A (3:37)
Welcome back to part three of our five part series on the death of Sandra Birchmore, a young woman who is found dead in her apartment after she told the police officer who had groomed her for years that she was pregnant with his baby. Sandra was discovered in her apartment on February 4, 2021 after her co workers called the Canton Police Department and asked them to do a wellness check. Unfortunately, when they arrive at her apartment they discover Sandra on the floor of her bedroom in a seated position. A duffel bag strap was wrapped around her neck and the other end of it was tied to her closet door handle. She had dried blood around her mouth and the officers noticed lividity, which is the discoloration of the skin after death and a rigor about her body's extremities which led them to believe that she had been dead for a while. They believe Sandra killed herself with a partial suspension Hanging Suicides using this method are quite rare because when people are in this position, their survival instincts usually kick in and prevent them from going through with it. In a typical hanging, the victim is completely suspended and dies relatively fast. But in a partial suspension, the victim is supported by the ground, which means they have to lean forward or to the side and hold themselves in that position until the noose is tight enough to restrict their airway and make them pass out and eventually die. For someone who was over the moon about her pregnancy, this just doesn't make sense to Sandra's family. She was making plans for the future. She had a photo shoot and a big pregnancy announcement planned. Boxes of baby items kept arriving even after her death and she was known for being a chronic oversharer who they believe would have shared her struggles if she was actually thinking about taking her own life. Her therapist said she saw her days before her death and said she didn't show any signs of suicidal ideation. And when they get to Sandra's apartment, they find her favorite necklace on the floor. The chain is broken and there's a tuft of her hair in the necklace. Her family believes that this is a sign of a struggle. From what I've learned about Sandra, I definitely think she is someone who would have found a safe place for her cats before she acted on something like this as well. But more than anything, they believe Officer Matthew Farwell had something to do with her death. Sandra had told her family about her married police officer boyfriend named Matthew, who she was about to have a baby with. She disclosed how she was pressuring him to sign the baby's birth certificate and how he had become aggressive with her in response. So even before Sandra was discovered, they were worried about her safety. Then there is the surveillance footage. A large man wearing a black hoodie pulled up over his baseball cap and a medical mask is caught entering Sandra's apartment building at 9:15pm the night of her death. And he is clearly trying to avoid the cameras. He goes up the elevator and 28 minutes later, he is seen rushing out the front door. While the man is in Sanders apartment, her phone captures eight steps and then all phone activity goes dark and Sandra is never heard from again. Authorities receive multiple tips about Sandra and Matthew's relationship and give Officer Farwell a softball interview in the parking lot of an elementary school. We later find out that he told multiple lies in this unrecorded and very cordial and casual interview. He even admits that it was him on the cameras, but he says that he was just there to break up with her. And the MSP officers at the time believe everything he says. The officers who reviewed the crime scene wrote that the place was a mess and cited this as a clear sign that she was depressed. They also note that there were no signs of a struggle and no defensive wounds. So they sent over the report to the ME's office, and three months later, on March 21, 2021, the medical examiner officially rules her death a suicide. It seems like a few of the MSP officers may have wanted to continue investigating Farwell. But after this determination, the da, Michael Morrissey, drops the case and it's closed. But there are a lot of people who are not satisfied with that result. One of these people is Donna McNamara, Stoughton's first female police chief. She had worked with Farwell for a long time and had also watched Sandra grow up. And she wasn't going to let him get away with it or tolerate this kind of misconduct on her force. Chief McNamara didn't have jurisdiction over this case since it happened in the neighboring town of Canton, Massachusetts. Which means she didn't have control over the criminal investigation. But one thing she could do is launch an internal investigation. Before we get into her findings, I will say that misconduct is not a New thing to this police department. Despite not being a large police force, Stoughton PD had a reputation in Massachusetts as the very worst department in the state. As far back as the 1970s, there were concerns that the town's officers were corrupt, especially the Chief. In 1976, Chief John Donahue was convicted of knowingly receiving stolen goods. But this wasn't a shock to the community. In fact, there was even a running joke that if you told the chief you were going on vacation, your house would get robbed while you were away. Twenty years later, another Stoughton chief landed in hot water. Chief David Young was fired for using department resources for non police business. His