Within one hour of finding Sandra Birchmore’s body, officers told the medical examiner there had been no foul play. That call shaped everything. The medical examiner never visited the scene. Canton police misidentified the murder weapon as a scarf. Investigators never compelled a DNA sample from the man seen on surveillance entering Sandra’s building the night she was last seen alive. They let him keep his phone for days. They never searched his home.

Federal prosecutors later wrote it plainly: at no point was Matthew Farwell seriously considered as a suspect in a homicide. He was a decorated police detective, a union president, a veteran. He had the kind of standing that makes people not ask uncomfortable questions. Sandra was a twenty-three-year-old with documented emotional challenges. His credibility was assumed. Hers was dismissed.

Sandra’s family refused to accept the official story. They said she was looking forward to being a mother. She was making plans. She was not in crisis. They filed a wrongful death lawsuit and hired an independent forensic pathologist. Dr. Michael Baden determined Sandra’s death was a homicide. A fractured hyoid bone supported the finding. The FBI’s own expert, Dr. William Smock, reached the same conclusion. Two independent analyses overturned what the state had decided in an hour.

Norfolk County DA Michael Morrissey has since announced he won’t seek reelection. Sandra’s family has endorsed a former federal prosecutor to replace him. The Birchmore case didn’t just expose a murder. It exposed the infrastructure that allowed it to be buried.

This is Part 4 of a five-part series on the Sandra Birchmore case.

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