A Florida woman accused of killing her boyfriend by leaving him in a locked suitcase has written a rambling 58-page letter to a judge claiming she is “not the problem” after trashing eight defense attorneys.
Sarah Boone, 46, blasted her last lawyer, Patricia Cashman, in the unhinged letter for allegedly keeping information from her. She noted that she had lost confidence in Cashman, but insisted that she did not want her attorney replaced.
Boone also noted that her case has gained national attention after she confessed to stuffing her boyfriend Jorge Torres Jr., 42, in a suitcase and leaving him there for hours until he died, in what she described as a game of hide-and-seek gone wrong.
She claims Torres’ death was an accident after a night of drinking.
Sarah Boone, 46, wrote a 58-page letter to the judge in her case criticizing her new attorney
Boone has admitted to putting Jorge Torres Jr., 42, in the suitcase in what she describes as a game of hide and seek
Since her arrest in February 2020, Boone has gone through a slew of defense attorneys. When she appeared in court on June 7, she gave the judge a lengthy letter explaining why the eighth lawyer did not meet the standard.
“I’ve never met anyone like Ms. Cashman,” Boone told the judge in court as she handed over the letter.
“She will change her disposition and her attitude towards me, and it doesn’t matter how stupid I am to myself to try to coexist with her.
‘I even came up with a solution: I have a fake judge in her dealings, so that she will hopefully treat me in an appropriate and professional manner. But she doesn’t.’
In her letter obtained by Court TVBoone reaffirmed these claims, insisting, “I AM NOT THE PROBLEM, EXCEPT THAT I WANT TO AND SHOULD BE TREATED WITH RESPECT, AND I AM BEHAVIING MORE PROFESSIONAL THAN THE PAID “I’VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR OVER 40 YEARS.”
“After so long of experience, we should have acquired common courtesy, customer service and listening skills.”
She argued that Cashman does not include her in discussions about the case, asking “how much more of my case and myself is being added to the Internet every hour (especially after this letter breaks) increasing the mass infection and destruction of my hopes . I got a fair trial, fair everything, my side first, and now I’m wondering if my lawyer ‘drank the punch like everyone else’.”
Boone claimed her newest attorney, Patricia Cashman, is not involved in discussions about the case
Boone subsequently admitted that she left meetings with Cashman “because of her unwarranted, uninformative, unprofessional, snotty attitude and her lying answers to my questions and more.”
She added: ‘The way she treats me is extremely prejudiced, hostile and disinterested.’
Still, Boone said she did not intend to have her attorney replaced like the others, writing, “I should feel safe, very confident and proud to have her ‘represent’ my life.”
‘I don’t, and I’ve told her that many times. She has such a huge lack of confidence in me and my cause, that I believe this greatly contributes to her hostile attitude towards me.
“I hope that with this letter she will pick up the sword of injustice and fight with me, and not against me, like so many unmotivated, overwhelmed, weak lawyers who clumsily retreated and disappeared from the battlefield without success.”
Just four days after Boone filed the brief, Cashman filed a motion requesting that he withdraw from the case, citing irreconcilable differences “including, but not limited to, ethical considerations,” according to Court TVin which a very different version of events was shared that the suspect portrayed.
She claimed she spent hours with Boone accepting collect calls, but Boone refused to cooperate.
“I spent over 20 hours going through her questions and going through her lists,” the lawyer told the court.
“When I tried to inform her about the statements I recently made, she chose to leave the prison conference.
“When I tried to go over some of the discovery stuff and things I wanted to make sure she was aware of, she walked away.”
She added: ‘I can’t spend all my time defending what I do and at the same time effectively preparing a case for trial.’
Boone was arrested in February 2020 after calling officers to her home and saying Torres had died while the two were playing hide and seek after a night of drinking.
Officers later found videos on her phone showing the woman filming Torres begging to be freed from the suitcase
Boone was arrested in February 2020 after calling officers to her home. They said Torres died while the two were playing hide and seek after a night of drinking.
During her first interview with a detective, Boone said she and Torres were painting pictures, completing a puzzle and drinking Woodbridge Chardonnay when they decided to play hide and seek.
Boone said she hid in the shower upstairs, but Torres never went upstairs to look for her.
When she got downstairs, she said she found Torres in the living room and together they decided to let her zip up Torres into the blue suitcase, with two of his fingers sticking out of the zipper.
“Sarah and Jorge both laughed because she zipped him into the suitcase,” the statement said.
At 12:30 a.m., Boone decided to go upstairs, with Torres still in the trunk, thinking he could get out on his own.
Boone went to bed and fell asleep half an hour later. She claimed that neither she nor her boyfriend were drunk from the wine.
She told the detective she assumed Torres would get out of the bag and lie in bed with her, the affidavit said.
Boone woke up the next morning and stayed in bed for a while. She said she assumed Torres was already downstairs “on the laptop looking for work.”
She finally went downstairs around 11am and couldn’t find her boyfriend anywhere.
“Sarah panicked and remembered the last time she saw Jorge was when she put him in her suitcase,” the arrest document said.
When she unzipped the luggage, she saw that Torres was no longer in it.
Officers responding to the residence in the 4700 block of Frantz Lane found Torres’ lifeless body on the ground next to a blue suitcase.
According to the document, the victim had a cut on his lip, bruises around his eyes, forehead and shoulder, and scratches on his back and neck.
Officers found Torres lying on the ground next to the suitcase, with bruises around his eye, forehead and shoulder, and nail scratches on his back and neck
During the subsequent investigation, Boone gave verbal and written consent for the detective to search her phone, which led to the discovery of two videos.
In the first recording, the victim is heard screaming at Boone from the suitcase, telling her he can’t breathe, prompting the woman to laugh at him.
“Yes, that’s what you do when you strangle me,” Boone says to her boyfriend in the video, according to the affidavit.
Torres continued to beg and push against the fabric of the suitcase in a desperate attempt to get out, telling his girlfriend he couldn’t breathe.
“That’s on you. Oh, that’s how I feel when you cheat on me,” Boone told him, according to the document, adding that he “should probably keep his mouth shut.”
A second video found on Boone’s phone shows the luggage in a different position. On that recording, Torres is heard screaming Boone’s name and saying, “I can’t fucking breathe.”
Boone would later say that she had no memory of recording the videos. She admitted they looked ‘bad.’
She also reportedly contradicted her original statement to police, blaming the incident on her and Torres’ drinking.
The case has now received national attention, Boone acknowledged in her letter to the judge earlier this month. Included in the letter were a map of the world and a map of the United States, with notes about the locations where she received messages and mail.
Boone claimed that the letter was necessary to give the public “an understanding of my ongoing disadvantages, hurdles, and impediments that I continue to experience in addition to the news, which fuels my intentions to write.”
“The race to the pulpit is unfair and it is important to me that “you” are informed and understand what happens when the news cameras are off and we are all in between my “status” hearings,” she wrote.
A hearing to dismiss Cashman’s motion from the case has not yet been scheduled, but Boone’s trial is set to begin Oct. 7.