Sarah Boone
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A Florida woman was accused of murdering her boyfriend by zipping him inside a suitcase in an alleged game of hide-and-seek. Was this just a tragic accident? Or did Sarah Boone intentionally murder Jorge Torres Jr.? This is Forensic Tales, episode number 256, The Case Against Sarah Boone. ♪♪

Hide and seek. A simple game we've probably all played as children. One person hides and the other goes out and looks for them.

It's supposed to be fun, but what happens when it turns deadly? On February 24, 2020, a frantic woman from Winter Park, Florida, called 911 saying that she found her boyfriend dead inside a suitcase. The caller was Sarah Boone, and the person trapped inside that locked suitcase was 42-year-old Jorge Torres Jr. Here are pieces of that 911 call.

911, what is the location of your emergency? 4748 France Court, apartment 3. 4748, what's the street name? France, F-R-A-N-T-V. And the apartment number? 3. Is this a police or medical? My boyfriend is dead.

Okay, send the line for the flight department. Do not hang up. All right, great. Now tell me exactly what happened there. My boyfriend and I were playing last night, and I put him in a suitcase when we were playing. Okay. Like kind of hide-and-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. Okay, what's your apartment number? 3-

At around 1 o'clock p.m., the Orange County Sheriff's Office responded to Sarah and Jorge's apartment at 4748 France Lane, Apartment 3 in Winter Park, Florida.

The matter-of-fact caller was 42-year-old Sarah Boone, a divorced mom of one, and the boyfriend is Jorge Torres Jr. She said she had already pulled him out of the suitcase and tried CPR, but he was already dead. That's the story. She went to sleep, woke up, and found him dead. Here's what she says about that on the 911 call.

Okay, is he hanging from somewhere or what, ma'am? No, I pulled him out of the suitcase. I tried giving him CPR. Okay, so he was in a suitcase? Yes, and I fell asleep. Okay, how old is the boyfriend, ma'am? 42. 42-year-old male. All right. Okay, where are you sending help out there? Sheriff's Office, you have anybody out there? Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry?

Yeah. Okay. All right. Listen to me. Okay. I just need to confirm this. I understand. I just need to confirm this. Is he awake at all? Is he conscious at all? No. He's purple. Right. Is he breathing? No. All right. I need you to get him on the floor and flatten his back for me, okay? I did. I did. I tried giving him CPR. All right.

I tried giving him CPR. Yeah, okay. He's purple now, but nothing happened. He's purple. Okay, listen to me. Is it a defibrillator? I need you to get it for me, okay? What is it? Do you have an AED available? No. All right. Are you right by him now? I'm sorry? Are you right by him now? Yes. Okay, okay. Ma'am, listen. So, listen. Is he cold and stiff? Yes.

When the police first showed up at the apartment, Sarah met them out front. And just like the 911 call, she's pretty calm. She doesn't try to hide what happened. She just tells them the story like it's any other day.

She led the police inside the apartment, and that's where they found Jorge. He was lying on the floor next to the suitcase. And just like Sarah had said on the 911 call, he was already dead. There was nothing else anyone could do.

Rigger Mortis had set in and he had clearly died several hours before the time they got there. So once again, the police turned to Sarah to get her story. They needed to know everything that had happened. And this is what she had to say.

As you can hear from the 911 call audio, Sarah says that she and her boyfriend were drinking wine the night before and started playing a game of hide-and-seek. She said they both thought it would be funny if they could see if Jorge could hide inside a blue suitcase that she had. He was only about 5'2'' tall and weighed just over 100 pounds.

So if any adult could fit inside of a suitcase, it would probably be someone like Jorge. She made it sound like this was both of their ideas and they were just playing around with each other completely innocent. After that, after Jorge gets himself in the suitcase and she zips it up, that's when she says she went upstairs and fell asleep.

She makes it seem like she didn't actually mean to fall asleep. She just assumed that her boyfriend would be able to get out of the suitcase, go to bed on his own, just like she had done. But when she woke up the next morning and didn't find him, that's when she realized he was still stuck inside the suitcase, and that's when she called for help.

According to Sarah Boone, the entire thing was a freak accident. They were drinking. They decided to play an innocent game of hide and seek. They both thought it would be funny to see if he could actually fit inside of the suitcase. She accidentally fell asleep and he couldn't get out and he must have suffocated or something. It was all just a bad game of hide and seek.

