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The Staged Suicide of Sandra Birchmore · Crime Night

0:00
Speaker 1: Imagine stepping out of the biting Massachusetts winter cold.
0:03
Speaker 2: Oh, that brutal February cold.
0:05
Speaker 1: Right exactly. So it's February fourth, twenty twenty one, and
0:08
Speaker 1: you're walking into an impartanting canton and it's just eerily quiet,
0:16
Speaker 1: too quiet. Yeah, the front door is completely locked. In fact,
0:19
Speaker 1: the property manager actually had to use a master key
0:22
Speaker 1: just to get the police inside. And once you cross
0:25
Speaker 1: that threshold, the stillness is just it's.
0:27
Speaker 2: Heavy, which is always a bad sign for first responders.
0:30
Speaker 1: Toltally, you look around and you see these cardboard boxes
0:33
Speaker 1: stacked in the living room, unopened baby items, diapers.
0:36
Speaker 2: Wipes, all just waiting for a child, a child that
0:39
Speaker 2: is never.
0:39
Speaker 1: Going to arrive. And then you look over by the
0:42
Speaker 1: bedroom closet and you find her. Sandra, Yeah, twenty three
0:45
Speaker 1: year old Sandra Burchmore. She's seated on the floor. There's
0:47
Speaker 1: a duffel bag strap pulled tight around her neck and
0:51
Speaker 1: it's anchored to the closet door handle.
0:53
Speaker 2: You know, to a responding officer walking into that room,
0:56
Speaker 2: the scene projects a very specific, very definitive narrative right
0:59
Speaker 2: off the right.
1:00
Speaker 1: They called it a suicide at first glance. The Massachusetts
1:04
Speaker 1: State police. They viewed this as just a tragic, open
1:07
Speaker 1: and shut case.
1:08
Speaker 2: Which I mean, you can almost see why if you
1:11
Speaker 2: only look surface deep.
1:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, she was a young woman with a really heartbreaking past.
1:15
Speaker 1: She had actually lost both her mother and her grandmother
1:18
Speaker 1: back to back in twenty.
1:20
Speaker 2: Sixteen, which is devastating.
1:22
Speaker 1: Completely, and she had a documented history of struggling with
1:25
Speaker 1: her mental health, of constantly searching for some kind of stability.
1:29
Speaker 1: And now she was two and a half months pregnant
1:32
Speaker 1: by a married man.
1:33
Speaker 2: So the police are looking at all this baggage and
1:35
Speaker 2: they just make an assumption exactly.
1:37
Speaker 1: They look around. There are no signs of forest entry,
1:39
Speaker 1: no scuff marks on the walls, no drag marks on the.
1:43
Speaker 2: Floor, no obvious signs of a struggle.
1:45
Speaker 1: Right, so the medical xanitor signs off and boom, the
1:47
Speaker 1: book snapshut.
1:48
Speaker 2: But that's just the official story exactly.
1:51
Speaker 1: Because the sources we are diving into for today's deep dive,
1:55
Speaker 1: which by the way, include a massive forty five page
1:58
Speaker 1: FBI affid David and some staggering internal police records, they
2:02
Speaker 1: reveal how an entire system basically conspired to keep that
2:06
Speaker 1: door locked, and how.
2:07
Speaker 2: A few really relentless outsiders finally kicked it down.
2:11
Speaker 1: Yes, welcome to the deep dive. Our mission today is
2:16
Speaker 1: to figure out how this system failed a vulnerable young
2:20
Speaker 1: woman so completely.
2:22
Speaker 2: Okay, let's unpack this because if the state police effectively
2:25
Speaker 2: close this case as a tragic suicide, how did it
2:29
Speaker 2: suddenly catch the attention of an entirely different police department.
2:32
Speaker 1: Right because the local jurisdiction was seemingly completely done with it.
2:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were, so what changed?
2:37
Speaker 1: Well, that is where the entire trajectory of this story shifts.
2:41
Speaker 1: Enter Donna McNamara. She is the police chief of Stoughton, Massachusetts.
2:45
Speaker 2: Which is just the next town over from Canton.
