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What Happened to Sandra Birchmore: Part 3 · Operation Midnight Climax

0:00
Speaker 1: Before we begin, the stories told in this podcast may
0:03
Speaker 1: be difficult for some to hear. Many discuss sexual assault,
0:07
Speaker 1: domestic violence, and suicide. Please take care while listening. At
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Speaker 1: the time of Sandra Birchmore's death, the police department in
0:16
Speaker 1: Stoughton was run by a woman, the first in the
0:19
Speaker 1: town's history. Her name is Donna McNamara. The day after
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Speaker 1: Sandra's body was found, McNamara opened an internal investigation. Her
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Speaker 1: reasons were obvious. First, Sandra had been a police explorer
0:33
Speaker 1: in the town's program for kids interested in law enforcement.
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Speaker 1: Sandra applied when she was 12, officially started when she
0:41
Speaker 1: was 13, and stayed active in the program until she
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Speaker 1: graduated high school. Second, rumors swirled immediately after Sandra's death
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Speaker 1: that she had been dating one of McNamara's detectives, Matthew Farwell,
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Speaker 1: and that he had gotten her pregnant. McNamara must have
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Speaker 1: understood this could get complicated fast, and so she ordered
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Speaker 1: her deputy chief to find out exactly what relationship Sandra
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Speaker 1: had to the Stoughton Police Department and to the men
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Speaker 1: inside it. It would take a year and a half
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Speaker 1: for the results of that investigation to come to light,
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Speaker 1: but when they did, it would forever change not only
1:21
Speaker 1: the story of Sandra's death, but the story of her life.
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Speaker 2: I stand before you today as a civil servant who
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Speaker 2: is heartbroken and incensed by what has transpired and who
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Speaker 2: pledges that this chapter in the Stoughton Police Department and
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Speaker 2: the town of Stoughton is over.
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Speaker 1: From iHeart Podcast, I'm Melissa Jeltsin, and this is What
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Speaker 1: Happened to Her? The Sandra Birchmore Story, Part 3.
2:09
Speaker 2: I'm here today because it is my duty, a duty
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Speaker 2: that I take very seriously, to report to our community
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Speaker 2: on the findings of a nearly 19-month-long complex and resource-intensive investigation.
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Speaker 1: On September 23rd, 2022, Chief Donna McNamara held a press conference.
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Speaker 1: She stood alone in front of a collection of microphones
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Speaker 1: as cameras clicked around her. She shared the massive scope
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Speaker 1: of the internal investigation, which included nearly 100,000 pages of
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Speaker 1: cell phone records and text messages and more than a
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Speaker 1: dozen interviews, including with several outside experts.
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Speaker 2: What I'm about to brief you on is something deeply
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Speaker 2: troubling to me as a human being and as a
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Speaker 2: police chief. On February 4th, 2021, 23-year-old Sandra Burchmore was
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Speaker 2: found deceased in her apartment. I am not here today
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Speaker 2: to talk about the subsequent investigation into Ms. Burchmore's death.
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Speaker 2: Her death was investigated by the Norfolk District Attorney's Office.
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Speaker 2: What I am here to talk about today is her
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Speaker 2: life and how she was failed by, manipulated by, and
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Speaker 2: used by people of authority that she admired and trusted
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Speaker 2: right up until her final days.
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Speaker 1: Chief McNamara was reading from prepared remarks, but she kept
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Speaker 1: looking up while she spoke, scanning the rooms, seeming to
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Speaker 1: make eye contact with the press. She went on to
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Speaker 1: sum up the findings of the report.
4:02
Speaker 2: In 2010, Ms. Birchbaum, then age 13, entered the Stoughton
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Speaker 2: Police Department Explorer Program. It was there as a child
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Speaker 2: that she met Matthew Falwell, an instructor in that program.
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Speaker 2: The evidence demonstrates that Matthew Falwell began an inappropriate relationship
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Speaker 2: with her when she was 15 and he was 27.
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Speaker 1: To those in the room and the public at large,
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Speaker 1: this was a bombshell. Farwell had told state troopers in
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Speaker 1: that school parking lot that his sexual relationship with Sandra
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Speaker 1: began in 2020 when she was an adult. It didn't.
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Speaker 1: According to text messages recovered from Sandra's laptop, it started
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Speaker 1: years earlier, when she was 15.
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Speaker 2: The investigation uncovered many hundreds of digital messages and explicit
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Speaker 2: exchanges between Matthew Falwell and Ms. Birchmore over the course
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Speaker 2: of several years. Our investigation discovered that Matthew Falwell exploited Ms. Birchmore,
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Speaker 2: a young woman who was 13 when she met him
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Speaker 2: until Matthew Falwell decided to end the relationship on February 1st, 2021.
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Speaker 1: Exploited. That's a powerful word, powerful especially coming out of
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Speaker 1: the mouth of a police chief regarding one of her
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Speaker 1: own officers. McNamara didn't give many details about the exploitation
5:37
Speaker 1: and why she chose to call it that, but having
5:40
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time on this case and having
5:43
Speaker 1: read through the investigation many times, I can offer my
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Speaker 1: own insight. Sandra was 13 when she first met Matthew Farwell.
