Simon, what was your favorite game to play as a small child? Was it hide-n-seek? How often have you played hide-n-seek as an adult? I know you have children, so I assume it’s possible you’ve played it recently, but what about playing it with another adult, perhaps with your wife on a Sunday night after a few drinks?
No, that is not an inappropriate euphemism; I’m talking about a game of real, honest-to-God, literal hide-n-seek with your wife…
You two haven’t played it recently (I assume for the sake of this bit)? How strange…
On today’s episode of the Casual Criminalist, a 42-year-old woman’s night of drinking and playing hide-n-seek with her 42-year-old boyfriend quickly morphs into a homicide investigation when that woman awakens to find him dead inside a suitcase the following morning—or so she claims. This is the story of the death of Jorge Torres (pronounced the English way, George) and the trial of Sarah Boone, a woman who was so insufferable she went through eight separate public defenders in the leadup to her trial, one of which stated before a judge that her demands were “taxing every fiber of our bodies.”
She truly was every public defender’s worst nightmare.
9-1-1, What is Your Emergency?
Our story today begins at exactly 1:01PM on February 24th, 2020, in Orange County, Florida (not California), just outside Orlando. If that county name sounds familiar to any viewers of this channel, that’s because it’s the same county where the Casey Anthony investigation and media circus took place roughly 12 years earlier. And, just like the Anthony Case, this one began with a very, very strange emergency call…
The caller was Sarah Boone, whose first words to the operator after providing her address were:
“My boyfriend is dead…”
Her tone was flat and lacked emotion, making her sound almost annoyed to be on the phone, but the operator paid this little mind. She instead ordered Sarah to stay on the line as she then connected their call to Orlando’s Fire and Rescue service to explain the situation and get someone en route to her. A new operator then took over the call and asked Sarah for clarification about her exact address, asking if she lived near Mckenzie Drive; however, Sarah, still speaking flatly, replied:
“I don’t know where that is…”
Very helpful, Sarah.
At this point, the operator then asked what had happened, and Sarah, now sounding a bit more frantic, began to tell her story for the first time. In her own words, she said:
“My boyfriend and I were playing last night, and I… I put him in a suitcase, and we were playing… like, kind of a hide-n-seek kind of thing… So, I fell asleep, and I woke up, and he was dead in the suitcase, so I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what happened… He has, like, blood coming out of his mouth, so I don’t know if he had, like, an aneurism or what happened. He’s purple…”
The rescue operator then assured Sarah that a crew was on their way and asked for more details about the exact position of her boyfriend’s body inside the apartment, asking if he was “hanging somewhere.” It seemed the operator was having trouble wrapping his head around the idea of a fully grown man stuffed inside a suitcase as part of a game; it just wasn’t clicking for him.
To this, Sarah replied:
“No, I pulled him out of the suitcase. I tried giving him CPR…”
Working under the assumption that Jorge Torres may still be alive—which is standard procedure until a rescue crew is on the scene to assess a person’s condition—the operator then went through a set of standard questions before asking if Sarah had access to an AED (defibrillator). When Sarah said she did not, he then told her to lay Jorge on his back and began giving her instructions on how to perform CPR manually. He hoped Sarah would do as instructed without question, but Sarah did not seem willing to participate—at least at first. Instead, she repeatedly cut him off while he was providing her with the possibly life-saving instructions to remind him that Jorge was “stiff” and “purple.”
Growing impatient, the operator then said:
“Right… Okay, listen. That’s fine; we’re still going to do compressions on him, okay? Alright? Take the middle of your hand on his breastbone, right at the center of his chest, right between the nipples, and put your other hand on top of that hand…”
Sarah cut him off once again:
“I’m telling you… just by looking at him… you can tell…”
She was completely unwilling to try—until she screamed and said:
“Okay, he just gurgled…”
At this point, Sarah became slightly more cooperative as the operator once again walked her through the steps of CPR. He told her to start pumping, and she confirmed that she was. He told her not to speak to him and instead count out loud so he could help her keep rhythm.
In the recording of this call, Sarah can then be heard counting:
“One… two… three… four…”
This went on for a grand total of 11 seconds, until Sarah reached the number fifteen, at which time she exasperatedly declared:
“This is… this isn’t working. Please, just hurry up…”
Unsure of why Sarah had stopped, the operator then reminded her not to speak to him, not to tell them to hurry up because a crew was already en route, and to keep doing as instructed. Reluctantly, Sarah did as she was told, starting compressions again and counting all the way to thirty-two this time before stopping. She then once again asserted “he’s purple,” followed by “please hurry,” and then randomly shouting “we were playing hide-n-seek!”
In the brief silence that followed, Sarah then added:
“This is horrible… This is horrific… What happened? Like, what happened? We were playing hide-n-seek…”
After another few tense moments, Sarah then stated:
“I think [the ambulance] is here… It’s open! Come in! Can I stop now?”
The rescue crew could then be heard entering her apartment and asking Sarah if Jorge had any known medical conditions. She stated he did not, and they got to work; however, as Sarah had asserted, it was far too late. At only 42 years old, Jorge Torres was pronounced dead at the scene.
The call then disconnected.
An Innocent Game
The odd conversation between Sarah and Orange County Fire and Rescue had lasted a total of eight minutes from start to finish, but the strangeness that morning did not stop when Sarah hung up the phone. As first responders noted while waiting for officers from the Orange County PD to arrive at 4748 Frantz Ct., Sarah was visibly nervous and fidgety while pacing around on her front porch. She was also stumbling, possibly intoxicated, and would not cooperate with their instructions. This would continue to be a theme throughout the rest of the morning, especially when Officer Kayla Rodriguez pulled up to the scene.
Now, despite the fact that her boyfriend of multiple years was dead inside their shared living space, Sarah’s main concerns that morning seemed to be focused on herself and things that were not time-sensitive in the slightest. For example, the very first thing Sarah asked Rodregues when she first approached was if she herself was allowed to walk over and explain what was going on to her apartment’s manager, explain why there were multiple firetrucks and police cars clogging up the road and causing a scene. When Rodriguez told Sarah that notifying her landlord about Jorge’s death wasn’t a priority at that moment and that someone else from the Orange County PD would handle it, she then immediately switched gears and started asking to go back inside her apartment to get a sip of her Dr.
Pepper because she had “cotton mouth.” Rodriguez then told Sarah she would not be allowed to enter the crime scene again until a forensic team looked everything over, so Sarah then crouched down and began drinking water straight from the outdoor spicket attached to the side of her unit. She then asked if she could walk around the exterior of her building to her back patio to smoke a cigarette; Rodriguez, once again, said no.
Keep in mind that Rodriguez had just pulled into the complex and had not even introduced herself to Sarah when these requests began, so this interaction definitely threw up more than a few red flags. However, this was only the beginning, and Sarah would continue to raise eyebrows as she began expounding on her story about how Jorge had ended up in that suitcase in the first place…
According to Sarah, the prior day—Sunday—had been fairly normal. She and Jorge had spent the entire day together because he was off work and she was unemployed. They had only left home once that afternoon to buy cigarettes and had otherwise been doing stuff together inside the home to occupy their time. They had then eaten dinner and popped open a bottle of wine before settling in to play some board games later that night.