2:47
Speaker 1: Right, exactly just next door, And the very day after
2:50
Speaker 1: Sandra's body was found, Chief McNamara opens an internal affairs
2:54
Speaker 1: investigation right the very next day, the very next day.
2:57
Speaker 1: And she does this because the state police casually mentioned
3:00
Speaker 1: to her that one of her own officers, a guy
3:03
Speaker 1: named Matthew Farwell, was allegedly having an affair with Sandra.
3:06
Speaker 2: Wow, just casually dropping that bomb, right, and Farwell was married,
3:10
Speaker 2: he had kids. But the detail that set off massive
3:13
Speaker 2: blinding alarm bells for Chief McNamara was how that relationship
3:17
Speaker 2: actually began.
3:18
Speaker 1: It traces back to this youth initiative, right, the Police
3:22
Speaker 1: Explorers program.
3:23
Speaker 2: Yes, the Explorer's Program.
3:25
Speaker 1: And if you're listening to this and you're wondering how
3:27
Speaker 1: a grain police officer gets tangled up with a young
3:30
Speaker 1: woman in a way that leads to this kind of tragedy,
3:33
Speaker 1: I mean the psychology of this program is really the
3:36
Speaker 1: dark heart of the whole story.
3:37
Speaker 2: It really is. It's essentially a junior police academy for kids.
3:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, and because she was in this program, she was
3:43
Speaker 1: practically conditioned to view these men as infallible mentors.
3:47
Speaker 2: Which made the grooming process terrifyingly seamless for someone like Farwell.
3:51
Speaker 2: Sandra actually joined this program in twenty ten.
3:54
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, she was so young.
3:55
Speaker 2: He was just thirteen years old at the time. Thirteen, yeah, thirteen.
3:59
Speaker 2: She craves stability, She absolutely idolized law enforcement, and she
4:04
Speaker 2: was really just looking for a safe harbor in her life.
4:07
Speaker 1: And Matthew Farwell was her instructor.
4:09
Speaker 2: Right, he was twenty four years old at the time.
4:11
Speaker 2: The Explorers program, it basically puts these young, super impressionable
4:16
Speaker 2: kids into uniforms, puts them in squad cars for ride alongs,
4:21
Speaker 2: and it places them under the direct, completely unquestioned authority
4:25
Speaker 2: of active duty adult men.
4:27
Speaker 1: I mean it's literally like handing the steering wheel to
4:30
Speaker 1: a drunk driver and then blaming the passenger for the crash.
4:33
Speaker 2: THO the perfect way to put it.
4:34
Speaker 1: The inherent power dynamic there. It completely strips the teenager
4:38
Speaker 1: of her agency. You have this program that is quite
4:41
Speaker 1: literally designed to mentor vulnerable youth, and yet the State
4:45
Speaker 1: Police seemed to completely dismiss the danger of this dynamic
4:49
Speaker 1: when they investigated her death.
4:50
Speaker 2: They didn't view Farwell as a predator at all. They
4:53
Speaker 2: viewed him as a peer, which is just insane. It's
4:55
Speaker 2: a textbook example of institutional bias. Now, the State Police
4:59
Speaker 2: did look into Matthew Farwell initially. They actually interviewed him
5:02
Speaker 2: on February sixth.
5:04
Speaker 1: But wasn't that interview in a really weird place?
5:06
Speaker 2: Yeah? Strangely enough, they interviewed him in a school parking.
5:09
Speaker 1: Lot, a school parking lot, not an interrogation.
5:12
Speaker 2: Room exactly, And in that parking lot, Farwell admitted that
5:16
Speaker 2: he was at Sandra's apartment on the night of February first,
5:19
Speaker 2: which is the.
5:19
Speaker 1: Day she was last seen alive. On the building's surveillance cameras, right.
5:23
Speaker 2: And those cameras they paint a very specific picture.
5:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, they catch Sandra coming and going alone that afternoon.
5:29
Speaker 1: But then later that night, at nine to fourteen pm,
5:32
Speaker 1: the cameras captured this tall, burly man walking into the.
5:36
Speaker 2: Lobby and he's totally disguised, right, completely.
5:39
Speaker 1: He's wearing boots, a black jacket with a hood up,
5:42
Speaker 1: and a COVID mask covering almost his entire face. And
5:46
Speaker 1: then he leaves at nine four three pm.
