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selection varies by location hello and welcome to my favorite murder that right there is georgia hardstark hello that's me
00:02:20
And that right there is Karen Kilgara. Goodbye. See ya later. She's not participating and she refuses to talk to you.
00:02:29
She stormed out. She's really mad. What did you guys say to her? Jesus. Oh my God.
00:02:36
All you said was hello and welcome. Oh, it's a special, a special episode. Is that what you're going to say?
00:02:44
Yeah. Something like that. We're on vacation, you guys. This is, we're not even here.
00:02:47
This is fake. If you're hearing us. Yeah. We're somewhere else skiing. We're skiing.
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Are you skiing? Yeah, we're both skiing on the same set of skis. That's how we go on vacation.
00:02:58
Phew, I'm glad you told me beforehand. I got to practice. Get ready. Okay. Get ready.
00:03:03
That's our vacation. Yeah, so we're on vacation. So this is a short episode and we will be back soon.
00:03:09
But we don't ever want to leave you entirely. God forbid we do that. No, no, no.
00:03:14
So we're going to do just one story each. No, that's how we can do it every episode.
00:03:19
One story per episode. Today's my day. So as you guys know, we're doing our holiday tradition where we make donations throughout the month of December.
00:03:31
And today we're donating $10,000 to the Trevor Project. The Trevor Project aims to end suicide among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning young people and to ensure those young people see a bright future for themselves.
00:03:46
And if you'd like to join us in donating to this very important cause, go to their website at thetrevorproject.org.
00:03:53
And if money isn't the thing you can give right now, they also have volunteer opportunities where you can work as a virtual volunteer to support young people to help them navigate tough times and prevent suicide.
00:04:04
Do you want to do some highlights from our podcast network, Exactly Right Media?
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You know, we're all on vacation. There aren't that many highlights, but we just want to tell
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00:04:37
of helps with metrics and shit, you know. Yes. And if you're loving the podcast here on Exactly
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00:07:02
Yeah, this one's a hardcore one. Okay. And just a kind of heads up, this case is still currently playing out in the courts.
00:07:10
So it's a really interesting one to follow. And if we were in England, we wouldn't be able to talk about this right now.
00:07:16
We know that now in the UK. We know that now. So this is a tragic and really honestly
00:07:22
infuriating story that I had somehow never heard about, even though it was going on right over in
00:07:27
Boston. As I said, it's still playing out in courts. And I checked on our Gmail and we only
00:07:33
had a couple of mentions of it by Murderinos, which I was really surprised about because you
00:07:36
guys were always emailing us like, you should cover this case. And have you heard of this?
00:07:40
So that was surprising. So I'm glad we're covering it. This is the story of the death
00:07:44
of Sandra Birchmore. And just a note and a warning, this story involves grooming of a teenager
00:07:50
for sexual assault and discusses suicide. So just a warning there. So the main sources I used for
00:07:56
this story are an article in Boston Magazine called The Betrayal of Sandra Birchmore by Michelle
00:08:02
McPhee. I highly recommend this article. It's really incredible. And I also use reporting from
00:08:08
the Boston Globe and the rest of the sources can be found in the show notes. Okay. So it's February
00:08:14
of 2021, pretty recently. And Sandra Birchmore is a 23-year-old woman living in Canton, Massachusetts.
