October 25, 2022 • 39 mins
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.
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 up
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Body Backs 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
(00:28):
might have or have had at any one time in
my life. My wife and I were ready to go
to second's notice. And as Tom 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
(00:50):
the only thing I carry other than you know, maybe
a book bag. And it took me some time to
figure out which one I actually wanted for the purpose
that I had at to carry the stuff I needed,
you know, today own body bags. We're gonna talk about
a case that might be as troubling as anything that
(01:13):
I have seen, a case involving a man who's closed
up in a suitcase and loses his life. Today we're
gonna talk about the homicide of Horey Torres, Jr. I'm
Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body Bags. Wow. I
(01:40):
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 throws of a man's life that
die right before our eyes, or was in the middle
(02:03):
of dying. Jackie Howard, my good friend, executive producer with
Nancy Graces Crime Stories. Jackie, I don't know if you've
seen this video. As my friend, I would prefer that
you don't want it, but I gotta tell you it
is absolutely horrific. It is, and unfortunately I have seen it,
but I did cut it off. It was more than
(02:26):
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,
(02:51):
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
(03:12):
and Torres was still inside the suitcase and unresponsive. He died.
What did he die? Up? Lack of oxygen? What is
his cause of death? Yeah, in the words, it was
lack of oxygen. But there's there's kind of a fine line,
you know, when you begin to think about lack of auction.
There's any number of ways that an individual can asphyxiate,
(03:34):
and we certainly talked about quite a number of those
over our episodes here on Body Backs. Uh, you know that,
I think you know this is an asphyxial death. However,
it's not in a classic sense where you begin to
think about manual st rengulation 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,
(03:58):
I want every body 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 excellate,
that means blow the blow your air out, tighten your
(04:19):
tighten your your arms across your chest even more every
single time. And that is kind of what position astoxia is. Like,
and the body or the decedent had to have been
in a compromise position. And you know, we're talking about
a suitcase. Everybody can imagine the dimensions of a larger suitcase.
(04:40):
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'd
against a panic. I don't know if you've ever had
(05:02):
this happen when you were a small child, Jackie, but
if you had older siblings or cousins and you guys
were rough housing and you were kind of the person
that was on the bottom on the floor, Yeah, like pickpile.
You know, they talk about a pigpile. And also if
you if you have someone to get you in a
bear hug um, you know, and you begin to kind
of have this chest compression that's going in. You're confined,
(05:24):
and you can imagine the panic that sets in 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
(05:49):
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
(06:11):
to breathe. So is that the same type of thing
you're talking about here. Yeah, it's the same same principle.
And generally there's some 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 gotta tell you, over the course of my career,
(06:32):
the most common that that I encounter we're actually heroin overdoses.
And the reason is is that heroin has this sedative
quality to it and it depresses the system. Alcohol depresses
a system, but heroin in particular depresses the system and
you become very drowsy, you know. And cases that I
(06:53):
remember are people that would fix on a toilet, say
for instance, sit there and heat there, you know, heat
their bullets of of heroin up drawed up and injected,
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.
Les's positional asphix it because first off, they're compromised at
(07:16):
a toxicological you know, 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
these things that we don't have to think about, the
autonomic nervous system can't compensate for that. It can't tell
(07:36):
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 rain 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
(07:57):
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
(08:18):
think that this may have happened to Orhey, when you're
rebreathing as you excellate, you're not blowing out oxygen, Okay,
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
(08:40):
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. This
is a case of oxygen deprivation. I gotta tell you
there there was a look Service advertisement that used to
(09:02):
come on, you know, way back when dinosaurs are 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 crawling
(09:22):
side 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
(09:46):
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
(10:08):
bringing into your body is pure poisonous. What does the
oxygen deprivation lack of oxygen due to your body? As
you mentioned earlier, we we've all either whether we're choking,
playing with somebody and they've got to set 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,
(10:30):
and you reference 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 you've ever
seen anybody that's having like a panic attack where they
can't control their breathing, they begin to shallow breathe, they
(10:53):
get lightheaded, that sort of thing. Imagine that Tom's you
know fifty if you're running out of oxtion. You know,
with panic attacks, most of the time people are in
a wide open space and they can breathe, there's auction 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
(11:18):
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 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
(11:39):
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
(11:59):
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, you know,
on the video tape, every time he shouts out to
his girlfriend. He's he's using available oxygen at that point
in time, and he continues to shallow breathe. So the
(12:22):
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 gonna spike, and
your lungs also will become markedly heavy. You'll have a
fluid build up in your lungs as a response to this.