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Speaker 1: She was a kid, In a program full of kids
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Speaker 1: with ambitions of becoming police officers. Trying to impress the
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Speaker 1: adults who could help them get ahead. Farwell was one
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Speaker 1: of her instructors. He had authority and influence and respect.
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Speaker 1: And he took advantage of that. For two years, he
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Speaker 1: spent time with her. Talking to her. Making her feel special.
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Speaker 1: Building trust. Grooming her. When Sandra was 15... Farwell had
6:23
Speaker 1: sex with her for the first time. Under Massachusetts state law,
6:27
Speaker 1: the age of consent is 16. But even setting the
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Speaker 1: law aside, does it matter if she had been 16
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Speaker 1: or 17? In a relationship like that, the power dynamic
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Speaker 1: is so skewed it's dangerous. Because how can you really
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Speaker 1: say no to a man who's not only physically far,
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Speaker 1: far bigger than you, remember, Sandra was tiny, but also
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Speaker 1: has a badge, carries a gun, and holds your future
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Speaker 1: in his hands. This wasn't just sex. This was sexual abuse.
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Speaker 1: Abuse that appears to have gone on for years in secret.
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Speaker 1: I should note here that Matthew Farwell has denied the
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Speaker 1: allegations in full.
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Speaker 3: Ms.
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Speaker 2: Birchmore was a vulnerable person who had one constant in
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Speaker 2: her life since childhood. Her unwavering admiration for of police officers,
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Speaker 2: of those serving the military, people in uniform, people with
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Speaker 2: oaths and duties to protect and serve.
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Speaker 1: And the chief had more to add because the exploitation
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Speaker 1: didn't stop with Matthew Farwell.
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Speaker 2: The admiration led her to form relationships with men who
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Speaker 2: were willing to take advantage of her. Evidence discovered determined
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Speaker 2: that at least three Stoughton police officers who were all
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Speaker 2: known to each other, including Matthew Falwell, his twin brother
8:04
Speaker 2: William Falwell, had inappropriate relations with Ms. Birchmore. The investigation
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Speaker 2: showed that William Falwell, in addition to having multiple inappropriate
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Speaker 2: physical encounters with Ms. Birchmore, exchanged explicit messages and photographs
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Speaker 2: with Ms. Birchmore while he.
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Speaker 1: Was on duty. Back when state troopers were still looking
8:31
Speaker 1: into Sandra's death, they'd interviewed William. He told them that,
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Speaker 1: like his brother, he'd first met Sandra years earlier when
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Speaker 1: she was in the Explorers program and he was an instructor.
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Speaker 1: They crossed paths again in 2018 when she came up
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Speaker 1: to him while he was working and asked about joining
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Speaker 1: the Army. He put her in touch with a recruiter.
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Speaker 1: William told troopers the last time he'd seen Sandra was
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Speaker 1: December 2020. But again, like with his brother, the texts
9:01
Speaker 1: told a different story. They showed that on January 10th, 2021,
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Speaker 1: after midnight, William met Sandra in the parking lot of
9:09
Speaker 1: her apartment building, three weeks before she died. And there
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Speaker 1: was more.
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Speaker 2: The evidence suggests that William Farwell also at the very least,
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Speaker 2: attempted to introduce Ms. Birchmore to other men.
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Speaker 1: As McNamara continued, she didn't say who those other men were,
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Speaker 1: but the implication was hard to miss. It appeared that
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Speaker 1: Sandra wasn't just being used by one officer, she was,
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Speaker 1: quite possibly, being handed around. I went looking for more
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Speaker 1: in the Internal Affairs Report, but it's heavily redacted. In
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Speaker 1: the section on William, there's a line that starts, some
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Speaker 1: of the content has communications in which William Farwell encouraged Sandra...
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Speaker 1: The rest is blacked out. William Farwell has denied any
10:03
Speaker 1: and all wrongdoing. The report names a third man, and
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Speaker 1: this one led up the ladder. Robert Devine was the
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Speaker 1: longtime head of Stoughton's Explorers program.
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Speaker 2: Robert Devine began overseeing the Stoughton Police Department Explorer Program,
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Speaker 2: approximately 20 years ago. Both William and Matthew Farwell were
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Speaker 2: youth participants in the Explorer Program under Devine. And the
10:34
Speaker 2: Farwell brothers would later take part in that same program
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Speaker 2: as instructors years later, which would put them all on
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Speaker 2: a course to meet Sandra Birchmore.
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Speaker 1: According to McNamara's findings, Devine, who was also a lawyer,
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Speaker 1: had had an inappropriate relationship with Sandra. But when internal
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Speaker 1: investigators sat him down, he too denied it. In fact,
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Speaker 1: he denied ever texting Sandra or communicating with her over
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Speaker 1: social media in any form. Again, Sandra's laptop told a
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Speaker 1: different story. After they spoke to Devine, investigators later found
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Speaker 1: Facebook messages from an anonymous account Marty Riggs, like the
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Speaker 1: crazy cop from Lethal Weapon. The user made mention of
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Speaker 1: being an attorney, of working for Stoughton Police, and talked
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Speaker 1: about meeting Sandra on duty in a patrol car. Investigators
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Speaker 1: concluded Marty Riggs was Robert Devine. One afternoon in December 2020,
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Speaker 1: while he was on duty, Riggs asked Sandra to meet
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Speaker 1: him at a local restaurant, The Chateau. The messages show
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Speaker 1: he got there and she was on her way. Devine
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Speaker 1: has denied all of this, including using the Facebook alias
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Speaker 1: Marty Riggs. The internal investigation also turned up two more men.