00:08:21
It's a Boston suburb. Like it's on the outskirts of Boston, but it's like part of that Boston
00:08:26
community. And Sandra has her own little apartment and new job teaching as an assistant at a local
00:08:32
school. So it's been a hard fight for her to get to this place. Growing up, Sandra had both,
00:08:37
had struggled both academically and socially in school. Her teachers say that she acted like a kid
00:08:43
who couldn't get enough attention at home, which kind of made her act out, but not in a bad way,
00:08:49
like kind of just wanting attention from the teachers, but that also made her a target for
00:08:54
bullies. Yeah. She would try to hang out with the teachers a lot, clearly just craving attention
00:09:00
and validation from adults. And because of this, she was often isolated from her peers,
00:09:05
which is really sad. Sandra had grown up without a father. Her last name, Birchmore,
00:09:10
comes from her mother's late husband who died before Sandra was born, so who wasn't her father,
00:09:15
and she actually never knew her biological father. Sandra's mother sounds like she did her best under
00:09:20
very tough circumstances, but their relationship is often strained, and Sandra isn't always closely
00:09:27
looked after. One of the most important people in her life is a grandfather figure. He's like
00:09:33
an older family friend who actually acted like her grandfather, and he's a decorated army veteran,
00:09:39
and he fosters in Sandra from a young age a deep admiration for law enforcement and makes her want
00:09:46
to go into that field. When she's 12 or 13 years old, I'm not totally clear on that, Sandra's mother
00:09:52
enrolls her in the police explorers program in their hometown of Stoughton, Massachusetts.
00:10:00
Obviously spelled in a way I would have said wrong if the phonetic. That's all of Massachusetts
00:10:04
cities. There's a G in there, you know. All kinds of G's and H's and T's. Yeah, so it's Stoughton.
00:10:12
This is a program run by the Boy Scouts, now called Scouting America, with local police
00:10:17
departments where children become junior police cadets and learn about police work.
00:10:22
Sandra had begged to join this program, and her mother finally makes it happen when she's 13.
00:10:27
And during this time in the Explorers, Sandra does better academically. She finds some community
00:10:32
and friendship in the program. And it seems like she really flourishes by finally getting to do
00:10:38
this. So around the time Sandra graduates from high school, Sandra's mother writes a letter to
00:10:43
the deputy police chief who runs the Explorers program, thanking him for its impact on Sandra's
00:10:48
life. It's clearly made a difference. Tragically, Sandra's mother dies shortly after this. And I
00:10:54
know losing the only parent in her life leaves Sandra unmoored, of course, and vulnerable.
00:11:01
Sandra's two aunts move in with her to support her, but their relationship is kind of tense and strained.
00:11:07
And it takes her a few years to find her footing. But by late 2020, Sandra is in a much better place.
00:11:13
She's in community college. She's made some very close friends with other young women there.
00:11:17
Her aunts, cousins, friends, and co-workers consistently describe her as relentlessly positive, even in the toughest circumstances.
00:11:25
She's also very talkative and upbeat. In fact, a lot of people would classify her as a bit of an overshare, which is like, hi,
00:11:33
welcome. Hi. Yes. To me. She will often tell her new coworkers of everything that's going on in her life, even if it's
00:11:42
the first time they've had a conversation, which I fucking do too. It's a way to, it's like a bid to get connection, you know?
00:11:47
Yes, completely. And I think it also is, I feel like I was reading recently. Yeah.
00:11:53
Yeah it a coping mechanism that we learn early And that just like you saying is a bid for connection But also I think there a little bit of a I just thinking of how I do it yeah where it is that kind of thing
00:12:05
of like this is it like get to know me and then if you don't like it then you can go totally that
00:12:11
kind of rather than us spending a bunch of time together and realizing you know we don't like each
00:12:14
other let me tell you what's wrong with me now so you can walk away if you want to and yeah and
00:12:20
if you don't like any of this then then great we're all on the same page it's kind of like that
00:12:24
Like it's also, that's very controlling. It's kind of trying to say, I can't deal with the basic back and forth nuance of a normal
00:12:31
adult relationship. I have to run it this way where it's like, throw it on the table.
00:12:37
If you don't like it. It's like over vulnerability in a way that isn't authentic somehow.
00:12:44
Well, it's, I think it's from maybe past transgressions where vulnerability has been a bad
00:12:49
idea for you. And so you just don't want it to happen again. So you're like, fine.
00:12:53
here's how we're going to run it. Yeah. And I'm in charge of it. Totally. That makes absolute sense.