After this, they had then gone on to work on a puzzle and “make some art” while sitting in their living room. But then everything went downhill…
In their simi-drunken state, Sarah said, they both thought it would be absolutely hilarious for Jorge, who was physically very small and only weighed about 106lbs (48KG), to see if he could fit inside the suitcase that was sitting in the corner of their living room. This suitcase was small, blue, rectangular, and usually lived in their upstairs bedroom closet; they had brought it down the previous day because they intended to donate it to charity along with some old clothing they no longer needed. This is what she referred to as “hide and seek.”
At this point, Sarah said, Jorge then willingly squatted into the suitcase, folding up his arms and legs into a ball, and allowed Sarah to zip it closed. Then she took a seat on the couch and started lightheartedly laughing as she watched him struggle to get out.
After observing this display for a short time, Sarah said, she then decided to “tease” Jorge further by pretending to walk away and leave him zipped up. She ran upstairs and called down to him from the top of the stairwell, saying he would have to “get himself out” if he wanted to come upstairs and have sex with her. She said she did this because she truly believed he was capable of unzipping the suitcase himself from the inside because she had deliberately left two fingers’ worth of room in the zipper and his hands were positioned near said zipper.
After this, Sarah then started preparing the bedroom and laid across the bed to wait for him; however, because Jorge did not immediately come upstairs and the alcohol was beginning to get to her, she fell asleep. By her best estimation, this was just after midnight.
The next morning, Sarah said, she had awoken sometime after 11am and couldn’t immediately remember the details from the prior night because of the alcohol. She saw that Jorge was not in bed with her but assumed he must have woken up before her and was then downstairs watching TV and waiting for her to wake up. So, believing this, she decided to stay in bed and browse the internet on her laptop for about an hour. Then, at around noon, she got up to go downstairs herself—and that’s when she saw the still-zipped suitcase laying on its side; that’s when all the memories of the prior night came flooding back.
In that moment, Sarah said, she rushed to Jorge, unzipped the case, and pulled him out. She believed he was already dead because—as stated multiple times on the 9-1-1 call—his face was purple, but she started chest compressions anyway. When this didn’t immediately work, she then stood up and began to panic, and because she was still hungover and not thinking clearly, she then called her ex-husband, Brian, to ask what she should do. This was when Brian informed her that she needed to hang up and call the police immediately.
Sarah had then begged him to come over, and he had agreed. She called 9-1-1 when he arrived at her apartment just before 1:00pm; he was still standing in the parking lot, waiting to speak with Rodrigez at that moment.
(Note: while it may seem like Sarah’s story was told in a cohesive manner, you can thank me for that, not her. Sarah’s actual retelling of her story was much more jumbled and rambly as she went off on strange tangents and continued to make more requests throughout, like repeatedly asking for her Dr Pepper after already being told “no” multiple times. Those few paragraphs of information you just heard took Sarah about 25 minutes to relay to Rodriguez.)
Now, to say that Rodriguez had more than a few questions was a massive understatement, but it wasn’t her job to dive too much deeper into the facts of the case because detectives from the local homicide unit were already on their way. She was there to simply secure the crime scene and take down initial statements, which she had done. She had also documented how Jorge’s body was lying flat on the downstairs floor beside the open suitcase, how there was an empty wine bottle on the counter, and how some of the wall décor had been taken off the walls.
She had also talked to Brian briefly, confirming that he had come over that afternoon as described and that he didn’t have any more information about what may have happened the previous night because he had not been present. All of this corroborated Sarah’s story.
Seeing that Sarah looked like she was about to physically collapse at this point, Officer Rodriguez then sat her down on the sidewalk in front of a neighbor’s apartment unit to help her calm down, and that is how detectives Chelsea Koepsell and Scott Lowen found her when they arrived at the scene a short time later.
Wasting no time after introducing themselves, Koepsell and Lowen then walked Sarah through the events of the previous night once again before asking permission to search and process her home and cellphone. Sarah agreed to this by telling them to “do whatever they need to do” and signing a waiver of her rights.
Keep this in mind because it will become very, very important later on.
They also asked for clarification about a few small details, such as what position Jorge had been in when she first zipped him up, if she had moved the suitcase around at all afterwards, how intoxicated they were during this “game” of hide-and-seek and so on. Sarah replied by saying Jorge had been lying on his side in the fetal position with his arms tucked in, she had not moved the case at all, and they were buzzed but not drunk; they had only shared a single bottle of opened wine, after all.
While answering these questions, Koepsell and Lowen couldn’t help but take note of the fact that Sarah seemed annoyed that they were involved in the investigation at all. It seemed as if she was expecting a Fire and Rescue team to arrive, pronounce Jorge dead, remove his body, and be on their way. At most, she would have to deal with a responding officer like Rodrigez, but that is obviously not how things were playing out, and Sarah was visibly bitter about it.
She was also very concerned about when exactly Jorge’s family would be notified about his death, and when Koepsell and Lowen said they would be delivering the news before the end of the day, she began to panic and begged them not to. When the detectives then asked Sarah why she was so concerned about Jorge’s family, she explained that she was “in fear for her life” because his family “hated her” for being a “white devil.” She said his adult children were going to kill her because they would not understand or accept that Jorge’s death was an accident; they would think she killed him on purpose…
The detectives then likely resisted the urge to look at each other with raised eyebrows before asking the obvious question: why would they think that, Sarah?
To which, she replied:
“They’ve always thought that…”
—which probably wasn’t the best thing to say at that moment.
The Real Sarah Boone
Now, I’ve not made any attempt whatsoever to hide the fact that I, the writer, personally do not like Sarah Boone, and that’s because I have, during my hours upon hours of research, honestly been unable to locate a single positive thing about her. She is, according to members of her own family, quite unpleasant to deal with, which is something Koepsell and Lowen were already starting to pick up on after spending just a few hours with her. They were also picking up on the fact that certain aspects of her story didn’t add up because of some glaring irregularities and inconsistencies. I’m sure many in the audience have already scratched their heads over a few of them, but let’s just run through them very quickly for the sake of making sure were all on the same page:
First, the timing of Sarah’s 911 call was exceptionally unusual. She claimed to have fallen asleep just after midnight the prior night, but the call hadn’t come through until 1:01PM, nearly 13 hours later. Even if she had stayed in bed for over an hour after waking up as she claimed, that would mean she had slept for at least 11 hours straight. That wasn’t impossible, but it was highly improbable, which made investigators wonder what time she had really discovered Jorge’s body, if she had woken up earlier than stated and used the extra time to cover up evidence of something more nefarious.
Second, they also acknowledged how resistant Sarah had been to performing CPR on Jorge during the call and noted how, even though she claimed to have attempted CPR before the call began, that didn’t seem likely. CPR requires a person to be lying flat on their back, and Sarah did not flip Jorge onto his back until the middle of the call. They knew this for sure because the “gurgling” sound that made Sarah scream while speaking to the operator only occurs when a body is turned, flipped, or moved after death. This suggested he was not lying on his back when the call began.
