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.
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.
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.