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Speaker 1: One was a former animal control officer in Stoughton, by
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Speaker 1: then a police officer in another town, who eventually admitted
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Speaker 1: to what the report calls illicit conversations with Sandra. The
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Speaker 1: other was an Army National Guard recruiter. McNamara had shared
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Speaker 1: their findings with both men's employers. As her remarks drew
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Speaker 1: to an end, the chief announced that all three Stoughton officers,
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Speaker 1: Matthew Farwell, William Farwell, and Robert Devine, had resigned. The
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Speaker 1: Farwell brothers had quit before speaking with investigators. Resigning meant
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Speaker 1: none of them could be fired, but it didn't stop
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Speaker 1: them from being hired somewhere else. So McNamara went further.
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Speaker 1: She recommended all three be decertified, stripped of their police
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Speaker 1: licenses in Massachusetts, and flagged in a national database so
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Speaker 1: any department anywhere would know.
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Speaker 2: In years prior, a story like this would have ended here,
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Speaker 2: or perhaps even earlier. Without criminal charges, no further actions
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Speaker 2: would have been taken by a police department. Not today.
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Speaker 2: All three men violated their oaths of office and should
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Speaker 2: never have the privilege of serving any community as a
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Speaker 2: police officer. Through a sustained and deliberate combination of lies, deceit,
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Speaker 2: and treachery, they violated the policies and the core values
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Speaker 2: of the Stoughton Police Department, not to mention human decency.
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Speaker 2: They're unfit to serve as police officers.
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Speaker 1: During press questions, McNamara noted she'd sent the full internal
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Speaker 1: investigation to the Norfolk County District Attorney, the same office
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Speaker 1: that had led the investigation into Sandra's death, and had
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Speaker 1: concluded that there was no evidence of foul play. It
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Speaker 1: was their job to determine if any criminal charges might
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Speaker 1: arise from these new findings, like, for example, statutory rape.
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Speaker 1: A spokesman for the office of District Attorney Michael Morrissey
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Speaker 1: told the press that prosecutors would review the new information. However,
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Speaker 1: he added, Reading through the lines, with Sandra gone, the
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Speaker 1: main witness was no longer around to testify. I don't
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Speaker 1: know if you read the internal investigation that Stoughton did
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Speaker 1: about the Explorer program and the fact that there were
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Speaker 1: other men who had also taken advantage of her, his
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Speaker 1: twin brother and.
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Speaker 4: The head of the program, Robert Devine. Can you talk
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Speaker 4: a little bit about learning just the scope of this,
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Speaker 4: that it was beyond what had even initially been assumed?
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Speaker 5: Yeah, that was tough.
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Speaker 1: Tracy Strausbaugh, another one of Sandra's cousins, was at work
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Speaker 1: when she got the call about the results from the
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Speaker 1: internal investigation.
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Speaker 5: That was very confusing to me. And I didn't understand.
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Speaker 5: I didn't understand. I mean, and we had known she
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Speaker 5: was in that program as a kid, but mentors of
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Speaker 5: the program?
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Speaker 3: Like, I.
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Speaker 4: Yeah.
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Speaker 6: I don't know.
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Speaker 5: Unfortunately for me, it just sent me to such a
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Speaker 5: dark place because that is just unbelievable. And it's, it's scary.
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Speaker 5: That's a program for the community.
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Speaker 7: Uh, they were children.
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Speaker 5: Like I just, it's, I guess the best word for
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Speaker 5: it is undigestible. I just, I just, it's awful to
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Speaker 5: think of the whole scope of it. Like cops, more
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Speaker 5: than one, a department, um, And those.
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Speaker 1: Were just the abusers. For Sandra's cousin Angelique, who had
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Speaker 1: been demanding answers about Sandra's death, Stoughton PD's internal investigation
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Speaker 1: felt like some sort of admission.
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Speaker 6: It was seismic.
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Speaker 8: For the first time in like over a year, someone
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Speaker 8: from law enforcement was saying, there's a problem here. And
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Speaker 8: we should all be concerned about this. And I hadn't
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Speaker 8: been getting that from the state police.
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Speaker 1: For Sandra's cousins, it was heartbreaking to realize that the
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Speaker 1: place Sandra had gone for support, the place her mother
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Speaker 1: had thought would be good for her, was where it
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Speaker 1: all began.
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Speaker 3: Her mother had such great intentions. Her mother wanted her
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Speaker 3: to be around positive male role models and just positive
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Speaker 3: role models. And I'm just sickened by the whole thing.
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Speaker 1: The Explorers program was a big part of Sandra's identity.