She doesn't mention anything else. She didn't say they were fighting or anything like that. And just keep that small detail in mind for later on. Now, at first, the Orange County Sheriff's Office thought maybe she was telling the truth. Of course, they did think it was strange that a grown man would put himself inside of a suitcase if they were just playing an innocent game of hide and seek. And why would she go upstairs and go to bed knowing that he's still in there?

You would think that if this was all just a game and they were having a good time with each other, that she would make sure that he got out okay and they would go to bed together. So to try and figure out if this was really just a freak accident, they asked to take a look at Sarah's cell phone, which she willingly gave over to the police right there at the scene. And that's when they found something interesting. Two videos.

According to forensic investigators with the Orange County Sheriff's Office, both of those videos on Sarah's cell phone were taken the night before, the night they were supposedly having fun, drinking wine, and just playing games. But when investigators watched the videos, they thought they told a much different story about what happened.

Now, before we talk about what was on both of those videos, I just want to say that you can find both of them online. They're both on YouTube. But I've decided not to include the audio of these videos in this episode for a couple of reasons. One, they're very graphic and explicit. She swears multiple times in it, and I just don't feel comfortable with that. And then number two, I'll be completely honest with you, they're both pretty disturbing.

Even I had a hard time watching them knowing that Jorge's in that suitcase and he can't get out even when he pleads multiple times for someone to help him. I really only watched the videos so that I could talk about them in this episode. So if you want to check out the videos for yourself, you can. Again, both of them are on YouTube.

Since I'm not playing a recording of the videos, this is how one of them went. It's filmed from inside the apartment's living room. You can't see Sarah since she's the one behind the phone filming it, but it looks like she might be sitting on the couch. And the suitcase that Jorge is in is lying on its side on the carpet right in front of her.

Every couple of seconds, you can see the suitcase rock side to side like he's trying to move or he's trying to get out. Again, it's incredibly disturbing to know that someone is inside of there and they can't get out. It starts with Jorge saying, Sarah. It sounds like he's pleading with her. Now, Sarah, this is for everything you've done to me. Jorge says, Sarah, again. She says again, for everything you've done to me.

Jorge, Sarah, Sarah, F-U, Jorge, Sarah. He sounds even more desperate and pleads with her. But Sarah just says F-U again and calls him stupid. Now, you can't see Sarah's face, so it's hard to read her facial expressions here. But it almost sounds like she's starting to giggle at this point when she calls him stupid.

Jorge then calls out her name a few more times, and Sarah says, that's my name, don't wear it out. Back to Jorge. Quote, Sarah, I can't effing breathe, babe, seriously. Sarah, yeah, that's what you do when you choke me.

Jorge then says her name a few more times and starts to rock back and forth inside of the suitcase until Sarah giggles a little bit more and says, and he says, I can't breathe. To which she replies, that's on you. He says Sarah two more times and then she says something back to him that I can't understand. Her words almost sound like they're starting to slur.

Jorge again, quote, Sarah, I can't breathe, babe. Sarah, oh, that's what I feel like when you cheat on me. You should probably shut the F up. He then says something I can't quite hear, and then Sarah starts to shush him until the video ends. The entire video is about two minutes long. Sometimes neither one of them is talking and it's completely silent.

But throughout the entire video, Sarah has her camera fixed right on the suitcase containing Jorge. At times, it's hard to even imagine how someone could fit inside of it. It isn't exactly a huge suitcase. It looks like maybe the size of a standard carry-on bag that you would probably see on an airplane.

So it's hard to imagine, it's hard to wrap your brain around that Jorge is stuffed inside there and he keeps saying that he can't breathe. So after the Orange County Sheriff's Office sees these videos, they start to wonder if something far more sinister happened here. Here he is on video begging Sarah to let him out because he says he can't breathe and she won't do it.

She giggles a few times. She says, this is how it feels when he chokes her, or this is how it feels when he cheats on her. But she never once goes over there to let him out of the suitcase. So were they actually just playing a game with one another? By the looks of these videos, probably not. The following day, the police brought Sarah Boone down to the police station to be questioned.

At this point, they think this had to be something far worse than a game of hide-and-seek gone wrong.

they started to think that maybe Sarah had intentionally locked Jorge inside that suitcase. They also wondered what kind of relationship they had and how they got to the point where Sarah calls him stupid and says everything that she says on these videos. In the video, Sarah accuses Jorge of choking her. So what exactly was going on between them? Was this maybe a domestic fight turned deadly?