(12:44):
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,
(13:06):
you know, and they're they're bound up or they're placed
in a say, for whatever it is, and they 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
(13:28):
yourself from this prison as you found yourself inside. 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 stranglation,
we know that we get patiqui, we get blood vessels
that burst. But when it's just lack of oxygen for
(13:50):
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 some times you'll have
a fluid build up with the brain to the brain
will become more heavy, and sometimes it's it's not it's
not as appreciable as it is in the lungs, but
you'll have this subsequent build up, a fluid congestion, if
(14:12):
you will. And many times there have been cases of
positional asphyxia as well, where you'll have uh patiki i
because the pressure is building up. You'll certainly see and
here's something that many people might not know. We always
talk about potiq i over the mucus surfaces like in
the eye, and you'll hear about it along the gum
line too. We see it inside the lips and on
(14:34):
the gum line itself. You know, relative to strangulation, you
know that you also get patiqui on the surface of
the lungs as well. There's so much pressure involved in
this that you'll have these little vessels that were burst
in what's called the interstitial tissue, and that's that's kind
of the bit of tissue that is out away from
the vessels, and because the vessels kind of leach out
(14:55):
are they kind of burst, and then it spreads out
into the interstitial tissu. You 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
(15:16):
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.
(15:38):
I mean, we all know we have to have oxygen
to 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 our self
(16:00):
this question why and hay, why but what 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 carries out. So
when you begin to think about why somebody would die
(16:24):
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
(16:48):
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, oh, 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
(17:11):
thing is is that it will have kind of a um,
kind of a blanched appearance to it because of lack
of oxygenated blood that has been going to it, so
it will 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 that is true,
(17:33):
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
(18:05):
an old army guy, and the reason I was in
the army is because I couldn't serve on a submarine.
There is no way I think that 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
(18:27):
chill up and down my spine. And I have friends
that were they like to call themselves sub mariners. 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
(18:49):
here talking. I have caught myself making a point to
take deep breath simply because what you're saying to me,
is almost putting me into the ANNEC 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
(19:09):
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
gonna make it through this, I promise you. It's 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
(19:32):
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 you know 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 my blood pressure begins to go up at that point.
(19:55):
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 Hore Torres Jr. You begin
to think about we know that he was essentially zipped
up in this suitcase, but here's something interesting. And you know,
we talked about oxygen deprivation, we talked about positional asphyxia.
(20:18):
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
(20:39):
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. The way and
the fact that he was placed in there, not just
in this space that it's obviously very tight and very contained,
(21:02):
he was placed in there with other objects. So you've
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 mentioned earlier, relative
(21:23):
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
(21:44):
to be less of a space that oxygen can can
actually occupy. And just let that sink in just for
a second, because now now you're 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
(22:07):
the fact that it's so tight anyway, and he would
have been struggling. I find that absolutely fascinating. And depended
upon the level of rigidity of these items, say, for instances,
say it's a couple of candlesticks, or it's and 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,
(22:28):
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
(22:52):
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 you're we're
talking about something called compression astphyxia. Compression and positional or
not the same thing. No, it's not, it is not.
People can say that that it is, I suppose, but
(23:14):
they're 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 like Mr Torres,
(23:34):
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 tortoiselike you know, 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
(23:56):
different than compressionist phyxia. Remember how I mentioned earlier, You know,
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 pickpile, 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 and everybody's joking around except for the
(24:17):
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 ten seconds, she allegedly goes
over to the surface of the suitcase and sits on
(24:40):
top of it with Mr Torres contained and beneath her.
As she's sitting there and she's teasing and 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 gonna draw her down ord draw her
weight downward on him. That's gonna height in that space.