5:48
Speaker 2: So Farwell actually admits to the investigators in that parking
5:51
Speaker 2: lot that the man on the tape was.
5:53
Speaker 1: Him, But what was his excuse for being there?
5:56
Speaker 2: He claims he went over there to break things off
5:58
Speaker 2: with Sandra because to him, she was telling people she
6:01
Speaker 2: was pregnant with his child, which was a claim he
6:03
Speaker 2: adamantly denied was even possible, right, of course he denied it. Yeah,
6:07
Speaker 2: he tells the police they had a tense argument. He
6:09
Speaker 2: told her it was over, and when he walked out,
6:11
Speaker 2: she was alive and well, just standing in her kitchen.
6:14
Speaker 1: Okay, so put yourself in the shoes of a detective
6:16
Speaker 1: for a second. You have a married cop admitting he
6:19
Speaker 1: was secretly visiting a pregnant woman who claimed he was
6:21
Speaker 1: the father. Yep, he's wearing a disguise on the exact
6:25
Speaker 1: night she died inside her lock department. Naturally, they ask
6:29
Speaker 1: him for a polygraph and a DNA sample to.
6:31
Speaker 2: Clear the air, right, They make the request, yes, but
6:34
Speaker 2: Matthew Farwell just hires a lawyer, and the lawyer shuts
6:37
Speaker 2: it down completely. His lawyer sends a letter starting that
6:41
Speaker 2: his client is just a mere witness, a mere witness, right,
6:45
Speaker 2: because in the bureaucratic language of police investigations, polygraphs and
6:50
Speaker 2: DNA are for targets of a criminal probe, not witnesses.
6:54
Speaker 2: So the lawyer just declines the request and.
6:56
Speaker 1: The state police just accept that blockade. They don't push harder.
6:59
Speaker 2: They basically just rubber stamped it and walked away. A
7:02
Speaker 2: state police sergeant went through Sandra's laptop, saw thousands of
7:05
Speaker 2: texts proving the sexual relationship, but clinically concluded there were
7:08
Speaker 2: no threats of harm.
7:09
Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
7:10
Speaker 2: They essentially closed the criminal prob rate there. It really
7:13
Speaker 2: shows how the quote unquote brotherhood of silence operates.
7:17
Speaker 1: It's not just a cultural thing, no.
7:18
Speaker 2: It's a bureaucratic weapon, Police union rules or procedural protections
7:23
Speaker 2: are specifically leveraged to stonewall investigations like this.
7:27
Speaker 1: Well, the State Police might have been willing to just
7:30
Speaker 1: bounce off that bureaucratic wall, but Chief McNamara's internal affairs
7:34
Speaker 1: investigation in Stoughton was operating under a totally different mandate.
7:38
Speaker 2: Thank God for her.
7:39
Speaker 1: Seriously, her team secured Sandra's entire digital footprint, and the
7:45
Speaker 1: sheer volume of data that Stout and PD processed completely
7:49
Speaker 1: rewrites the timeline Farwell gave those State detectives.
7:52
Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely. What's fascinating here is the contrast. The State
7:56
Speaker 2: police looked at a laptop and found quote, nothing threatening.
8:00
Speaker 2: Chief McNamara's team comb through thirty two thousand text messages.
8:04
Speaker 1: Thirty two thousand texts between Sandra and Matthew Farwell. Just
8:07
Speaker 1: think about the logistics of reading through all that.
8:09
Speaker 2: It's massive, and those thirty two thousand texts exposed the
8:13
Speaker 2: massive lie at the center of Farwell's parking lot interview.
8:16
Speaker 1: Right because he claimed the physical relationship started in.
8:18
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty exactly, but the digital trail proved it actually
8:21
Speaker 2: began in twenty.
8:22
Speaker 1: Twelve when Sandra was around fifteen years old.
8:25
Speaker 2: Yes, the grooming documented in these texts was so methodical
8:30
Speaker 2: and deeply, deeply disturbing. Farwell asserted complete control.
8:34
Speaker 1: Over her, and he bragged about it, didn't he.
