A Florida woman accused of killing her boyfriend by leaving him in a zippered suitcase wrote a rambling 58-page letter to a judge claiming she is “not the problem” after criticizing eight defense attorneys.
Sarah Boone, 46, criticized her last lawyer, Patricia Cashman, in the deranged letter for allegedly withholding information from her, noting that she lost faith in Cashman, but insisted that she did not want her lawyer replaced.
Boone also noted that she knows her case has gained national attention after she admitted to putting her boyfriend Jorge Torres Jr, 42, inside a suitcase and leaving him there for hours until he died in what she described as a game. hideaway. search went wrong.
She has maintained that 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 last attorney.
Boone admitted to putting Jorge Torres Jr., 42, inside the suitcase in what she described as a game of hide-and-seek.
Since his arrest in February 2020, Boone has used a series of defense attorneys, and when he appeared in court on June 7, he gave the judge a lengthy memo to justify why the eighth attorney was not up to the task.
“I have never met anyone like Ms. Cashman,” Boone told the judge in court as he handed her the letter.
‘She will change her disposition and her attitude towards me, and it doesn’t matter how foolish I am to myself to try to coexist with her.
‘I even came up with the solution of having a fictional judge in interactions with her to try to treat me appropriately and professionally, which she doesn’t do.’
In his letter obtained by Court TVBoone doubled down on his claims and insisted: ‘I AM NOT THE PROBLEM EXCEPT I WANT TO BE TREATED AND SHOULD BE TREATED FAIRLY WITH RESPECT, ACTING MORE PROFESSIONALLY THAN THE PAID PROFESSIONAL. ‘I’VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR OVER 40 YEARS.’
‘After so much time of experience, courtesy, customer service and listening skills should have been acquired.’
She argued that Cashman is not including her in discussions about the case, asking, “How much more of my case and myself is being added every hour (especially after this letter is released) to the Internet, increasing the mass infection and destroying my hopes for a fair trial, anything fair, my side first and foremost, and now I’m wondering if my attorney ‘drank the punch like everyone else’.”
Boone said his latest attorney, Patricia Cashman, is not included in discussions about the case.
Boone later admitted that he walked out of meetings with Cashman “due to his unreasonable, uninformative, unprofessional and arrogant attitude and his false responses to my questions and beyond.”
He added: “The way he treats me is extremely prejudiced, hostile and uncaring.”
Still, Boone said her intention was not for her attorney to be replaced like the others, writing, “I should feel safe, very confident and proud that she “represents” my life.”
‘I don’t, and I have told you this many times about your monumental disbelief towards me and my case, which I believe contributes greatly to your hostile attitudes towards me.
‘I hope that with this letter she will take up the sword of injustice and fight by my side, not against me, like so many unmotivated, overwhelmed and weak lawyers who retreated without grace and walked away from the battlefield without success.’
Just four days after Boone filed the letter, Cashman filed a motion to withdraw from the case, citing irreconcilable differences “including, but not limited to, ethical considerations,” according to Court Televisionsharing a very different version of events than the defendant portrayed.
She claimed she had spent hours with Boone accepting collect calls, but Boone had refused to cooperate.
“I have spent more than 20 hours reviewing your questions, reviewing your lists,” the lawyer told the court.
‘When I try to inform her about the statements I recently took, she chose to leave the jail conference.
“When I tried to go over some things regarding the discovery in terms of things I wanted to make sure she knew, she walked away.”
He added: “I can’t spend all my time defending what I’m doing and at the same time effectively prepare 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.
Police later found videos on her phone showing the woman filming Torres pleading to be released from the suitcase.
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.
During her initial 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 upstairs in the shower, but Torres never went up to look for her.
When he went downstairs, he says he found Torres in the living room and together they decided to zip Torres’ blue suitcase, leaving two of his fingers out of the zipper.
“Sarah and Jorge were laughing when she put him in the suitcase,” the affidavit said.
At 12:30 a.m., Boone said he 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. He claimed that neither she nor her boyfriend were drunk from the wine.
She told the detective she assumed Torres was going to get out of the bag and join her on the bed, according to the affidavit.
Boone woke up the next morning and stayed in bed for a while. He said he assumed Torres was already down “on the laptop looking for a job.”
She finally went downstairs around 11am and couldn’t find her boyfriend anywhere.
“Sarah got scared and remembered that the last time she saw Jorge was when she put him in the suitcase,” according to the arrest document.
He then unzipped the luggage and found Torres unconscious inside.
Officers responding to the residence in the 4700 block of Frantz Lane found Torres’ lifeless body lying on the ground next to a blue suitcase.
The victim had a cut on her lip, bruising around her eye, forehead and shoulder, and nail scratches on her back and neck, according to the document.
Officers found Torres lying on the floor next to the suitcase, with bruises around his eye, forehead and shoulder, and fingernail scratches on his back and neck.
During the ensuing investigation, Boone gave verbal and written consent to the detective to search his phone, which led to the discovery of two videos.
In the first recording, the victim is heard yelling at Boone from inside the suitcase and telling him he can’t breathe, prompting the woman to laugh at him in response.
“Yeah, that’s what you do when you choke me,” Boone tells her boyfriend in the video, according to the affidavit.
Torres continued to plead and push at the fabric of the suitcase in a desperate attempt to get out, telling his girlfriend he couldn’t breathe.
“That’s up to you. Oh, that’s how I feel when you cheat on me,” Boone told her, according to the document, adding that she “should probably shut up.”
A second video found on Boone’s phone shows the luggage in a different position. In that recording, Torres is heard screaming Boone’s name and saying, “I can’t breathe.”
Boone would later say that he did not remember recording the videos, and admitted that they “looked bad.”
She also allegedly contradicted her original statement to police, blaming what happened on her and Torres’ alcohol consumption.
The case has since gained national attention, Boone admitted in his letter to the judge earlier this month, including a world map and a map of the United States, with annotations to indicate the locations from which he received messages and mail.
Boone said the letter was necessary to give the public “an insight into my continuing handicaps, obstacles and impediments which I am still experiencing in addition to the news, which motivates my intentions to write.”
“The race to the pulpit is unfair and it is important to me that ‘you’ are aware and understand what happens when the news cameras are off and we are all among my ‘status’ audiences,” he wrote.
A hearing on Cashman’s motion to be removed from the case has not yet been scheduled, but Boone’s trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 7.