Third, there was also a major problem with her hide-n-seek/falling asleep story: if they were playing hide-n-seek as Sarah claimed—which was already a strange thing for a 42-year-old woman to claim—how would it make any sense whatsoever for her to zip him up? How would you go about seeking someone when you are the person who helped them hide in the first place? Plus, what Sarah described to Rodreguez wasn’t hide-n-seek; if anything, it was mere drunken antics, so why call it hide-and-seek numerous times? And speaking of drunken…
Fourth, Sarah’s self-reported intoxication level was inconsistent; how does one share an opened bottle of wine with another adult and then pass out drunk several hours later? Furthermore, how does one awaken almost 11 hours later with no memory of the prior night after consuming so little?
Lastly—and this something we’ve yet to discuss but threw up more red flags than anything—despite the fact that Sarah claimed her and Jorge’s Sunday together had been “normal,” the medical examiner’s report showed there were several serious injuries on Jorge’s body at the time of his death, including scratch marks on his back and neck, a contusion on his left shoulder, a cut on his lip, and lots of bruising on his skull and across his body. All of these injuries were recent, the report also stated, likely occurring within 24 hours of his death. That last part was very important because Sarah had insisted that she and Jorge had spent the entire day alone together inside their apartment on Sunday, meaning there were only two people who could have been responsible for inflicting those wounds…
Coincidentally, investigators also noticed a baseball bat in the living room, not very far from the suitcase, though they could not say for certain that this bat was the cause of any of those injuries.
Now, with all that under consideration, Koepsell and Lowen were very eager to speak with someone besides Sarah, and I can’t say I blame them, so they sent her away to stay with a friend while they continued their investigation. Their primary goal at this point was to see if anyone else knew what had happened the previous night and to get an idea of who Sarah really was on a day-to-day basis. They also wanted to know what “normal” meant when it came to her relationship with Jorge and, furthermore, if the type of injuries seen on his body were atypical, i.e. was abuse a regular occurrence.
Because he was already on the scene, Sarah’s ex-husband, Brian, became a great source of information on all things Sarah, which was appropriate because he was by far the person best equipped to shed some light on the real Sarah Boone. He had, after all, known her for over 20 years.
While speaking with several officers at different times, Brian explained that he and Sarah had met in the 1990s and married in 2005, after which time they had gone on to have one child together, a son named Lucas. But their marriage had been a complete disaster, primarily because, according to him, Sarah was a raging alcoholic who had been spiraling further and further into depression and self-destructive behaviors over the past few years. She hadn’t always been this way, he said, but Lucas’s birth had caused her to fall off the deep end; Sarah resented being a mother, you see, and felt “trapped’ because her old, carefree lifestyle was now over.
(Fun Fact: in this way, this case once again reminds me of the Casey Anthony script as Casey was also highly inconvenienced by her own child, allegedly.)
In Brian’s words:
“Before [Lucas was born]… whatever she wanted… if she was outside having a drink [and said] ‘oh I want to go play pool,’ well, [she went] over across the street and played pool a little bit. That’s not happening anymore once you got a kid…”
However, Sarah did try her hardest to keep up that lifestyle for as long as possible, responsibilities be damned. Brian told how she would often go out on weekdays during their marriage—nights when Lucas had school the next morning and Brian himself had to go to work—and not come home until the wee hours of the morning. She would then stumble in, sloppy drunk, often accompanied by complete strangers she had met at the bar that night, people who were hoping to keep the party going after closing. They would then hang out on his and Sarah’s back porch or in their living room, shouting and raving drunkenly, until Brian was forced to kick them out when they began to disturb the neighbors.
Other family members corroborated this claim by saying that Brian and Lucas had been forced to come over to their home in the middle of the night on multiple occasions to sleep because Sarah’s “friends” were being too rowdy.
When asked why Brian didn’t just tell Sarah to keep it down or refuse to allow her friends inside, he then explained how Sarah was known to get physically violent when she drank, particularly toward him and especially when he tried to make her stop drinking. She would punch, slap, and claw at him, and although he attempted to downplay this abuse to officers by saying she was “too small” to actually abuse him, it’s obvious that wasn’t true. He would often go to work with bruises on his face and arms and scratches on his neck. His coworkers would ask what had happened, and he would shrug it off, saying:
“…you know how Sarah is…”
When asked about whether or not he ever retaliated for this abuse, Brian said he did not:
”…I never got that drunk, and I had restraint. I never touched her back…”
Once again, friends and family members stood behind Brian on this, asserting that Sarah was always the aggressor, and Brian never laid a finger on her; the abuse always went one way. However, Sarah’s relationship with Jorge Torres was a different story altogether…
According to Brian, Sarah and Jorge had met at a bar during his and Sarah’s marriage, and their abuse of each other was fairly mutual. Brian said Jorge didn’t possess or value restraint the way he did and would “hurt Sarah back,” when she started hitting him. And because Jorge and Sarah were roughly the same size, they were fairly evenly matched, which meant that their fights often went on for a significant amount of time—sometimes hours—and both would walk away with not-insignificant injuries.
Koepsell and Lowen were able to verify these claims by taking a quick peak into the arrest records of every involved; Brian himself had never been arrested for domestic violence, but both Sarah and Jorge had been arrested multiple times in the years since the pair moved in together. In fact, Jorge had been arrested three separate times in the prior year alone, 2019, most recently after he repeatedly punched Sarah in the side of the head and sliced open her knee with a sharp abject. Jorge was actually still on probation for that last offense, and Sarah had an active restraining order against him at the time of his death. This meant Jorge wasn’t even supposed to be inside Sarah’s apartment Sunday night…
For now, we’ll stick with Brian because officers were curious about what exactly, after years of putting up with the cheating, emotional neglect, and physical and mental abuse, had been the final straw that led to their divorce. Brian’s answer to this, it turns out, would provide even more valuable insight into how Sarah saw herself, how she attempted to present herself to strangers, and what her mental state was like daily.
Brian said that, while he had been reluctant to break things off for the longest time for Lucas’s sake, there was a moment during the final death throes of their marriage that made him realize just how remarkably lost Sarah was. It happened on their second or third appointment with a couple’s therapist, when Sarah began blatantly lying about the details of their marriage and her abuse. Sarah knew that she was lying and saying things that Brian himself knew weren’t true, but she simply didn’t care; she was more concerned about what their therapist thought about her than acknowledging reality so they could potentially fix their issues and their marriage.
She was attempting to brazenly gaslight Brian into accepting responsibility for her abuse in real time and was incapable of accepting any responsibility for her own actions. In her version of events, she was the victim in their relationship, and it was Brian’s fault that she had to “stand up for herself” on a near-daily basis. It was also his fault that she had to drink to cope with the pain.
In that moment, sitting on a sofa inside what I assume was a stereotypical therapist’s office, Brian realized that Sarah was a narcissist and an extreme manipulator. She was also, as stated, a terrible person who had no interest in helping herself. Their therapist seemed to realize this around the same time too, but when she attempted to confront Sarah about her lies, Sarah stormed out of the office and refused to return, despite Brian’s pleas. That was effectively the end of everything between them, Brian said, although it would take some time for the divorce to be finalized.
Once again, family members would later confirm that Brian’s assessment of Sarah was spot-on. Several indicated that, while Sarah saw herself as a loving mother and all-round good person, she was actually arrogant, self-obsessed, delusional, bitter, greedy, aggressive, and simply a nasty person—and all of those character flaws had worsened after her separation from Brian. Without him to hold her together as best he could, her nighttime escapades turned to full-blown alcoholism, her occasional infidelity turned into constant hook-ups with different men, and her relationship with Lucas shriveled to a fraction of what it once was. In the subsequent years, she hadn’t even been abiding by their court-approved custody agreement, which had been putting serious strain on their entire family.