8:36
Speaker 2: He constantly bragged about the power he held over her.
8:39
Speaker 2: He indulged in these violent sexual fantasies, sending her messages
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Speaker 2: about non consensual acts and chillingly statements like maybe I'll
8:48
Speaker 2: choke you a little.
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Speaker 1: Ugh. That makes my skin crawl, especially considering the physical
8:52
Speaker 1: difference between them.
8:53
Speaker 2: Right, keep in mind, he was six.
8:54
Speaker 1: Foot four and she was only four foot ten.
8:57
Speaker 2: Exactly, and he constantly reminded her of that physical disparity
9:00
Speaker 2: in the text, really reinforcing her helplessness.
9:03
Speaker 1: It paints this claustrophobic picture of a young girl trapped
9:07
Speaker 1: in the orbit of an authority figure she was raised
9:09
Speaker 1: to obey. It's tragic, and the dynamic was already devastating.
9:13
Speaker 1: But the true turning point, the moment this shifts from
9:16
Speaker 1: a long term patative abuse into a literal countdown to
9:19
Speaker 1: a murder, happens in December twenty.
9:21
Speaker 2: Twenty, when Sandra discovers she's pregnant.
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Speaker 1: Yes, she is thrilled about it. She actually makes this colorful,
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Speaker 1: super enthusiastic poster that says congrats, We're going to be parents.
9:33
Speaker 2: Which is so heartbreaking in retrospect, it really is.
9:35
Speaker 1: She sends a photo of it to Matthew and his
9:38
Speaker 1: reaction is just pure, unfiltered fury. He texts back, I
9:43
Speaker 1: literally have nothing to say right now. You are truly
9:46
Speaker 1: the worst person on the face.
9:47
Speaker 2: Of the earth because he is watching his entire carefully
9:51
Speaker 2: compartmentalized life, his marriage, his career, his freedom about to
9:56
Speaker 2: completely detonate. Right The grooming was always about control, but
10:00
Speaker 2: this pregnancy represented a total, irreversible loss of control for him.
10:05
Speaker 2: But the actual catalyst, the spark that accelerates this timeline
10:08
Speaker 2: to our February first, occurs a little later on January twentieth,
10:12
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one.
10:13
Speaker 1: This is where a friend of Sandra's let's call her
10:15
Speaker 1: Jill for this, gets into a petty financial argument with.
10:18
Speaker 2: Sandra, a totally unrelated argument.
10:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, but Jill decides to go nuclear to get back
10:22
Speaker 1: at her. She calls the Stoughton Police Department to maliciously
10:25
Speaker 1: out the affair. She tells whoever answers the dispatch phone
10:28
Speaker 1: that Sandra's sleeping with one of their officers.
10:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, and to make him pay the debt, which is
10:31
Speaker 2: just wild and a word immediately filters back to Matthew Farwell,
10:35
Speaker 2: obviously a fellow officer confronts him about the call. Farwell
10:39
Speaker 2: is totally rattled. He texts Sandra in a total panic,
10:43
Speaker 2: furious that her friend called his job. But then almost instantly,
10:47
Speaker 2: his behavior undergoes this radical chilling shift.
10:50
Speaker 1: He does a complete oneint eighty. He stops acting like
10:52
Speaker 1: an angry abuser and suddenly starts playing the supportive, caring partner.
10:56
Speaker 1: It was so abrupt Sandra even texts his friends saying
10:59
Speaker 1: it through her off there was a total one to eighty.
11:02
Speaker 1: He comes over, He's acting incredibly sweet, but he starts
11:05
Speaker 1: asking these highly specific, really logistical questions like what he
11:09
Speaker 1: asked for a spare key to her apartment and he
11:12
Speaker 1: asked to confirm the master code to get into the
11:15
Speaker 1: front door of her building.
11:16
Speaker 2: Wow, So he is no longer managing a relationship at
11:19
Speaker 2: that point. He is conducting reconnaissance. He is literally mapping
11:22
Speaker 2: the entry point exactly.
11:23
Speaker 1: And keep that timeline in your head, because what happens
11:26
Speaker 1: on February first, the night he has caught on camera
11:29
Speaker 1: leaving her building at nine point four three pm shows
11:32
Speaker 1: a staggering level of compartmentalization.
