The Florida woman who was accused of zipping her boyfriend into a suitcase and leaving him in there where he suffocated and died will face trial for his murder this fall.
Sarah Boone was charged in 2020 with second-degree murder for the death of 42-year-old Jorge Torres. During a court hearing last week, a judge set the start date for her murder trial to Oct. 7, more than four years after Torres’ death.
Boone told detectives that she and Torres were drinking wine while playing hide-and-seek in their home on Feb. 24, 2020, and decided it would be funny to zip Torres in a suitcase.
Boone said she zipped the suitcase up but left enough space for Torres to stick a couple of his fingers out. She said she decided to go to bed, believing Torres could get out on his own.
When she woke up the next morning, she found Torres’ body inside the suitcase.
She told law enforcement that she never meant to leave him there.
However, investigators later discovered videos on Boone’s phone that show Torres pleading for Boone to release him from the suitcase while a voice presumed to be Boone’s taunted him and accused him of cheating.
“Sarah, I can’t f—ing breathe,” Torres said.
“Yeah, that’s what you do when you choke me,” Boone responded in the video.
“Sarah, Sarah,” Torres said. “Sarah, I can’t breathe, babe.”
“That’s on you,” she responded.
“That’s what I feel like when you cheat on me,” she said later in the video.
“Please, Sarah,” Torres said.
“Shhh!” Boone responded.
According to an autopsy report, Torres had scratches on his back and neck, a cut near his busted lip, injuries on his shoulder, and contusions to his skull and forehead from blunt force trauma.
Boone’s trial has been delayed partly because she keeps changing attorneys. According to Fox 35 Orlando, lawyers appointed to represent Boone have parted ways with her because of “irreconcilable differences.”
One of Boone’s former attorneys said their attorney-client relationship had become “adversarial.” Another suggested Boone “represent herself, as no attorney can satisfy her.”
During her pretrial hearing on June 7, Boone complained about her seventh defense attorney to the judge and wrote a 58-page letter citing all her current concerns.
“I feel she is untruthful with me and full-blown prejudiced against me, which I believe adds to her nasty attitude towards me, and I do not trust her,” Boone told the judge. “Everyone constantly, constantly, constantly blames me, that I am the reason why I am supposedly going on attorney number eight, which I am not the reason for any of them.”
Her current lawyer, Patricia Cashman, told the judge that she and Boone are at an “impasse,” adding that Boone “walks out of every conference” they have.