You see, on paper, Brian and Sarah had entered into a joint custody agreement, which stipulated that Lucas would stay at Brian’s home on Mondays and Tuesdays, at Sarah’s on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and they would both alternate weekends. This way, both he and Sarah would have five uninterrupted days with Lucas at a time; however, things almost never worked out that way. Sarah was very flaky when it came to picking Lucas up on the correct day and would often not show up when Brian expected her.
This left him struggling to find childcare at the last minute so he could go to work on more than one occasion. She was also known to call Brian late at night, sometimes as late as 11 or 12pm, to inform him that she was “on her way” to drop Lucas off at his house early because she wanted to go out partying that weekend.
All this effectively meant that Brian had kept primary custody of Lucas for the past several months, with Sarah only actually keeping him one or two nights each week. By the time of Jorge’s death, she was down to one or two days every other week, and Brian had not spoken to her in several days. For this reason, he was not able to provide any further information about what may have transpired in the days and hours directly before Jorge’s death, so the detectives were forced to look elsewhere, and Brian was allowed to leave the scene to go pick Lucas up from school and return home.
Fortunately, there were a few neighbors who stepped forward to claim that they had overheard fighting and what sounded like someone or something falling down the staircase inside Sarah’s unit the prior night. This further cemented Koepsell and Lowen’s belief that Sarah’s claim of having a “normal, good night” with Jorge was complete B-S, and they were about to find even more rock-solid evidence of that…
The Videos
Now, remember earlier in the episode when I said that Sarah allowing Koepsell and Lowen to process her cellphone would become very, very important later on? Well, I wasn’t exaggerating, because what forensic detectives eventually found on that phone was possibly the most damning evidence imaginable. It was evidence that would not only be enough to see her arrested and charged with Jorge’s murder, but it would also make mounting a creditable defense at trial almost impossible—although God knows she would try.
You see, on the night of Jorge’s death, Sarah had been much, much more intoxicated than she originally claimed to Officer Rodriguez. She had been so intoxicated, in fact, that she had completely forgotten about using her cellphone’s camera to record two extremely disturbing videos of Jorge while he was zipped up inside the suitcase. These videos showed Jorge begging to be let out as Sarah drunkenly mocked him.
Yes, I’m serious—and Sarah willingly handed those videos to the police on a silver platter without even remembering they existed.
In total, there were about 2 and a half minutes’ worth of footage across both videos—one long and one short—which have been made available online, allowing me to describe them in fairly great detail.
In the long one, the zipped, blue suitcase can be seen lying face down in the corner of Sarah and Jorge’s living room. From inside it, the weak and muffled voice of Jorge can be heard calling out to Sarah by name, begging to be let out. Sarah, who is recording from behind the camera, can be heard speaking to Jorge while sitting on the couch.
Slurring her words drunkenly, Sarah states:
“For everything you’ve done to me…”
Then, as he continues to call out to her, she says:
“Fuck you, stupid… That’s my name… Don’t wear it out…”
At this point, the suitcase jiggles back and forth a bit, and Jorge can be heard pleading:
“Sarah, baby, I can’t fucking breathe. Seriously…”
To this, Sarah replies:
“[That’s how it] feels when you choke me… That’s how I feel when you cheat on me…”
At one point, the suitcase flexes, indicating that Jorge might be trying to bust his way out, but the zipper won’t give. Sarah can then be heard laughing as she coldly taunts him:
“Wiggle around some. I want to get video of it.”
As Jorge’s begging voice is getting weaker, she continues:
“You should probably shut the fuck up now…”
The long video then proceeds like this for another minute or so, during which time Jorge continues to periodically call out, repeatedly stating in no uncertain terms that he cannot breathe, nor can he let himself out. Sarah remains unbothered as she taunts him.
In the second video that was taken directly after, a much shorter video, the suitcase can be seen lying in a different spot, indicating Sarah had moved it at some point once Jorge was inside. It was now flipped right-side up beside the kitchen bar. Jorge was still alive and calling out to her in this video, but his voice was noticeably very weak, obviously because he was on the verge of blacking out, possibly because he was facedown. Yet Sarah still showed no concern as she continued to taunt him.
Having now just seen and heard some of Jorge Torres’s last moments alive, Koepsell and Lowen knew Sarah’s entire story was nonsense; her innocent game was actually cold-blooded murder motivated by jealousy and revenge.
Confronting the Narcissist
Now, while the discovery of these videos alone was more than enough to arrest and charge Sarah Boone with the murder of Jorge Torres, detectives Koepsell and Lowen knew they could make the local prosecutor’s job much easier if they could somehow get Sarah to admit to killing Jorge on purpose. This, of course, was a longshot considering they now knew Sarah wasn’t the type of person to ever admit fault for anything in her life, but even if they couldn’t quite get a full confession, there was a strong belief among investigators that her compulsive need to save face would likely cause her to further incriminate herself, if they confronted her with some of the more damming holes in her story. After all, any statements they managed to pry out of her could be used against her at trial, which could possibly help rule out a potential insanity or self-defense plea, which meant there was no downside to trying; it could only benefit them and hurt Sarah.
For this reason, Sarah was not immediately arrested once her warrant was approved; she was instead politely invited to the station for a sit-down, where Koepsell and Lowen planned to kindly ask for an explanation for both the autopsy results and the cellphone footage. It was an ambush, and Sarah, who had absolutely no idea she would not be leaving the station that day no matter what she said, fell right into it. She walked into the station with a smile on her face and a notebook full of questions in her hand.
She was then escorted into a room and read her Miranda rights again before agreeing to speak with Koepsell and Lowen. Very soon, however, that smile would begin to fade.
With Koepsell deciding to take the lead, she quickly disregarded Sarah’s list of questions by telling her that she and Lowen had some questions of their own that needed answered first. She then kicked off the conversation by revealing the discovery of the scratch marks on Jorge’s back and neck, the contusion on his left shoulder, the cut on his lip, and the bruising on his skull and across his body. After this, she then sat back and slyly waited for an explanation that she knew Sarah couldn’t provide.
Sarah, of course, claimed to be dumbfounded and stated she had no idea where most of the injuries had come from. The only ones she could account for were the scratches, which she said likely resulted from rough sex in the days leading up to Jorge’s death; however, she also suggested Jorge was “notoriously clumsy” and had a habit of running into walls and falling off bicycles, which could explain the bruising and cuts.
To apply more pressure, Koepsell then revealed the part of the autopsy that stated all the aforementioned injuries had occurred within 24 hours of Jorge’s death, and because Sarah had repeatedly said they were alone together all day, this was almost certainly the moment Sarah knew she was in big, big trouble—and Koepsell hadn’t even gotten to the video yet!
