The Murder Of Sandra Birchmore

Before Matthew Farwell's federal trial begins on October 5, 2026, this is Sandra Birchmore's whole story in one place, both parts of the Hidden Killers series combined. It opens on the handmade sign her family found when they cleaned out her apartment, the one she'd made for the man she said was the father, and on what she'd put on it. Who she was. What the Stoughton Police Department's own investigators found was done to her. What the state did with the evidence of her death. And who finally forced the case into a federal courtroom.

Sandra was raised by a chronically ill mother and a great-aunt she called Grandma, and by 19 she'd buried both. She joined the Stoughton Police Explorers at 12 because she wanted to be a police officer. The department's internal report, released in September 2022, found Farwell's inappropriate relationship with her began in the spring of 2013, and that William Farwell and Robert Devine had inappropriate relationships with her as an adult. All three left the department on their own terms and none has been charged by the state.

In December 2020 Sandra sent Farwell a homemade poster announcing she was pregnant. Prosecutors say his answer was that he had nothing to say, and that he later called her the worst person on the face of the earth. Someone who cared about her reported him to the Stoughton Police Department on January 20, 2021, and the FBI says that report was handed to Farwell. On February 1 she told him the door would be open. The building's camera has him inside for 29 minutes, and her phone's last recorded movement is eight steps at 9:40 p.m.

The state ruled it a suicide. Sandra's family, the Boston Globe, Dr. Michael Baden, and the FBI got the case reopened. Farwell has pleaded not guilty; his defense says she took her own life. The medical examiner changed the death certificate to undetermined in 2026.

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Prosecutors say it took about an hour for local officers to tell the medical examiner's office that Sandra Birchmore's death involved no foul play. It took five years, her family, a newspaper, a famous pathologist, and the FBI to undo that. Part 2 of Sandra's story is the investigation, the declination, and everyone the record shows walked away.

By February 6, 2021, the state had watched a hooded, masked man go into Sandra's building at 9:14 p.m. and come out at 9:43. It had a complex employee's account of a caller who said Sandra's boyfriend, a cop, had threatened to handle the pregnancy himself. It had an autopsy with a fractured hyoid. Detectives sat with Matthew Farwell in a school parking lot, recorded nothing, and the FBI later laid out how video, texts, and Stoughton's own records contradicted nearly everything he said. Then, the FBI says, he used his town phone to look up whether deleted messages come back and whether consent can be taken back in Massachusetts.

His lawyer refused a DNA sample on March 8. The medical examiner ruled suicide on May 21. By the end of 2021 the state was building a larceny case. In September 2022 the Norfolk DA said there was no prosecutable case over what began when Sandra was 15, because Sandra was dead. Matthew Farwell resigned. William Farwell resigned and started a TSA job the same day. Robert Devine retired and practices law. None of them has been charged by the state.

Farwell was arrested by the FBI on August 28, 2024. He has pleaded not guilty. The death certificate was changed to undetermined in 2026. Jury selection begins October 5, and the jury will be allowed to read Sandra's journals.

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Sandra Birchmore made a sign to tell a man he was going to be a father, sprinkled it with glitter, and put her ultrasound picture on it. Her family found it when they cleaned out her Canton apartment after she was found dead on February 4, 2021, along with a stroller still in the box and a load of laundry left in the washer. Part 1 of this two-part series tells her story from the beginning, because February 1 doesn't make sense without 2010.

That's the year Sandra, 12, applied to the Stoughton Police Explorers. She had no father. Her mother was sick. She wanted to be a cop, and the department ran a program for kids like her. Robert Devine directed it, the Farwell twins taught in it, and the town later couldn't find a record that any of them completed the youth-protection training the program required.

Stoughton's own sixty-page internal report, released in September 2022, found Matthew Farwell's inappropriate relationship with Sandra began in the spring of 2013, at 15. It found William Farwell messaged her from his shifts and misused police databases. It found Devine met her on duty in December 2020 under a fake Facebook name, then denied it. None of the three has been charged by the state.

Sandra told Farwell she was pregnant on December 28, 2020. Prosecutors say he replied that he had nothing to say, and within weeks told her he wished she would die. Her therapist saw her on January 31 and, the FBI says, found no suicidal thinking. On February 1 Farwell texted "come by for a second," and building video shows him inside for 29 minutes. Her phone counted eight steps at 9:40 p.m. and then went still. He has pleaded not guilty. Part 2 is the investigation.

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Sandra Birchmore’s death certificate no longer lists the same conclusion that shaped the first investigation. The Massachusetts medical examiner initially ruled her death a suicide. On April 30, 2026, the office changed the manner of death to undetermined and revised the cause from asphyxia by hanging to asphyxia. 

