A Florida woman accused of zipping her boyfriend in a suitcase and leaving him in there to suffocate was found guilty of murder on Friday, four years after what she had initially described to authorities as a case of drunken hide-and-seek gone wrong.
Sarah Boone was convicted by an Orange County jury of second-degree murder in the February 2020 death of Jorge Torres Jr., court records show.
Torres was found dead in their Winter Park apartment after Boone said she zipped him into a suitcase during a game of hide-and-seek, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office said in a report at the time. Boone said she thought it was funny and that the pair had allegedly been drinking alcohol.
She said that she had gone upstairs and passed out, and when she woke up, she realized Torres was still inside the suitcase. When she unzipped it, Torres was unresponsive.
Boone testified at her trial, telling the court that the two had been drinking outside their apartment, and when she went inside she assumed they would be going to bed but Torres allegedly settled himself into a large suitcase.
"In my head, I said, 'Oh, man we're obviously not going to be going to sleep any time soon.' And I walked over and he was trying to get himself flat so that I couldn't tell that he was in there," she said.
Boone told the court, "I just kinda zipped him up, we thought it was funny and were joking about how he was small enough to fit inside the suitcase."
She said she "moved it around a little bit" while Torres was still inside the suitcase.
"We were joking and laughing about it," she said.
Boone said at one point the suitcase fell over and she decided that she would talk to him about his alleged abusive behavior. She also pulled out her cell phone and began videotaping, she told the court.
In the video clips, Boone allegedly mocked Torres as he begged for help, NBC affiliate WESH of Daytona Beach reported. She could be heard on the clips telling him that this is "For everything you’ve done to me."
When Torres said he couldn’t breathe, Boone said, "That’s on you. Oh, that’s what I feel like when you choke on me," the news station reported.
Boone testified that Torres' "tone changed" while he was in the suitcase and the two began arguing.
"The things that he was saying very much frightened me, cursing at me and threatening me," she told the court. "It got very heated very quickly."
Boone said Torres began pushing on the suitcase and she feared he would get out. After he was able to get a hand out of the suitcase, she hit his hand with a baseball bat until he put it back inside.
She told the court that she went upstairs and fell asleep. When she woke up, she assumed Torres had left the apartment and then she "saw the suitcase and remembered about the night prior."
The state said that Boone was not in imminent danger when she refused to unzip the suitcase, according to WESH. Prosecutors said Boone killed her boyfriend because she felt he deserved to die because of his past actions.
She is expected to be sentenced on Dec. 2.