Once again claiming to be shocked by this revelation, Sarah then repeatedly stated she was not responsible for hurting Jorge, that they had not gotten into any altercations in the days or weeks leading up to his death, and that things were “very good” between them. She kept repeating this statement, saying “things were good,” while emphasizing that Jorge was keeping up with his probation, working, and attempting to go to college. She tried to paint their relationship in the best light possible in order to eliminate any motivation she might have for wanting him dead; however, directly after saying all this, she then also went on contradict herself, reminding Koepsell and Lowen that she was still being regularly abused by him, citing the restraining order as proof.
She did this because she wanted them to understand that he was the abuser in their relationship, not her. She emphasized this multiple times by saying:
“I don’t think you understand… Jorge abuses me…”
Seeking to further support her claims, Sarah then directed Koepsell to look into the photos and videos on her cellphone, where she said they could watch Jorge breaking her flatscreen TV in a fit of rage with a baseball bat. She could also see photos of past bruises and cuts on her body and face that Jorge was responsible for.
At this point, I imagine it must have been extraordinarily difficult for Koepsell to hold in her excitement for the big reveal, but she and Lowen weren’t quite done tightening the screws just yet; first, they wanted to address the real amount of alcohol Sarah had consumed Sunday night…
When asked about her normal drinking, Sarah indicated she only drank because Jorge forced her to. Jorge was an alcoholic, she said, who drank daily because of depression, work stress, stress surrounding his “bonkers ex-wife,” and so on. She said she recognized that he had a problem but couldn’t get him to stop. In fact, not only would he not stop drinking, but he also insisted she drink with him every night.
This resulted in her having wine with dinner during the week and a few drinks on weekends, but those were almost never by choice.
Once again, nothing was ever Sarah’s fault, not even her alcoholism, but she continued to maintain that she was not drunk Sunday night, nor had she been drinking Monday morning.
By this point, Koepsell’s personal dislike of Sarah was beginning to show through as her attitude became somewhat standoffish during the interview. She couldn’t help but notice that, as is typical of extreme narcissists, Sarah was very concerned about what the police and others thought about her. It was clear she didn’t want the facts of the case to dictate their opinion of her and would take every opportunity to sing her own praises so they would hopefully start to like her. But this was backfiring.
At one point, Sarah randomly told a story about how she had graciously bailed Jorge out of jail following on of their domestic dispute and claimed his probation officer once congratulated her for “helping Jorge get better.” She claimed he told her that she was “good for Jorge.”
She also continued to refuse to acknowledge the injuries. Whenever they were brought up, she would pivot to talking about her own prior injuries or something completely unrelated, such as how violent Jorge’s ex-wife was, and how much Jorge’s family hated Sarah herself.
(Note: for the record, Sarah’s claims about Jorge’s family seem to be largely baseless. Some of them do seem to have their issues, especially Jorge’s brother, but as far as I can tell, they are not the violent psychopaths Sarah has described. Her persistent attacks on them were likely designed to discredit anything bad they may have said about her when Koepsell and Lowen informed them of Jorge’s death.)
Sarah’s constant self-aggrandizement and the multiple abrupt subject changes got so bad at one point that Lowen had to stop Sarah mid-sentence to ask:
“What does any of this have to do with Sunday night?”
Sarah didn’t have an answer for this because she couldn’t actually admit that she was only trying to sing her own praises so they would feel sorry for her.
So, after a while of going back and forth and getting nowhere, the detectives then began pivoting to the moment they had been building toward; they asked Sarah if she remembered taking any videos on Sunday night. Sarah, suddenly pale in the face, said she did not, and this was when Koepsell opened a laptop that had been sitting in the room with them and began playing the first of the videos back for her. It should have been a bombshell moment, but something unexpected happened…
Approximately 5 seconds into the first video, as soon as Sarah can first be heard drunkenly taunting Jorge from behind the camera, the laptop dies and leaves them all sitting in silence. This was terrible timing and could have spoiled the entire buildup, but it ended up working out in the detectives’ favor anyway because it put an extreme amount of pressure on Sarah.
You see, at this point, Sarah didn’t know exactly what was on the video, but she knew a video existed and it almost certainly wasn’t going to paint her in a positive light. So, realizing that the detectives knew everything she had told them about Sunday night up until that moment was a lie, she began to panic.
While Koepsell went to go retrieve a charging cable, Lowen sat with Sarah and let her continue speaking. She pleaded with him:
“I don’t think you understand who I am… I have always been a straight-A student. I am an outstanding mother to my son… I excel at everything.”
She was cracking.
Lowen, stalling for time, then advised Sarah that she should wait to see the rest of the video before saying anything else, but Sarah kept talking and eventually ended up saying she didn’t want to see the video at all.
By now, Koepsell was back in the room and the laptop was booting back up, so she told Sarah that she needed to explain herself and her actions, otherwise they would have to take the video at face value and assume the worst. In response, Sarah then agreed to watch it, but as soon as it started playing, she asked Koepsell to stop the video and said she simply couldn’t bear to hear it.
Now, with all their cards on the table, the detectives then began pressuring Sarah to confess. They emphasized how nothing she had told them thus far made sense. She had lied about not moving the suitcase, lied about leaving the zipper only half zipped, lied about the mood on Sunday night, lied about how much she had drank, and everything in between. They grilled her on why she had locked Jorge in the suitcase, how she had gotten him in there, why she was so angry with him, what caused the crashing sound in the stairwell, and more.
When they were done, all Sarah could say was:
“Guys, this is killing me right now… I don’t know what you want me to tell you… this wasn’t intentional… it’s not malicious…”
Quoting what Sarah herself had said to Jorge in one of the videos, Lowen then leaned in and smoothly asked her:
“Not malicious? What does ‘fuck you’ mean to you, then?”
Sarah could not answer this.
The interview then went on for another hour and a half as she tried and failed to explain away what could clearly be seen and heard in the video. She reasserted that she and Jorge were playing, that he was abusive toward her, that she didn’t know where the injuries had come from, and so on. She also repeatedly stated that her life was going to be ruined if the detectives didn’t stop “assuming things” about her; she was clearly not understanding just how screwed she was, how airtight the evidence and witness statements against her were, and thought she could still talk her way out of the charges. Fortunately, she could not, and her hours of ramblings only served to hurt her own future defense in an irreparable way.
In the end, Sarah was charged with second-degree murder and booked into the county jail.
An Uphill Battle All the Way
With everything at the police and prosecution’s disposal, one might assume that taking this case to trial should have been a relatively quick affair. After all, there’s not many ways to defend against the callousness seen throughout those videos, which meant that Sarah would have been smart to pursue a plea deal at all costs to avoid having them shown to a jury; however, Sarah was not very smart, nor was she willing to accept any amount of blame for Jorge’s death whatsoever, even after spending a significant amount of time drying out in jail. Instead, she opted to fight the charges tooth and nail with the help of a public defender—or, more accurately, the help of 8 separate public defenders…
Yes, as I mentioned in the intro, Sarah went through multiple lawyers in the leadup to her trial because she quickly earned a reputation in Orange County as a deeply unpleasant client. Based on what has been reported in the media, she was rude, overly needy, would speak out of turn at court proceedings, would storm out of meetings with her own lawyers, and was highly dismissive of all advice that she did not like. That last part was the biggest challenge for her lawyers to overcome as, even without any formal law education, Sarah seemed to believe she knew more about the legal process than they did.
