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- [00:02]
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Hi, it's Katie. I'm excited to let you know that you can watch video episodes of Crime House Daily Night Watch on Spotify. It's the same gripping true crime stories you've been getting here now with added videos and photos that give you even more depth and detail into each case. Search Night Watch on Spotify and hit follow so you never miss an episode.
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This is Crime House In Part one.
- [00:40]
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We went through Sandra's difficult upbringing and how Matthew Farwell took advantage of her vulnerability to groom her from the time she was a teenager. As this predatory relationship continued, things kept getting more twisted until Sandra was discovered dead. Tonight, in part two of our five part series on Sandra Birchmore's death, we're looking into the botched first investigation that declared her death a suicide and the reasons why they might have covered for the killer. Let's get into it. It's been more than four and a half years since Sandra Birchmore, then 23 years old and three months pregnant, was found hanging in her apartment in Canton, Massachusetts. But it is the decade of exploitation and deceit and corruption that came before that.
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He's accused of grooming Burchmore and having sex with her when she was as young as just 15 years old. Police found the 23 year old dead inside her Canton apartment in 2021. It wasn't until three years later that the FBI arrested Farwell. Former Snoughton police officer Matthew Farwell remains in federal custody charged with killing Sandra Birchmore.
- [01:54]
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Hi, I'm Katie Ring, a true crime analyst, self defense instructor and fierce advocate for victims. And this is Crime House Daily, your essential true crime companion. Every weekday morning and night here at Crime House Daily, we dig into the true crime stories making headlines right now, where justice is unfolding, arrests are happening, and new evidence is emerging. Every morning, First Watch gets you up to speed on the biggest cases. Every night, Nightwatch takes you deeper. If you want to follow a case from the first 911 call to the final verdict, this is the place for you. Follow Crime House Daily Wherever you get your podcasts, leave a review and for ad free listening. Subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. For video, check out our YouTube channel Rimehouse Daily or on Spotify by searching Night Watch True Crime Cases Daily in the Search tab. This episode discusses active criminal cases in breaking news. The information we share is based on what's publicly available at the time of recording and may change as new evidence comes to light. We aim to inform, not to decide guilt or innocence. So everyone mentioned is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
- [03:11]
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- [03:46]
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Welcome back to our five part series on Sandra Birchmore, a young woman who was found dead in her apartment after the police officer who'd groomed her for years believed he'd gotten her pregnant. As I mentioned in the last episode, this is a case that picked up a lot of steam during the Karen retrial because it happened in the same town of Canton. And there are also some very suspicious circumstances surrounding the case. In fact, if you followed our coverage of the Karen retrial, you may recognize a few names involved in the investigation. One of the names is Sergeant Michael Link, who arrived at the scene on February 4, 2021, after Sandra's school called the Canton police and requested a wellness check. The second officer is Kevin Albert, brother of Brian Albert, the man who owned the house where Boston Police Officer John o' Keefe was found dead on the front lawn. The Canton police originally ruled Sandra's death a suicide and were ready to move on to the next case, but they receive a few tips that they are forced to follow up on. The first is an email from Sandra's aunt notifying them that Sandra was pregnant and the father of the baby was Stoughton Police Officer Matthew Farwell. This information was then passed on to the Massachusetts State Police for action. The second tip is from someone in her apartment building who said that Sandra had been dating a police officer who did not want the baby and if Ms. Birchmore did not get an abortion, he would take care of the problem himself. And the last and most significant tip was from Sandra's apartment building manager, Aaron Porter. Porter couldn't shake the unsettling feeling she had that there was more to Sandra's death than what met the eye. So she decided to look over the surveillance footage again. And that's when she found something shocking. Around 9:15pm on the night of Sandra's death, a large man walks into the building with his head down, shoulders hunched over, a hoodie pulled over a baseball cap and a medical mask obscuring his face, it's clear he was trying to hide from the cameras. He is there for 28 minutes, and when he leaves the building, he hurries through the front doors. After receiving these tips, Canton police officers, accompanied by the Massachusetts state police, go to the apartments where they interview one of the witnesses, review the footage for a second time, and conduct a second search of Sandra's apartment. One of the first state troopers to arrive on the scene after the case is transferred from Canton PD to MSP and is trooper Matthew Dunn. Dunn knows there's a lot to investigate, but when he searches the apartment, he doesn't see any signs of struggle. What he does see is a lot of mess. And despite some saying that the scene definitely looked more like someone was tossing things around trying to find something, Dunn determines that Sandra was just messy and that this was a clear sign of depression. Regardless of what Sandra's loved ones think, the more that the officers talk to people in Sandra's life, the more likely it seems to them that she had committed suicide. When they call a resource officer at the school where Sandra worked in Sharon, Massachusetts, she tells them that Sandra had struggled after the deaths of her mom and grandma and that she had a history of claiming she was pregnant when she actually wasn't. However, the fact that she was pregnant in this case seems beside the point to them, and Dunn and his fellow officers see it as more evidence that Sandra was unstable. According to trooper Dunn's report, there was no sign of a struggle. There were no scuff marks or indentations on the wall, no drag marks on the floor. Rmore's body showed no defensive wounds. He noticed no bruising, swelling, or external trauma, nor any markings that would show she was trying to loosen the strap around her neck. Trooper Kevin Tufts began to prepare a standard form for the medical examiner. Next to the field labeled homicide. He filled in. No, next to possible manner of death he wrote suicide. And next to possible cause of death, he wrote intentional self harm suicide. But there is still one person that MSP has to talk to before they can really close this case.
