Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan:Trapped in a Suitcase - The Murder of Jorge Torres Jr.

Episode Date: November 5, 2022

Sarah Boone calls authorities to report that her boyfriend, Jorge Torres Jr. is dead in their home in Winter Park, Florida. The couple had been drinking the night before and thought it would be “funny” if Mr. Torres crawled inside a suitcase and Ms.Boone zipped him inside. She then goes upstairs and passes out in her bed. When she woke up the next morning she finds Torres still in the suitcase and unresponsive. After police uncovered video from Boone’s phone with Torres yelling Boones name and attempting to escape, they charge her with second-degree murder. In this episode of Body Bags, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan and Jackie Howard discuss what happens to your body when it’s deprived of oxygen, positional vs. compression asphyxiation, how much of a role the couple’s alcohol consumption played into the case, injuries sustained by Mr. Torres, and much more.  Subscribe to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : Apple Podcasts Spotify iHeart Show Notes: 0:00 - Intro 1:40 - Background and overview of case 3:25 - Cause of death 5:40 - Positional asphyxiation 8:00 - What volume of oxygen does your brain require? 10:30 - What does lack of oxygen do to your body? 15:45 - How is it exactly that lack of oxygen makes you die? 18:05 - Fear of running out of oxygen 20:25 - Other items found in the suitcase 23:25 - Compression asphyxia vs. Positional asphyxia 26:35 - How compressed does your chest have to be for asphyxiation to occur? 28:45 - How much of a role did alcohol play in this case? 30:55 - Discovering a body in a suitcase 31:35 - Injuries Mr. Torres sustained 35:40 - Could Torres have gotten out of the suitcase? 37:55 - History of domestic violence 39:14 - Wrap upSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. You're listening to Body Bags on the Crime Online Podcast Network. Subscribe to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, or wherever you get your podcasts. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. I love to travel. That's something I've got to confess to you. I probably value now at this point in my life travel more than I do any kind of material possessions that I might have or have had at any one time in my life. My wife and I were ready to go at a second's notice and as time has progressed I carry less stuff with me. I find that I need less stuff but with that said I've got a I've got a particular bag I like to use, a suitcase.

It's generally the only thing I carry other than maybe a book bag. And it took me some time to figure out which one I actually wanted for the purpose that I had, to carry the stuff I needed. You know, today on Body Bags, we're going to talk about a case that might be as troubling as anything that I have seen. A case involving a man who's closed up in a suitcase and loses his life. Today, we're going to talk about the homicide of Jorge Torres Jr. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Wow, I watched a video recently that just chilled me to my absolute core. I don't know in recent memory that I have seen anything like this. And it was, I think at least, the last throes of a man's life that died right before our eyes or was in the middle of dying. Jackie Howard, my good friend, executive producer with Nancy Grace Crime Stories.

Jackie, I don't know if you've seen this video. As my friend, I would prefer that you don't watch it, but I got to tell you, it is absolutely horrific. It is, and unfortunately, I have seen it, but I did cut it off. It was more than I really wanted to remember. It's one of those things you can't unsee or unhear. Jorge Torres, after a night of drinking with his girlfriend, was convinced that it would be funny to crawl inside a suitcase and be zipped inside.

And that's what happened. Torres begged to be let out, but wasn't. His girlfriend recording it on her phone, laughing, and Torres begging, crying out to be released, that he couldn't breathe, that he was having trouble. The girlfriend, Sarah Boone, went upstairs to bed. And the next morning, woke up, and Torres was still inside the suitcase and unresponsive. He died. What did he die of? Lack of oxygen? What is his cause of death?

Yeah, in a word, it was lack of oxygen. But there's kind of a fine line when you begin to think about lack of death. Yeah, in a word, it was lack of oxygen. But there's kind of a fine line, you know, when you begin to think about lack of oxygen, there's any number of ways that an individual can asphyxiate. And we certainly talked about quite a number of those over our episodes here on Body Bags. You know, I think, you know, this is an asphyxial death. However, it's not in a classic sense where you begin to think about manual strangulation or ligature strangulation, that sort of thing. This is a unique type of death that is actually called positional asphyxia. And essentially what that means, I want everybody to kind of, if you can, take your arms and cross them across your chest and squeeze as tightly as you can and breathe in and breathe out and continue to tighten.