(25:01):
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 bringing normally or as
normally as a can the space, and then all of
a sudden she sits back down and kind of this continuous,
(25:21):
repetitious event like this, it 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 tips where they're tightening
some kind of encasement upon you. Famously, there was the
(25:42):
fellow and the during the Selim witch trials that you know,
he famously said because he would not confess to being
a witch, and they 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
(26:04):
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 is
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
(26:28):
when we breathe me 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
(26:49):
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,
(27:11):
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 make no bones
about it. I got a fifty in chest, and so
there's no way I could fit inside of that of
that suitcase. Okay, there's no way a smaller person might could.
(27:31):
And a lot of it's gonna 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
(27:53):
he's 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,
(28:17):
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
(28:40):
a depressant and Obviously, we've seen people that have been
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 will say, well, all it
texts from me is one class of wine. I'm passed
out in the in the corner. And I'll have other
friends as it will say, well, you know, don't don't
(29:02):
put any tequila near me. I'm gonna 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
(29:23):
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 as little as i as
I possibly could, but I had to go back and
(29:43):
listen to it, and you know, his voice, it sounds
very shaky and kind of slurred. Not I'm 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 it's probably a
combination of both. But the combination of the alcohol along
(30:05):
with the compromised physical positioning in this case, it is
absolutely a recipe for death. There are certain cases I
(30:32):
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 and suitcases, they were not
completely integrated. As a matter of fact, most of the
time they had been dismembered. And in this particular case,
(30:52):
I cannot imagine what the medical examiner investigator's reaction was
when they showed up the scene and you've got a
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
(31:14):
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 being closed spaces and how horrible this is. You
begin to think about, you know, um, tales of people
(31:36):
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, that that is not We have to
go back and remember this is not like, um, a
hard sided suitcase. Um, this is a soft suitcase. Okay,
it's it's made out of out of fabric of some type,
(32:00):
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 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've got
(32:20):
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. Who Lord only
(32:42):
knows what else could have happened to him once he
was in there. I don't think that you know the
entirety of of his encapsulation and thing was videotape. Obviously
it wasn't. A matter of fact, it cuts off very
suddenly he's got blunt force trauma, and it is within reason,
is within reason that he could have sustained blunt force
(33:04):
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 Ms Boone as babe, a term of affection. Babe,
(33:27):
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 know,
you can hear in the video which sounds like her,
(33:51):
that she continues to taunt and so you wonder, you know, well,
how how did he come about the blunt force trauma?
Was it again, heart and parcel of this kind of
terrorizing him as he's encased inside of this this this
soft sided bag, it is not beyond reason to think
that you could either be punched through the bag or
(34:13):
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 contract
coup injury, where you have been struck in the head
on one side and the energy kind of travels through
the brain, that energy travels to the other side of
(34:34):
the skull, and you might have a concurrent area of
hemorrhage on the opposite side of the head from where
you are 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, uh, it's gonna be interesting to hear
the forensic pathologists talk about this at trial is coming
(34:54):
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
(35:18):
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 if the zipper were in fact
off of the track, they would closely examine that zipper
and you know, see if if if it marries up
with the statement that you've given. The problem is, according
to the police, is that she's given a number of
(35:40):
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 gonna 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 can do? And one was
(36:00):
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 currencies is
as they say, it's the coin of the rent. We
try to match things up with timelines that were given
or we try to create or not create. We try
(36:21):
to assess a timeline based upon what the science is
telling us, and so depended upon his level of rigidity
in his body, rigor mortis, the settling of blood post
vulnerable avidity, and certainly his body temperature, that's going to
tell us a lot. Now, I think that 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
(36:43):
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 um, 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 eleven hours. We know from police reports that
(37:08):
this couple had a history of domestic violence. Yeah, going
back for some time, there have been visits by the
authority out to that location as a result of fights
that were going on at the residents. 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,
(37:28):
I think that probably the prosecution more than likely we'll
talk about this and if this is something else that
can kind of be featured in this in 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, Uh,
(37:50):
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
in 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
(38:11):
of striking him? And maybe when they call the cops,
cops like, you know, how'd you get that shiner? Man? Uh?
You know why is it that you have a bruise
on your neck? And if those photos exist, and you'll
see those in court as well, if in fact they
are admitted into evidence. Sarah Boone's trial, as you said Joe,
is expected to get underway in November again. She has
(38:32):
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 Backs.
