Sandra Birchmore: Part 2

Before we begin, the stories told in this podcast may be difficult for some to hear. Many discuss sexual assault, domestic violence, and suicide. Please take care while listening. There's a photograph of police detective Matthew Farwell taken inside Newton Wellesley Hospital. In it, he's holding his baby, his third child, born that day via cesarean section. Farwell is in a surgical gown and mask. Under the translucent gown, you can just make out a black sweatshirt with a white logo.

You can't see the expression on his face, but he looks directly at the camera, and his eyes seem somehow both vacant and intense. Holding your brand new baby for the first time, it's an incredible feeling. Thrilling and terrifying and awe-inducing all at once. A new life just beginning. But Farwell's mind is somewhere else. That morning from the hospital, he texts a co-worker at the Stoughton Police Department. He's, quote, bored as hell, he says. Is anything going on at work?

The co-worker is surprised. Farwell had never asked a question like that before, not on his day off. Less than 12 hours before his baby was born, a different camera got a glimpse of Matthew Farwell. This time, inside the lobby of Sandra Birchmore's apartment building. He's walking out into a blizzard in a black hoodie with a white logo, a hoodie that looks a lot like the one he'll wear while holding his newborn baby. From iHeart Podcast, I'm Melissa Jeltsin, and you're listening to What Happened to Her, the Sandra Birchmore story, part two. In the last weeks of her life, Sandra Birchmore reached out to one of her cousins on Facebook Messenger, seeking opinions on strollers.

She told me that she was pregnant and she was really excited. And she was asking me about different baby carriages. Her enthusiasm for becoming a mother was unbridled.

Angelique Perazzi didn't see her cousin Sandra all that much. Though they both lived in Massachusetts, Angelique was twice Sandra's age and at a different stage of life, managing a busy career in politics that often kept her traveling. Still, she had a soft spot for the girl and fond memories of her as a child. Every year, Angelique's Aunt Clara, Sandra's grandmother, had held a special Christmas Eve party at their house in Stoughton, and Angelique recalled how Sandra was always in a beautiful dress, animated and gregarious, reveling in adult attention. As Sandra grew older, they stayed in touch sporadically, mostly over social media or the occasional family gathering. It came as a surprise then in the winter of 2021

when Sandra messaged her to tell Angelique she was pregnant. She wasn't aware of any serious relationships Sandra was in and didn't know who the father was. And so when Angelique wrote back to her young cousin, it was with a little bit of trepidation.

I cautioned her I just said, I know that you're really excited about this, but frankly, like thinking about strollers is really not the biggest thing for you to think about right now. You're probably going to be doing this on your own. And I would I would be more contemplative about that piece than any other piece.

Soon afterwards, Angelique's two sisters, Antonetta and Justina, took Sandra to brunch and over eggs. They had a similar conversation with Sandra later. trying to temper her excitement with realistic expectations.

Both of my sisters are my age as well. All three of us are mothers, and we know how hard the work is, even with two parents. And we were, you know, just trying to be a little bit, like, you know, sober with her. You know, like, this is going to be really hard.

Angelique's sisters attempted to get Sandra to disclose the identity of the father. The most they got was that he was a Stoughton cop and his name was Matt.

Sandra told a lot of people a little bit about who this person was in her life. Some people knew his name was Matt. Some people knew he was a police officer. Some people knew he was married. But very few people knew all.

Of the details.

What Sandra did share, though, about her boyfriend's reluctance to have the baby was enough to leave Angelique's sisters uneasy. The whole situation seemed precarious.

She was very clear that he was really unhappy about the fact that she was pregnant at all.

After Angelique's sisters left brunch, the conversation with Sandra still lingering in their heads, they did some internet sleuthing. Searching through the Stoughton Police Department's website, they found a picture of Matthew Farwell and took a screenshot. He must be the guy, they thought. Around two weeks later, on the 4th of February, Angelique's phone rang.

I got a video call from my two sisters and they never like call each other and then link me in. Like the three of us never do that. And it was, oh my God, Sandra has been found dead in her apartment and they're saying it's suicide. My sisters were like, we just saw her. She was so excited about the baby.

It doesn't make sense that she would kill herself.

Angelique was stunned. Suicide wasn't impossible, but it didn't align with the bubbly Sandra she'd been messaging on Facebook or the Sandra her sisters had just seen at brunch brimming with plans for her child. What worried Angelique further, though, was who Sandra had been seeing, a cop. Angelique wasn't naive about the way the world works, about who gets the benefit of the doubt and who doesn't.

I've been in... electoral politics for over 30 years. And I thought it was likely she wouldn't get, like, he was a police officer. And all those, they all knew each other.

Angelique immediately picked up the phone.

I cold called.

I had no idea who to call or who to talk to, but I cold called the state police and I asked for the lead investigator, whoever that might be for Sandra Birchmore.

The trooper who answered was Matthew Dunn, one of the two state troopers who'd responded to the scene the morning Sandra's body was discovered.