That change comes as Matthew Farwell prepares to stand trial in federal court. His defense says Sandra killed herself, and Judge Denise Casper has ruled that jurors may hear evidence about Sandra’s mental-health struggles and suicidal thoughts. The prosecution says those records cannot be separated from the relationship and police environment surrounding her. 

Sandra entered the Stoughton Police Explorers program at 12. Prosecutors allege Farwell began an unlawful relationship with her at 15 while he was 27 and serving as an officer and program instructor. They allege he later killed her to prevent disclosure of his conduct. Farwell has pleaded not guilty. 

Stoughton’s own 2022 internal investigation found that Matthew Farwell, his twin brother William, and former deputy chief Robert Devine had inappropriate relationships with Sandra. All three left the department. William Farwell and Devine are not charged in the federal criminal case. 

Federal prosecutors say the first death investigation left major questions untouched. Their court filings say local officers reported “no foul play” to the medical examiner within about an hour of finding Sandra. Prosecutors say investigators did not compel Farwell’s DNA or seize his devices during that initial work. 

Years later, federal investigators returned to the physical and digital evidence. Prosecutors say Farwell was a major DNA contributor on the duffel-bag strap found at the scene. His lawyers dispute the significance of that result and continue to argue suicide. 

Farwell is charged with killing a witness and causing the death of Sandra’s unborn son. Jury selection is set for October 5, 2026. 

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Before Sandra Birchmore died — before the duffel bag strap, before the staged apartment federal prosecutors allege — there was Stoughton. And Stoughton had been eating itself for decades.Sandra joined the Explorers program at twelve looking for mentorship. Federal prosecutors allege the officers who ran it took something else entirely. The union president allegedly began a physical relationship with her at fifteen. His twin and the deputy chief who oversaw the program also crossed boundaries, according to POST findings.The department's record stretches back through on-duty extortion, a chief convicted for covering it, FBI corruption probes that sent officers to federal prison, a deputy chief's compromising photos emailed department-wide, and a sergeant who killed a seventy-four-year-old man and went back to work.The FBI found forty thousand messages and Farwell's DNA on the ligature. The medical examiner changed the manner of death to undetermined. Trial starts October 5.

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Farwell's defense is built on one argument: Sandra Birchmore killed herself. They have psychiatric records dating back to age nine, journal entries, a medication with a suicide warning, and a prior attempt. They won the right to put all of it before the jury. Their case rests on Sandra's instability, her manipulation, and her pain—every piece of damage the defense can find.Prosecutors allege that damage has a source. Sandra joined the Stoughton Police Explorers at twelve. By fifteen, Farwell had allegedly crossed the line with her. Three other men connected to the department were involved. She spent a decade under the control of men who tracked her phone, told her to delete messages, swore her to silence, and punished her when she stepped outside the boundaries they set. None of them were ever criminally charged for what they did to her.Farwell's DNA was the major contributor on the strap found around Sandra's neck. A strangulation expert found her hyoid bone fractured—an injury with zero documented cases in women found in a seated position. Before her death, Farwell attended a training where the medical examiner discussed how to identify suicide in hanging cases. Sandra was booking prenatal appointments past the day she died.The defense's strategy asks twelve people to look at everything Sandra endured and decide she did this to herself. The prosecution asks them to look at the same evidence and see what these men did to her. Trial begins October 5 in Boston.

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Sandra Birchmore’s name showed up in a place nobody expected — in a text chain between a Canton police sergeant and the state police trooper who led the investigation into the death of John O’Keefe in the Karen Read case. According to an eighty-seven-page lawsuit filed against Canton and the Massachusetts State Police, former Canton Sgt. Sean Goode allegedly responded to Birchmore’s story by calling her a derogatory slur in a message to fired Trooper Michael Proctor. A sworn officer — texting about a dead woman who, according to federal prosecutors, was allegedly pursued by police officers beginning when she was a teenager. And his response was contempt.

That text connects two cases already linked by geography and institutional failure. Sandra Birchmore was found dead in her Canton apartment in February 2021. Her death was initially ruled a suicide. The state medical examiner changed her manner of death to “undetermined” more than five years later. Former Stoughton detective Matthew Farwell faces federal charges alleging he killed her and staged the scene. According to federal prosecutors, Farwell was one of three Stoughton officers who allegedly became involved with Birchmore after meeting her through a police youth program when she was thirteen. Four officers connected to her case have been decertified or permanently barred from law enforcement.

The documented record — from the federal filings in Birchmore’s case to the decade of alleged messages between Proctor and Goode — reveals officers across multiple departments who allegedly treated the people they served with open disdain. And when confronted, every response followed the same pattern: minimize, deflect, redirect. Nobody has acknowledged the culture that allowed it. This piece asks whether that culture is still the one running these departments — and who is still paying the price for it.