Body Backs 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
(00:28):
might have or have had at any one time in
my life. My wife and I were ready to go
to second's notice. And as Tom 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
(00:50):
the only thing I carry other than you know, maybe
a book bag. And it took me some time to
figure out which one I actually wanted for the purpose
that I had at to carry the stuff I needed,
you know, today own body bags. We're gonna talk about
a case that might be as troubling as anything that
(01:13):
I have seen, a case involving a man who's closed
up in a suitcase and loses his life. Today we're
gonna talk about the homicide of Horey Torres, Jr. I'm
Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body Bags. Wow. I
(01:40):
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 throws of a man's life that
die right before our eyes, or was in the middle
(02:03):
of dying. Jackie Howard, my good friend, executive producer with
Nancy Graces Crime Stories. Jackie, I don't know if you've
seen this video. As my friend, I would prefer that
you don't want it, but I gotta tell you it
is absolutely horrific. It is, and unfortunately I have seen it,
but I did cut it off. It was more than
(02:26):
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,
(02:51):
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
(03:12):
and Torres was still inside the suitcase and unresponsive. He died.
What did he die? Up? Lack of oxygen? What is
his cause of death? Yeah, in the words, it was
lack of oxygen. But there's there's kind of a fine line,
you know, when you begin to think about lack of auction.
There's any number of ways that an individual can asphyxiate,
(03:34):
and we certainly talked about quite a number of those
over our episodes here on Body Backs. Uh, you know that,
I think you know this is an asphyxial death. However,
it's not in a classic sense where you begin to
think about manual st rengulation 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,
(03:58):
I want every body 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 excellate,
that means blow the blow your air out, tighten your
(04:19):
tighten your your arms across your chest even more every
single time. And that is kind of what position astoxia is. Like,
and the body or the decedent had to have been
in a compromise position. And you know, we're talking about
a suitcase. Everybody can imagine the dimensions of a larger suitcase.
(04:40):
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'd
against a panic. I don't know if you've ever had
(05:02):
this happen when you were a small child, Jackie, but
if you had older siblings or cousins and you guys
were rough housing and you were kind of the person
that was on the bottom on the floor, Yeah, like pickpile.
You know, they talk about a pigpile. And also if
you if you have someone to get you in a
bear hug um, you know, and you begin to kind
of have this chest compression that's going in. You're confined,
(05:24):
and you can imagine the panic that sets in 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
(05:49):
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
(06:11):
to breathe. So is that the same type of thing
you're talking about here. Yeah, it's the same same principle.
And generally there's some 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 gotta tell you, over the course of my career,
(06:32):
the most common that that I encounter we're actually heroin overdoses.
And the reason is is that heroin has this sedative
quality to it and it depresses the system. Alcohol depresses
a system, but heroin in particular depresses the system and
you become very drowsy, you know. And cases that I
(06:53):
remember are people that would fix on a toilet, say
for instance, sit there and heat there, you know, heat
their bullets of of heroin up drawed up and injected,
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.
Les's positional asphix it because first off, they're compromised at
(07:16):
a toxicological you know, 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
these things that we don't have to think about, the
autonomic nervous system can't compensate for that. It can't tell
(07:36):
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 rain 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
(07:57):
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
(08:18):
think that this may have happened to Orhey, when you're
rebreathing as you excellate, you're not blowing out oxygen, Okay,
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
(08:40):
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. This
is a case of oxygen deprivation. I gotta tell you
there there was a look Service advertisement that used to
(09:02):
come on, you know, way back when dinosaurs are 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 crawling
(09:22):
side 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
(09:46):
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
(10:08):
bringing into your body is pure poisonous. What does the
oxygen deprivation lack of oxygen due to your body? As
you mentioned earlier, we we've all either whether we're choking,
playing with somebody and they've got to set 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,
(10:30):
and you reference 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 you've ever
seen anybody that's having like a panic attack where they
can't control their breathing, they begin to shallow breathe, they
(10:53):
get lightheaded, that sort of thing. Imagine that Tom's you
know fifty if you're running out of oxtion. You know,
with panic attacks, most of the time people are in
a wide open space and they can breathe, there's auction 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
(11:18):
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 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
(11:39):
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
(11:59):
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, you know,
on the video tape, every time he shouts out to
his girlfriend. He's he's using available oxygen at that point
in time, and he continues to shallow breathe. So the
(12:22):
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 gonna spike, and
your lungs also will become markedly heavy. You'll have a
fluid build up in your lungs as a response to this.