Every time you exhalate, that means blow your air out, tighten your arms across your chest even more every single time. And that is kind of what positional asphyxia is like. And the body or the decedent had to have been in a compromised position. And, you know, we're talking about a suitcase. Everybody can imagine the dimensions of a larger suitcase. Remember, this is a grown man, so he has to fit within. It's a soft-sided suitcase that zips up. But still, you have to fit within that space. And so every time he would breathe out, he would become more and more contracted in that space, particularly as he begins to panic. I don't know if you've ever had this happen when you were a small child, Jackie, but if you had older siblings or cousins and you guys were roughhousing and you were kind of the person that was on the

floor, yeah, like a pig pile, you know, they talk about a pig pile. And also if you have someone to get you in a bear hug, you know, and you begin to kind of have this chest compression that's going in, you're confined. And you can imagine the panic that sets in in this kind of circumstance. So long story short, what they actually ruled his death as is asphyxia as a result of positional asphyxia. We've talked about positional asphyxiation related to hazing cases where fraternity brothers have had a party and the pledges have been forced to drink a large amount of alcohol. They pass out or fall on the floor and then they die from positional asphyxiation because they fall or slump over and then their lungs can't expand enough to breathe.

So is that the same type of thing you're talking about here? Yeah, it's the same principle. And generally, there's some type of inebriation that is involved where an individual is either going to be inebriated or drunk on alcohol, or you might have drugs involved. And I got to tell you, over the course of my career, the most common that I encountered were actually heroin overdoses. And the reason is that heroin has this sedative quality to it, and it depresses the system. Alcohol depresses the system, but heroin in particular depresses the system and you become very drowsy,

you know, and cases that I remember are people that would fix on a toilet, say for instance, sit there and heat their, you know, heat their bolus of, of heroin up, draw it up and inject it,

you know, into their arm where they have a tourniquet in place. And as they get drowsy, they fall off the toilet and slip between the toilet and the wall. Well, that's positional asphyxia because, first off, they're compromised at a toxicological perspective where they have this drug on board and they can't move. And they're not aware that they need to move. And then just from a mechanical, you know, like if you think about the autonomic nervous system that tells our heart to beat and all those

things that we don't have to think about, the autonomic nervous system can't compensate for that. It can't tell you to breathe more rapidly or more shallow or whatever the case might be. So you get in this compromised position, you can't uptake oxygen. And we know what happens. What happens is, is that your brain begins to shut down because it's not receiving the volume of oxygen that is required. And what is the volume of oxygen that your brain requires? It has to be sufficient to the task at that particular time. The uptake of the oxygen has to, it has to be counterbalanced with the amount of carbon dioxide that you have in your system. So you don't want to be, for instance, there's this idea of

rebreathing, for instance, if you're in a confined space. And I think that this may have happened to Jorge. When you're rebreathing, as you exhalate, you're not blowing out oxygen. You're blowing out carbon dioxide. So there's an imbalance that occurs there, particularly if you're in a confined space like this. So your uptake of available air is primarily comprised of carbon dioxide, which is a waste product that's coming out of your body. You're rebreathing that. And so it gets out of balance with the oxygen. And so the brain, you know, begins to scream because it's oxygen deprived. It's a case of oxygen deprivation.

