Cop, 27, Rapes 15-year-old Virgin, Allegedly Kills Her When She Gets Pregnant; Staged Suicide of Sandra Birchmore

0:01 Body Bags with Joseph Scott Moore. It's not every day that I come to you and talk about a homicide case that involves the feds. I think people think, you know, well, it's like the feds are really good at homicide investigation. Did you know that the feds don't technically have a federal homicide statute that homicide is generally relegated to the purview of the state, whatever state it happens in. Now, there are instances where the feds get involved in a case because there are, as the feds look at it, overarching issues that penetrate that veil that separates state law from federal law and Boy, today, do we have a doozy. Now, we have already covered this case previously, and it was some time ago, but right now there is a trial

1:10 going on that has as much intrigue to it and a peek behind the curtain, if you will, of, let's just say, malfeasance in office. But the main thing is the fact that we don't have just One, we have two victims here that are deceased. We have a mother by the name of Sandra Birchmore, and we have her unborn child that never had a shot outside of the womb.

1:48 I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Brother David, it seems to me Like, we have been talking about Sandra Birchmore for a long, long time. And finally, this case has made it into a courtroom, but it's in a federal courtroom. And also, as an adjunct, if that wasn't enough, we've got the specter of the Karen Reed case that is tangentially involved with this because of the investigators and all that sort of thing. Right.

2:27 And we just got over the Clancy trial in Massachusetts, too. Exactly.

2:30 So if you want your bag of crazy, here it is. And boy, is it nuts.

2:35 Snowden, Massachusetts. This is about 25, 30 miles outside of Boston. And when we covered this story, it was when Matthew Barwell, the accused, was trying to get out on bail. And so we backed into the story there. It's the story of a girl who she wanted to be a police officer. OK, that's all this girl wanted. And what she ran into was grooming. I don't want to call it alleged because at this point we do, don't we? We have to say alleged because.

3:09 I guess we do. But, yeah, allegedly, allegedly, allegedly, you.

3:13 Know, the Boy Scouts of America used to support the Explorer posts that existed in a number of different areas and They dealt with certain things like law enforcement or fire department. Firefighters, yeah. Yeah, and there was actually one that was for media. When I was in high school, and it was really cool. I was called by a guy.

3:40 I was already working in radio. I started when I was 14, okay? I got paid to be doing radio when I was riding my moped to the radio station.

3:50 Isn't that something? You guys started when you were 14. I guess I started when I was 12 working in the morgue. I tell you, man, it's just.

3:55 One of those things. What did you do to be in a morgue at 12, dude? I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

3:59 I'm just kidding.

4:00 It freaked me out. I'm thinking, I mowed a yard at a mower when I was 16.

4:03 No, that's what I did. I drug a lawnmower up and down the streets. I had little old ladies on the street that paid me five bucks a hit to do that. Now guys are getting like, I don't know, 350 bucks to cut your grass.

4:14 This one is $ 60 just to do my front yard. And I'm like, I'm not kidding. You know what? Last time I mowed it, I'm not kidding. I had to use my cane and I was pushing that mower. Kidding. Anyway, let's get back to the Explorer Post. Yeah, let's do it. When I was in high school, there was an Explorer Post and it was about... radio in particular, and it was done at a radio station where you had legitimate broadcasters.

4:36 And this, it was a guy named Dick Storch, who was a WPTF in Raleigh, North Carolina, which is a legendary radio station and a TV station back then. Anyway, he was on staff as their production director, and he was the professional who mentored this Explorer Post group. And they had news people and production people and camera. They had all the different people in the media that volunteered their time at night once a week to come in and train young people to show them all the different aspects of broadcasting. Now, I was brought in to show these people who were, in some cases, they were older than me, that I'm already in radio and I'm younger than you. So you can do this too. And that was kind of the point of the Explorer Post in Stoughton, Massachusetts,

5:24 that Sandra got involved in. She wanted to be a police officer, wanted to know more about it. So at 12, which is a little young for an explorer post, they usually start at 14. But at 12, she started hanging around the explorer post, dealing with law enforcement. And the Stoughton Police Department, headed by Chief Deputy Robert Devine, he was the professional overseeing this particular explorer post. He ended up resigning not too long ago. I'll tell you why.