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Speaker 1: She stayed for six years, longer than most kids. On
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Speaker 1: her Facebook page, she posted photos of herself with Stoughton
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Speaker 1: police officers, her 4'10 frame dwarfed by men more than
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Speaker 1: a foot taller. In picture after picture, she had the
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Speaker 1: same expression, a wide grin, a little whimsical look in
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Speaker 1: her eyes. She looked like a young girl who had
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Speaker 1: found a place to belong. Here's Tracy again.
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Speaker 5: She was really proud at what she was doing.
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Speaker 9: I was really proud of her.
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Speaker 1: But something was happening to Sandra behind her wide grin.
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Speaker 1: Something she wasn't letting on. Something not even her family
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Speaker 1: understood until well after Sandra's death.
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Speaker 7: I was flabbergasted. Overwhelmed. So deeply sad for her.
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Speaker 10: And what became clear as a pattern of systematic abuse.
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Speaker 1: There's a lot that we still don't know about those
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Speaker 1: early years between Sandra and Farwell. What he did to
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Speaker 1: earn her trust, what kind of interactions they had, how
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Speaker 1: their connection developed. Grooming, by its nature, occurs in private,
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Speaker 1: but court documents have revealed some details. They met through
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Speaker 1: the Explorers program when Sandra was in middle school. When
18:35
Speaker 1: she was a freshman in high school, Farwell began to
18:37
Speaker 1: meet her at the library to help her study. In
18:40
Speaker 1: her sophomore year, he sent her a Facebook friend request.
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Speaker 1: By April 2013, when Sandra was still a sophomore, he
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Speaker 1: was having sex with her. Under Massachusetts law, Farwell could
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Speaker 1: have been charged with aggravated statutory rape. Sandra was under 16,
18:57
Speaker 1: that's statutory rape. Farwell was nearly 12 years older than
19:01
Speaker 1: her and a mandated reporter. Either fact on its own
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Speaker 1: makes it aggravated. And by any definition, what Farwell was
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Speaker 1: doing to Sandra was sexual abuse. But grooming is complicated
19:14
Speaker 1: and insidious, and because of that, I don't know if
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Speaker 1: Sandra initially understood these interactions as abuse. I've read some
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Speaker 1: of the messages she sent Farwell in the last year
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Speaker 1: of her life, the ones quoted in court filings. The
19:29
Speaker 1: reason we know the date he first had sex with
19:32
Speaker 1: her is because they texted about it repeatedly. I'll read
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Speaker 1: some of them. Sandra writes, I had butterflies so bad
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Speaker 1: the day you took my virginity. Farwell responds, me too,
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Speaker 1: it was such a big day. Sandra tells him she
19:48
Speaker 1: still knows the date. April 10th, 2013. Best day of
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Speaker 1: my life, she writes, and then she adds an emoji,
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Speaker 1: the face with a heart. Me too, he replies. In
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Speaker 1: another exchange, Farwell writes, I wish it had been a
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Speaker 1: year sooner after helping you study at the library. He
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Speaker 1: goes on, I absolutely would have fucked you in 12.
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Speaker 1: Sandra asks, in 12? He clarifies, 2012. Reading through the text,
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Speaker 1: every so often the power imbalance breaks through the surface.
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Speaker 1: Farwell tells Sandra that if he had pushed, he absolutely
20:27
Speaker 1: could have had sex with her without condoms from day one.
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Speaker 1: When she was 15, she doesn't argue. Probably if you
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Speaker 1: really pushed it, she writes, then, quote, I was kind
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Speaker 1: of scared to say no in the beginning, not knowing
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Speaker 1: how you'd take it. So yeah, you would have got
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Speaker 1: no condoms, lol. And then there's one instruction from Farwell
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Speaker 1: that comes up again and again. Clear this out, meaning
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Speaker 1: delete this text. When they talked about how it started,
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Speaker 1: when he told her he wanted to have sex with
20:58
Speaker 1: her even earlier, he wrote, clear that part out, baby.
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Speaker 1: And when she did, good girl. after he wrote about
21:06
Speaker 1: wanting to roleplay raping her, clear out this text. And
21:11
Speaker 1: in June 2019, nearly two years before her death, he
21:15
Speaker 1: told her to make sure all of their texts and
21:18
Speaker 1: Facebook messages were deleted, according to court filings. Sandra was
21:24
Speaker 1: carrying this in secret throughout her teen years, throughout all
21:28
Speaker 1: of high school. And that's devastating for her cousins, like Barb,
21:33
Speaker 1: Sandra's former Words with Friends partner, to imagine.
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Speaker 11: I mean, to just think of what was going on
21:39
Speaker 11: with Sandra and her mother had no idea. But that's
21:43
Speaker 11: what grooming's all about, right? You know, the victims are
21:48
Speaker 11: groomed to keep secrets, and Sandra was very good at that, unfortunately.
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Speaker 1: For Tracy, it was impossible to reconcile the Sandra she
21:59
Speaker 1: saw at family functions, laughing, always happy to be there,
22:04
Speaker 1: with what she was finding out now.