I got to tell you, there was a public service advertisement that used to come on, you know, way back when dinosaurs were on the earth and I was a little boy. And it really stuck with me. And I'm sure that some of our listeners have probably seen this. But there used to be a problem with kids playing hide and seek. And they would go and they would play hide and seek in vacant lots. And what they would do is crawl inside of empty or in discarded refrigerators. And they would shut the door behind them. And, you know, back then in those days you had an exterior latch on the refrigerator, so you couldn't get out. And it's got this rubber gasket that seals it. So once all of that oxygen

is gone in that tiny space, remember the space within an area like a suitcase or refrigerator is not measured in square feet. It's measured in cubic inches. All right. So that's how much oxygen you have. It disappears very quickly as your body demands it. So that supply just is non-existent essentially. So you're attempting to uptake something that's not there. And that that is there that you're bringing into your body is pure poison. What does the oxygen deprivation, lack of oxygen, do to your body? As you mentioned earlier, we've all either whether we're choking, playing with somebody and they've got us in a chokehold and you're in a bad position and you can't breathe. We all know that panic about not being able to breathe. And you referenced that earlier.

But what does that lack of oxygen actually do to your body? It has to affect everything differently. I think that probably the most obvious response that you see, if you're like, if that's having a panic attack where they can't control their breathing, they begin to shallow breathe, they get lightheaded, that sort of thing. Imagine that times 50 if you're running out of oxygen. attacks, most of the time people are in a wide open space and they can breathe. There's oxygen available, but their mind has got them in such a state that they begin to panic and shallow breathe. Well, in the reality that Jorge faced in this particular circumstance, he would have had this kind of primal response. Keep in mind, right above your kidneys, bilaterally, there are two glands. They're the adrenal glands and and they're sitting there. And it's fight or flight, baby.

And when that adrenaline starts to pump into your system, your body is screaming out, it needs to do something. It needs to do something superhuman in this particular instance. And the more you begin to panic, the more fuel you need. All right. And if you think of oxygen as fuel, you're needing more and more of it in order to function and in order to increase strength, speed, all of those sorts of things. And can you imagine being inside of this thing and you can't get out? And he's fighting in this environment as best he can, struggling.

And with every turn of his body, with every shout, because you can hear him on the videotape, every time he shouts out to his girlfriend, he's using available oxygen at that point in time. And he continues to shallow breathe. So the more shallow you breathe, the more oxygen you're burning through at that point in time. There's probably going to be an associated terrible headache that comes along with this. Blood pressure is going to rise significantly. It's going to spike. And your lungs also will become markedly heavy.

You'll have a fluid buildup in your lungs as a response to this. So anything and everything that could go wrong in this particular circumstance from a physiological standpoint goes wrong for your body. If you have any chance of surviving, let me tell you something. They'll have old black and white movies on television or these film clips of people like Harry Houdini, you know, and they're and they're bound up or they're placed in a safe or whatever it is, and they're attempting to get out. I can watch that and begin to panic. I don't like small spaces. And can you imagine if you don't like small spaces, suddenly finding yourself in this environment, and no matter what you do, how much you scream,

how much you claw, you cannot free yourself from this prison that you found yourself in. But what does it actually do to your body? You touched a little bit on it. Your lungs get heavy. But we were talking about the brain. So when we have strangulation, we know that we get petechiae, we get blood vessels that burst. But when it's just

lack of oxygen, for what we're talking about here, does that do anything to the brain cells to shut it down? Yeah, it does, actually. And you will see there'll be sometimes you'll have a fluid buildup with the brain to the brain will become more heavy. And sometimes it's not, it's not as appreciable as it is in the lungs, but you'll have this subsequent buildup of fluid congestion, if you will. And many times there have been cases of positional asphyxia as well, where you'll have petechiae because the pressure is building up. You'll certainly see, and here's something that many people might not know. We always talk about petechiae over the mucous surfaces, like in the eye, and you'll hear about it along the gum line

too. We see it inside the lips and on the gum line itself, you know, relative to strangulation. Did you know that you also get petechiae on the surface of the lungs as well? There's so much pressure involved in this that you'll have these little vessels that will burst in what's called the interstitial tissue. And that's kind of the bit of tissue that is out away from the vessels. And because the vessels kind of leach out or they kind of burst and then it spreads out into the interstitial tissue, you'll see those little focal areas of hemorrhage in there as well. So probably back to the brain, one of the things that you're going to see specifically is that there will be this congestion of the brain. And many times, Jackie, many times, this will also lead to a seizure because the brain activity is so skewed at this point in time, the brain essentially goes into a shutdown itself and the individual will many times wind up having a fatal seizure.