5:54 It has something to do with Sandra. At 12, she starts going to the Explorer meeting. She meets Officer Matthew Farwell and his twin brother, William. Meets a lot of police officers who devoted their personal time to helping these young people learn more about law enforcement. Sandra was involved with it all the way through high school, Joe. And the reason we're talking about her today is is at the age of 23, Sandra was found dead in her apartment.

6:28 She was pregnant at the time. And her body was discovered and her death was ruled a suicide. The problem was information had been leaking out that Sandra had been involved with some Stoughton police officers sexually. And as that word started spreading, Joseph Scott Morgan, they found out that there were text messages from Matthew Farwell to Sandra talking about her virginity. Yeah. And how when she was 15, he took her virginity. This guy, by the way, is married. Yeah.

7:10 And I think he was 27 at the time when this act, which, by the way, is rape.

7:18 Took place.

7:19 This is not a sexual act. This is sexual assault, rape. And you can call it, you know, a statutory rape. You know, even in Massachusetts, it's called statutory rape. And he was certainly, you know, well, the investigators knew that he was guilty of this. At least, you know, if we're looking at this probatively, you know, one of the numbers that really caught my attention were these text messages.

7:47 It's like, Ten thousand plus, I think. And I'm, you know, and I'm sitting there thinking, first off, I hate to text. I don't. And I know that people are much better at it than I am. I've got dumb thumbs. I'm always misspelling things, you know, when I do it.

8:03 So you don't hurt me?

8:05 That's an accident? Yeah, right. It's one of those things I'd much rather just have a conversation with you and call it done. But that's neither here nor there. What I'm getting at is the amount of time. that is involved in this. And of course, we've talked about other cases where there are thousands and thousands.

8:26 Just finished up with the American Idol murder.

8:29 Yeah, yeah, precisely. And it just goes on forever. And I'm thinking, my Lord, if you had all of that reclaimed, if you could reclaim that time in your life, and it's this constant thing of kind of keeping track. But yeah, in some of these communications, it's you know, he, he talks about, you know, the, the taking of her virginity.

8:57 He's 27 at the time. Right. And of course she's 15 when this occurs. And I'm thinking about all the kids that were exposed to this particular explorer chapter, however you want to, whatever the phraseology is for it. And it is like shooting fish in the barrel. You get a, 11-year-old kid that comes in there, they don't know diddly about diddly. And they just see the nice officer that's in a... All the while, you know, it's like you've got a line kind of roving outside the herd, and they're just looking who they're going to pick off. And I think that's like the perfect analogy. That's actually what happened here. And the setup for this, to be able to facilitate it, this is, again... Jumping ahead just a

9:51 wee bit, but this is one of the reasons that the feds, I think, took a real interest in this. because you've got a police department that is in members of a police department that are allegedly engaged in this kind of behavior, you know, which equals out to like coercion, you know, those sorts of things. And I'll go through the charges in just a moment because the phraseology is a little bit different than what we're used to in state state charges. But you can see the feds have a very robust interest in this particular case because there is so much. Yeah, there's so much, you know, to kind of to kind of dig into here. And it's not just the one. It's it's everybody that's in, you know, that's in this orbit around this place, Dave.

10:39 Well, you know, we mentioned Matthew Farwell. He has an identical twin brother, William, who, by the way. Also a police officer with the Stoughton Police Department and involved in this Explorer Post. Robert Devine, the guy who was over it. Well, he was also chief deputy, you know. And when you start looking at these authority figures who are doing the job, they're heroic figures to these young people. Of course. And you know they're telling them stories, life-saving stories and things that they've done. I mean, it's... But when you're hunting...

11:15 When you're separating one from the herd as they did with Sandra. And that's the part that's really the most bothersome. Because there are certain things that you don't do. And all men know this. When you're a man, you know, you know that you do not put yourself in situations with young girls. You don't do it because bad things happen. Yes, I do. Bad things sometimes are even said to happen when they don't. Yeah. You don't put yourself in that position.