For example, for a large chunk of Sarah’s time behind bars, she was solely focused on obtaining pretrial release so she could await trial outside of jail. That is not something that typically happens in murder cases like this, and the judge assigned to Sarah’s case, Judge Micheal Kraynick, made it clear early on in the process that he was not even considering letting her out. Yet Sarah would not accept this answer.
She consistently hounded her early lawyers, sometimes calling them up to 10 times per day to ask when she was getting out while refusing to speak with them about the concrete facts of her case when they came to visit her. She was convinced there was some legal loophole or magic words that could force Kraynick to release her.
Then, even when Sarah did finally agree to talk about her case, she seemed to not understand what was relevant and what was completely irrelevant to her defense, what would and would not be allowed at trial, and so on. And, once again, nobody could get through to her and explain that the Judge—not them, and especially not her—was in control.
At one point, Sarah then also became fixated on seeking several pages of medical records that supposedly had hand-written notes on them that could “clear her name,” but multiple public defenders were unable to locate these records through discovery. This caused Sarah to begin claiming that she was being denied her right to see evidence that could be used to aid in her defense and that her lawyers were working to undermine her, which led to more than one of the eight public defenders requesting to walk away.
To the dismay of everyone involved, Sarah also insisted that she be present at every single pretrial court hearing, including the routine housekeeping hearings that usually only involve the judge and lawyers. She then seized every opportunity to speak up and make an ass of herself whenever possible. She would speak out of turn, interrupting the judge, the prosecutors, and even her own lawyers.
She seemed unwilling to accept that she didn’t understand how the law worked, how trials worked, or even who was on whose side. She constantly asked Judge Kraynick questions that would be more appropriate for her own defense, and then still ignored his answers when they were direct and clear, such as when he told her that she was not getting out of jail before trial! How many times do we have to say this, Sarah?
Usually, from what I have witnessed in videos, when Sarah did not like an answer she received to one of her questions, she would then ask it again in a slightly different way, repeat ad nauseum, leading to her becoming known as “prison Karen.”
Speaking of which, we need to discuss the primary reason Sarah was so concerned about being released, aside from the obvious one. Because of Florida’s very liberal transparency laws surrounding criminal cases, several news organizations around the Orlando area had received access to a great deal of information about her case, including the bodycam footage from her home, the interrogation footage, the 9-1-1 audio, her mugshots, and all her courtroom recordings and transcripts, most of which had gone viral. The coverage, as you might expect, was not favorable for Sarah, with many interrogation analysis channels and Law-tubers having a field day making jokes at her expense, painting her exactly as I have: a word that starts with “B” and ends with “i-t-c-h.”
This enraged Sarah, and she wanted nothing more than to start publicly defending herself. She wanted to speak with the media and make sure everybody would understand once and for all that, even though Jorge was dead, she was the real victim—and that she was being denied a fair trial. Even while facing a murder charge, Sarah could not handle the fact that the narrative was out of her control.
After a while, once Sarah was on her third of fourth lawyer, she then decided that she wanted to start making all the major decisions about her defense herself, which was a bad idea because she still had no idea what she was doing. But nobody could convince her of that. This resulted in her lawyers receiving dozens of collect calls late into the night so Sarah could go over new strategies and ideas that had popped into her head throughout the day, none of which were legally viable.
So, instead of spending their time building an actual defense, all her public defenders could do was rebut stupid idea after stupid idea. Sarah often responded by hanging up on them.
This all, of course, frustrated Judge Kraynick to no end, but there was only so much he could do as lawyer after lawyer came forward requesting to withdraw for a variety of reasons. He also obviously became more and more frustrated with Sarah herself as time went on, and after the third full year of these continued shenanigans, he almost always addressed her with a half-hidden scowl, which was more than visible in the courtroom recordings I have watched.
Because public defenders don’t typically get paid if they are taken off a case before it is resolved, Sarah’s sixth and seventh attorneys, Winston Hobson and Patricia Cashman, were forced to go before another judge, Judge Lisa Munyon, to request special compensation for their time. This gave them the opportunity to describe the terrible treatment they had endured at Sarah’s hand before the court, which now also allows us to feel their pain.
Hobson claimed Sarah was verbally hostile toward him throughout nearly every interaction, calling him a “dud” and a “buffoon” to his face. He told judge Munyon:
“I would say conservatively any lawyer that had this case could tell you easily they spent at least an hour to two hours on the case every single day… gathering information coming in from Ms. Boone, the matters she wanted dealt with, her view on the law versus our theory … it was a constant battle going back and forth. And you had to deal with the gaslighting, and I told Judge Kraynick… it’s just too much.”
He also said:
“Ms. Boone has some ideas about what should be done, should not be done. I don’t agree with those. Some things she wants done, I won’t do…”
Mrs. Cashman made it clear that Sarah’s demands were beyond unreasonable. Even as late as the summer of 2024, with her trial date closing in fast, Sarah was still obsessed with the coverage the case was getting both online and from media outlets like Court TV and would request that Cashman keep up with dozens of hours of footage each week in order to “counter the lies” jury members may have heard about her.
When speaking about Cashman, Sarah herself had this to say to the judge:
“I don’t understand what it is that [Mrs. Cashman] has against me… I’ve warned her that her snotty attitude was inappropriate, and I tried very hard to bear with her and her attitude. I don’t know what it is that I’m doing wrong to her, but I feel that her attitude has equaled prejudice, which is not in my favor, especially considering she is supposed to be representing my life…”
Yes, Sarah still could not handle the fact that the narrative was out of her control and was trying desperately to make herself seem sympathetic to the judge, the public, and other people whose opinions of her didn’t really matter. All that mattered was the future jury, which hadn’t even been selected yet…
Sarah was playing to absolutely nobody.
In the end, Judge Munyon awarded both Hobson and Cashman a flat fee of $15,000, and Hobson was given an additional $15,000 in hourly fees for his time.
Once again, because of Florida’s information laws, footage of these hearings was made available online, which continued to add fuel to the media fire, further drawing eyes to case. However, these encounters also further aggravated Judge Kraynick, who was forced to eventually take the very drastic step of declaring that Sarah had forfeited her right to counsel.
On June 28th, 2024, he wrote in a 16-page order:
“Actions speak louder than words. Although defendant’s words seemingly reveal a desire to go to trial, as set forth herein, her actions and inability to work with court-appointed counsel, are repeated over and over. Allowing defendant to her eighth court appointed attorney (her ninth attorney overall) will only serve to delay the case further and encourage defendant to persist in efforts to prevent the resolution of the case on its merits… It has become apparent to the court that the defendant will not permit herself to be represented by anyone…”
Afterwards, Sarah truly did begin representing herself in court—at which time she began complaining that she was thoroughly confused by the process. At one point, she submitted a 58-page handwritten letter to Judge Kraynik outlining her frustrations, which I’m sure he was absolutely thrilled to read.
Kraynick responded to her complaints by saying:
“Ma’am, again, this is why there were benefits to being represented by counsel… the court has already identified in its 16-page order the reasons for why you no longer have those benefits. It makes things exceptionally more difficult, as I explained to you in communicating with the court and communicating with the State Attorney’s Office.”
Still, Sarah, to the surprise of no one, was not happy.