11:34
Speaker 2: I still can't get over this part.
11:36
Speaker 1: Right. Guess where Matthew Farwell went immediately after walking out
11:40
Speaker 1: of Sandra's apartment.
11:42
Speaker 2: It's sickening.
11:43
Speaker 1: He went directly to the hospital because his wife was
11:46
Speaker 1: in labor with their third child.
11:48
Speaker 2: He had the means, he had the access, and with
11:52
Speaker 2: the pregnancy threatening to expose his years of grooming a minor,
11:56
Speaker 2: he had the ultimate motive.
11:58
Speaker 1: And Sandra's family they saw through the official narrative immediately
12:02
Speaker 1: they knew this was not a suicide.
12:04
Speaker 2: Families usually know, yeah, And.
12:06
Speaker 1: When they were finally allowed into her apartment, the physical
12:08
Speaker 1: space did not reflect a person preparing to end.
12:10
Speaker 2: Her life, not at all. The scene told a story
12:13
Speaker 2: of interrupted life. There were wet clothes just sitting in
12:17
Speaker 2: the washing machine.
12:18
Speaker 1: Who does laundry right before exactly?
12:20
Speaker 2: And she had cats that were left completely unattended with
12:23
Speaker 2: no food or water out, which defies all logic because
12:26
Speaker 2: she had already been making meticulous arrangements for a pet
12:28
Speaker 2: sitter for when she would be in the hospital giving
12:31
Speaker 2: birth seven months in the future.
12:33
Speaker 1: But the detail that really highlights the massive failure of
12:36
Speaker 1: the initial investigation was found right on the bedroom floor
12:39
Speaker 1: neck Yes, it was a thin gold chain with a
12:43
Speaker 1: pink flamingo charm. It was a keepsake from Sandra's late grandmother.
12:47
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
12:48
Speaker 1: And it was snapped in half, laying on the floor
12:51
Speaker 1: with a clump of Sandra's hair tangled tightly in the links.
12:54
Speaker 2: And the state police had literally taken crime scene photos
12:57
Speaker 2: showing that exact necklace brooke in and hanging off neck
13:00
Speaker 2: when they found her.
13:01
Speaker 1: But they didn't even collect it as evidence.
13:03
Speaker 2: No, they didn't. This is where confirmation bias in crime
13:06
Speaker 2: scenes becomes literally deadly, because they walked in assuming suicide.
13:11
Speaker 2: They didn't see a broken necklace as a sign of
13:13
Speaker 2: a violent, desperate struggle. They just saw it as irrelevant
13:17
Speaker 2: background noise.
13:17
Speaker 1: It makes you want to scream. And as Chief McNamara
13:20
Speaker 1: doug deeper, she realized that blindness, that willingness to look
13:24
Speaker 1: the other way. It wasn't isolated. The rot within the
13:27
Speaker 1: department was systemic.
13:28
Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, it wasn't
13:31
Speaker 2: just Matthew Farwell. Internal affairs discovered that he wasn't the
13:35
Speaker 2: only officer exploiting Sandra. It gets worse, It gets so
13:38
Speaker 2: much worse. His twin brother, William Farwell, who is also
13:41
Speaker 2: a stote and police officer, admitted to having a sexual
13:44
Speaker 2: relationship with her too, Are you kidding me? And furthermore,
13:48
Speaker 2: Robert Devine, a former Deputy chief who actually ran the
13:51
Speaker 2: Explorer's program and brought the Farwell brothers into it, was
13:55
Speaker 2: also implicated in grooming her.
13:57
Speaker 1: These men were literally passing around vulnerable girl who came
14:01
Speaker 1: to them from mentorship, and the bureaucratic machinery was designed
14:05
Speaker 1: to just insulate them from any consequences.
14:07
Speaker 2: Which is why Chief McNamara recommended that all these officers
14:10
Speaker 2: be decertified.
14:11
Speaker 1: Decertification is crucial.
14:13
Speaker 2: Very crucial. It means revoking their official post certification, so
14:18
Speaker 2: they can't just quietly resign and get hired by another
14:21
Speaker 2: police department two towns over.