11:48 These guys did over and over. They actually groomed Sandra to such a degree they passed her around. They passed her around in the most disgusting, despicable way. And they used her and continued using her. You know, after she graduated high school, Dateline NBC did a story on this. And they reported in this Dateline episode that the year after Sandra graduated high school, They shut the whole Explorer program down. Why do you think that is, Joe?

12:20 Well, I don't know. I think because they noticed that they made a diagnosis that this thing is diseased.

12:26 Yeah.

12:26 And that it was bearing fruit that is just pure, unadulterated evil here. Look, it begs the question for me.

12:36 If there is.

12:39 Sandra Birchmore, how many other people are there out there, you know, that, you know, and it's kind of festering, you know, Hey, you know, if you've got like-minded people that are thinking, Hey guys, yeah, this is really, if you, if you want to be around individuals that are vulnerable individuals that may be troubled at home, uh, there, and it's, it's amazing to me that many times predators have that, they have that sixth sense about things like that, where they can spot much like a line, uh, going around a herd, they can spot, you know, the weakest among the herd and kind of call them out, if you will.

13:23 And in this case, this winds up being something that is so dark and demented, particularly, I think, for those that first arrived on the scene of when Sandra was found deceased. They knew at that moment in time maybe in their heart of hearts, that something just wasn't right. Brother Dave, I'm thinking about this case and it's not too far removed from, let me see, how can I say this? It's not too far removed from cases that I have worked in the past and have studied involving asphyxial deaths, okay? Because there's like this commonality, I think, that you have, particularly in what's referred to as a non-suspended hanging. Did I ever tell you about like one of the most bizarre ones that I've worked? Talk about

14:29 not having your guard up. I actually had a lady years and years ago that was, I'm not going to say which hospital it was, but She was on an acute psych ward, which means these are people that are in, they're in crisis at this moment in time. They're hearing voices, their medications, and they are just, they have to be monitored 24-7. It's like, it's the type of environment that you take away people's shoelaces in, all right? And I got called, I'll never forget, I got called to the unit where she was housed. And Dave, this lady had actually taken, they left her a hairdryer and she had tied plug for the hairdryer off on the handle of the hospital bed. You know the one I'm talking about, the rails that drop down like that. Sat down away

15:20 from the nurse's station and took the hairdryer after tying it off with the plug and wrapped it around her neck multiple times so that the hairdryer was positioned just like this. And she sat down in that position. And that's a non-suspended non-suspended asphyxial death by hanging. And of course, they ruled that as a suicide. We did at the time, and she had been suicidal, all those sorts of things, and they had left this with her. They did not take this bit of personal property up from her. But many people believe, I think, wrongly, and that's okay because most people have not worked hangings before, you go out And you labor under this idea that all hangings are suspended and they're not. The trick is, does an individual

16:14 have the will to do it? But I'll throw out this little tidbit to you. In my personal opinion, it's much easier to stage a scene with someone that is in a seated asphyxial position than it is if you're going to do a suspension hanging. Because with suspension, you literally have to lift the body up and get it positioned like that. If you have somebody that's kind of seated in a location, Yeah, it's much easier to facilitate that.

16:46 And Dave, I truly believe my heart of hearts that that's what we're what we're dealing with in this case.

16:51 But that is what they found after Sandra got out of the high school and left the Explorer post. As you said, it closed a year after she was done. She graduated. But she continued this communication with these police officers and others, including the dog catcher in town and an army recruiter as well. maintaining contact with all these men who were taking advantage of her. But she became an adult, okay? She had been groomed from the age of 12, had been raped at the age of 15 by these men in authority, or at least one man in authority, allegedly. And now she's in her early 20s, and she's pregnant, and she's living by herself. She's working as an elementary school teacher's aide. She's got a lot

17:37 on the ball. Yeah. She has told, and by the way, this was not a secret pregnancy joke. Even though she was only maybe eight to ten weeks into her pregnancy, some women know when LaDonna got pregnant with Hannah, she knew four weeks. At four weeks, she was like, Dave, I'm pregnant. I'm like, baby, we just got married. What are you talking about? Hey, I don't think you're right.