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Speaker 5: You'll learn that that was her life and that had
22:09
Speaker 5: gone on for so long and at such a young age.
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Speaker 1: How did she live?
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Speaker 5: How did she go to school? Like, so the thoughts
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Speaker 5: that were going to my head was, how did she
22:19
Speaker 5: always show up with a smile? How did she finish school?
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Speaker 1: Like, what?
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Speaker 5: I don't understand. Like, she must be really good at compartmentalizing.
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Speaker 5: I can't imagine what she had gone through.
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Speaker 1: Here's Angelique.
22:34
Speaker 7: She was deeply ensnared from a very young age in
22:39
Speaker 7: this system of abuse. And more than anything, obviously, shock,
22:51
Speaker 7: but a deep, deep sadness for her. And what she
22:56
Speaker 7: endured and.
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Speaker 3: What she thought she had to endure for whatever reason,
23:01
Speaker 3: you know, like, That she might have thought it was
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Speaker 3: normal or acceptable or that that's what she deserved in life.
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Speaker 1: Somewhere, somehow, along the way, Sandra had internalized the idea
23:18
Speaker 1: that this was normal.
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Speaker 5: It breaks my heart because she thought that this was, well,
23:25
Speaker 5: I'll speak for her. I swear she thought that this
23:28
Speaker 5: was genuine love.
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Speaker 8: She thought she loved this man. She thought she was
23:33
Speaker 8: in a relationship with him.
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Speaker 1: From reading through some of their texts, I got the
23:38
Speaker 1: same impression. Sandra appeared to believe she and Matthew Farwell
23:43
Speaker 1: were in a romantic love affair. A secret love, which
23:46
Speaker 1: only made it feel bigger. He was a grown man,
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Speaker 1: a police officer. A month after he first had sex
23:53
Speaker 1: with her, he married someone else. And still, he kept
23:57
Speaker 1: coming back to her. To Sandra, it must have looked
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Speaker 1: like he was risking everything. his marriage, his badge, to
24:05
Speaker 1: be with her. To understand how a 15-year-old comes to
24:09
Speaker 1: see her abuser as the love of her life, I
24:12
Speaker 1: talked to Elizabeth Jellick.
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Speaker 6: What we see in cases of adolescents, and particularly adolescent girls,
24:18
Speaker 6: is that they often fall in love, quote-unquote, with their perpetrator.
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Speaker 1: Jellick is a psychology professor at John Jay College of
24:27
Speaker 1: Criminal Justice. She spent years studying how child sex abusers
24:32
Speaker 1: groom their victims.
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Speaker 6: These are girls that may not feel wanted or loved
24:36
Speaker 6: or they may, you know, have low self-esteem. And so
24:39
Speaker 6: this perpetrator makes them feel like they're important, that this
24:42
Speaker 6: is their girlfriend. And so they believe themselves to be
24:45
Speaker 6: in a consensual relationship with the perpetrator. They don't want
24:48
Speaker 6: the abuse, but they want the relationship and that feeling
24:51
Speaker 6: of specialness that that person made them feel.
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Speaker 1: Jellick says it's hard for these young victims to even
24:57
Speaker 1: understand what's happening is abuse.
25:00
Speaker 6: It's only afterwards, and this can happen like many years
25:04
Speaker 6: after they are adults, that they recognize that they were
25:07
Speaker 6: just children that they were taken advantage of. They see
25:10
Speaker 6: how this was unhealthy and how they were manipulated and
25:14
Speaker 6: how this really was abuse, and it's not a relationship.
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Speaker 1: For Sandra, it would be years before she began to
25:21
Speaker 1: recognize herself as a victim. In the meantime, she and
25:25
Speaker 1: Farwell kept seeing each other, through high school, through her graduation,
25:30
Speaker 1: through his marriage, as he started a family of his own.
25:34
Speaker 1: Sandra went from a 13-year-old girl to a grown woman.
25:39
Speaker 1: She left the explorers, got jobs, made friends, had a
25:43
Speaker 1: life of her own. And still, she kept going back
25:47
Speaker 1: to him. Here's where it gets tricky. Once she was
25:51
Speaker 1: old enough to consent to the sexual relationship, was it
25:55
Speaker 1: still abuse? I asked Jalik to help me understand.
25:59
Speaker 6: We consider grooming to be a psychological manipulation. So when
26:03
Speaker 6: that happens, when you're young and you're vulnerable, you know,
26:07
Speaker 6: all your experiences are shaped through that manipulation. So it's
26:10
Speaker 6: not like you suddenly cross this arbitrary line, like the
26:13
Speaker 6: person is no longer in a position of power over you,
26:15
Speaker 6: like let's say he was no longer a police officer,
26:18
Speaker 6: or she crosses the age of consent. It doesn't mean
26:21
Speaker 6: that that manipulation has ended. It's just a continuation of it.
26:25
Speaker 6: The abuse started when there was this incredible power differential.
26:28
Speaker 6: You were a child. So while the law might say
26:30
Speaker 6: that you are of age, when that power imbalance has
26:34
Speaker 6: formed the relationship, it's not like you really have gained
26:37
Speaker 6: power at 18 because it's happened that way, right? So
26:40
Speaker 6: it's not like something magically shifts.