(12:44):
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,
(13:06):
you know, and they're they're bound up or they're placed
in a say, for whatever it is, and they 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
(13:28):
yourself from this prison as you found yourself inside. 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 stranglation,
we know that we get patiqui, we get blood vessels
that burst. But when it's just lack of oxygen for
(13:50):
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 some times you'll have
a fluid build up with the brain to the brain
will become more heavy, and sometimes it's it's not it's
not as appreciable as it is in the lungs, but
you'll have this subsequent build up, a fluid congestion, if
(14:12):
you will. And many times there have been cases of
positional asphyxia as well, where you'll have uh patiki i
because the pressure is building up. You'll certainly see and
here's something that many people might not know. We always
talk about potiq i over the mucus surfaces like in
the eye, and you'll hear about it along the gum
line too. We see it inside the lips and on
(14:34):
the gum line itself. You know, relative to strangulation, you
know that you also get patiqui on the surface of
the lungs as well. There's so much pressure involved in
this that you'll have these little vessels that were burst
in what's called the interstitial tissue, and that's that's kind
of the bit of tissue that is out away from
the vessels, and because the vessels kind of leach out
(14:55):
are they kind of burst, and then it spreads out
into the interstitial tissu. You 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
(15:16):
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.
(15:38):
I mean, we all know we have to have oxygen
to 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 our self
(16:00):
this question why and hay, why but what 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 carries out. So
when you begin to think about why somebody would die
(16:24):
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
(16:48):
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, oh, 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
(17:11):
thing is is that it will have kind of a um,
kind of a blanched appearance to it because of lack
of oxygenated blood that has been going to it, so
it will 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 that is true,
(17:33):
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
(18:05):
an old army guy, and the reason I was in
the army is because I couldn't serve on a submarine.
There is no way I think that 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
(18:27):
chill up and down my spine. And I have friends
that were they like to call themselves sub mariners. 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
(18:49):
here talking. I have caught myself making a point to
take deep breath simply because what you're saying to me,
is almost putting me into the ANNEC 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
(19:09):
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
gonna make it through this, I promise you. It's 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
(19:32):
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 you know 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 my blood pressure begins to go up at that point.
(19:55):
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 Hore Torres Jr. You begin
to think about we know that he was essentially zipped
up in this suitcase, but here's something interesting. And you know,
we talked about oxygen deprivation, we talked about positional asphyxia.
(20:18):
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
(20:39):
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. The way and
the fact that he was placed in there, not just
in this space that it's obviously very tight and very contained,
(21:02):
he was placed in there with other objects. So you've
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 mentioned earlier, relative
(21:23):
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
(21:44):
to be less of a space that oxygen can can
actually occupy. And just let that sink in just for
a second, because now now you're 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
(22:07):
the fact that it's so tight anyway, and he would
have been struggling. I find that absolutely fascinating. And depended
upon the level of rigidity of these items, say, for instances,
say it's a couple of candlesticks, or it's and 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,
(22:28):
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
(22:52):
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 you're we're
talking about something called compression astphyxia. Compression and positional or
not the same thing. No, it's not, it is not.
People can say that that it is, I suppose, but
(23:14):
they're 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 like Mr Torres,
(23:34):
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 tortoiselike you know, 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
(23:56):
different than compressionist phyxia. Remember how I mentioned earlier, You know,
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 pickpile, 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 and everybody's joking around except for the
(24:17):
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 ten seconds, she allegedly goes
over to the surface of the suitcase and sits on
(24:40):
top of it with Mr Torres contained and beneath her.
As she's sitting there and she's teasing and 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 gonna draw her down ord draw her
weight downward on him. That's gonna height in that space.