In what could be considered a win for Sarah (and a win for us because it removed her ability to claim that evidence was being hidden from her) Judge Kraynick did allow Sarah to be given direct access to all the evidence in her case so she could begin preparing her own defense. Normally, this would be given to the public defender assigned to her case, who would then be expected to share it with her upon request, but now Sarah could know for sure that nothing was being hidden. Everything was delivered to her on a USB drive, which she was allowed to access using one of the jail’s laptops during business hours.
A Knight in Shining Armor
Now, to her credit, Sarah did seem to recognize that she was in over her head around this time—and that it was probably best for her to attempt to hire a lawyer on her own. So, she asked Judge Kraynick if they could delay the trial, again. It would have been a perfectly fine request for an ordinary defendant, but Sarah was not ordinary; her trial had already been pushed countless times, once because of a hurricane, and Judge Kraynick was beyond over her delay tactics. He told her:
”… the trial will not be continued for any reason, except by extraordinarily good cause and such extraordinarily good cause shall not include retention of counsel by the Defendant.”
This meant that Sarah was working against the clock to find someone, so she sent out a desperate plea for help by publicly releasing the following advert online:
(NOTE: I have transcribed it for you below the image, Simon)
INMATE seeks ATTORNEY
Looking for a prosperous challenge?
Ready for your close-up on nat’l television?
Are you zealous with a side of keen?
Show the WORLD who you are with your:
original creativity, extraordinary expertise, confident ingenuity
Qualifications must include:
Being trustworthy, honest, passion driven, open-minded
Exceptional problem-solving skills
Client inclusion at all times, team orientation, collaboration
Dedication to success, possessing a winning mindset
Extreme efficiency in listening, communication, understanding
Capability of excellence in representation, committed
Maintaining faith in the client and case with the ability to think differently, overcome all circumstances
Epic opportunity Awaits!
Sarah Boone #20005623
Orange County Corrections Department
Invest in the oppressed. Believe.
Well, believe it or not, this actually worked, and Sarah soon found herself represented by a man named James Owens. Owens was a long-time criminal defense attorney who had learned about Sarah’s case through the CourtTV coverage. He had agreed to meet with her and eventually take her case after Kraynick refused to assign her a ninth public defender. He claimed he wanted her to have a fair day in court and would present a battered spouse defense at trial on her behalf, alleging that Sarah had locked Jorge in the suitcase for her own protection after he attacked her.
One of the first official things Owens did was request yet another delay in the trial in order to “get himself up to speed” and prepare his new defense because, at the time he came to her aid, the trial was only about 45 days out. However, Judge Kraynick denied the request, stating Sarah “only had herself to blame for that.”
After this, Owens then began attempting to get as much evidence suppressed as possible. Before Judge Kraynick, he argued that the interrogation footage should not be considered permissible because Sarah did not understand that she had the option to not speak with the detectives both at the scene and inside the interrogation room, therefor her rights had been violated. His proof was, although Sarah was read most of her Miranda rights and signed a document agreeing to allow the police to search her home and cellphone, Detective Koepsell had left off the final line of the rights, which stated “Having these rights in mind, do you wish to talk to us now?” He also stated that Sarah was uncomfortable around guns and the fact that the officers were armed on the morning Jorge’s body was discovered also made her feel like she didn’t have the option to not speak with them.
As several online legal experts have pointed out, Owen’s argument was not legally sound, and Kraynick agreed, denying the motion to suppress.
After this, Owens then focused on the all-important task of requesting a hearing to ensure Sarah would be allowed to bring stacks with her to trial. To Kraynick, he said:
“Judge, she’s asking that… you know they get commissary at the jail… and she’s asking that the officer that escorts her be allowed to bring her commissary. She’s asking for 2 juice packs, 5 peppermints, 2 bags of chips, a bag of candy, and a bag of cookies or a poptart…”
CourtTV humorously covered this hearing as it was happening by hosting a breaking news update segment with the banner “Judge to Rule on Boone’s Snack Request Today!”
That ruling, by the way, was not in Sarah’s favor. He denied her self-asserted “right to yummy snacks,” and instead pointed out that she, like all inmates, would be provided two bagged lunches each day of her trial, which could be eaten during recess. There would be no special treatment for her, at all. He then also denied another request to allow Sarah to meet with a professional hair and makeup stylist each morning before the trial.
Because of these types of requests—and the fact that Owens had willingly associated himself with Sarah for seemingly no reason—some people online believe he was a bit of a clown; however, I’d argue that it’s obvious Sarah was the one pulling his strings at these meetings, and he was simply doing what he agreed to do when responding to her flier, AKA whatever she told him. In fact, I’d also argue that Owens was a pretty decent lawyer considering he managed to negotiate a phenomenal plea deal that would see her charges reduced to manslaughter with no more than 15 years in jail…
For context, based on the circumstances, Sarah was facing a minimum of 22.5 years and up to life for the charge of second-degree murder, if convicted. But because of time served and Florida’s generous “65% with good behavior” early-release program, she could have been a free woman as early as 2028—if she accepted the plea deal. It’s hard to express how absolutely fantastic this deal was, especially considering what we all know the jury would see… but Sarah, as always, was her worst enemy. She outright rejected the deal, despite Owens reportedly “begging” her to take it.
Remember, Sarah is the real victim here, and she would not accept any blame.
The Trial, Finally
Sarah’s publicly-aired trial began as scheduled on October 14th, 2024, and Owens presented the defense he said he would: Sarah was a battered woman who had suffered verbal and physical abuse from Jorge Torres for years, and on the night of Sunday, February 24th, 2020, she believed he was finally going to make good on his promise to kill her, something he had been threating to do since they first met. He had been verbally shouting at her all day, Owens told the jury, and toward the end of the night, those shouts had turned into threats of physical violence. The only way for Sarah to save herself, he alleged, was to lock Jorge in the suitcase for her own protection. The only reason he had died in here, Owens alleged, was that Sarah felt she couldn’t free him because he would not hold back if released; he had inadvertently died while she debated what to do.
To provide credibility to her story, Owens brought up all the past instances of abuse that Jorge had been arrested for, which Judge Kraynick allowed to proceed as part of the battered spouse defense. A psychologist was also called by the defense to testify that Sarah was suffering from PTSD from years of cyclical abuse at the time of the killing.
Sarah then also took the stand in her own defense because she believed the jury needed to hear from her directly in order to give her story more weight. During her testimony, Owens asked her:
“Were you in fear?”
To which Sarah replied:
“Always. If he had gotten out of the suitcase, what would’ve happened? He used to tell me he would’ve left me unrecognizable, and I would’ve lost my life.”
Honestly, this was probably the best defense any lawyer could have come up with when accounting for the facts, but unfortunately for Sarah, it would look extraordinarily weak when compared to the prosecution’s evidence.
In their opening statement, they claimed Sarah’s motivation for locking Jorge in the suitcase was both simple and obvious: she wanted revenge. And they pointed, first and foremost, to the video evidence that Sarah herself had provided:
“For everything you’ve done to me…”
Those were her exact words, and the prosecution repeatedly called back to them during the opening and closing arguments, as well as referencing how Jorge had begged to be let out.
In her callousness, they said, Sarah had gone to bed and left Jorge in the suitcase, thus showing a conscious disregard for wether he lived or died, and for that reason, she was guilty.