18:05 You need to double check that. Yeah. In this case, Joe, she knew. She went and got tested. She went to the doctor. You told me something earlier today, and I had forgotten it. And I wanted to make sure that I knew that it had happened. She'd already gotten an ultrasound.

18:22 Yeah, she had.

18:23 Even though she was very early in this pregnancy. Yeah. And had told over 80 people. It wasn't hidden. And by the way, some of her friends knew that Sandra had been taken advantage of by a number of men in town. older men, married men in town who were just using her. And they knew that. And they felt, Sandra, you're better than this. Come on, you know. And a phone call was made to the Stoughton Police Department. One of Sandra's friends called two weeks before Sandra's death, called the police department and said, hey, One of your police officers has been having sex with this girl since she was in the Explorer Post, and now she's pregnant with his baby, and y'all need to do something about this.

19:11 This is crazy, you know? It was one of those calls, although I'm taking out all the dirty words and just kind of giving the idea of the call. But it led to some text messages that we have read from Matthew Farwell to Sandra, and they're very specific. He ain't happy. He is not happy at all. No.

19:34 Let me jump in right here, because I think he had allegedly sent her a directive that she was, in fact, to eradicate or clean out her character.

19:50 All the text messages.

19:52 Yeah, all the text messages that alluded to any kind of sexual conduct. And you can imagine, the younger you go, the darker this gets. And they had had these communications going on for a protracted period of time. And look, I can imagine for a period of time, that Sandra was, you know, certainly dazzled and starstruck, you know, she's got this, you know, the guy in blue that's paying attention to her and he's certainly, uh, you know, revealing her with all of his tales of heroics and the stuff that he's seen out on the street, you know? And so that's really easy to do when you're talking to a child, um, and, and to try to draw her in. And then, you know, as, uh, as she's going through, you know, all of this storm

20:41 that she's a part of and this interaction that she has, you know, with all of these other officers there, she's thinking, this is going to be like a fairy tale. You know, I'm it's, and at some point in time, um, you gotta be disillusioned. Um, you know, and I, you know, you, you start, you start talking out loud, uh, to people regarding, uh, And it takes on an even more sinister, dark layer to it when you're beginning to think about this is a law enforcement officer, you know, because a lot is at risk here. It's really, isn't it really interesting, you know, and I know that we've spoken this before, when cops, preachers, people that are held in esteem, when they fall, the impact of that is it shakes the foundations of the earth.

21:42 Because if it was just like an average citizen that had done something horrible like this, they may make it through a couple of news cycles. They may cover their trial. Dude, when you're talking about a police officer and a group of police officers, this takes on an entirely different Entirely different life. That's how you get the attention of the feds, Dave.

22:07 Well, the fact that when we laid the groundwork so you know who we're talking about. We want you to know who Sandra was. Based on what I've seen from those text messages, Joe, there was a fairytale thing going on. I think she was in love with Matthew Farwell, personally. I think she... I think she had a relationship with some of these other men because Matthew probably told her to, or she was led to believe something good could come out of it. If she did, it was just, she was so used by these guys and controlled by them, but allegedly, um, but I, you know, there was one of the text messages that gets me because you gotta remember that, that her death was ruled a suicide. Yeah. Okay.

22:47 And to, in order for it to be a suicide, then that's a woman who wasn't planning a life with her child. Yet every other indication we have is she, she was writing, um, text messages to Matthew about, are you going to be there to sign, you know, was asking, will you be there to sign the birth certificate with me?

23:04 She was asking that because she had reason to believe that he would. And who would have given her that reason to believe that, Joe?

23:12 I guess probably a real cynic would probably say, well, maybe she had, you know, kind of cooked this up in her brain. But given the dynamic of the relationship and the ongoing physical contact, you kind of got to lean into the idea that you got the older guy with the influence here that's saying, oh, yeah, baby, it's going to be okay. I'm going to take care of you, this sort of thing. And, of course, she's buying it hook, line, and sinker. You know, here she is. And, look, I mean, she ain't making a million bucks a year. She's working as a parapro, which, by the way, is one of the toughest jobs in education somebody can have. And it's a thankless job. And she is doing that job. I'm sure part of it. Has to do with, well, she

23:57 gets health care with it, you know, and she can make a way for her and her child that she, you know, that she she's going to have. She wants him to be a part of this. So, you know, we I don't know that we'll ever know what went on relative to any kind of pillow talk that took place, you know, over. And we're not talking about just months, brother.