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- [08:48]
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- [09:52]
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After Sandra Birchmore's death, Canton Police Department and the Massachusetts State Police receive numerous tips about Officer Matthew Farwell. Some say he is the father of Sandra's unborn baby. Others say he wanted her to get an abortion and threatened her that if she didn't he would do it himself. And some say that he has been involved with her since she was a minor. Apparently, Sandra had told multiple people that Matthew was the father of her baby, that he'd been physically violent with her and that he told her he wanted her dead. When Trooper Dunn gets this information, along with the footage of the man entering Sandra's apartment, and he suspects Matthew was a factor in Sandra's death. Suicide or not. On February 6, 2021, two days after Sandra's body was discovered and three days after Matthew Farwell's third baby with his wife was born, Trooper Dunn asked to speak with him about Sandra's death. Dunn and his partner, Trooper John Fanning, meet Matthew in a parking lot at an elementary school in Stoughton. In his notes, Fanning refers to Matthew as Matt, indicating the meeting was on the casual side and none of it was recorded, a courtesy a regular citizen in this situation would never receive. In this interview, Matthew tells the troopers multiple lies. He says he met Sandra when she was a kid and that they had had sex. But according to him, it had only been two or three times during a seven month period in 2020 when Sandra was a legal adult. He also tells the detectives that there was no way he could be the father of Sandra's baby because the last time they'd had sex was in October of 2020, two months before Sandra became pregnant. But the FBI later found communications between Matthew and Sandra on November 18, 2020, talking about their sexual encounter that day. Matthew goes on about how Sandra had a rough upbringing and that he just felt bad for her. According to him, she'd been put in a mental hospital a few times. But this is also false. She had gotten into a fight with a family member who called the police on her saying that she was suicidal. But when she was admitted to the hospital, they determined that she was not suicidal and she was released hours later. When Trooper Dunn brings up the surveillance footage from Sandra's apartment, Matthew confesses that yes, he had been there the night of her death, but it wasn't to kill her. Matthew says he'd gone over to break things off with Sandra and disprove he was her baby's father. According to him, they had had what he described as a pretty nasty argument and he left around 9:30pm he claimed she was standing in the kitchen when he left. Matthew's explanation seems plausible, but Sandra's family said that if her baby daddy and the love of her life broke up with her, that they would each receive 15 calls about it. But they never heard from her again after Matthew left that apartment. To verify the timeline, the detectives ask Matthew to surrender his personal phone. He consents for them to search through it, but he warns them he deleted most of his messages from Sandra. A few hours later though, Matthew rethinks his decision. He uses his department issued cell phone to Google. Can delete imessage be recovered by cellebrite AKA can deleted imessages be recovered by cellebrite? If you're not familiar with Cellebrite, it is a tool used by law enforcement to look through cell phone data. Then he looks up can you revoke consent in Massachusetts based on this behavior? It appears that Matthew thinks his story won't hold up and that investigators will follow the breadcrumb trail all the way back to April 2013 when he'd first raped 15 year old Sandra. After making these searches, Matthew deletes his search history. Trooper Nicholas Guarino, who you may remember from the Karen Reid trial for his role in the celebrite extractions in that case, when was also tasked with the Cellebrite extractions of Sandra and Matthew's devices. Curiously, he originally says he does not find any evidence of a relationship between the two. But even if Matthew had deleted texts between him and Sandra, they would show up on the reports. But hope isn't lost yet, because with the help of Sandra's cousin, Angelique Perozzi, they figured out her password is a variation of Matthew's name. When the detectives crack her password, they find a complete archive of over 30,000 texts going back years. It's going to take a long time to sort through all of these messages, but one thing is clear. Matthew had lied about his relationship with Sandra. They hadn't had sex just a few times when she was in her twenties. Matthew had been grooming her since she was a teenager. I listened better back then, Sandra wrote in 2020, reminiscing about when they'd first been intimate. To that, Matthew replied, you still listen and give me whatever I want, baby. Then Sandra says, good, but I don't think