00:12:59
Sandra is a redhead with a ton of freckles, sweet little face. She looks younger than she is
00:13:05
her whole life in these pictures I've seen of her. So all of this oversharing she's doing
00:13:10
includes some exciting news. At the very end of 2020, Sandra finds out she's pregnant.
00:13:16
Her friends say she's absolutely thrilled about it. She's only a few weeks along,
00:13:20
She's already shopping for baby items and scheduling doctor's appointments. And she's told quite a few people, because that's the way she is, and she's excited.
00:13:29
And she has plans to announce the pregnancy on Valentine's Day, according to her texts with friends.
00:13:34
She's planning a gender reveal. She even already asked a friend to watch her two cats when she has to go deliver the baby in the hospital, which is months away.
00:13:43
So she is excited about this and planning for it. Yeah. So on February 4th, 2021, when Sandra fails to show up for work, her colleagues are concerned and they call the police for a wellness check.
00:13:54
So that day is a Thursday. On the previous Monday, there had been a heavy snowstorm and school had been dismissed early.
00:14:02
So it sounds like school is back in session on Tuesday and Wednesday, but for whatever reason, no one checks in until Thursday.
00:14:08
When Canton police arrive at Sandra's apartment, there's no answer at the door. the door is locked, but they see her car in the parking lot covered in snow. So they assume she's
00:14:17
there. They get a key from the building management and they let themselves in. So when they get to
00:14:23
Sandra's bedroom and here, just the warning is the description of a death rule to be suicide.
00:14:30
They find her body and the immediate impression is that she has died by suicide. It appears she
00:14:37
has hanged herself in a seated position from the door to her bedroom closet. Yeah, it's very
00:14:43
distressing. Sandra's two cats are in the apartment and they're fine, but it appears she
00:14:49
made no arrangements for their care if she was planning to take her own life. You know, she had
00:14:54
made plans for months in advance when the baby was born. Why wouldn't she have done it then as well?
00:15:00
Right. And also, why would she be making plans months in advance? Exactly. Exactly. And this is just one of the many details the Canton police overlooks in their initial investigation into Sandra's death. The police call in help from state troopers and emergency medical personnel also report to the scene, although Sandra is already dead. A state trooper notes that there appears to be no sign of foul play and the medical examiner also rules the death a suicide. He says that Sandra had died several days earlier.
00:15:32
So Sandra's aunt, a woman named Darlene Smith, is named as the emergency contact on Sandra's lease.
00:15:38
And so when she gets the horrific news about her niece, she's immediately suspicious and knows shit's not adding up.
00:15:45
Yeah. She calls her other niece, Sandra's cousin, a woman named Barbara Wright, who totally agrees as well.
00:15:51
These two grieving women are tasked with cleaning out Sandra's apartment in the days immediately following her death.
00:15:57
And this is what they find. And Sandra had been in the middle of doing laundry when she supposedly took her own life.
00:16:04
She had a load going in the dryer and a load in the washing machine. She had sent text messages back and forth with a few different friends about random everyday things.
00:16:13
And on the evening she died, she had scheduled an OB appointment. So, you know. Crazy.
00:16:20
Yeah, it doesn't make sense. Yeah. No, the math's not mathing, as they say. When going through the apartment, they find a homemade sign that says,
00:16:27
congratulations, we're going to be parents, assumably to whoever the father was.
00:16:32
It's written in an elaborate script with magic markers, has glitter and animal stickers on it.
00:16:37
Clearly, she's excited about this. They find an ultrasound photo decorated with more glitter.
00:16:41
They find Sandra's necklace, which she always wore. It's a gold chain with a flamingo pendant.
00:16:47
And it's found on the floor. And the chain is broken. And it's next to like a clump of hair.
00:16:53
As if they had been pulled all, you know. And the police either never saw it or simply never explained it away.
00:17:00
Because it's left behind. Both Barbara and Denise knew that Sandra had a boyfriend.