Well, based on several different police reports, Sarah and Jorge definitely had domestic issues during their three-year relationship. Several criminal charges were filed against both of them in the months and weeks leading up to what happened.

Sarah had been arrested and charged with battery by strangulation in July of 2018, and Jorge had been charged with battery three separate times in 2019, including an incident where Sarah said that he punched her in the head.

But most of these incidents resulted in one of two ways. Either the criminal charges were dismissed because the other person didn't want to press any criminal charges, or Sarah herself would drive down to the jail, bail Jorge out herself with her own money, and then they would get back together again. So based on all of these police reports, we know at the very least they had a very rocky relationship. They both had been arrested for assaulting the other.

I also want you to keep these domestic violence issues in the back of your mind because it's going to come into play a little bit later on. So just remember these details. But despite all of the previous fights between Jorge and Sarah, none of that answers the question about what really happened inside that Winter Park apartment. Was this an accident or was this a domestic dispute turned deadly?

Well, to try and get to the answer to all of that, let's get into the autopsy. From your fryer to the table, it's a quick trip for crispy fries. But how about a Crosstown delivery? McCain Sure Crisp Fries are designed to go from fryer to container to carrier to passenger seat across town during rush hour down a shortcut that wasn't all that short to a doorstep before they hit the table. And that first bite, the crispiness speaks for itself.

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When Jorge's body showed up for the autopsy, he was measured at only 62 inches tall and 103 pounds. So like I mentioned at the top of the episode, he was a very small guy, 5 foot 2 inches tall and just barely over 100 pounds. That's really the only kind of person, besides a small child, who could actually fit inside of the suitcase that he was in. Again, it's like a carry-on bag.

Also, if you're curious to see what the suitcase looked like, go online and check it out. I think that would give you a better idea of how all of this worked and exactly how small it is. Now going back to the autopsy, the Orange County medical examiner who performed it listed his cause of death as positional asphyxia with environmental suffocation and his manner of death as homicide.

So let's start with a cause of death first, positional asphyxia with environmental suffocation. Usually, asphyxia is just a term, a general term, that simply means a lack of oxygen. You might think of a hanging or suffocation, strangulation.

But Jorge's case is a little different. It's a little unique, positional. Because of how his body was stuffed inside of that tiny suitcase, that position caused him not to be able to breathe. So he essentially suffocated because his body was in such a weird position that that position caused him to suffer a lack of oxygen.

Now, we've seen almost this same exact thing in another episode that we covered on the show, the death of Kendrick Johnson. In that case, Kendrick was found dead, stuffed inside a rolled-up gym mattress inside of his high school gym. And when it came to the cause of death in his situation, it was also listed as positional asphyxia. The way that he was stuffed inside of that rolled-up gym mat caused him to suffocate to death.

Now, very similar to Jorge's case, right? Only difference is that we're talking about a suitcase here, not a rolled up gym mat. Isn't that terrifying though? Being trapped somewhere in a position where it causes you to suffocate to death? Well, that's exactly what the Orange County, Florida medical examiner said happened to Jorge.

When it comes to the second part, with environmental suffocation, that just meant the medical examiner said there wasn't enough oxygen in the environment where Jorge was, the suitcase. He was stuck in an enclosed space without enough oxygen to keep him alive or sustain him. So now the next question, how exactly was Jorge positioned inside the suitcase to cause all of this?

Well, the medical examiner couldn't say for sure. That's because when the police and the first responders got to the apartment, Sarah had already pulled him out of the suitcase. Remember, she was apparently on the phone with 911 performing CPR. So he wasn't inside of the suitcase anymore. And that means that we're not 100% sure exactly how he was stuffed in there. But here's what the medical examiner did say.

He was probably in the fetal position with his head and neck flexed forward. So in other words, he was essentially in a human-shaped ball with his knees up to his chest or his head. That's really the only way that he could have fit in there. He was also most likely lying on his left side because that's where they saw the most lividity or the pooling of blood. Now, how long was he inside of there?

Well, that's another question the medical examiner couldn't exactly figure out. But based on Sarah's story about playing hide-and-seek the night before, going to bed, and waking up the next morning to call 911, their best guess is that he was in there for about 11 hours. This time frame is also supported by what the medical examiner found at the autopsy. The first was skin slippage.