26:45
Speaker 1: By the time Sandra was old enough to choose, Her
26:48
Speaker 1: whole life had been twisted by her entanglement with Farwell
26:52
Speaker 1: and the Stoughton Police Department. It was what she knew.
26:57
Speaker 8: When you read the IA report, you can't help but
27:00
Speaker 8: think that they got their hooks in her really young,
27:03
Speaker 8: and she didn't have a chance.
27:06
Speaker 7: You know, like she didn't have a chance.
27:07
Speaker 1: IA When Chief McNamara released the findings of the internal investigation,
27:24
Speaker 1: she announced that the Explorers program was shuttered for good.
27:28
Speaker 1: Then she took questions. Reporters asked about next steps and
27:32
Speaker 1: about the two men the report didn't name. Then someone
27:35
Speaker 1: asked the question that had been hanging over the whole thing.
27:38
Speaker 1: The Stoughton Police Department isn't big, about 60 officers. Could
27:43
Speaker 1: no one else have known? McNamara could only answer for herself.
27:48
Speaker 1: She said she first found out when the Massachusetts State
27:51
Speaker 1: Police contacted her in the days after Sandra's death. That's
27:55
Speaker 1: what led to the internal investigation. She couldn't speak for
27:59
Speaker 1: anyone else. But the question remains. With three officers in
28:04
Speaker 1: the department found to have had inappropriate relationships with the
28:08
Speaker 1: same person, was it possible no one else knew?
28:11
Speaker 9: Police work is a close culture and you don't want
28:15
Speaker 9: to be the guy that's the Tattletale.
28:19
Speaker 1: That's Timothy Mayer. He's a criminologist, a former police officer,
28:24
Speaker 1: and one of the few people who have studied police
28:26
Speaker 1: sexual misconduct.
28:28
Speaker 9: I think we're still in the dark because so much
28:31
Speaker 9: of it is unreported. Victims don't report it. The police
28:36
Speaker 9: certainly aren't going to report on themselves. And we don't
28:39
Speaker 9: know how many fellow officers don't report on fellow officers.
28:43
Speaker 1: Mayor told me that even when other officers suspect the
28:46
Speaker 1: boundaries are being crossed, they often stay quiet.
28:50
Speaker 9: Most officers said, you know what, if I learn of
28:55
Speaker 9: another officer having sex on duty with someone, but they
28:59
Speaker 9: believe it's consensual, whether it's a wife, girlfriend, someone they
29:03
Speaker 9: just met three hours ago, if they believe that it
29:06
Speaker 9: was not forced, that it was consensual, I would say
29:09
Speaker 9: the majority of line officers would not report on a
29:14
Speaker 9: fellow officer. I just don't think it would happen.
29:18
Speaker 1: The Stoughton internal investigation was primarily focused on the misconduct
29:22
Speaker 1: of its officers while Sandra was an adult, likely because
29:26
Speaker 1: this was the information they could access. But her exploitation
29:30
Speaker 1: had started, at least with Matthew Farwell, when she was
29:33
Speaker 1: an underaged member of the Explorers program. And in that way,
29:38
Speaker 1: Sandra's case is not unique. The program nationwide has a
29:42
Speaker 1: long history of abuse. A 2017 investigation by the Louisville
29:47
Speaker 1: Courier-Journal looked back through the past 40 years of the Explorers.
29:52
Speaker 1: What it found was extremely troubling that across the country,
29:55
Speaker 1: at least 137 girls and 26 boys had been raped, seduced, fondled, kissed, dated,
30:03
Speaker 1: or otherwise exploited by law enforcement officers or other authorities
30:08
Speaker 1: and advisors connected to the program. Since 2017, there have
30:13
Speaker 1: been explorer sexual abuse cases uncovered in California, New York City,
30:18
Speaker 1: and Kentucky. Explorers are especially vulnerable, Mayer told me, because
30:23
Speaker 1: many of them are hoping to be cops one day,
30:26
Speaker 1: so they have something important, their futures, at stake.
30:30
Speaker 9: You want to piss off these people and ruin your
30:33
Speaker 9: chances of maybe getting a job later down the line.
30:36
Speaker 9: So they go along to get along.
30:38
Speaker 1: There are hundreds of Explorer programs at police departments across
30:42
Speaker 1: the country. They run under guidelines from a Boy Scouts affiliate.
30:46
Speaker 1: But who enforces those guidelines is a harder question.
30:51
Speaker 9: Explorer programs certainly invite opportunity and opportunity for corruption and problems,
30:57
Speaker 9: which is why I think there needs to be strict
31:00
Speaker 9: written policies for the Explorer program.
31:04
Speaker 1: I found Stoughton's policy and procedure document for its Explorers program,
31:08
Speaker 1: updated in 2012, the same year Farwell sent Sandra that
31:13
Speaker 1: friend request. It's a page and a half. It lists
31:16
Speaker 1: what the kids would learn, physical fitness, drug awareness, canine demonstrations.
31:22
Speaker 1: But as far as I can see, there's nothing about
31:24
Speaker 1: how the officers were supposed to behave. That's not unusual.