00:17:07
And that he was a police detective and that he was married. Oh, no. So here we fucking go.
00:17:13
Yeah, here we go. We're talking about the Boston PD. And specifically the Canton PD and the Stoughton PD.
00:17:20
And so, I mean, I can't even begin to tell you all the shit that's going on with them right now.
00:17:27
Oh, is that where that case? Oh, my God. What's that woman's name? Karen Reed. So what we're talking about is the fact that recently the citizens of Canton voted in favor of an independent third party audit of their police department because they didn't have faith in them because shit is going on.
00:17:47
And one of those things that going on is the trial of this woman named Karen Reed for the alleged murder or accidental car accident death of her boyfriend who was also in the PD But as you know it just sounds it shit blowing up It wild And there a really
00:18:10
great two part article in Vanity Fair called Karen Reed tells her story, part one and two,
00:18:16
that'll tell you everything about it. That's really good. And this happened a couple years
00:18:19
before Karen Reed, the Karen Reed case has come to light. A lot of people think that because of
00:18:26
the investigation into what's going on with Karen Reed, this case has resurfaced to the FBI agents
00:18:32
who are investigating Karen Reed's story and that, and there's some red flags here.
00:18:36
Yeah. There's about eight red flags and you just started telling me this story. Exactly. God.
00:18:43
So in fact, lots of people knew this information that this police detective was her boyfriend.
00:18:49
Sandra had told friends and co-workers that she was pregnant and that he was the father.
00:18:54
She had described the situation as tense. The officer's name is Matthew Farwell, and he's 35 years old.
00:19:01
And Sandra is 23. At this point, we should make it clear, Matthew was charged with Sandra's murder this past August,
00:19:08
more than three years after all this happens. But he has not been convicted, so just to let you know.
00:19:14
Sandra's aunt and cousin both immediately tell investigators that they believe Matthew should be questioned because this is suspicious.
00:19:21
It takes two days after Sandra's body is discovered for investigators to look at the security footage from the lobby of her apartment.
00:19:28
Two days. So the footage initially shows Sandra coming home to her apartment on Monday and just kind of, you know, doing some errands in and out of the apartment building.
00:19:39
And in this footage, Sandra's wearing the clothing she is later found in. And so this confirms the medical examiner's timeline and makes it even more specific.
00:19:48
Sandra died on Monday, February 1st. And this is further corroborated by the health data on her iPhone because it records her last steps at 9.40 p.m. that night.
00:19:58
Wow. Which I find so interesting that they can just track that now. Kind of creepy.
00:20:03
Yeah, totally. The security footage then also shows a man. authorities have confirmed to be Matthew Farwell, the police officer, in a hooded jacket and like a
00:20:16
COVID mask, arriving at the lobby at 9.08 p.m. He gets in the elevator and then is seen leaving the
00:20:23
building at 9.43 p.m., three minutes after Sandra's phone records her last steps. Let's back up a
00:20:31
little to the troubling part of the story where Sandra Birchmore first meets Matthew Farwell.
00:20:36
This would have been when Sandra joined the police explorers program in 2010. Oh, no.
00:20:42
When she was just 13 years old. And Matthew was 24 years old. So about Matthew, after dropping out of high school, he joined the military and then got a job with the Wellesley Police Department.
00:20:55
And over the first two years of Sandra being in the Explorers program, Matthew took a special interest in her and would spend time helping her with her homework, both at the program and outside of it at the public library.
00:21:07
During this time period, Matthew moved from the Wellesley Police Department to the Stoughton Police Department, but he had worked with the Stoughton Explorers program the whole time.
00:21:16
So he's in this Explorers program. From an outside perspective, at the time, Matthew's interest in Sandra would look like the program was working as intended, setting vulnerable kids up with police mentors.
00:21:29
Federal prosecutors now say that Matthew spent the first two years of the program grooming Sandra.