After death, the top layer of our skin separates from the layers below, causing them to slip off our bodies. It's just one of the many natural processes our bodies go through after death. And in Jorge's case, the medical examiner thought that the amount of skin slippage was consistent with him being in there for about 11 hours. The second was rigor mortis, another natural process that our bodies go through after death.

The post-mortem stiffening of his muscles was also consistent with this 11-hour time frame. Now, another thing the ME wasn't able to determine was how long it took for Jorge to die. Yes, he was probably inside of the suitcase for about 11 hours, but how long did it take him to actually suffocate to death?

Well, we don't know the answer to that. It's impossible to say without knowing the exact percentage of oxygen inside of the suitcase. All we know at this point is that the air inside of it eventually ran out. But how long that took, we don't know. Just like in most other autopsies, the ME did a complete toxicology. And here's what came back from Jorge's tests.

His blood alcohol content was 0.139 at or near the time of death. He had caffeine in his system and there was a little bit of nicotine. So let's talk about the most important part, the alcohol. Well, we already know that Jorge and Sarah were drinking the night before because that was part of her story to investigators. But based on a BAC of 0.139, we can pretty much say that Jorge was intoxicated.

Of course, we all metabolize alcohol differently, and we don't know what kind of tolerance he may have had, but we can definitely say he was drunk. We also don't know what kind of role alcohol may have played that night with either one of them. At 0.139, his decision-making abilities might not have been that good.

So we've got positional asphyxia with environmental factors. We've got a manner of death as homicide. We estimate he was in there for about 11 hours and he was drunk. What else did the ME say about the autopsy? Well, let's go to the other injuries that were found on Jorge's body.

On several places of his body, the ME noticed injuries that she described as blunt force trauma. They were on his head, face, elbow, left shoulder, and left forearm and hand. The one on his elbow was likely a pressure point injury from being in the suitcase for so long. But the others, she couldn't explain how or why he got them.

All she said was that they were fresh and that they all happened at the same time. All the bruises and marks were in the same stage of healing, like they had just happened right before he died. They were, in her words, consistent with someone being struck by a baseball bat or being pushed down the stairs. Keep both of those details in the back of your mind.

So I think that begs the question, did Sarah and Jorge have some type of physical fight before he ended up in that suitcase? If all those blunt force trauma injuries were fresh and they all happened at around the same time, was it possible that they fought right before he died and that's when he got those injuries? If you think the answer to that is yes, then you'd probably be on the same side as the Orange County Sheriff's Office.

After 24 hours after Sarah initially called 911, she was arrested on murder charges. The police had the ME's report that said Jorge was the victim of a homicide. And there was no way they believed her story about this being a case of a game of hide and seek gone wrong. They also had another key piece of evidence. The two videos taken from Sarah's cell phone that night showing her taunting and laughing at him because he couldn't breathe.

That didn't look like they were just playing an innocent game together. So Sarah Boone was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. But that's definitely not the end of this story, or the last we'll hear from Sarah Boone.

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Before Sarah called 911 that day, she made another phone call. As soon as she saw that her boyfriend was dead, she called her ex-husband, who lived a few minutes away in another Winter Park apartment complex. She told him what happened, and he was the one who told her, hey, you need to call the police here, so she eventually did.

In the police reports, the officers wrote that Jorge had a small laceration on his lip and there was bruising around one of his eyes like he had just been in a fight. So they asked Sarah if they had gotten into an argument or a fight earlier that night. And she initially denied it. And she even voluntarily turned over her cell phone to them so that they could take a look at it.

When the police asked her about the two videos they found on the cell phone, she said she didn't remember taking them. She also admitted to them that, yes, these videos do look pretty bad, but she still claimed that she didn't remember taking them. After that, three years passed while Sarah awaited trial.

Her first trial date was scheduled for January 30, 2023, but that was delayed after her defense attorney contracted COVID-19. But at the court hearing to schedule another start date, Sarah's attorneys mentioned something else. They talked about the battered spouse defense.

This was the first time that anyone on the defense team had mentioned the idea that Sarah may have intentionally killed Jorge because she was the victim of domestic violence. Now, this wouldn't be the only delay because after that, her trial date kept getting pushed back and pushed back. The next delay was in July of 2023.

This time, it was because her defense had requested the Justice Administrative Commission to pay for an expert that they planned to use for the battered spouse defense. Under Florida law, you can use the battered spouse defense if you can prove that because of a vicious cycle of abuse, you committed a certain crime. So that's essentially what Sarah's defense wanted to say. She was the victim of abuse, and that's why she committed the crime.