24:19 We're talking about years, man.

24:21 Back to when she was 14 years old, Joe. Yeah.

24:24 And just moving forward. I mean, these people have a history. There are a lot of marriages out there, marriages that don't make it past six months. You're talking about a girl who was groomed and she was a child. groomed all the way back then and then kind of marching forward. And she's always seeing, you know, that bit of light over the next hillside that, you know, might mean hope for her that she's going to have something that, you know, maybe one day I can be in the army. I can do this in the army. Maybe one day I'll be a police officer, an actual police officer. I'd go through the academy and all this. And, you know, I'm going to be a mama too. You know, it's everything that she Maybe that she wanted somebody had to put

25:11 that into her brain that, you know, that she and plus she's bold enough to ask that question, Dave. And I don't know. I'd I'd have to say that that signed her that signed her death warrant when she asked that question.

25:23 You know, Joe, it's interesting you said that because it was after those text messages. That's when the text messaging between Matthew Farwell and Sandra changed. That's when he said, you were not talking about this message. here. We're not going to text about this. Never stop it. Don't do it. His tone became angry. Don't put this in writing anymore. Done. Stop.

25:44 You know? And that's when, after he started that tone, stop writing this to me. That's when the phone call gets made to the police station where they out him and the relationship. And by the way, they add some of your other guys are doing her as well. And then again, you know, you mentioned that Sandra was at the elementary school and she's working and she's like got her own apartment, you know, She lost her mother and her step and her grandma in the same year when she was like 18. I can't imagine what the women who raised her. She's totally on her own. And you mentioned I hadn't thought about the job that she chose and why she might have chosen it. But, you know, it makes perfect sense. She doesn't have a college degree.

26:28 She's looking at going in the army. She's still thinking about what it could be as a cop or whatever. And she ends up at a job that provides her with health care. She has her own apartment in her own apartment complex. She's paying her own way, doing her own thing. And now she's pregnant. And it makes no sense that this woman who is gone and is making plans for this baby, making plans for her new life.

26:56 It's telling everybody, anybody, I think, Joe, as a matter of fact, I think when the pizza guy delivered the last pizza, she said, hey, I'm having a baby. I think she told everybody. Think of it. We know 80 people that she told she was pregnant.

27:08 Yeah, and that expresses a certain level of comfort with this information. And it also, you know, and it goes to the joy, you know, that she was having. Because I don't know. I don't, you know, and I would assume you were the same way every time. I found out that I was going to be a new father again.

27:25 I couldn't watch a smile off my face. I love being a father. I mean, I truly do. I love being a dad. And I really like being a grandpa, though. I certainly dig on that, you know, and love doing that. But, yeah, there's a certain joy, you know, that comes along with this. And I'm thinking about she had no way of predicting that.

27:49 The horror, you know, that that awaited her when, you know, she's apparently continuing to kind of push the envelope here. And and whoever drops the dime on this as well. You know, retrospectively, I'm really wondering about that communication that went to the police department and kind of what what that individual, what the relationship was with that individual and the information that was dropped. But I can tell you this, as dark as this seems, it gets even darker in the sense that this young woman who had not just been the victim of one or two or three individuals affiliated with local government, she was a victim of an entire police department. There are some images that stay with you as an investigator when you walk onto a scene,

28:57 and you cannot forget them for the life of you, period. And I've had cases like that. I know that other investigators out there have as well. But, Dave, in this particular case, when they were summoned... And seeing initiates as a welfare check because she had not shown up for work. Sandra hasn't. And so she did not show up for work.