you're gonna get what you want next time. Matthew's response is chilling. He says, of course I will. I'll just take it. With all of this in mind, things are not looking good for Matthew. On February 24, 2021, the Souton Police Department places him on administrative leave for misconduct. Afterwards, Matthew asks one of his co workers to meet him at a bar over drinks. He admits his relationship with Sandra was sexual, but his colleague says that it didn't seem like Matthew was sad or remorseful about her death at all. If anything, Matthew is just mad that the state police are still targeting him, and now it's ruining his own life if it isn't the consequences of your own actions. But Matthew's wrong. If anything, the state police aren't looking into his actions enough. In the aftermath of being put on administrative leave, Matthew Farwell stopped cooperating with the state police when they ask him to submit a DNA sample to compare it to the samples from the ligature around Sandra's neck, we or the DNA of her fetus. He refuses. They also request another interview, this time with a polygraph. Matthew declines that too, and he lawyers up. His attorney sends a letter to Trooper Fanning telling him their investigation is becoming excessive. He says that Matthew had no role in Sandra's death and never encouraged her to take her life. Considering the evidence against him, detectives could definitely force the issue and and get a judge to sign a warrant for it. But instead, the detectives drop the issue. Sandra's family can't believe it. They think investigators are protecting Matthew because he's a fellow police officer, and soon they find something that reinforces their suspicions.
- [17:20]
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- [17:47]
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- [18:08]
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- [18:11]
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Rated M for Mature.
- [18:16]
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- [18:45]
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In March 2021, Sandra Birchmore's family holds a small celebration of her life at her hometown church in Stoughton. Shortly after, Sandra's family goes to her apartment to start cleaning out her place now that police are done with it. And what they find isn't exactly consistent with with someone who'd taken her own life. First off, Sandra was in the middle of doing laundry when she died. There's a load in the washer and one in the dryer. Then they find a poster in the living room. It reads, congratulations, we are going to be parents. A lot of Sandra's loved ones know who she thought the father was. They already suspect Matthew Farwell has something to do with her death. And when they look through Sandra's apartment, they they're even more convinced. Especially when they find something the police had missed. It's Sandra's pink flamingo necklace that she adored lying on her bedroom floor. The chain is snapped in the middle with a small lock of Sandra's hair tangled in it. Sandra loved that necklace. It had been a gift from her late grandmother, and she almost never took it off. As soon as they'd heard about what happened to Sandra, her family had a feeling she hadn't killed herself. She'd been through some really hard times in her life, but the weeks leading up to her death were the happiest they'd seen her be in a long time. And while people can hide how they're feeling, Especially when they're struggling, that just doesn't seem like something Sandra would do. She texted her friends and family every single day. They know she would have reached out if she needed support. Something just doesn't seem right. The necklace is the confirmation they need. They can't believe that Sandra would have broken something so meaningful to her or left it on the floor like that. And what makes it even stranger is that somehow the police had missed it completely. Because it turns out Sandra hadn't taken the necklace off at all. Crime scene photos show that she is still wearing it when she died. But because the clasp had been broken when Sandra died, It must have fallen off her when they moved the body. And they either didn't notice it or ignored it. And here's the thing. It would be extremely unusual for a necklace clasp to break in a suicide like Sandra's is believed to be. After Sandra's family finds the necklace, they pass it along to the police. But the police don't really do anything with the information. And on May 21, 2021, the Chief Medical examiner finally makes her ruling. She determines that Sandra's manner of death is suicide and that her cause of death is asphyxiation. Sandra's family won't accept that. Deep down, they know there's no way Sandra could have done this to herself. And the more they look into it, the more it feels like something is being covered up. First, they keep thinking back to Sandra's necklace and why the police hadn't flagged it. And that wasn't the only suspicious thing about their examination of