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Sandra Birchmore trusted the people who were supposed to protect her. She was twenty-three, pregnant, and full of life when she was found dead — and for five long years, the official story was that she did it to herself. Her family never believed it. They fought. And now, finally, the record has changed.

This community has stood with Sandra from the start, and this is the update so many of you have been waiting for. Months before the trial of the former police officer accused of killing her, the state amended her death certificate — taking away the word suicide and replacing it with undetermined. Experts say medical examiners almost never do that. It happened for Sandra.

And the news kept coming. A judge refused to let the accused out on bail, writing that the evidence against him is very strong, if not overwhelming. The man prosecutors say strangled her and staged the scene is staying behind bars until trial.

We sat down with an attorney and legal analyst to talk through what this all means for the family — why the changed death certificate matters so much, why the defense keeps losing, and the one piece of testimony waiting at trial that could finally give Sandra the truth her loved ones have demanded for half a decade.

For everyone who refused to accept the first version of this story — this one's for you, and for Sandra.

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Sandra Birchmore believed things were getting better. Matthew Farwell brought ginger ale to her apartment. She texted a friend that he was coming around. She was contacting lawyers. She was building a plan for child support. She was preparing for a future with the child she was carrying — a future she believed was finally within reach.

Farwell was allegedly having different conversations entirely.

According to federal prosecutors, he told one person that if Sandra did not end the pregnancy, he would "take care of the problem himself." He told another he needed to "put crazy back in the bag." He told a third that "the problem was going to take care of itself." Three people. Three conversations. All allegedly pointing toward a man who had decided that a pregnant twenty-three-year-old — the same girl he allegedly began a relationship with when she was fifteen and enrolled in his police youth program — was a problem to be eliminated.

On January 20, 2021, Sandra's friend called the Stoughton Police Department and reported Farwell's involvement with Sandra. The employee who took the call told Farwell. Eleven days later, Sandra was dead.

At 9:27 PM on February 1, Farwell entered her Canton apartment building. At 9:56 PM, he left. Twenty-nine minutes. Sandra's phone recorded its final movements while he was still inside. She was found three days later in the same clothes. Her death was classified as something other than homicide for years.

The forensic evidence prosecutors have since assembled tells a different story. Farwell's DNA on the duffel bag strap they say was used to strangle her. His sperm cells in her underwear — contradicting his claim of months without contact. An injury to her right clavicle sustained while she was alive, matching a buckle behind her head. A broken pink flamingo necklace — one Sandra wore regularly — tangled in her hair on the bedroom floor. And a reenactment at a private gathering where an inebriated Farwell reportedly demonstrated how she supposedly died, describing details no one outside the investigation should have known.

DNA testing confirmed Farwell was not the biological father of Sandra's unborn son. But both he and Sandra believed he was. Prosecutors say that belief — combined with Sandra's growing willingness to tell the truth about how their relationship began — is what made her a threat he allegedly could not allow to speak.

Sandra put her trust in the police. They allegedly broke it in every way a person can be broken.

Farwell has pled not guilty. His defense maintains Sandra took her own life.

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For years, Sandra Birchmore’s family held vigils outside buildings that didn’t want them there. They held signs at the Stoughton Police Department. They demanded answers from a system that had already decided Sandra did this to herself. Then the FBI came.

On August 28, 2024, agents arrested Matthew Farwell and charged him with killing Sandra to prevent her from exposing his crimes. A superseding indictment added a charge under the Unborn Victims of Violence Act for the death of her unborn baby boy. Farwell has pleaded not guilty. His trial begins October 5, 2026 in Boston federal court.

The defense has tried everything. They moved to dismiss the charges. Denied. They moved to relocate the trial. Denied. They sought bail, presenting Farwell as a war hero. Prosecutors responded with new DNA evidence: Farwell’s genetic material on the strap used to strangle Sandra, his sperm cells in her underwear contradicting his statements. Their filing also revealed that months after Sandra’s death, Farwell allegedly bought a drink for a woman at a bar who woke up naked while he searched her room for his keys.

All three officers connected to Sandra’s exploitation have been permanently barred from law enforcement. The DA who oversaw the initial investigation won’t seek reelection. Sandra’s family has endorsed his potential replacement. The political fallout has been seismic.

Sandra Birchmore was born in 1997. She lost her mother, grandmother, and aunt before turning twenty-three. She worked with children. She was studying nursing. She wanted to be a police officer. She wanted to be a mother. Everything taken from her began with trust. The trial begins in October.

This is Part 5 of a five-part series on the Sandra Birchmore case.

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