(25:01):
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 bringing normally or as
normally as a can the space, and then all of
a sudden she sits back down and kind of this continuous,
(25:21):
repetitious event like this, it 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 tips where they're tightening
some kind of encasement upon you. Famously, there was the
(25:42):
fellow and the during the Selim witch trials that you know,
he famously said because he would not confess to being
a witch, and they 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
(26:04):
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 is
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
(26:28):
when we breathe me 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
(26:49):
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,
(27:11):
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 make no bones
about it. I got a fifty in chest, and so
there's no way I could fit inside of that of
that suitcase. Okay, there's no way a smaller person might could.
(27:31):
And a lot of it's gonna 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
(27:53):
he's 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,
(28:17):
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
(28:40):
a depressant and Obviously, we've seen people that have been
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 will say, well, all it
texts from me is one class of wine. I'm passed
out in the in the corner. And I'll have other
friends as it will say, well, you know, don't don't
(29:02):
put any tequila near me. I'm gonna 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
(29:23):
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 as little as i as
I possibly could, but I had to go back and
(29:43):
listen to it, and you know, his voice, it sounds
very shaky and kind of slurred. Not I'm 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 it's probably a
combination of both. But the combination of the alcohol along
(30:05):
with the compromised physical positioning in this case, it is
absolutely a recipe for death. There are certain cases I
(30:32):
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 and suitcases, they were not
completely integrated. As a matter of fact, most of the
time they had been dismembered. And in this particular case,
(30:52):
I cannot imagine what the medical examiner investigator's reaction was
when they showed up the scene and you've got a
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
(31:14):
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 being closed spaces and how horrible this is. You
begin to think about, you know, um, tales of people
(31:36):
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, that that is not We have to
go back and remember this is not like, um, a
hard sided suitcase. Um, this is a soft suitcase. Okay,
it's it's made out of out of fabric of some type,
(32:00):
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 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've got
(32:20):
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. Who Lord only
(32:42):
knows what else could have happened to him once he
was in there. I don't think that you know the
entirety of of his encapsulation and thing was videotape. Obviously
it wasn't. A matter of fact, it cuts off very
suddenly he's got blunt force trauma, and it is within reason,
is within reason that he could have sustained blunt force
(33:04):
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 Ms Boone as babe, a term of affection. Babe,
(33:27):
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 know,
you can hear in the video which sounds like her,
(33:51):
that she continues to taunt and so you wonder, you know, well,
how how did he come about the blunt force trauma?
Was it again, heart and parcel of this kind of
terrorizing him as he's encased inside of this this this
soft sided bag, it is not beyond reason to think
that you could either be punched through the bag or
(34:13):
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 contract
coup injury, where you have been struck in the head
on one side and the energy kind of travels through
the brain, that energy travels to the other side of
(34:34):
the skull, and you might have a concurrent area of
hemorrhage on the opposite side of the head from where
you are 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, uh, it's gonna be interesting to hear
the forensic pathologists talk about this at trial is coming
(34:54):
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
(35:18):
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 if the zipper were in fact
off of the track, they would closely examine that zipper
and you know, see if if if it marries up
with the statement that you've given. The problem is, according
to the police, is that she's given a number of
(35:40):
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 gonna 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 can do? And one was
(36:00):
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 currencies is
as they say, it's the coin of the rent. We
try to match things up with timelines that were given
or we try to create or not create. We try
(36:21):
to assess a timeline based upon what the science is
telling us, and so depended upon his level of rigidity
in his body, rigor mortis, the settling of blood post
vulnerable avidity, and certainly his body temperature, that's going to
tell us a lot. Now, I think that 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
(36:43):
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 um, 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 eleven hours. We know from police reports that
(37:08):
this couple had a history of domestic violence. Yeah, going
back for some time, there have been visits by the
authority out to that location as a result of fights
that were going on at the residents. 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,
(37:28):
I think that probably the prosecution more than likely we'll
talk about this and if this is something else that
can kind of be featured in this in 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, Uh,
(37:50):
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
in 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
(38:11):
of striking him? And maybe when they call the cops,
cops like, you know, how'd you get that shiner? Man? Uh?
You know why is it that you have a bruise
on your neck? And if those photos exist, and you'll
see those in court as well, if in fact they
are admitted into evidence. Sarah Boone's trial, as you said Joe,
is expected to get underway in November again. She has
(38:32):
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 Backs.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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