Do the brain cells explode or shrivel? I mean, I guess I'm trying to understand what it is about the lack of oxygen. I mean, we all know we have to have oxygen to survive, but how is it that the lack of oxygen just makes you die? I think that this is important to remember is that the brain, as we've touched on before, is the most vascular organ in the body. And what that means is that it has the most blood supply. Okay. So we have to ask ourselves this question. Why? And I hate why, but let's say what? What is the purpose of this incredible blood supply that the brain has?

Well, the answer to that question is the fact that it has a super demand for oxygen because of all of the functions that it carries out. So when you begin to think about why somebody would die as a result of, say, a seizure or the brain would get congested. Just think about the fact that it is in some people, some old timers, particularly relative to forensic pathology, they'll talk about strangulation of oxygen to the brain. And it's just kind of a euphemistic term that they're saying. And what they're meaning is that the brain itself has been depleted of oxygen many times and sometimes as well. And this is kind of fascinating from the standpoint of looking at the brain. What we refer to as grossly gross, not in the sense of that's gross, but grossly means with the unaided eye.

Like when you take a look at it after it's been removed at autopsy, the brain will be heavy because it's congested. But the other thing is, is that it will have kind of a kind of a blanched appearance to it because of the lack of oxygenated blood that has been going to it. So it'll have more of a pale appearance to it as opposed to the kind of healthy pink color that it has. You know, people talk about gray matter and white matter and all of that, and that is true. But the brain has kind of a pinkish hue to it, you know, when it's removed. And most of the time, that's a sign of a healthy brain. But when you see one that has kind of got this kind of pale discoloration to it, it's one of the things that you have to think about relative to oxygen supply. I'm an old Army guy. The reason I was in the Army is because I couldn't serve on a submarine.

There is no way. I think that that service in particular is probably one of the bravest things anybody can do from my perspective because it absolutely terrifies me. The idea of running out of oxygen. It sends a chill up and down my spine. And I have friends that were, they like to call themselves submariners. That would never be for me, Jackie. Well, for me either. I was a lifeguard for many, many years.

And, you know, one of the things lifeguards like to do is work on how long they can hold their breath. But the idea of that, I have caught myself while we're sitting here talking, I have caught myself making a point to take deep breaths simply because what you're saying to me is almost putting me into the panic mode that you were talking about. I mean, making myself consciously take deep breaths so I can imagine if I really couldn't breathe, what kind of a panic I would be in. Don't worry about that. Your autonomic nervous system is going to take care of that. You're going to continue to breathe. We're going to make it through this. I promise you.

Okay. That's good to know. It's absolutely terrifying. And I can't emphasize that enough. And that's what grabbed me about this case. And the reason I wanted to talk about it. It's not that often, I think, in forensics that you come across something like this because it's so unique. It's so unusual. There have been cases over the years, I think, where people have famously been kidnapped, for instance, and they've been placed into a coffin alive, for instance, and the kidnapper will say, listen, we'll tell you where the person is if you give us the money and that sort of thing. And again, my blood pressure begins to go up at that point. It's absolutely terrifying.

And I think that that's what struck me with this case, because there's so much going on physiologically in the case of Jorge Torres Jr., you begin to think about, we know that he was essentially zipped up in the suitcase. But here's something interesting. And, you know, we talked about oxygen deprivation. We talked about positional asphyxia. But here's something that I haven't mentioned yet. Contained within the suitcase where this man was held, essentially, by his girlfriend, allegedly, were other items. And the police have not released information yet regarding what those items were, but I'll put it to you this way. What they've said is that these other so-called items that were found in the suitcase, these things were going to be donated, you know, like taken to, you know, Goodwill or Salvation Army or one of these places.