To further rebut her story, they pointed out that Jorge was the only one with physical damage to his body and used Sarah’s own words in her interrogation against her, showing how Sarah herself had said “things were good” between her and Jorge on the night he died, and so on. They also called several witnesses, including Brian, who testified against her. Then, as if this all wasn’t bad enough, Sarah herself also inadvertently undermined her whole defense during cross examination.
When asked by the prosecution if she was trying to “teach Jorge a lesson” by locking him in the suitcase, Sarah replied:
“There was no lesson to be learned. I wanted him to try to understand how I felt so maybe he could progress and be a better person…”
Those were not the motivations of someone who had been in fear of losing their life, and the jury recognized that. They also recognized how cold and callous and uncaring Sarah seemed on the stand, which is one of the reasons it is generally a bad idea to open yourself up to cross-examination when you are an unlikeable person.
One of the biggest unanswered questions of the trial and this case as a whole is how exactly Jorge ended up inside the suitcase. After all, how does someone force someone else to fold and contort their body in such a way while also zipping them up when they are conscious? It’s possible her original story had been somewhat true, that he had willing crouched inside it as a gag; however, the prosecution didn’t spend too much time theorizing because, honestly, it didn’t really matter. All they knew was that he ended up in the suitcase and that Sarah’s claims of self-defense were ludicrous:
“We aren’t sure exactly what did happen or why this ended with his death. But what you, the jury, need to know is that you do not have to buy her story: You don’t need to think about this night in the terms that Sarah has defined. You are free to follow the evidence and to reconstruct the events according to the logic that the evidence demands.”
The trial lasted a total of 10 days, and in the end, the Jury delivered the only logical verdict: guilty.
The Sentencing
Although it is now time for you all to learn exactly how long Sarah will be kicking herself for not accepting Owens’ plea deal, there is one final part to today’s episode because Sarah remained insufferable until the very last minute.
At her sentencing hearing on December 2nd, 2024, after Jorge’s family spoke about how his death had affected them, Sarah decided to use her time addressing the court as a platform to lambast the media, Jorge’s family, the judicial process, Florida’s laws, and Judge Kraynick himself—and she did this before her sentence was delivered…
Infuriatingly, her statement was delivered as if she were accepting apologies from everyone in the court. She chose to “forgive” the people who had wronged her. She said she forgave the Torres family for mischaracterizing her to the media, forgave Jorge for abusing her.
She then referred to Jorge as her greatest lesson and spent several minutes providing graphic and uncomfortable details of his alleged abuse to his family and the public on live TV. She did not apologize for her actions, instead maintaining that Jorge would have eventually killed her, and that his death was the “greatest experience of her life” because it allowed her to re-find Jesus. She then said she couldn’t wait to see Jorge waiting for her at the gates of heaven when she dies.
She also called social media an “organized crime network” that made blood money off her story. Then, at the end of her speech, she chose to “forgive herself,” because why not.
Notably, not one single person from Sarah’s life before prison spoke on her behalf at her sentencing. Her only allies were a psychologist, a religious leader, and several fellow inmates who spoke about how she had helped them when they were housed together—but I would assume they only did so because Sarah had manipulated them.
Once everyone had said their peace, Owens delivered a final heartfelt plea for leniency where he once again emphasized how abused Sarah had been—but Judge Kraynick was unswayed. When it came time for Sarah to learn her fate, there was no hesitation in his voice; he sentenced her to the legal maximum for second-degree murder: life in prison.
As of the time of writing, Sarah is in the custody of the Florida Department of Corrections, where she still claims she had been denied her right to a fair trial and will be filing appeals to have her sentence overturned. James Owens, however, has stated that he will not be filing those appeals on her behalf. It seems he might have learned his lesson about involving himself with the worst defendant imaginable.
Key Takeaways
- Sarah Boone called 911 on February 24, 2020, claiming her boyfriend Jorge Torres died accidentally during a game of hide-and-seek involving a suitcase.
- Cellphone videos Boone herself provided showed her taunting Torres while he begged for his life inside the suitcase, directly contradicting her innocent narrative.
- Boone cycled through eight public defenders due to her hostile, uncooperative behavior before a judge declared she had forfeited her right to counsel.
- She rejected a favorable plea deal for manslaughter with a 15-year sentence, instead insisting on trial where a jury convicted her of second-degree murder.
- At sentencing, Boone showed no remorse, ‘forgiving’ the victim’s family and calling Torres’s death the ‘greatest experience of her life’ before receiving life in prison.
Dana Ortiz covers prosecutorial mechanics, evidentiary procedure, and how investigations unwind decades after the original case file went cold.
Frequently Asked Questions
When and where did Sarah Boone call 911 to report Jorge Torres’s death?
Sarah Boone called 911 at exactly 1:01 PM on February 24th, 2020, in Orange County, Florida, just outside Orlando.
What was Sarah Boone’s initial explanation for how Jorge Torres ended up in the suitcase?
Sarah Boone claimed that she and Jorge were playing hide-and-seek, that he willingly got into the suitcase as a joke, she zipped it closed, went upstairs to wait for him, fell asleep, and woke up to find him dead.
How many public defenders did Sarah Boone go through before the trial?
Sarah Boone went through eight separate public defenders in the leadup to her trial.
What damning evidence was found on Sarah Boone’s cellphone?
Forensic detectives found two videos showing Jorge Torres begging to be let out of the suitcase while Sarah Boone drunkenly mocked him, saying things like ‘For everything you’ve done to me’ and ‘That’s how it feels when you choke me.‘
What injuries were found on Jorge Torres’s body according to the medical examiner’s report?
The medical examiner found scratch marks on his back and neck, a contusion on his left shoulder, a cut on his lip, and lots of bruising on his skull and across his body, all occurring within 24 hours of his death.
What was the plea deal that James Owens negotiated for Sarah Boone, and what was her response?
James Owens negotiated a plea deal that would reduce her charges to manslaughter with no more than 15 years in prison, meaning she could have been free as early as 2028. Sarah outright rejected the deal despite Owens reportedly begging her to take it.
What defense did James Owens present at Sarah Boone’s trial?
Owens presented a battered spouse defense, alleging that Sarah had locked Jorge in the suitcase for her own protection after he attacked her, and that he had inadvertently died while she debated what to do.
What was the verdict and sentence in Sarah Boone’s trial?
The jury found Sarah Boone guilty of second-degree murder, and Judge Michael Kraynick sentenced her to life in prison.
What did Sarah Boone do during her sentencing hearing that angered the court?
Sarah Boone used her time addressing the court to ‘forgive’ the Torres family, Jorge, the media, and others she claimed had wronged her; she provided graphic details of alleged abuse to Jorge’s family on live TV; called his death the ‘greatest experience of her life’; and did not apologize for her actions.
Why did Judge Kraynick eventually declare that Sarah Boone had forfeited her right to counsel?
Judge Kraynick declared she forfeited her right to counsel because her actions and inability to work with court-appointed attorneys were repeated over and over, and allowing another attorney would only delay the case further and encourage her to persist in preventing resolution of the case on its merits.
Sources
- Original Casual Criminalist video: The Trial of Sarah Boone - A Public Defender’s Worst Nightmare
- Hero image source by Famartin / openverse, by-sa.