Now, another year goes by, July 2024, but after going through eight different defense attorneys, again, eight, the judge ruled that Sarah could represent herself at trial. In an article for Newsweek, Orange County Circuit Court Judge Michael Kranich was quoted as saying, "...it has become apparent to the court that the defendant will not permit herself to be represented by anyone."

Patricia Cashman, her latest attorney at the time, was granted a motion to withdraw as her attorney, citing irreconcilable differences. The same issue her previous seven attorneys also had. Many of them asked to be taken off the case because Sarah was too difficult to work with, and she wasn't even helping in her own defense. There was just no way they could put on a good defense enough for her. She was too difficult.

The judge also said, quote,

Although the defendant's words seemingly reveal a desire to go to trial, however, as set forth herein, her actions and inability to work with court-appointed counsel are repeated over and over. The judge once again acknowledged that the part of the delay, or the early part of the delay, was because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused a lot of criminal trials to be delayed.

But allowing her to, quote, have her eighth court-appointed attorney, her ninth attorney overall, would only serve to delay the case and encourage the defendant to persist in efforts to present, prevent the resolution of the case on its merits, end quote. So how bad was Sarah Boone to work with from a defense attorney's perspective? Well, some of her attorneys said that she would call them as many as 10 times a day asking questions about her case.

Others said that she was difficult to work with because she took non-viable legal positions, walked out of multiple meetings, lobbed derogatory statements at them, and at one point accused one of her lawyers of using a, quote, pretend judge to oversee them. In August 2024, Sarah motioned the court to push her trial date once again.

This time, it was because she decided against representing herself and had retained another attorney, James Owens. But if she was so difficult to work with, why did this guy agree to do it? Well, in an interview for News 6, he said this, quote,

Sarah Boone needed a lawyer. I mean, I can't imagine our system. The case is an aberration. Sarah has been sitting in jail for a while. She's looking for her day in court, and we all want justice to be served. I'm a criminal defense lawyer. I've been doing it for a long time. The state has the burden of proof. They have to prove their case. I know there is some strong evidence in this case."

He also went on to explain that he first heard about the case through social media and that after speaking with her in jail, it took him a couple of days to really think it over before he finally agreed to represent her. At this same court hearing, Sarah also filed another motion asking the court to dismiss her case, arguing that her Sixth Amendment right, the right for a criminal defendant to have a speedy trial, had been violated.

But that motion was denied. So was her motion to use the battered spouse defense. According to her new attorney, Jorge's death was the result of, quote, years of physical and psychological abuse she sustained at the hands of the alleged victim, end quote. Her defense said they had at least six experts, witnesses, including a doctor who would testify to the abuse allegations.

But all of that was denied. Sarah Boone wouldn't be allowed to use the battered spouse defense at trial. Right before the start of the trial, prosecutors offered Sarah a plea deal. If she agreed to manslaughter, they would decrease her potential sentence to 15 years instead of a minimum of 22 years for second-degree murder. But Sarah rejected the deal. She wouldn't take it. She wanted her day in court.

Friday, October 18th, 2024. Finally, day one of the trial. The prosecution's case was that this was murder. Sarah and Jorge had a rocky relationship, and she intentionally let him suffocate to death inside of that suitcase. And the defense's case was that this was self-defense. Sarah had been the victim of domestic violence for their entire three-year relationship, and this was simply a case of self-defense.

Sarah's defense attorney told the jury that both she and Jorge suffered from alcohol abuse, and most of their fights centered around drinking, exactly what they were doing the night that Jorge died. They claimed that when Jorge drank too much, he became violent. He would either physically abuse Sarah or force her to have sex with him. This went on for pretty much their entire three-year relationship.

When it came to the defense's claim about why Sarah didn't immediately let him out of the suitcase, this is what they had to say. Her attorney argued that yes, they're physically the same size, but he's much stronger than her. If they got into a fistfight, he would win 100 times out of 100. But when he's inside that suitcase, he has to sit down and listen to everything that she has to say.

So when she said things like, this is what it feels like when you cheat on me, or this is what it feels like when you choke me, that was Sarah's opportunity to let him have it. And there was nothing that he could do about it because he was trapped inside the suitcase. They also claimed that the prosecutor's argument that Sarah wanted Jorge to die was simply not true. They said she loved him but hated the abuse.