14:23
Speaker 1: But they all quickly resigned anyway to avoid the internal punishment,
14:26
Speaker 1: didn't they?
14:26
Speaker 2: They did? But Chief McNamara didn't stop there. She handed
14:30
Speaker 2: her massive damning IA investigation over to the Norfolk District Attorney,
14:35
Speaker 2: fully expecting criminal charges for statutory rape to be filed.
14:39
Speaker 1: And what did the DA do?
14:41
Speaker 2: The DA declined to prosecute.
14:42
Speaker 1: The excuse given was that quote the main witness was dead.
14:46
Speaker 2: Which is incredibly frustrating.
14:48
Speaker 1: It feels like the ultimate loophole for murder. If you
14:51
Speaker 1: systematically abuse someone and then you kill them, you can't
14:55
Speaker 1: be charged for the abuse because you successfully silenced the
14:58
Speaker 1: only witness. I mean, how is the family supposed to
15:01
Speaker 1: fight a justice system that aggressively protects its own blind
15:03
Speaker 1: spots like that?
15:04
Speaker 2: They really can't, at least not at that level. The
15:07
Speaker 2: lowel DA's refusal to prosecute created a massive legal debt
15:11
Speaker 2: end for state charges. The family filed a wrongful death lawsuit,
15:15
Speaker 2: They took to social media, and they absolutely refused to
15:18
Speaker 2: let Sander be forgotten.
15:19
Speaker 1: They kept fighting, they did.
15:20
Speaker 2: But that exact blockade at the state level is what
15:23
Speaker 2: forced a new approach. It forced authorities to look for
15:26
Speaker 2: a backdoor.
15:27
Speaker 1: Which brings us to August twenty twenty four. The local
15:31
Speaker 1: systems totally failed, but the intense public pressure and the
15:35
Speaker 1: undeniable mountain of evidence gathered by Chief McNamara finally summoned
15:39
Speaker 1: a different kind of authority.
15:40
Speaker 2: Of Feds enter the FEDS.
15:43
Speaker 1: FBI Special Agent Cheney Kastrita drops a forty five page
15:46
Speaker 1: affidavid that fundamentally rewrites the ending of this story.
15:50
Speaker 2: And to get around the local state police and the
15:53
Speaker 2: DA who wouldn't touch this, the FBI executed this brilliant
15:57
Speaker 2: legal maneuver, utilizing the concept of dual sovereignty.
16:01
Speaker 1: So because the state failed to act, the federal government
16:04
Speaker 1: stepped in.
16:04
Speaker 2: Exactly, they didn't charge Matthew Farrewell with standard state level murder.
16:08
Speaker 1: They bypassed the local jurisdiction entirely.
16:11
Speaker 2: The FBI charged him with a federal crime, specifically killing
16:15
Speaker 2: a witness or victim. That's Title eighteen US Code, Section
16:19
Speaker 2: fifteen twelve, which is huge. It's massive. It's a statue
16:23
Speaker 2: usually reserved for taking down organized crime rings, cartels, or
16:27
Speaker 2: mobsters whose silence informants to prevent them from communicating with law.
16:31
Speaker 1: Enforcement, treating a corrupt cop like a mobster. Fitting.
16:34
Speaker 2: By utilizing this specific federal civil rights and witness tampering charge,
16:39
Speaker 2: the FBI takes total control of the case, sidestepping the
16:42
Speaker 2: local DA completely. And crucially, this specific charge carries a
16:46
Speaker 2: potential death penalty.
16:48
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting because the forensics they
16:51
Speaker 1: brought to the table to back this up just dismantled
16:53
Speaker 1: every single excuse the state police made.
16:56
Speaker 2: Let's look at the digital timeline first, and how they
16:58
Speaker 2: proved he was actually in the room when she died.
17:01
Speaker 1: Right, Because the FBI extracted data from the Apple Health
17:05
Speaker 1: app on Sandra's iPhone.
17:07
Speaker 2: Yes, and if you're listening to this with a smartphone
17:09
Speaker 2: in your pocket, you know it tracks your steps. But
17:12
Speaker 2: forensically it does so much more than that.
17:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, the FBI analyzed the internal accelerometer logs. Those are
17:18
Speaker 1: the sensors that measure the phones velocity and physical orientation.
17:22
Speaker 2: In space, and those logs proved that the device and
17:26
Speaker 2: by extension, Sanders, ceased all movement at exactly nine point
17:30
Speaker 2: four zero.
17:31
Speaker 1: Pm nine point four zero pm. Now sync that up
17:34
Speaker 1: with a surveillance video at the front door. Farwell is
17:38
Speaker 1: caught on camera walking out of her building at nine
17:40
Speaker 1: point four to three pm. Wow, The accelerometer data proved
17:44
Speaker 1: she stopped moving three minutes before he left.
17:46
Speaker 2: The FBI's timeline mathematically places him inside that lock department
17:50
Speaker 2: at the exact moment she dies.
17:52
Speaker 1: But they couldn't just stop at the digital footprint, right.
17:54
Speaker 1: They needed to prove it wasn't a suicide. Mechanically right.
17:57
Speaker 2: So they brought in doctor Williams. Smock.
17:59
Speaker 1: Doctor Smack is a forensic heavyweight. He's actually the medical
18:03
Speaker 1: expert who testified in the Derek Schouvin trial regarding the
18:06
Speaker 1: precise mechanics of asphyxiation.
18:09
Speaker 2: He is, and doctor Smock reviewed Sandra's original autopsy and
18:13
Speaker 2: he zeroed in on one glaring anatomical detail. Sander had
18:18
Speaker 2: a fractured hyoid bone.
18:20
Speaker 1: That's the small U shaped bone at the top of
18:22
Speaker 1: the neck.
18:23
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. And Smock testified that a fracture like this
18:26
Speaker 2: is scientifically medically impossible in the position she was found.
18:30
Speaker 1: In, because she was seated on the floor.
18:32
Speaker 2: Yes. In forensic terms, it's called a partial suspension hanging.
18:36
Speaker 1: Okay, So what's the mechanical difference there.
18:38
Speaker 2: Well, when a ligature is used in a seated hanging,
18:40
Speaker 2: the gravitational force pulls the strap upward and backward. It
18:43
Speaker 2: typically slides right past the hyoid bone without breaking it
18:46
Speaker 2: at all.
18:47
Speaker 1: It just missed it entirely right.
18:49
Speaker 2: The body simply does not generate enough downward force to
18:52
Speaker 2: snap it in that seated position. Smock noted that he
18:55
Speaker 2: could not find a single documented case in forensic history
18:59
Speaker 2: of a seated hangar resulting in that specific fracture.
19:02
Speaker 1: So how does it break?
19:03
Speaker 2: It breaks from inward lateral pressure like someone's hand, someone's
19:07
Speaker 2: hands wrapping around the throat and squeezing from the sides.
19:11
Speaker 2: It overwhelmingly, almost exclusively indicates manual strangulation.
19:16
Speaker 1: God, the physical evidence of murder was literally inside her
19:22
Speaker 1: throat the entire time, and it.
19:24
Speaker 2: Was missed by a medical examiner who had clearly already
19:27
Speaker 2: decided it was a suicide before even doing the autopsy.
19:30
Speaker 1: And you know, as sophisticated as all this forensic science is,
19:34
Speaker 1: criminals always think they are smarter than the technology they use.
19:37
Speaker 2: They really do.
19:38
Speaker 1: Matthew Farwell willingly handed his personal phone over to the
19:41
Speaker 1: state police back in twenty twenty one, knowing full well
19:44
Speaker 1: he had already deleted all his texts with Sandra.
19:47
Speaker 2: But the FBI didn't just look at his personal phone.
19:50
Speaker 2: They decided to look at his police work phone.
19:52
Speaker 1: And the digital footprint on that device was just incredibly damning.
19:55
Speaker 2: What did they find on it?
19:56
Speaker 1: They found that immediately after handing over his personal phone
19:59
Speaker 1: in that school parking lot, Farwell use his police work
20:02
Speaker 1: phone to frantically google whether deleted text messages could be
20:06
Speaker 1: recovered by forensics.
20:07
Speaker 2: You have got to be kidding me.