31:29
Speaker 1: When Mayer did his research, none of the departments he
31:32
Speaker 1: studied had a written policy on sexual misconduct. Even today,
31:37
Speaker 1: he told me, the main national organization that accredits police
31:40
Speaker 1: departments requires a policy on car chases. It doesn't require
31:45
Speaker 1: one on sexual misconduct. Without rules, Mayer says, it all
31:51
Speaker 1: comes down to who's in charge.
31:54
Speaker 9: I think it starts with the supervisor. If they're going
31:56
Speaker 9: to tolerate this sort of thing, maybe even participate, that's
32:01
Speaker 9: when I think things go haywire on a squad.
32:04
Speaker 1: For most of Sandra's time in the Explorers, the program
32:07
Speaker 1: belonged to Robert Devine. The investigation didn't find evidence that
32:12
Speaker 1: he had had an inappropriate relationship with Sandra while she
32:15
Speaker 1: was underage, just when she was an adult. But investigators
32:19
Speaker 1: did hear from someone who had known Devine long before
32:22
Speaker 1: Sandra did. Before he ran Stoughton's Explorers, Devine was the
32:27
Speaker 1: police supervisor for an open gym program at a local school.
32:32
Speaker 1: After reading an article about Sandra's death in the Boston Globe,
32:35
Speaker 1: a woman contacted the district attorney's office about something that
32:39
Speaker 1: had happened to her in that program. This was back
32:42
Speaker 1: in 2001. The woman was in middle school. She had
32:45
Speaker 1: had a huge crush on Devine, who would have been
32:48
Speaker 1: in his late 20s. She said that one day, Devine
32:51
Speaker 1: took her alone into an office away from the other
32:54
Speaker 1: kids and closed the door. He told her she was, quote,
32:57
Speaker 1: a knockout and that he was going to take me
32:59
Speaker 1: on a date when I turned 18. She said there
33:02
Speaker 1: was never any sexual contact between them, but in her experience,
33:07
Speaker 1: he didn't act like a father figure. Instead, she said
33:10
Speaker 1: he definitely seemed to be showing off and loving attention
33:13
Speaker 1: from kids. The woman also noted that the Farwell twins
33:17
Speaker 1: were at that same open gym program, being supervised by Devine.
33:21
Speaker 1: She said they were, quote, under his wing. The Farwell
33:25
Speaker 1: twins would go on to join the Stoughton Explorer program,
33:28
Speaker 1: also supervised by Devine. And years later, Devine sat on
33:32
Speaker 1: the hiring panel that brought Matthew Farwell onto the force.
33:37
Speaker 1: The internal investigation Stoughton opened after Sandra's death wasn't the
33:41
Speaker 1: first time the department had looked into Devine. In 2015,
33:46
Speaker 1: it investigated how he'd used his position to handle a
33:49
Speaker 1: personal matter, a relationship with a woman outside his marriage.
33:53
Speaker 1: That investigation found conduct unbecoming an officer and found Devine
33:58
Speaker 1: wasn't credible. He was demoted from deputy chief to patrol officer.
34:04
Speaker 1: The investigation after Sandra's death saw a pattern. It called
34:08
Speaker 1: Devine's history, quote, an expository example of exploitative, misogynistic, and
34:14
Speaker 1: risk-seeking behavior, and said that in both cases, Devine, quote,
34:19
Speaker 1: violated his inherent position of the public trust. Devine disputed
34:25
Speaker 1: the 2015 investigation's findings and fully denied the allegations in
34:29
Speaker 1: the 2022 report. When Chief McNamara recommended he be stripped
34:34
Speaker 1: of his police certification, he appealed.
34:38
Speaker 9: Raise your right hand, please. You swear to tell the truth,
34:41
Speaker 9: the whole truth, and nothing but.
34:53
Speaker 1: At a hearing in July 2025, under oath, Devine said
34:56
Speaker 1: his name had been, quote, dragged through the mud. He
35:00
Speaker 1: said if his name had showed up in Sandra's messages,
35:03
Speaker 1: it must have been because he'd been hacked. And he
35:05
Speaker 1: said it was Sandra who came to him, approaching his
35:08
Speaker 1: cruiser while he was on duty, starting in the summer
35:11
Speaker 1: of 2020.
35:13
Speaker 9: Without fail, if she saw me, she pulled in. She
35:16
Speaker 9: would ask if I wanted a coffee or anything else
35:18
Speaker 9: and want to try to strike up a conversation. And
35:22
Speaker 9: what did you do? I spoke to her briefly, you know, usually,
35:26
Speaker 9: because I didn't really.
35:27
Speaker 5: Want to get into it.
35:28
Speaker 1: How often would you see her?
35:30
Speaker 9: Like I said, once a week, maybe once every other week.
35:33
Speaker 9: And would you ever see her outside of work?
35:37
Speaker 6: Never.
35:38
Speaker 1: During the cross-examination, Devine testified that after a couple of
35:42
Speaker 1: weeks of these meetings, And seemingly out of nowhere, Sandra
35:46
Speaker 1: suggested they have sex.