the crime scene. Women tend to move their hair out of their way when they hang themselves. But Sandra hadn't done that. The makeshift noose was tied around her hair. All of this information could have helped the medical examiner come to a different conclusion. But the photos from the crime scene weren't sent to the examiner's office until a few days before she made her determination, which is not normal. Medical examiners have the ability to send their own investigators to crime scenes to make their own observations, but they never did that in this case. Instead, they only relied on the police's crime scene photos, which, again, were only sent right before they made their official determination. Which means they might not have had all the information they need to make a proper analysis. And the medical examiners seem to side with the state police's report too easily. Sandra's Cousin Angelique tries to propose additional theories for Matthew's involvement. But Trooper Fanning always has some reason why she was wrong. Multiple people had also told the detectives that Matthew had asked Sandra for a key to her apartment, which is not something you would do if you were trying to distance yourself from someone. But apparently, the detectives never followed up on this line of questioning. In his official reports, Fanning points out that Sandra had been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility for suicidal ideation in the past. Even though this isn't actually true, the only time Sandra was taken to a mental hospital was because of a family dispute, not for suicidal ideation. And she wasn't even admitted once. She was deemed to not be a threat to herself. When Angeli complains about the suicide ruling to the District Attorney's office, they assure her they'll still try and hold Matthew accountable somehow. But as time goes on, that seems less and less likely. Regardless of his potential involvement in Sandra's death, the state police have ample evidence that Matthew had committed the statutory rape. The texts between him and Sandra are explicit about the timeline of their relationship. Sandra even named the specific date when they'd first had sex, and she was just 15. But without Sandra as a witness, the DA's office feels like they can't fully prove Matthew's guilt, so they never file any charges against him for that. I'm not sure how explicit text messages laying out the timeline and family testimony wouldn't be enough to put him in jail, but I digress. Additionally, the DA considers charging Matthew with larceny for stealing government money by having sex with Sandra during work hours. Again, they have direct proof in Sandra's messages that Matthew was working during several of their encounters. But that doesn't seem to be enough evidence either. As of this recording, no larceny charges have been filed against Matthew, although there is an open case into it. However, it's not just the DA looking into Matthew. He might have gotten past them and the Massachusetts State Police, but he still has to deal with the Stoughton Police Department. Matthew is placed on leave, and the Internal affairs does a more thorough investigation. They look into the entire department, especially those who were involved in the Police Explorers program. And what they find is horrifying. Matthew had told investigators that Sandra had multiple sexual partners. They didn't expect those other partners to be other members of the Stoughton Police Department. Robert Devine, the officer who started the Police Explorers program, was revealed to have pushed the boundaries with his mentees for years. And after Matthew talked about his sexual relationship with Sandra, Robert had begun to pursue one too. But even more shocking is the revelation about the man Sandra called her best friend. It was Matthew's twin brother, William. He was now working as a Stoughton officer too, and he and Sandra had been having sex for years and both brothers knew knew about it. Matthew, William and Robert took advantage of Sandra at every opportunity, and the depths of their abuse was about to be exposed. What did you think of tonight's case? Drop your thoughts and theories in the comments and stay tuned for Part three. See you next time. If you haven't already, subscribe to our YouTube channel @Crime House Daily and follow us on social media rimehouse247 for real time updates. Because the pursuit of justice never stops. Looking for your next Crime House? Listen? Don't miss Crimes of with Sabrina Diana Roga and Corinne Vian. Crimes of is a weekly series that explores a new theme each season from Crimes of the Paranormal, unsolved murders, mysterious disappearances, and more. Their first season is Crimes of Infamy, the true stories behind Hollywood's most iconic horror villains. And coming up next is Crimes of the Paranormal, real life cases where the line between the living and the dead gets seriously blurry. Listen to Crimes of every Tuesday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you listen to your podcasts.