00:21:36
Starting in April of 2013, when Sandra was 15 and Matthew was 27, federal prosecutors now allege that Matthew began sexually abusing Sandra.
00:21:47
This would have been one month before Matthew got married to his now wife and was going on at the time.
00:21:53
This period is often described as the relationship, quote, becoming sexual or, quote, crossing a line.
00:21:59
But because of the age difference, and if it happened the way federal prosecutors say it did, it's sexual abuse is what we're explaining.
00:22:08
Matthew will later admit that he and Sandra had a relationship, but he claims it started after Sandra became an adult.
00:22:15
and the bulk of the evidence for the federal charges, which say the relationship began when
00:22:20
Sandra was underage, is based on extensive text messages between Matthew and Sandra.
00:22:25
Right. It's a little hard to refute. Yeah. It appears the earliest messages available are from 2019, but in them, Matthew seems to back up
00:22:34
the prosecutor's timeline. And in one text, he says, and it's like creepy and flirtatious,
00:22:41
that he would have started the physical relationship when she was even younger than 15.
00:22:46
This relationship continued consistently for the next seven years, but it gets even darker than just Matthew using his position of power to groom and abuse Sandra, allegedly.
00:22:57
Because the evidence points to this being a bigger problem within the Explorers program.
00:23:01
Sometime around 2017, once Sandra was about 18, federal prosecutors say that two other men who worked for the Stoughton Police Department
00:23:09
also had physical relationships with her. With Sandra? Mm-hmm. One was Matthew Farwell's twin brother, who was also a police officer.
00:23:20
And the other is the deputy chief who ran the police explorers program from the time Sandra joined to when she was 13.
00:23:27
The same man that Sandra's mother wrote a thank you note to for all she's done for Sandra.
00:23:32
This is horrible. Yeah. All three men were aware of this dynamic between themselves and Sandra.
00:23:40
So the men would also sometimes see Sandra while they were supposed to be on duty.
00:23:47
Sandra had joined the Explorers program as a vulnerable girl without stable adult relationships, according to both federal prosecutors and the Stoughton Police Department's own internal investigation.
00:23:57
The men she met in this program used this. in order to exploit her. Over the course of 2020, when Sandra is 22 and 23, Matthew's texts to her
00:24:07
also become increasingly creepy and violent in tone. In their exchanges, they would talk about
00:24:13
how he would perform certain sex acts as, quote, punishment for what he deemed bad behavior on
00:24:18
Sandra's part. Throughout 2020, Sandra becomes fixated on the idea of having a baby with Matthew.
00:24:25
They would fight more and more often, and she essentially presents this as an ultimatum.
00:24:32
If they have a baby, she won't reveal the relationship to his wife and to higher-ups at the police department.
00:24:38
Sandra, at this point, has confided in multiple friends about what's going on with her relationship with Matthew.
00:24:45
One of them urges her not to have a baby with Matthew and told her, quote, trying so hard to get pregnant, she was going to get herself killed, end quote.
00:24:53
At the end of 2020, Matthew eventually agrees to have the baby. And according to text messages, their text messages that have been released in the federal indictment,
00:25:04
in the process of the agreement, he also negotiates with her about getting to enact violent fantasies.
00:25:10
And those texts are very disturbing. I'm not going to repeat them. In December of 2020, Sandra finds out that she's pregnant.
00:25:18
Even though Matthew had seemingly agreed to have the baby, he doesn't react well to the news.
00:25:24
He texts Sandra, quote, I have literally nothing to say right now. How far are you?
00:25:29
End quote. And Sandra writes back, quote, regardless of how far, we're keeping it.
00:25:34
End quote. She also writes that she will insist that he sign the birth certificate.
00:25:38
And that's partly because she didn't have her birth father's signature on her birth certificate.
00:25:43
And, you know, that upset her. Well, and it feels like, and this is obviously, I have no idea, but just hearing the details of what you've told me from the outside, it's like she is trying to get the thing that she never had, build the thing she never had with a person who does not want to give it to her.
