Prosecutors in the trial of suitcase killer Sarah Boone offered jurors what may be the strongest piece of evidence they have – given to them courtesy of Boone herself.
A video police retrieved from Boone’s cellphone shows her taunting her boyfriend, Jorge Torres Jr., as he begs to be let out of the suitcase where he later died. Boone is charged with second-degree murder.
“Yeah, that’s what you do when you choke me,” she tells Torres in the video when he says he can’t breathe. “…For everything you’ve done to me. F*** you. Stupid.”
Considering Boone’s multiple contradictory statements to police, the video may be the best window into what really happened that night. The prosecution is seeking to paint her actions as malicious to undermine her legal team’s argument that she killed Torres in self-defense.
“Sarah,” Torres keeps repeating from the suitcase. “That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” she says.
Prosecutors also sought on Monday to underscore inconsistencies in the stories Boone gave to police — which they are expected later to contrast to Boone’s recently adopted claim of self-defense. Boone initially told police Torres’ death was an accident.
The jury was shown Boone’s two interviews with homicide detectives from the Orange County Sheriff’s Office. In the first interview, she says Torres did not say anything negative while in the suitcase and that they were both laughing. She also said neither she nor Torres were drunk.
Several of these statements are contradicted in the second interview the following day, where Boone is shown the video from her cellphone, which she says she doesn’t remember taking. She blames this on her consumption of alcohol. The video Boone views also clearly shows Torres in distress.
From this point, the near-two-hour-long second interview is largely made up of back-and-forth between Boone and the detectives, with Boone insisting she did not intentionally leave Torres to die because she didn’t zip up the suitcase entirely, leaving enough room for him to poke two fingers through, which she thought would allow him to get himself out.
She even swears on her young son’s life that Torres’ death was unintentional.
In the second interview, detectives ask about other injuries found on Torres’ body, but Boone insists nothing physical happened between them that night.
Dr. Sara Zydowicz, the medical examiner who performed Torres’ autopsy and testified Monday, said his recent wounds at his time of death included blunt-impact injuries to head near mouth and eye, and bruises on both hands, the left side of his back and his forearms.
Prosecutors asked if these injuries were consistent with being struck with a baseball bat or pushed down a flight of stairs. Zydowicz said it was possible.
Prosecutors on Friday had called one of Boone’s former apartment neighbors, Brandon Moats, to testify. He said he heard a loud noise coming from Boone’s room, which was adjacent to his bedroom, on the night of Torres’ death. He also said it sounded like something was falling down the stairs and mentioned Boone’s staircase shared a wall with their bedrooms.
Besides the video, another piece of digital evidence shown Monday was text messages sent from Boone’s phone to one of Torres’ brothers around Christmas 2019, only a few months before Torres’ death. The messages say “I’ll get RID of him. Then I’ll be BETTER. UGH. TORRES.”
Boone herself is expected to testify Tuesday morning.
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