29:26 And she's, look, when you're in charge of kids and you go missing, that throws a monkey wrench into everything because it's about classroom management and what are you capable of. of doing, what's the organization capable of doing. I'm not saying that it was simply because she wasn't at work and they couldn't get coverage. I'm sure that they cared about her. But the fact that it's a teacher... all the more so are a teacher's aid. And so when they rolled up to the scene and they gain access to this environment, you know, consistently the investigators are reporting that they saw her seated at a door in a seated position. Now one investigator or one, the initial officer, I can't remember which one talked about, she had a

30:18 scarf around her neck, but then it comes out that she has this, um, She's got this strap that originates off of an army issue bag, like a duffel bag. And that that has been used apparently as a ligature to self-inflict death. And I think that they felt there was a rep from the medical examiner that came out there.

30:45 So it's not like the medical examiner is doing this in a vacuum where they're just getting data from the scene. They actually had eyes on out there. that physically observe this environment. And many times I think that people might believe that the police are fully vested in suicide investigation. They generally are not, because once in, this has been my experience working in two separate very large cities, once you make the utterance to a cop at a scene that this appears to be suicide to you, Many times you're going to see the heels of their shoes walking out the door because they've got other cases because there's nothing prosecutable here.

31:26 Okay.

31:26 That goes to a bigger narrative, right?

31:28 I did not think about that, Joe, just until right now. Never occurred to me.

31:32 Yeah, and I'm thinking, you know, now there are a lot of jurisdictions out there with police officers that really invest their time in suicide investigations. But it really rests upon us in the medical legal world. you know, to follow up with families and find out psychiatric histories and what kind of medications they're on and all that sort of stuff. And that's because, you know, from the perspective of the police, there's literally nothing to invest in. There's nobody that can be prosecuted for this. Do you see what I'm saying? So it comes down to the coroner, the medical examiner, make a final ruling. And in this case, they had concluded that the state medical examiner, which Massachusetts,

32:11 by the way, is a state medical examiner system, not a coroner system. They haven't had a coroner in a long, long time there. They ruled this as a suicide. But Dave, the family, Sandra's family, was, let's just say, irritated and dissatisfied with that finding. They went out and they retained the services of another Forensic pathologist, correct?

32:39 They did, Joe. It was her family and friends, the people that knew her, and the people who knew what had happened to her at the hands of these other people. Because she didn't happen in a vacuum. You are in an area where people talk, where people know. And so, yeah, there was some serious discussion amongst those who knew Sandra.

33:01 And went, this is not right. So they did. They hired... They went out of their way to get a professional to look at everything because they just didn't feel like she would commit suicide. Dr. Michael Bodden was brought in by the family, and he reviewed the autopsy of Sandra Birchmore. At the request of her family, he took a look at everything, Joe. When it came right down to it, he did not believe it was a suicide.

33:32 Yeah, yeah. And with the number of cases that he has seen over the years, it's really weird, man. You're around people like him, and there are no longer any forensic pathologists out there that have the same high profile as Bodden does. That's a different generation. They are out there, but they're not at the level that Bodden is. One of the reasons he has that reputation is the fact that he's seen so many deaths. And it's like I think that it's like playing a violin or something, you know, that the more you do it, you become very skilled at at the most delicate changes or nuances in a case.

34:22 And hangings in particular are nuanced.

34:25 Well, I got to ask you something because Nancy hit me with this the other day when we were covering this story on Crime Stories. Yeah. She asked me, what was the tip-off? What was something that could have pointed to something other than a suicide? And there were two things. One in particular was a marking that was on her chest that could have only come from the strap that was around her neck that They're mutually exclusive. You know, if it's on her neck, it can't be on her chest.

34:56 And if it's on her chest, it can't be on her neck. But the other was something we talk about in almost every strangulation case. Actually, every strangulation case, the hyoid bone. And in this case, it came to the forefront because in hanging cases, in strangulation cases, you know, it's going to break. You're going to break it because it's very thin, right? But not in this type of a hanging.

35:24 No, you wouldn't see it. You know, it would have to be the ligature itself would have to be positioned so high on the neck. And wherever we heard this before, you know, this goes back to Epstein.

35:42 Oh, my gosh.