She couldn't leave him because every single time that she did kick him out of the apartment, which was like six or seven times, he would always come back around. She also didn't have any family or any support systems, so she would always take him back when he came back around. In their own words, Sarah was, quote, weak and vulnerable.

Three days in, Sarah took the stand. I think in a lot of cases involving a self-defense claim, the defendant has to take the stand to testify. The jury just wants to hear directly from them, so that's exactly what she did. And what she had to say surprised every single person on that jury.

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She started by telling the jury exactly what she had said before. They were drinking and decided to play a game of hide and seek. She said that during the game, she ran upstairs to hide in one of the showers, but Jorge never came to look for her. So after waiting in the bathroom for what she described as quite a while, she said she decided to go back downstairs to quote, start wrapping up the evening because she was ready to go to bed.

But when she got downstairs, she said that's when she saw Jorge trying to squeeze himself inside the suitcase. She said, quote, he was trying to get himself flat so I couldn't see that he was in there. So she went over there and zipped it up for him, saying that it was both of their ideas and they both thought it would be funny to see if he could actually fit.

She said, quote,

From there, I moved the suitcase around a couple of times on the wheels and moved it around. And at that point, it was still funny. We were joking and laughing about it. End quote. When it came to why she pulled out her cell phone and started recording him, she said she did it because that was her opportunity to finally talk to him. Because of all the abuse, she said she was never able to confront him about it.

But now that he was trapped inside this zipped-up suitcase, that finally gave her the moment and finally gave her the opportunity to talk to him and force him to listen to her. She admitted that, yes, she was drunk at the time, but alleged that Jorge had threatened her while inside the suitcase and things got, quote, heated very quickly.

She said at some point his hand got out of the suitcase and he was forcefully trying to get out. And in a split second decision, she got a baseball bat to quote, poke his hand to go back inside.

Pause there. Now, you might remember from the autopsy that we talked about earlier, the medical examiner said that some of the injuries to Jorge's arms and hands were what she believed were consistent with being struck by a baseball bat. So that explains a lot. Sarah said after that she felt safe enough to turn the suitcase back over and claimed she left enough room for him to get out.

That's when she went upstairs to go to sleep. Now, let's pause there again for a second. At least in my opinion, Sarah's defense is a little confusing. On the one hand, she says that this was self-defense. She was a battered girlfriend, and she felt like her life was in danger because he abused her for years.

But on the other hand, she says that this was just an accident. They were playing a game. She thought that he had enough room to get out or that he was able to get out on his own. And this was all just a tragic, tragic accident. So her defense is confusing. Is this supposed to be a self-defense case? Or was this an accident? Or was this something else?

Now, what about the state's evidence? Well, the first big one is that cell phone video or both of them. It's hard to argue self-defense or that this was an accident after watching how Sarah behaved on those videos when you can hear and you can see Jorge was pleading for her to open the suitcase and he kept saying that he couldn't breathe. However, the state also had the forensic evidence on its side, the autopsy findings.

Based on all the facts of the case, the ME testified that she had no doubt that the manner of death was homicide. On top of being suffocated to death, Jorge also had multiple blunt force trauma injuries to his head, neck, face, arms, and hands, some of them being consistent with a baseball bat.

Closing arguments for both sides started on October 25th, and on the same day, after less than two hours of deliberation, the jury came back with a verdict. They found Sarah guilty of second-degree murder. They didn't believe her self-defense story or that this was a game. They believed the forensic evidence from the autopsy.

Jorge had blunt force trauma injuries, and he suffocated to death inside that suitcase because she wouldn't let him out. They also didn't believe her claims of battered spouse syndrome. Since this is a very recent case, Sarah Boone hasn't been sentenced yet. Her next court date is scheduled for December 2nd of this year, so we'll have to wait and see what kind of sentence that she'll get for that second-degree murder conviction.

We'll also have to wait and see if she appeals or not. But at the very least, she faces a minimum of 22 years behind bars. If she would have just taken that plea deal, she could have been sentenced to just 12.

So now it's your turn. Is Sarah Boone guilty of murder? Did she intentionally leave her boyfriend in that locked suitcase to die? Or was she a longtime victim of domestic violence and the only way to save herself was to leave him in that bag? Or was this really a game of hide and seek gone wrong? What does the forensic evidence found at the autopsy and the cell phone evidence mean to you?

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If you'd like to become a producer of this show, head over to our Patreon page or send me an email at Courtney at ForensicTales.com. For a complete list of sources used in this episode, please visit ForensicTales.com. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.