35:48
Speaker 9: Was there any other context around it?
35:50
Speaker 11: No. That's what she does.
35:53
Speaker 9: Or what she did.
35:56
Speaker 8: What she did to plenty of people.
35:58
Speaker 6: So you witnessed when she did this to other people?
36:00
Speaker 9: No, other people talked about it. Who are these other
36:03
Speaker 9: people that talked about that?
36:04
Speaker 11: Just people around the.
36:05
Speaker 1: Station, you know.
36:07
Speaker 9: Would say things that she would say, inappropriate things to
36:10
Speaker 9: people that she would everything else.
36:11
Speaker 8: I mean, No one told me she directly.
36:13
Speaker 9: Propositioned them, but that she would say things that were
36:16
Speaker 9: out of bounds. She would say things that are what?
36:19
Speaker 6: Out of bounds.
36:21
Speaker 1: In December 2025, the Post Commission sided with the internal
36:25
Speaker 1: investigation and Devine lost his certification. He has appealed. A
36:30
Speaker 1: final decision is still pending. Devine did not respond to
36:34
Speaker 1: a request for comment sent to his counsel. But back
36:40
Speaker 1: to that reporter's question. Did anyone know? Maybe Chief McNamara
36:45
Speaker 1: had been in the dark, but by Divine's own telling,
36:48
Speaker 1: other people in the Stoughton Police Department did know that
36:51
Speaker 1: something was up with Sandra. In his words, she said
36:54
Speaker 1: things that were out of bounds. It's hard to know
36:57
Speaker 1: exactly what he meant. Off-limits, maybe? Inappropriate? But it reminds
37:03
Speaker 1: me of another word connected to Sandra, the one her
37:06
Speaker 1: co-workers used to describe her. Oversharer. Sandra told them too
37:12
Speaker 1: much too soon. She didn't seem to know where work
37:15
Speaker 1: ended and her personal life began. Her family saw a
37:18
Speaker 1: version of it too. Tracy told me Sandra would show
37:22
Speaker 1: up after years apart and launch into some detailed story
37:25
Speaker 1: as if they'd spoken that morning. Out of bounds, oversharing,
37:30
Speaker 1: these are two different ways of saying the same thing.
37:33
Speaker 1: Sandra didn't seem to know where the lines were. And
37:37
Speaker 1: knowing everything we know now, it makes sense. Most of
37:41
Speaker 1: us learn appropriate boundaries as children, modeled by the adults
37:45
Speaker 1: around us. They teach us what's private, how to act
37:49
Speaker 1: in certain situations. But in Sandra's case, an adult she'd
37:53
Speaker 1: been taught to trust crossed every one of those lines.
37:57
Speaker 1: Her childhood was interrupted. So maybe it's not surprising that
38:02
Speaker 1: she was described as young for her age, immature. In
38:06
Speaker 1: some ways, she was still the girl she'd been when
38:09
Speaker 1: it all started. That girl had learned to keep secrets.
38:14
Speaker 1: Big secrets. Secrets that could have ended Farwell's marriage, his career,
38:18
Speaker 1: and potentially implicated other men in the Stoughton Police Department too.
38:23
Speaker 1: And yet, the people who knew her didn't remember someone
38:27
Speaker 1: who was quiet. They remembered how much she talked. I
38:31
Speaker 1: keep wondering about all that talking. Maybe some part of
38:36
Speaker 1: her hoped someone would ask the right questions. In the
38:39
Speaker 1: months before her death, Sandra told co-workers she was dating
38:43
Speaker 1: a police officer. She told them he was older. Others
38:47
Speaker 1: knew she had been an explorer and had deep connections
38:51
Speaker 1: to the police department. The pieces were there. No one
38:54
Speaker 1: put them together. Maybe Sandra was never an oversharer at all.
39:00
Speaker 1: For years, about the thing that mattered most, she said
39:04
Speaker 1: almost nothing. Next week on What Happened to Her, the
39:13
Speaker 1: Sandra Birchmore story. Sandra's family goes to court. It was
39:18
Speaker 1: all of their hands around her neck. They were all
39:20
Speaker 1: responsible for that death. And another agency takes a fresh
39:24
Speaker 1: look at the case.
39:26
Speaker 3: The FBI came knocking and it was like, oh my God,
39:29
Speaker 3: to have this case.
39:30
Speaker 10: Someone say, can we talk to you? And it was like, whenever, wherever,
39:34
Speaker 10: now I'm free.
39:38
Speaker 1: What happened to her is hosted, reported, and written by me,
39:41
Speaker 1: Melissa Jeltsin. Additional writing and story editing by Marissa Brown. Editing,
39:47
Speaker 1: sound design, and mixing by Evan Tyer. If you have
39:59
Speaker 1: a story you think we should look into or just
40:02
Speaker 1: something to say, you can reach us at whathappenedtoherpodcast at gmail.com.
40:09
Speaker 1: If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence,
40:12
Speaker 1: please visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline at thehotline.org or
40:17
Speaker 1: call them at 800-799-SAFE. for free confidential support 24 hours
40:23
Speaker 1: a day thank you so much for listening