35:43 Again, a case that Bodden, while Bodden was physically there for the examination. physically there in the suite, it would have to be so high in the structures of the neck to facilitate a fracture. And you would have to have a certain amount of force applied to it. And yes, it is fragile. However, mainly when that bony structure is accessed, it can only be accessed by really high grip on the neck. Most ligatures are going to be positioned about this area. If you find your Adam's apple right here, this kind of cartilaginous body in the midline, most ligatures are going to sit right here. And then the other thing, one of the giveaways that we always look for is their tinting feature. I've talked about that before. The tinting

36:36 feature goes up behind the ears, comes to an apex right here And then you've got a point of anchorage there, which in this case would have been a doorknob. So if he is looking, if Bodden is looking into this area to see if there is, you would have associated hemorrhage running up and you'd also have a furrow, a furrow even with a wide strap and within the furrow, Dave, you're going to see hemorrhage in the furrow as well. Okay?

37:12 Because it's creating that kind of pressure, the little capillary beds in there are under a tremendous amount of strain, and they would burst in there. Okay? So, absent that, now you can, and this is what's referred to as a staged death, is what the investigators are saying, is what the feds believe in this particular case. So, if it is a staged case, then you would deal with this trauma first, right here, which would be C-clamp or throttling, you demonstrated a second ago, and it would be really high up, okay, as opposed to down here. You're trying to get as much pressure applied to the neck. You got this big guy on this tiny girl doing this, okay?

37:58 Direct pressure being applied here, you're gonna have trauma in this area Um, and maybe there was an absence of trauma that, you know, I, I go back to what, you know, about things being nuanced with somebody like, cause he's a maestro, you know, it really is. Now he's older now, obviously, but he's still a maestro relative to the way he sees things, hears things, appreciates things. And there's a nuance to it that you pick up on after doing thousands of them.

38:26 Right.

38:27 So yeah, he didn't concur. And as a matter of fact, he didn't concur so much that, uh, The medical examiner was compelled to change the ruling, right? Change the ruling. And I think at one point in time, they had left the manner as undetermined, but now the manner is homicide.

38:47 That's a whole lot different than suicide, Judge Scott Morgan. We're light years away from suicide.

38:55 From that at this point in time. And so with armed with that and that physical finding, you know, this bolstered by, by what, you know, uh, Biden had, had stated, um, those two things just don't job there. There's an interesting little aside. There were a couple of, a couple of the investigators that both stated that when they walked in and they noticed her body in the suspended position, not fully suspended, seated suspension, um, that they said they use the term lividity, that they had seen lividity in her head and face. And I think, um, Folks might misconstrue that and say, well, I thought that lividity only sits in in dependent areas relative to a body, the gravitational flow of blood settling in one area. That's not the case.

39:49 You can actually see lividity. And lividity comes from the idea of the changing of colors. And what they're saying is they see purple, okay, in her face and head. The reason they do is because this is an asphyxial death. And you've got this backup of circulation in here. So all the little vessels burst. So not only are you going to have the little capillary beds that will burst and will present with petechiae, these kind of pinprick hemorrhages, it kind of drains off into the interstitial tissue, turning that tissue purple as well. So that A lot of force behind this.

40:32 Good grief.

40:33 Yeah, and that's what they're seeing. So it's not like if anybody sees their support and they say, well, they're saying that they saw lividity. They're using lividity not as a consequence of postmortem change. They're using the term lividity as in the person is livid, right? Because the reason we say people are livid is is because it's the best descriptor if any of y'all have ever been mad enough for your face to change color. Chief among sinners here.

41:03 I've done it multiple times. Dave never has, though, I can tell you that.

41:07 Yeah.

41:08 Where the color of your face changes.

41:10 Mine's permanently changed.

41:13 But, yeah, so that's what they're dealing with, and that's how they can move forward with this case because this ruling has been changed.

41:19 And here's the other catch. Now, this case is at trial now.

41:23 Yes.

41:23 It took years to get there. It took years. it took the family saying, we just don't buy it. And her friends just don't buy it. People knew there was more to this. And so we did this story. The first time we did it was after Matthew Farwell had been arrested and there's evidence that is being presented. And I wanted to share one piece, Joe.

41:44 Yeah, sure. Please go ahead.