00:26:02
And not only never intended to give it to her, but who has been the last person she should be trying to do that with.
00:26:10
But obviously, if she's been groomed since she was in junior high. Yeah. Then she actually doesn't really know anything about she wouldn't be able to. But then she's also been completely under the influence of this grown man.
00:26:26
Yeah. It makes sense that this is how she thinks she should start a family because there's no there's nothing else that's ever led her to believe otherwise.
00:26:35
You know, it's it's so tragic. And it's also the reason they say a lot of times pedophiles groom children who are at risk because there are those voices aren't there to tell them that or defend them or anything.
00:26:48
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Intro rate first three months only then full price plan options available Taxes and fees extra Default terms at mintmobile Sandra text messages show that in January of 2021 Sandra writes to a friend saying that Matthew had basically pushed her down to the ground when she showed him the ultrasound photo saying quote that not my child end quote
00:29:12
At the end of January, Matthew texts Sandra to ask if he can come over. He asks when he comes, he asks for a key to her apartment in case he needs to be there during the pregnancy.
00:29:22
And he's generally acting much nicer to her than he has in the previous months. But also on that visit, she tells her friends that Matthew inspects her bedroom closet and her bathroom.
00:29:34
And she texts her friend about it because it's so strange. But also she says he seems like he's coming around because, you know, the key and everything.
00:29:43
Right. Then on February 1st, 2021 is the day of the snowstorm. When Sandra gets home early from work, she does those mundane things I talked about.
00:29:52
Matthew texts asking to swing by at 9.08. He enters the building at 9.14, which means he was close by, and leaves at 9.43, locking
00:30:01
Sandra's door behind him with the key he had asked her to make. And then this is so disturbing.
00:30:06
So based on the clothes he's wearing in the footage from the lobby, he goes seemingly directly or in the same clothes to the hospital where his wife is giving birth to their third child.
00:30:18
No. Oh, God. And there's a photo of him holding the baby, the new baby in those clothes.
00:30:24
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Again, Sandra's family and friends are suspicious of the suicide ruling by the medical examiner.
00:30:33
And when they bring up Matthew Farwell's name to the investigators, and when he's seen on Sandra's building security footage, a state police detective, but who's also a former Stoughton officer, interviews him.
00:30:46
But just like, maybe not, dude. Maybe some conflict of interest there. Maybe. The interview is super brief.
00:30:53
It takes place in a parking lot. So it's totally informal. It's obviously like just almost seems like, you know, let's get this over with and blow this off.
00:31:01
Firewall describes a recent casual relationship with Sandra and admits he did visit her the night she died and that they had a brief argument.
00:31:08
And he says that he had ended their relationship that night. And he denies being the father of Sandra's child, says, like, we haven't had sex in months.
00:31:16
A week later, on February 9th, Matthew turns his phone over to state troopers. They say they look through it and they say they don't find anything noteworthy in it.
00:31:23
So either he deleted the text and they didn't look any further into it or they just didn't look into it.
00:31:29
Right. We don't know. But while all this is going on, multiple people are telling higher-ups at the Stoughton Police Department about Sandra's relationship with Matthew and the involvement of Matthew's twin brother and the deputy chief, the one who ran the Explorers program.
00:31:42
So people are talking because this is fucking suspicious as shit, you know? Yeah, right.
00:31:47
It's like clear to anyone, especially those involved. Especially people that have some sort of a conscience or some sort of an ethical center.
00:31:55
Right, right. Or basic understanding of like detective work. Also basic, like, human decency.
00:32:04
Yeah. Yeah. At this point, Stoughton has its first ever female police chief, a woman named Donna McNamara, and thankfully she launches an internal affairs investigation.
00:32:16
So this internal affairs investigation finds significant evidence backing up all of the allegations.
00:32:22
It also uncovers the thousands of text messages between Sandra and Matthew, which the state troopers, for whatever reason, were unable to recover.
