American Sarah Boone smiles as she is led in handcuffs into a courtroom at the Orange County Courthouse in Orlando, Fla., Monday, Dec. 2, 2024. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel via Associated Press)

A Florida woman was sentenced Monday to life in prison for stuffing her boyfriend into a suitcase and leaving him to die of suffocation amid a history of domestic and alcohol abuse.

Circuit Judge Michael Kraynick imposed the sentence in Orlando on Sarah Boone, 47, for the 2020 murder of Jorge Torres, 42.

A jury deliberated only 90 minutes on Oct. 25 before finding Boone guilty of the second-degree murder of Jorge Torres after a 10-day trial. Boone had insisted that she herself was a victim of domestic violence at the hands of Torres and rejected a plea deal offer that included a 15-year sentence.

Torres’ family members testified at the hearing that his death tore them apart.

“Sarah deserves to languish in prison,” said one sister, Victoria Torres. “Sarah has caused a lifetime of pain.”

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In her own statement, Boone addressed a litany of abuse by Torres, which she said occurred over many years, denounced the way her trial was handled and covered by the media, all asking for forgiveness for his actions.

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“I forgive myself for falling in love with a monster. I tried to break the spell…I never stopped loving him,” said Boone, who has been imprisoned for 58 months. “I didn’t want this to happen. Forgive me Jorge. Forgive me Torres family.

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Initially, Boone told Orange County Sheriff’s Office investigators that she and Torres had been drinking heavily and playing hide-and-seek on February 23, 2020, at their Winter Park, Fla., residence while they thought it would be fun for the 103-pound (47 kilogram) Torres to fit in the suitcase. Winter Park is a suburb of Orlando.

They had been drinking alcohol and she decided to fall asleep, thinking Torres might get out of the suitcase on his own, she told detectives in an arrest report.

When she woke up the next morning, she did not find Torres but remembered him being in the suitcase. She unzipped the suitcase and found him unconscious, according to the arrest report.

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Boone was charged with second-degree murder after investigators found videos on his cell phone in which Torres can be heard screaming from inside the suitcase that he couldn’t breathe and repeatedly calling Boone’s name , according to the arrest report.

“She decided to keep (Torres) in the suitcase while he told her he couldn’t breathe in it to terrorize him,” prosecutor William Jay said in a court filing. “She then hit him with a baseball bat.”

Boone rejected a plea offer from prosecutors that would have given him a 15-year prison sentence in exchange for his guilty plea to a reduced charge of manslaughter.

During her trial, Boone testified that past violent incidents between her and Torres made her perceive a threat of imminent danger and that she acted in self-defense by keeping him in the suitcase.

“Yeah, that’s what you do when you choke me,” Boone said in one of the cellphone videos from that night, according to the arrest report. “Oh, that’s how I feel when you cheat on me.”