41:46 Because the night in question, when, uh, Sandra was murdered, allegedly murdered, um, Matthew Farwell, a person who has been identified as Matthew Farwell, is seen on the surveillance cameras at the apartment complex going into her apartment, going up towards her apartment that night and leaving her apartment. What is.

42:11 This goes beyond the pale. No, boy. But after leaving Sandra Birchmore's apartment, after allegedly killing her. And by the way, he he was not the father of her baby. like he thought. But there was another reason he was motivated to stop her. After allegedly killing Sandra Birchmore, he goes from there to the hospital, and he's videoed coming in on surveillance cameras wearing the exact same outfit as we left Sandra's house, her apartment. He now goes to the hospital, and you know why he's there? His wife... is giving birth to their baby. Officer Matthew Farwell. Yeah. Allegedly killed Sandra and Ben.

43:07 Went for the birth of his own child.

43:09 It's just, you know, Joe, you know I've had the opportunity to work with a lot of young people in my life. And because of that, I've always been hypersensitive to being alone with young teenage kids. Because you don't know all of the emotional baggage that they have. You don't know what their home life is like. So many of them are mistreated. And you need to be a loving, safe place. But that loving, safe place that you have to be as a person also has to be protected.

43:42 You cannot be alone with a child when they're in that age at all. Because It just never is. It's never wise to make it look like it's something that it's not.

43:54 Yeah. And it's just not it's not healthy for anybody involved. And, you know, in these these cases like this that have this kind of flavor to it, they seem to be on repeat. We get a lot of this day. Yeah.

44:08 And. But you know what, Joe? They're all told. They know better. Yes, they do. A grown man knows you do not rape a 15-year-old girl that you have been grooming for the last three years, allegedly. It's just despicable. It's sickening. I'm so thankful. that this has gone to trial. I'm thankful that Matthew Farwell had to resign his position, um, that his twin brother, William, who also allegedly had sex with or admitted to having sex with Sandra, um, also had to resign. And that the guy who Robert Devine, who was over the whole Explorer program, uh, he took her early retirement and quit and none of them are allowed to be cops in Massachusetts ever again.

44:51 So, yeah, I, I, you know, I, I'm thinking about this and I'm thinking, uh, looking back over this, the state never filed a homicide charge in this. And that's, that's why the feds took this up. Now, um, the finding has been changed, you know, uh, as far as the ruling in this case, but if you will give me a little latitude here, I want to, because this is such a, it's such a different type of event than what we normally talk about, uh, on body bags. Um, relative to death investigation, homicides in particular. But let me give you the federal charges here because I find this interesting.

45:33 And you have to understand the language that we're talking about because, again, I go back to what I said earlier. States generally file the homicide charge. But here are the charges. So, count one. Farwell is charged with killing a witness or a victim. And This is rooted, I think, in our.

45:57 Bill of Rights.

45:58 It's a violation of civil.

46:02 Rights.

46:02 So the kind of elements to this, and when you look at the overarching charge, there are elements of this that bleed over into civil rights. So the first element is deprivation of rights under color of law. That means that you are in a position of authority, using your badge and your uniform to do harm to someone. The second element to this is going to be coercion and enticement.

46:34 So coercion, drawing them in, maybe using your muscle, if you will, as a public servant to coerce somebody is another element to this. And then secondly, and this is kind of interesting, there is an element of wire fraud here. And I think a lot of this has to do with much of the communication that has been involved in this. Again, this is very nuanced. The second count that we're looking at actually goes to this. It's the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. And that's the other part to him being charged.

47:19 And because she was eight to ten weeks pregnant, It fits within the parameters of that federal law. Now, I'll go and tell you this. The case is not yet resolved. We're waiting, Brother Dave and I are, to see what the outcome is because we've been following it for so long. And I think that you guys have an interest in it.

47:40 I truly do because it's a tragic, tragic case. It is also, I would say, a warning. It's a warning. about where your kids go and who they're around. It's not always somebody that shows up in dark clothing and hiding down a mysterious alleyway. Sometimes it can be perpetrated by those that we trust the most. And in this case, it makes it all the more sinister. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan.

48:21 And this is Body Bags.