And the suitcase was just kind of sitting there waiting to be hauled away. And the fact that he was placed in there, not just in this space, that's obviously very tight and very contained. He was placed in there with other objects. So you got a couple of things working here. First off, if you're trying to move your body into a position where maybe you can breathe a little bit better, that ability is going to be impeded greatly by whatever items that are in there. And just like I'd mentioned earlier, relative to ice boxes and refrigerators and that sort of thing. Those spaces

are measured in cubic inches, very tiny spaces. Well, this space is as well. So for every item, just do the math here, for every item that you have contained in the same space with Jorge, that is going to be less of a space that oxygen can actually occupy. And just let that sink in just for a second. Because now you're talking about a condition called oxygen displacement, which means you have other things in the same space that are taking up space. And the fact that it's so tight anyway, and he would have been struggling, I find that absolutely fascinating. And dependent upon the level of rigidity of these items, say for instance, say it's a couple of candlesticks, or it's an, I don't know what's in there, a couple of candlesticks, maybe a few old toys.

If these things are rigid, and can you imagine the pain that would be associated with that in addition to trying to move and being in this already highly agitated state? It again adds another layer of terror to this. Well, let me add on to what you're talking about. Sarah Boone, her body weight would have even further lessened his space to breathe in and his ability to breathe. Well, here we go. We've got another type of asphyxia to talk about now because now, wow, how many are we up to now?

Now we're talking about something called compression asphyxia. Compression and positional are not the same thing? No, it's not. It is not. People can say that it is, I suppose, but they're kind of delineated. Generally, if you think about positional asphyxia, most of the time folks will think about somebody that is in a contracted position and they're unable to kind of extend their body to the point where they can breathe. Say, for instance, like Mr. Torres, if you're

in a fetal position, which we would have to assume that he probably was with his knees drawn up, his back curled almost in a tortoise-like posture, arms tucked perhaps in front of him. That's a positional event, okay? And you can't extricate yourself from that. Now, that is different than compression asphyxia. Remember how I mentioned earlier when we're kids and we're playing around and whatnot and wrestling and whatnot? If people are familiar, and down here in the South, we use a term called pig pile, where if you're the smallest one, you're on the bottom.

And you've got all of these people kind of stacking up on top of you and everybody's joking around, except for the person on the bottom, of course, and you're panicking. Well, the more weight you apply, the less of an opportunity your chest has to expand. So let's just say, and this is kind of torturous when you think about it, let's just say that for 10 seconds, she allegedly goes over to the surface of the suitcase and sits on top of it with Mr. Torres contained beneath her as she's sitting there. And she's teasing him. She's taunting him, perhaps. And all the while, maybe she's bouncing up and down. Well, every time she moves down, you know,

and gravity is going to draw her down or draw her weight downward on him, that's going to tighten that space. But then when she stands up, let this sink in. When she stands up, his chest can re-expand at that point. Okay. And maybe he thinks that it's over. Maybe he thinks that he's about to get out. And all of a sudden he starts breathing normally or as normally as he can in the space. And then all of a sudden she sits back down and kind of this continuous repetitious event like this, it kind of sneaks over into the area of torture because this is

something that you might see, for instance, in a situation, say, with a torture event from the medieval times where they're tightening some kind of encasement upon you. Famously, there was the fellow during the Salem witch trials that he famously said because he would not confess to being a witch, and they would pile stones on him to try to get him to confess. And the last words he ever uttered as they were putting more and more weight on him was he said, more weight, because he would not confess. And so that is compression asphyxia. The more weight that you have on you, the less you have as far as a capacity for your lungs to expand. And that, again, adds another layer to this that's absolutely horrific. How much does your size play into how much weight that you could hold in that you would still be able to breathe, that you'd still have room.

