Rotten Mango's Sarah Boone Episode: The Suitcase Murder Caught on Tape
In February 2020, Jorge Torres Jr. was found dead inside a zipped suitcase in a Winter Park, Florida, apartment. The woman who put him there — Sarah Boone, his girlfriend — had filmed him begging to be let out. She called it a game of hide and seek. Rotten Mango's 83-minute episode walks through one of the most unsettling homicide cases of the decade.
If you know Rotten Mango, you know the format: host Stephanie Soo narrates a case with dark humor and genuine outrage in roughly equal measure, and the storytelling is tight enough to carry 83 minutes without dragging. This episode, published in April 2023, landed while Boone's case was still winding through years of pretrial delays — eight attorneys, a rejected plea offer, and trial dates that kept slipping — and that unresolved feeling hangs over the whole thing.
The video has pulled in more than 5.2 million views, and it is easy to see why. The case has something most true crime stories do not: video evidence of the crime itself, recorded by the perpetrator. There is no whodunit here. There is only why — and what justice looks like when it takes four years to arrive.
At a Glance
| Video | “She Locked Her BF In A Suitcase During Sick Game of “Hide & Seek” - Murder of Jorge Torres” |
|---|---|
| Channel | Rotten Mango |
| Published | April 16, 2023 |
| Length | ~83 minutes |
| Views | 5.2M+ |
| Subject | The 2020 death of Jorge Torres Jr. and the case against Sarah Boone |
What the Video Covers
The episode opens in February 2020, in Winter Park, Florida. Jorge Torres Jr. is found dead inside a suitcase in the apartment he shared with his girlfriend, Sarah Boone. What makes the case extraordinary — and what anchors the entire episode — is what Boone did the night before: she recorded videos of Torres zipped inside the suitcase, pleading to be let out. In the recordings she can be heard taunting him.
Boone told investigators she had zipped Torres into the suitcase during a drunken game of hide and seek, believed he could free himself, and fell asleep. The episode tracks her shifting accounts and the years of legal chaos that followed: Boone was arrested on February 25, 2020, charged with second-degree murder, and her case ground through attorney after attorney — eight in all — and a rejected 15-year manslaughter plea before finally reaching trial in October 2024.
One update the episode could not include, published in April 2023: the story now has an ending. After deliberating less than two hours, a jury convicted Boone of second-degree murder on October 25, 2024, and on December 2, 2024, she was sentenced to life in the Florida Department of Corrections. Her defense at trial leaned on claims of years of abuse — a defense the jury rejected.
Strengths
The evidence is the story. Most true crime episodes reconstruct what happened. This one does not have to — Boone recorded it. Rotten Mango builds the episode around those recordings, and the effect is genuinely chilling: there is no ambiguity about who zipped the suitcase shut, which forces the whole episode onto the only question that matters — why.
The victim is not forgotten. Episodes about cases this sensational can turn the perpetrator into the star. Soo keeps returning to Jorge Torres Jr. — a real person, not a plot device — and to the family who spent years waiting for a trial date that kept slipping.
A genuinely educational look at pretrial chaos. The episode's tour through Boone's revolving door of attorneys and rejected plea negotiations is one of the clearest explanations anywhere of how a seemingly open-and-shut case can stall for years before a jury ever sees it.
Weaknesses
It is dated by events. Published in April 2023, the episode ends on an unresolved note that has since been resolved — Boone was convicted and sentenced in late 2024. It holds up as a case history, but viewers should know the ending is not in it.
Thin on the trial itself. For the same reason: the trial that finally answered the episode's central questions — including the battered-spouse defense — happened a year and a half after publication. This is a pre-verdict document, and it shows.
Read the commentary as commentary, not a verdict. Rotten Mango is entertainment with strong opinions; the episode's read on Boone's motives is sharp and often persuasive, but it is the host's interpretation of a case the courts ultimately decided — not a substitute for the trial record.
Who Should Watch
- Rotten Mango fans — Stephanie Soo's signature mix of dark humor and outrage at full strength, in an 83-minute deep dive.
- Video-evidence case followers — the suitcase recordings make this one of the most documented homicides on YouTube.
- Courtroom-drama viewers — years of pretrial chaos, eight attorneys, and a rejected plea make the legal saga its own story.
- True crime completionists — a defining case of the 2020s, told before the verdict landed.
8/10
A gripping, well-researched deep dive on a case that had everything — video evidence, a shifting defense, and a legal saga that took years to resolve. Dated by the 2024 verdict it could not include, but as a pre-trial case history it is one of Rotten Mango's strongest episodes.
Source: Rotten Mango on YouTube (“She Locked Her BF In A Suitcase During Sick Game of “Hide & Seek” - Murder of Jorge Torres,” published April 16, 2023); case background via contemporary reporting on the Sarah Boone trial and sentencing (October–December 2024).