00:32:31
Oh, there they are. So the results of the internal affairs investigation are made public in September of 2022.
00:32:39
At a press conference, Chief McNamara says Sandra was, quote, failed by, manipulated by, and used by people of authority that she admired and trusted right up
00:32:49
until her final days. Ms. Birchmore was a vulnerable person who had one constant in her life,
00:32:55
an unwavering admiration for police officers, of those serving in the military, people in uniform,
00:33:01
people with oaths and duties to protect and serve. The admiration led her to form relationships with
00:33:07
men who were willing to take advantage of her, end quote. And she had also tried to join the
00:33:12
military as well. Oaths and duties to protect and serve really is kind of the banner. That's the
00:33:18
banner statement where just like it's it's gone so insane with policing in America. It's just so
00:33:25
out of control. It is. The information uncovered by this internal affairs investigation shows that
00:33:31
the deputy chief who ran the Explorers program also acted inappropriately with other girls in
00:33:37
the program. And it finds the timeline of Matthew Farwell's relationship with Sandra meant that he
00:33:42
committed statutory rape He is placed on leave that same month but nobody presses charges for years That is 2022 So then in May of 2024 the Marshall Project which does investigative reporting about the
00:33:59
criminal justice system, runs a story about widespread grooming and abuse in the Police
00:34:05
Explorers program across the country. And it also discusses Sandra's death. And so at the time the
00:34:11
article is published, the reporters find about 200 complaints of misconduct in the nationwide
00:34:17
program and more have since come out. So this development and others bring much more attention
00:34:23
to Sandra's death and many people join a movement to pressure the Norfolk County District Attorney
00:34:29
to build a criminal case against Matthew. So on Wednesday, August 24th, 2024, this past August,
00:34:36
Matthew Farwell is indicted on federal charges of murder. At this point, he's no longer employed by the Stoughton police, but it's the first time anyone has brought any charges against him.
00:34:47
And it's the first time much of the evidence from his text with Sandra and Sandra's other online activity is released to the public.
00:34:54
So people are pissed and it's like kind of goes all the way to the top situation.
00:34:59
that's like it's the the act itself the the potential the potential of that being true
00:35:08
and like whatever this the trial is going to result in but then also just the overall corruption of
00:35:14
like so you would actually protect something this craven you would actually you would actually
00:35:20
participate in it and you would make sure it gets to keep happening that's just like
00:35:24
that's horrifying on so many levels. For an innocent girl to be murdered, that's fine with
00:35:31
you. That's an okay trade-off to protect this person and this institution. The federal
00:35:39
investigation also uncovers overlooked forensic evidence. A pathologist from the FBI finds that
00:35:45
Sandra had injuries that would be inconsistent with the way her body was found. There's a fracture
00:35:51
in her hyoid bone, which any fucking true crime amateur knows is from strangulation, right?
00:35:59
Yeah, can be. I think Paul Holes one time talked about how that is a very, it's a very easy bone
00:36:05
to break. So it isn't immediately proof. However, that's true. And it also does happen when you,
00:36:13
when a person's been hanged from the ceiling, not from a sitting position. It's never happened when
00:36:18
someone's hanged from a seating position. Wow. So it's actually has no place here at all. It points
00:36:23
otherwise. If she had been hanging from, you know, the ceiling, then it would have been a different
00:36:28
story. Got it. So additionally, the FBI investigation re-examines photos from Sandra's apartment
00:36:33
taken by either Canton police or state troopers on the day her body was found. And in the photos,
00:36:40
Sandra's flamingo necklace, the one that was found broken on the floor by her family, is clearly
00:36:46
visible. The broken chain is hanging off of her neck and the pendant is resting on her stomach,
00:36:53
as in she was wearing it when this happened. And it slid off. It got ripped off somehow
00:37:00
because it's broken. Oh, got it. So how would that happen without a struggle? Right. So somehow
00:37:09
this necklace migrated from her body to the floor while investigators were on the scene.
