitcase and found her unresponsive, the arrest report said.
Boone was charged with second-degree murder after investigators found videos on his cell phone in which Torres can be heard yelling from inside the suitcase that he couldn’t breathe and calling Boone’s name, according to an arrest report.
“He decided to keep (Torres) in the suitcase when he said he couldn’t breathe in it to scare him,” prosecutor William Jay said in court. “Then he hit him with a baseball bat.”
Boone rejected a prosecutor’s request for a 15-year prison sentence in exchange for a reduced sentence for murder.
During his trial, Boone testified that previous violent incidents between him and Torres caused him to perceive a threat of harm and that he protected himself by keeping her in a 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.”