Woman who locked boyfriend in suitcase where he suffocated to death ‘during booze-fueled game of hide-and-seek’ makes entitled request to court ahead of murder trial

A Florida woman accused of fatally suffocating her boyfriend in a suitcase requested professional hair and makeup for her murder trial, but her daring request was denied.

Sarah Boone, 46, filed the request before taking the stand at a pre-trial hearing on Wednesday, four years after she was arrested in the bizarre death of her boyfriend Jorge Torres Jr., 42, in their Winter Park, Florida, apartment .

She claimed Torres died during a booze-fueled game of hide and seek, but investigators responded with footage from her phone showing him thrashing around in the suitcase and telling her, “I can’t fucking breathe.”

During Wednesday’s hearing, Boone requested a team to spruce her up for court, but a judge even denied that her own lawyers had applied makeup, saying it is considered contraband.

The main reason behind Wednesday’s pretrial meeting was not Boone’s request for makeup, but rather her defense team’s attempt to suppress key evidence from prosecutors.

Boone has represented herself for much of her lawsuit since her arrest, and is now represented by her ninth attorney after eight others were fired or fired.

Her most recent attorney, James Owens, has filed a request to have two hours of interrogation footage between Boone and the Orange County Sheriff’s Office thrown out of court.

Owens argued that Boone was forced to talk to detectives and that her Miranda rights were not properly read, and felt she had no choice but to talk to authorities.

Specifically, it was about whether she understood the ninth question in the rights: ‘With these rights in mind, would you like to talk to them? [investigators] now?’

During the hearing, Orange County Sheriff’s Detective Chelsey Koepsell testified that Boone read her rights directly from her card, and that the question was not on the card she carries.

However, prosecutors argued that Boone never asked for an attorney during her interrogation.

In the interrogation footage, investigators wondered how Torres suffocated in the suitcase, which Boone said was an accident as they drunkenly played a game of hide-and-seek.

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 found Torres in the living room, and together they decided to let her zip up Torres into the blue suitcase, and she claimed she left two of his fingers sticking out of the zipper.

“Sarah and Jorge were both laughing because she zipped him into the suitcase,” her arrest affidavit read.

At 12:30 p.m., Boone said she decided to go upstairs while Torres was still trapped in the suitcase, thinking he could get out on his own.

Boone got into bed and fell asleep half an hour later, telling detectives she assumed Torres would get out of the bag and lie in bed with her.

The next morning she woke up 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 that the last time she saw Jorge was when she zipped him into the suitcase,” the arrest document said.

She then unzipped the luggage and found Torres unresponsive inside.

She testified Wednesday that after police found Torres’ body, she was still “very confused, very hazy” from what she said was drinking that night. HofTV.

‘I didn’t understand how many people were there [at the crime scene] and what they were doing. I was worried about my dogs. I was worried about my son. I was in shock.

‘I was traumatized by the situation and tried to concentrate on everything that was happening in my home. I was hungover; I think I was still drunk to some extent.”

Owens’ move to have the interrogation footage suppressed comes because it appears to contradict his intended defense argument – that Boone acted in self-defense the night of Torres’ death.

He claimed she suffered from battered wife syndrome, and Torres had a history of domestic violence involving Boone, including a battery charge in 2018 related to a drunken altercation in their home.

Prosecutors said during the pre-trial hearing that they plan to file a motion to bar Boone’s attorney from making such an argument, citing an expert opinion from Boone on Wednesday before the hearing.

It is not clear what this expert investigation entailed.

After denying her request for professional makeup and hair styling, the judge in her case said he would rule late Thursday on whether Boone’s interrogation video will be suppressed.

Boone’s trial is set to begin on October 7 and she faces up to life in prison if convicted of manslaughter.