When we breathe in, there's two types of breathing, whether people realize it or not. You have chest breathing and diaphragm breathing. When you're a singer or you're a public speaker, you breathe from the diaphragm because it gives you greater wind volume. When your lungs expand inside your chest, they don't have a lot of room, but there still is some room. So how much does your chest have to be compressed or unable to expand for this type of asphyxiation to happen? I think that it would take a pretty detailed study in order to come up with a specific number. But let's just kind of begin to factor it like this. You begin to think, you know, the larger the person you are, first off,

a large person is not going to be able to fit inside of that suitcase to begin with. I'll make no bones about it. I've got a 50-inch chest. And so there's no way I could fit inside of that suitcase, okay? There's no way. A smaller person might could, and a lot of it's going to have to deal with your muscle density, how much oxygen your muscles require, and how much muscle you have on you. Also, are you compromised at all physiologically? Let's say, for instance, that Mr. Torres was a smoker, for instance. His lung capacity is going to be diminished as a result of this. So, he's not going to have the ability to respire like many people might, for instance. It would be very difficult to actually get an accurate measurement on that,

though. But when you begin to couple that with also this kind of specter that's lingering in the background in this case, these people were both inebriated. They had both been drinking. And she admits that they had, you know, knocked off a bottle of Chardonnay that night. And so alcohol is going to play a factor in this as well. Well, that was my next question, Joe. How much does alcohol play into this

impacting his ability to breathe? We know it is a depressant. You're absolutely right, Jackie. It is a depressant. And obviously, we've seen people that have been drunk and they've become violent. You know, I've certainly witnessed the end result of that many times on cases I've worked. It doesn't necessarily make everybody go to sleep. I've got, you know, friends that will say, well, all it takes for me is one glass of wine. I'm passed out in the corner. And I'll have other friends that will say, well, you know, don't put any tequila near me.

I'm going to wind up ripping the place apart. But it is a depressant, and it does impact the lungs and your ability as a result of the impact of the alcohol to uptake oxygen. And it will compromise your ability to breathe. So when you couple that with this kind of compromised physical condition that you're in, and then you introduce this into your system. And right now, this is kind of what we're waiting on right now. But right now, we don't know what his blood alcohol level is. And, you know, I tried listening to this tape as little as I possibly could, but I had to go back and listen to it. And, you know, his voice, it sounds very shaky and kind of slurred. And I had to think, well, am I hearing this because he's running out of oxygen or am I hearing this because he's inebriated? Or is it a combination of both?

I think that it's probably a combination of both. But the combination of the alcohol along with compromised physical positioning in this case, it is absolutely a recipe for death. There are certain cases I remember from my time as an investigator where I did, in fact, find bodies in suitcases. But most of the time when I found bodies in suitcases, they were not completely integrated. As a matter of fact, most of the time, they had been dismembered. And in this particular case, I cannot imagine what the medical examiner investigator's reaction was when they showed up at the scene. And you've got a full-grown man folded up inside of a suitcase. Because we had a full-grown man inside a suitcase, he had some other injuries. What were those injuries and were they caused by him trying to get out of the suitcase since

nobody was going to let him out? When I heard that he had injuries on his body, that was the first thing I'm thinking about, you know, because I've always got this, you know, going back to this idea of enclosed spaces and how horrible this is. You begin to think about, you know, tales of people trying to scratch their way out of being buried alive in coffins and all that sort of thing. You'd see broken nails and nail marks everywhere. That's not what we're talking about here. We have to go back and remember this is not like a hard-sided suitcase. This is a soft suitcase. It's made out of fabric of some type, and it's some kind of man-made woven fabric, manufactured fabric. And you begin to think, well, how did he get bruises

on him? Because they're talking about, and they use this term specifically, they say that he has sustained blunt force trauma. And anytime you hear that, you got a couple of things that you can consider. Either these are defensive wounds where somebody is in a fight and they're throwing their hands up or trying to get somebody off of them. Maybe they've been struck by an item in that sense, kind of in a defensive posture, or they're on the receiving end of being pummeled. Remember, he had been in there for some time. Lord only knows what else could have happened to him once he was in there. I don't think that the entirety of his encapsulation in this thing was videotaped. Obviously, it wasn't. As a matter of fact, it cuts off very suddenly.