20:09
Speaker 1: No. He also googled whether a person could legally revoke
20:13
Speaker 1: their consent to a police search in Massachusetts. Wow, he
20:17
Speaker 1: practically gift wrapped his guilty conscience for the federal agents.
20:21
Speaker 2: It is the digital equivalent of washing blood off your
20:24
Speaker 2: hands while staring directly into a security camera.
20:27
Speaker 1: Truly so, today Matthew Farwell is sitting in a detention
20:30
Speaker 1: facility in Rhode Island. He's being held without bail, and
20:34
Speaker 1: he's awaiting a federal trial scheduled for October twenty twenty six.
20:38
Speaker 2: The walls finally closed in.
20:40
Speaker 1: They did.
20:40
Speaker 2: Ye.
20:41
Speaker 1: It's a remarkable testament to what happens when you have
20:43
Speaker 1: a clash of two very different forces within law enforcement.
20:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have the state police who defaulted to the
20:48
Speaker 2: path of olice resistance. They trusted the word of a
20:51
Speaker 2: fellow officer over the physical anomalies at the scene.
20:54
Speaker 1: And then you have Chief McNamara and the FBI who
20:56
Speaker 1: looked at the exact same set of facts and refuse
21:00
Speaker 1: used to let the badge act as a shield.
21:02
Speaker 2: We started this deep dive in a cold lock department
21:05
Speaker 2: with a tragic death written off as a simple suicide.
21:08
Speaker 1: We uncovered a predatory youth program that served as a
21:11
Speaker 1: hunting ground for men in uniform.
21:13
Speaker 2: We witnessed how bureaucratic loopholes and confirmation bias create this
21:19
Speaker 2: really toxic brotherhood of silence.
21:21
Speaker 1: But we also watched the FBI step in to execute
21:24
Speaker 1: a flawless legal maneuver to finally, finally deliver some justice
21:29
Speaker 1: for Sandra Burchmore.
21:30
Speaker 2: It's a story of profound systemic failure, but also of
21:34
Speaker 2: incredible institutional courage from those who refuse to look away.
21:38
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
21:39
Speaker 2: However, there is one final mind bending twist hidden in
21:42
Speaker 2: the sources that completely shatters the motive we thought we understood.
21:46
Speaker 1: Oh Man, lay it on us.
21:47
Speaker 2: According to anonymous sources close to the ongoing investigation, recent
21:51
Speaker 2: DNA testing yielded a shocking result. Matthew Farwell wasn't even
21:55
Speaker 2: the biological father of Sandra's unborn baby.
21:57
Speaker 1: Wow wait, really, Kelly tail alone shifts the entire landscape
22:01
Speaker 1: of the case.
22:02
Speaker 2: If that reporting is true, it means that Matthew Farwell,
22:05
Speaker 2: driven by sheer paranoia, a desperate need for control, and
22:08
Speaker 2: a terrifyingly fragile ego murdered a twenty three year old
22:11
Speaker 2: woman and destroyed his own life all over a secret
22:14
Speaker 2: that wasn't even biologically his.
22:16
Speaker 1: It really forces you to mul over the psychology of
22:19
Speaker 1: those we empower to protect us. Just the terrifying fragility
22:23
Speaker 1: of an ego that will burn down the world and
22:25
Speaker 1: take a young life just to avoid the consequences of
22:28
Speaker 1: its own actions.
22:29
Speaker 2: It's chilling.
22:30
Speaker 1: It really makes you realize that sometimes the clean binary answers,
22:35
Speaker 1: you know, the neat and tidy police report, the locked
22:38
Speaker 1: door with no forced entry, They were just a facade
22:41
Speaker 1: hiding a profoundly messy and horrifying reality.
22:45
Speaker 2: This raises an important question for all of us. How
22:47
Speaker 2: many other clean narratives have we accepted just because the
22:50
Speaker 2: person telling the story was wearing a uniform.
22:53
Speaker 1: Something to think about the next time a story seems
22:55
Speaker 1: just a little too simple. Keep asking questions, keep looking
22:58
Speaker 1: past the locked doors, and never stopped questioning the narratives
23:01
Speaker 1: handed down by authority. We'll catch you next time.