successor, Chief Manny Cachopa, was even worse. Under him, the department was flagrantly corrupt and targeted people of color at one of the highest rates in the state of Massachusetts. Despite being indicted and removed from office for his actions, the town select board voted to reinstate Cachopa in 2004. The chief then spent months getting revenge on the officers who he felt had turned against him. And at one point, he tried to run a lieutenant over with his car in a parking lot. Cachopa was finally removed from office in 2009 after being convicted of being an accessory after the fact that to attempted extortion. But the scandals didn't end there. There was also a case where a Stoughton officer left his patrol car to take a picture with a porn star while he was in uniform. And one random fact that I found particularly interesting is that the town is named after Justice Stoughton, the judge who proceeded over the Salem witch trials. Talk about a long history of corruption. After decades of this kind of corruption, the town of Stoughton finally had enough of its bad reputation. And the citizens were counting on Chief Donna McNamara to turn the department around and keep it free from scandal. And things were good for a while. Until Sandra Birchmore's death. After Sandra's body is discovered, Chief McNamara is immediately suspicious of Matthew Farwell, even if he wasn't involved in her death. A former police explorer and a current Stoughton police officer, being romantically involved doesn't sit right with her. On February 5, 2021, the day after Sandra's body is discovered, Chief McNamara directs her deputy Chief Brian Holmes, to investigate Matthew's relationship with Sandra. Whatever resources or leeway Holmes needs for the investigation, McNamara gives it to him. She wants the truth to come out, no matter how bad it might make the department look. At the same time, McNamara places Matthew on indefinite paid suspension pending the result of the investigation. Unlike the State Police investigation. Deputy Chief Holmes isn't looking to solve a crime. All he needs to do is find out whether Matthew had violated any of Stoughton's PD's rules and regulations. To get to the bottom of it, Holmes hires two private detectives and an IT expert who were all former state troopers to help him dig into Matthew and Sandra's communications. The MSP hands over Sandra's and Matthew's devices, and what they find is shocking. One thing that has been really bugging me while researching this case is that it's not clear who found what evidence. What I know for sure is is that Trooper Nicholas Guarino from the Massachusetts State Police was tasked with running cellebrite reports on Sandra and Matthew's devices. And he initially reports that he doesn't find communications between the two. But it is later discovered that Sandra and Matthew had over 32,000 texts spanning years. This became a huge scandal in the Karen retrial and something that Karen's lawyers petitioned to be let in because Trooper Guarino was the person assigned with the Celebrate extraction for the Karen Reed case as well. But of course, Auntie Bev didn't let it in. In the federal indictment, it just says that after Birchmore's death, law enforcement agents obtained Birchmore's cell phone, both Apple iPhones, and a laptop and reviewed the data on those devices. During that review, agents discovered messages between Farwell and Birchmore. The messages confirm that Farwell frequently communicated with Birchmore over the years. The messages also indicate that Farwell had sex with Birchmore when she was a minor, starting in or around April 2013, when Birchmore was 15 and Farwell was 27. Since it just says law enforcement, I can't find a definitive answer to whether or not the MSP had all of these communications before the suicide determination. Regardless, when they handed the devices over to McNamara's team for examination, all of the communications were exposed and it was way worse than expected. While reading the over 32,000 messages, it becomes clear that Matthew had been grooming Sandra since the moment he met her. He had taken her virginity when she was 15, which in reality was actually just statutory rape. He had coerced her into engaging in his disturbing fantasies, including rape, role playing as a minor, violent sex, and strangulation. He had emotionally and physically abused her for years, and he had sex with her while he was on duty. In total, the extraction of Sandra's data, including text messages, Facebook messages, and some other data, was 50,000 pages long. And when they start combing through this data, they realize that Matthew is not the only officer who had been taking advantage of Sandra. Matthew's twin brother, William Farwell, had been sleeping with Sandra as well, and both brothers knew about it. They also discovered that the officer who ran the police Explorers program, Robert Devine, had not only turned a blind eye to the brothers behavior, but but had also become involved with Sandra himself. Even after Sandra's death is officially ruled a suicide in May 2021, the investigation keeps going. Regardless of how Sandra died, there are mountains of evidence that Robert and the Farwell brothers engaged in extremely inappropriate behavior, to say the least. By the spring of 2022, Holmes has everything he needs. Now it's time for him to talk to Matthew. William and Robert, they're all looking for ways to avoid him though. But they can't run for long. Welcome to Walgreens. Looking for a holiday gift?