He's got blunt force trauma, and it is within reason. It is within reason that he could have sustained blunt force trauma at the hand of someone literally pummeling him through this soft-sided luggage. And you think about this man is begging for his life. You can hear him on the videotape. He's begging for his life. He's crying out. He's asking for mercy. He's referring to Miss Boone, continues to refer to Miss Boone as babe, a term of affection. Babe, please

let me out. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. And he's actually verbalizing the fact that he cannot breathe. He has an awareness that he cannot breathe. Let that sink in just for a second. This guy knows he's running out of oxygen. Even in an inebriated state, he knows that he's running out of oxygen. But yet, you can hear in the video, which sounds like her, that she continues to taunt. And so you wonder, well, how did he come about the blunt force trauma? Was it, again, part and parcel of this kind of terrorizing him as he's encased inside of this soft-sided bag. It is not beyond reason to think that you could either be punched through the bag or stomped on or bounced upon. And keep in mind, he's tightly pressed to the floor, even though he's contained in his bag. If he has any space whatsoever, you might have maybe what's referred to as a coup or contra coup injury where you have being struck in the head on one side and the energy kind of travels through the brain.

That energy travels to the other side of the skull. And you might have a concurrent area of hemorrhage on the opposite side of the head from where you were actually struck. It's kind of a fascinating manifestation, but we don't know that at this point in time. But that kind of thing can happen in this environment. And so, again, it's going to be interesting to hear the forensic pathologist talk about this. A trial is coming up in November. Sarah Boone at one point told police that Torres had been able to stick two fingers out of the suitcase. So she thought he'd have no problems getting himself free. And I was thinking myself that as many times as I've used a zipper in clothes, they fail often. So wouldn't you think

that it should have been or would have been easy to get out of the suitcase, Joe? Yeah, and there would be evidence of that, I would think. If the zipper were, in fact, off of the track, they would closely examine that zipper and see if it marries up with the statement that she's given. The problem is, according to the police, is that she's given a number of statements, and some of the stuff that she says contradicts previous statements. And so, look, this is the bottom line, is that the science is going to win out. You know, when they examine the suitcase, one of the things that they would have closely examined when they finally got the suitcase opened up is what condition was his body in? And, you know, we've talked about injuries and all that sort of thing.

But what I'm talking about is the changes after death. Our currency in medical legal death investigation is time. That is our currency. As they say, it's the coin of the realm. We try to match things up with timelines that we're given, or we try to create, or not create. We try to assess a timeline based upon what the science is telling us. And so, dependent upon his level of rigidity in his body, rigor mortis, the settling of blood, post-mortem lividity, and certainly his body temperature, that's going to tell us a lot. Now, I think the body temperature will probably

be skewed because he's in this kind of contained, closed-up area. So, I don't know that you would necessarily get a true reading, but I think that the level of rigor mortis is going to be key here. And you know how rigid he was at this particular time when they found him, because here's kind of an interesting little aside. They are saying, they are actually saying that they believe that Mr. Torres was in there for possibly 11 hours. We know from police reports that this couple had a history of domestic violence. Yeah, going back for some time, there had been visits by the authority out to that location as a result of fights that were going on at the residence. When you begin to put all of this together and you think about what's going to come out at trial relative to their history i think that probably the prosecution more than

likely will talk about this and if this is something else that can kind of be featured in this and defense might use this too if remember in any kind of domestic violence event if someone has caused a bruise on someone or has drawn blood, guess what the police do? They take photographs of that. And it'll be interesting to see if those types of photographs exist from previous events. And if they are, if they're going to be admitted into court and we'll be able to kind of see, do a side by side comparison. Did she sustain any kind of injuries in the past, maybe at the hands of Mr. Torres? Or conversely, did she have a history of striking him?

And maybe when they called the cops, the cops were like, you know, how'd you get that shot on her, man? You know, why is it that you have a bruise on your neck? And if those photos exist, then you'll see those in court as well, if, in fact, they were admitted into evidence. Sarah Boone's trial, as you said, Joe, is expected to get underway in November. Again, she has been charged with Torres' death. She has not been convicted. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. This is an iHeart Podcast.