00:37:13
They didn't collect it as evidence. They just left it behind, which is like, why wouldn't you?
00:37:18
It's because it's, this is evidence that like points to a struggle, you know? Yeah.
00:37:23
Or they're just, they're actually not even looking that closely. Right. They already have said, this is suicide.
00:37:28
Let's move on. Right. Totally. So far, no state or county charges have been filed against Matthew.
00:37:34
So the FBI has made their evidence available to those agencies. Sandra's loved ones and thousands of people who never knew her in life continue to pressure
00:37:43
the DA to rectify the mistakes that local law enforcement made on this case and to bring their
00:37:49
own charges. You know, you can't help but wonder what good Sandra Birchmore could have done if she
00:37:55
had been able to follow her actual dreams of being in law enforcement. And maybe she would have
00:38:00
mentored a new generation of at-risk kids who dreamed of being in law enforcement and, you know,
00:38:05
had become the good cops we need so badly. On the day of the federal indictment,
00:38:11
one of Sandra's friends told reporters, quote, Sandra, we can't bring you back, but we're fighting for you, end quote.
00:38:18
And that is the story of the alleged murder of Sandra Birchmore. Wow. I mean, I, so I remember seeing like an article about that.
00:38:28
I think when that first broke of like, this is like this controversy. And the reason it sticks to my mind is because you saying that the program she joined was from Boy Scouts of America Yeah Which if you have ever seen Leave No Trace which is a documentary about the Boy Scouts of America it is harrowing and hair what a basically it a program
00:38:55
that almost encourages pedophiles and people who have ill intent toward children. And the idea that
00:39:02
then they're going through it, it's like, we're going to take this and now implement it through
00:39:06
policing the people who seem to have ultimate authority over everybody all the time. Like,
00:39:13
what a nightmare. Totally. And then like, not without oversight, but with oversight
00:39:17
by those predators. By their, yes, the same people. Wow. That's going to be kind of fascinating
00:39:25
to see how that case turns out. It is that thing of like, once you kind of pull, pick up that rock
00:39:31
and like let the sunshine come through. It's like, at least gives people hope for like if one thing gets exposed,
00:39:39
then the exposure spreads. Totally, like you're pulling a thread, a loose thread and the whole fucking thing falls apart.
00:39:45
But God, these are like, these ones are bad. It's, you know, we don't want to sit on here
00:39:50
and talk about anything like we know anything, but like this is, what this podcast is,
00:39:56
is us consuming media and going, wow, as an average American, what in the hell is going on? Well, great job.
00:40:06
Thank you. So yeah. All right. So that's this week. You go next week. Yeah. We'll just keep our vacation promise to you. Hey, we're gone now. We're skiing at the moment,
00:40:16
but tandem skiing. We still want to tell you all of the horrible things that are happening in the
00:40:22
world so that you can have a good holiday. So we're here with you. We're hoping you're having
00:40:25
good holiday season and it's not too insane, make sure to go tandem skiing with your loved ones.
00:40:31
Yes. And also if you need a palate cleanser and we don't have the one we normally build in,
00:40:37
go over to the mini sodes because there's some real joyful shit happening over there.
00:40:41
Real fun time stories, real good stories about people's grandmas and their trash dads
00:40:46
and those games where you step into a cabinet and money gets blown all around you. What's it called?
00:40:51
A money grab? A money booth. Money booth. Money booth. There's a lot of money booth stories.
00:40:56
A lot of fun stuff. It does feel like a little like camaraderie spot, the minisodes, where it's like we're
00:41:02
a little, we're in like a club, you know, and everyone's just like telling their fun
00:41:06
stories and fucked up stories too. So they're still there. It's all there. To each other.
00:41:10
It's all there. Yeah. And you know, in the meantime, we'll see you when we get back.
00:41:15
Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Ah! my favorite murder.
00:41:50
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