In the same Massachusetts town rocked by the Karen Read case, 23-year-old Sandra Birchmore was found hanged in her Canton apartment in 2021. Sandra was pregnant and alone, and her death was quickly ruled a suicide, despite her family’s belief that she’d been groomed for years by Stoughton officer Matthew Farwell, who first “mentored” her in a police youth program when she was just 12. In this episode, Katie unpacks Sandra’s troubled childhood, her secret relationship with Farwell, and the threatening messages that preceded her death, revealing a darker picture of small-town policing: alleged statutory rape, buried complaints, and a department accused of closing ranks around one of its own. With Farwell in federal custody, Katie revisits the night she died, the evidence that never added up, and how her family, a podcast, and viral social posts dragged her “suicide” back into the spotlight… and onto the FBI’s radar.
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