I said to him, point blank, she was having a relationship with a married Stoughton police officer. She was pregnant with his child. He was unhappy about this pregnancy. It became very clear to me that he wasn't the person that I was supposed to be talking to. The person who actually led the investigation was a guy.

Named Massachusetts State Police Sergeant John Fanning, assigned to the Norfolk DA's office. So, she called him, and she told him the same thing about the relationship, the pregnancy. Despite passing along what she felt was pertinent information, Angelique didn't feel confident or reassured after those first few phone calls with the Massachusetts State Police. Instead, she felt a growing sense of worry.

It's hard to get justice, and it's even harder to get justice when law enforcement is involved. And I was like, I need eyeballs. I need oxygen. I need light on this. Because if there is none, this is not going anywhere.

She decided right then and there she needed to take more action.

I went on Sandra's Facebook page, and I said, if you have any information— around the circumstances of Sandra's death. I didn't call it a suicide because none of us believed it was. I said, please call the Norfolk County District Attorney's office. I put the number in there and I said, and asked to speak to the lead investigator.

My instincts were they're going to do everything they can to make this go away. And it was my job and my sister's jobs to make sure they couldn't look away.

By the afternoon of February 4th, the day Sandra's body is found, local police are already calling her death a likely suicide. But under Massachusetts law, a sudden death like hers still has to be investigated. and the district attorney's office is in charge. The state police will need to learn more about what Sandra was like, how her mood had seemed lately, if there was anyone who'd want to hurt her. Basic due diligence. So on February 5th, Massachusetts State Troopers Dunn and Tufts drive to East Elementary in Sharon, where Sandra had been working as an instructional assistant. They speak to her supervisor, whose name has been redacted from the report. Her depiction of Sandra, at least through the

state trooper's narration, is one of someone who came across as immature for her age. When Sandra first started at the school, the teacher had had to set some boundaries with her about what was appropriate and not appropriate to talk about in a work environment. Here's some of Trooper Dunn's report as read by a voice actor. Where names have been redacted, pronouns have been added for clarity.

She stated that Birchmore seemed a little off. intended to overshare a lot of personal information about herself, even on her first day of employment at the school. When asked to elaborate, she said that Birchborn shared with her unprompted, intimate details about her personal life.

A second colleague said that Sandra, quote, acted like a teenager. In her opinion, Sandra often shared more personal information than what was necessary, talking about her boyfriend, her mother's death, the fact that her father had never been in the picture, and more recently, her pregnancy.

She stated that Birchmore came across like a child without parents that needed help. She said that she tried to help Birchmore as best she could and expressed that she wished she'd been there for Birchmore more in light of what happened.

Another woman had started at the school that past October. When interviewed by state police, she said Sandra introduced herself on her first day. They traded numbers, and over text and in person, Sandra very quickly confided in her. Sandra told her that her boyfriend was married with a wife and kids. She and the father of the baby weren't going to be together, and she was fine with it.

Sandra was already working out the logistics of their parenting arrangement, which holidays each of them would take. And from where this co-worker sat, the situation, although complicated, seemed amicable. Sandra made a point of telling the co-worker that the boyfriend had recently brought her coffee and munchkins. The state troopers asked the same co-worker whether there'd been any signs of abuse between the pair, whether Sandra had ever said he was mean to her, whether anything about the relationship worried her.

She said no. Here's how State Trooper Dunn described the interaction.

She stated that she believes that if there were any safety or abuse issues in their relationship, Bershma would definitely have shared that information with her. When asked why she believes she would have told her about that, she stated that Bershma would routinely overshare personal details about her life.

With every interview, the boyfriend kept coming up. By now, investigators knew he was married, that he was a detective himself in the town where Sandra grew up, that according to several people, He was not happy about the pregnancy. And of course, there was the security footage from Sandra's apartment building taken the last night anyone had heard from her that showed a man entering her building, a man police confirmed was Matthew Farwell. So the next step, it seemed, was to talk to him directly. Here are some of Sergeant Fanning's notes from that meeting, read by a voice actor.

On February 6, 2021, at approximately 3.10 p.m., Trooper Matt Dunn and I interviewed Matt Falwell at the Gibbon School in Stoughton in a parking lot out front.

The three cops talked in a parking lot outside an elementary school. Snow still piled high around them. Nobody recorded it.

Matt said that he has known Sandra for about 10 years, going back to when Sandra was a police explorer in Stoughton. And Matt was an instructor.

Matt and Sandra had first crossed paths in the Stoughton Police Explorer Program. which Sandra joined the year she turned 13. The Police Explorer program is a national mentoring initiative charted through an arm of the Boy Scouts. The idea is local students get to spend time with working cops, have positive interactions with police, and see if a future in policing might be right for them. Like with any mentorship, these relationships can last beyond the program's end.

Matt said that Sandra had a troubled life and he felt bad for her. He would keep tabs on her over the years. Matt said that Sandra continued to have problems over the years that he has known her.

Their relationship, he told state police, had changed about a year earlier. Sandra was 22 by then, still a dozen years younger than him. In his telling, the whole thing started with a drunken hookup.

