The Florida woman accused of suffocating her boyfriend in a locked suitcase testified that they both found it “funny” he could fit inside – but that she felt too scared to let him out when he turned angry during his final moments of life.
Sarah Boone, 47, took the stand in her murder trial Tuesday to portray the gruesome 2020 death of Jorge Torres Jr., 42, as an unexpected tragedy from an innocent, drunken game of hide-and-seek, ClickOrlando reported.
“He was 5 feet, 3 inches tall, roughly, and he weighed like 100 pounds. I just kind of zipped him up. We thought it was funny,” she told the court.
“We were joking that he was small enough to fit inside the suitcase.”
Boone – who is currently on trial for second-degree murder – alleged that she even rolled Torres around in the suitcase and “he just thought it was funny.”
“We were joking and laughing about it,” she told the court, admitting she was intoxicated at the time.
However, Boone claimed that she got terrified when the still-trapped Torres — whom she now accuses of previous domestic violence — started threatening her to release him.
“If he had gotten out of the suitcase, what would’ve happened?” Boone asked, saying she was “always” in fear around Torres.
“He used to tell me he would’ve left me unrecognizable and I would’ve lost my life,” she alleged, with her defense now largely resting on her claims of suffering from battered spouse syndrome.
That abuse, she said, was why she filmed him as she laughed and ignored his pleas for help, even poking the case with a baseball bat to stop him from escaping and telling him at one point: “Yeah that’s what you do when you choke me.”
Still, despite her claim of self-defense — which was not mentioned in her initial police interviews — Boone testified that she never meant to leave him to die in the case.
Instead, she claimed that that when she felt “safe” enough, she turned the case to make sure the zipper side was exposed, and went to bed assuming he would easily be able to free himself.
Prosecutors, however, maintain that she intentionally left Torres zipped inside the suitcase, where he eventually suffocated while she slept.
Boone’s first eight attorneys claimed that the incident was accidental. The self-defense theory only emerged over the summer, when Boone hired her ninth lawyer, James Owens.
During a pre-trial hearing earlier this month, Boone claimed that she was “very hazy” and “confused” during the police interview, in which she also failed to mention abuse.
She also shocked the court by requesting professional hair and makeup for her trial – which the judge swiftly denied.
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