Matt said that sometime early in 2020, he began a sexual relationship with Sandra. He said that he was intoxicated one night and ended up meeting up with her and having sex.

The way he described the relationship was much more casual and briefer than what Sandra's co-workers had reported. Farwell said they'd only had sex a couple of times total. He said the last time they'd had sex was at the end of October 2020. And then in December, Sandra had dropped a bombshell on him.

Sandra told him that she was pregnant and he was the father. Matt was adamant that he is not the father of the unborn child that Sandra was carrying at the time of her death.

Farwell told them the last time he saw her was the night of the blizzard. This was the visit that had been captured by the camera in her lobby.

He said that he asked her if he could come by and she said no problem. He said that he intended on breaking everything off with Sandra. Matt said that he told Sandra that she was crazy and it was not his child. He said that Sandra told him that he was a dick Matt said that he was straightforward in his conversation with her and told her it was all over and he was blocking her from all forms of communication. Matt said that it was a pretty nasty argument, but they weren't too loud.

He said he arrived around 9.10 and left around 9.30, leaving him inside for about 20 minutes. Fanning notes that the building cameras have him inside for 28 minutes.

Matt said that Sandra was upset, but she did not make any suicidal statements at all. Matt said that he left and Sandra was standing in the kitchen when he walked out.

The story Farwell told about his relationship with Sandra, well, it wasn't really a relationship at all. He left the impression what they'd had was a fling, mutually casual. In fact, Farwell said that Sandra was sleeping with other people the whole time. Yes, he helped her move into her apartment, but he'd only been there a handful of times and they'd never had sex there. He was disturbed after she told him she was pregnant and insisted the baby was his, even though he said it couldn't have been. And so he put distance between them. And then he ended it.

And perhaps she couldn't handle it. Sad, unthinkable, really, but just a tragedy. But over the next few weeks, a different story started to emerge. People who knew Sandra, who had seen her cousin Angelique's post on Facebook, asking them to call the DA's office about anything they knew, they started calling, and they offered some new details about Matthew Farwell, though many of them didn't know his name. One woman called who had known Sandra since they were seven or eight years old. She told state police that when Sandra told the baby's father about the pregnancy a few days after Christmas, he exploded with anger.

She stated that Birchmar told her he had said, I wish you would kill yourself, or I wish you were dead.

By the friend's account, Sandra's asks were stacking up. She wanted the baby to have her boyfriend's last name. She wanted his name on the birth certificate. She wanted him in the delivery room when she gave birth, too.

She stated that Birchmar had demanded that if he could be in the delivery room with his wife, then he could be in the delivery room with her.

The friend also mentioned a phone call she'd made just two weeks before Sandra died. As she told it, Sandra owed her $ 248. Frustrated that Sandra hadn't returned the loan, she called the Stoughton Police Department to make a report. When the person on the phone advised that it was a civil matter and they couldn't help, she blurted out something that she knew Sandra wouldn't have wanted her to say.

She stated that.

She became upset. and responded to the officer on the phone by insinuating that the Stoughton officer that Birchmore is engaged in a sexual relationship with should tell her to pay back the money she owes.

Another woman who'd also known Sandra since elementary school called the state police. She said they weren't close and mostly communicated in Snapchat pictures. But she told police that Sandra had told her about a fight she'd had with her boyfriend. in which she threatened to tell his wife and job about the baby.

She stated that Birchmore was aware this would get him into trouble. The father of the child then got angry and took Birchmore's phone from her. She stated this was approximately two weeks prior to her being found deceased.

Between the 5th of February and the 23rd, the state police interviewed about 20 people. And taken together, their testimonies reveal a portrait of a young woman in a very hard place, believing herself pregnant by a man who didn't want it, fighting with him over what he'd be to the child. Read one way, that's a reason for suicide.

Read another way, it's a motive for murder. A few days after the non-recorded parking lot interview with Matthew Farwell, state police ask him to provide some personal items for review, including his cell phone. He says no initially, but ends up agreeing to a limited search. Just the messages between him and Sandra and nothing else. They find none. A few months later, state police get his work phone. And there's nothing on that one either. Which was expected. Here's Fanning again.

I analyzed both of these phones and did not find any communication with Sandra Birchmore. Matt had said in a previous interview that he deleted all communications with Sandra.

As the investigation continued, Fanning asked Farwell for a few more things that could be helpful, like a DNA sample and a polygraph and another interview to fill in some of the blanks. By that point, Farwell had a lawyer and his response to Fanning's request came in the form of a letter from defense attorney Patrick Hanley. Here's an excerpt of that letter read by a voice actor.

Although I appreciate your diligence... I advised my client to decline these requests and the request for further interview that accompanied them. I did so because they are far outside the norm for mere witnesses in an investigation. I was a prosecutor for 14 years and participated in hundreds of interviews with state police detectives like yourself. I cannot recall once seeking a polygraph interview, and I can only recall seeking DNA of persons that the investigators and I considered targets.

Patrick Hanley goes on to say that compiling Farwell's DNA profile would be, quote, highly invasive, and that, anyway, the profile would reveal nothing of value.

My client had no role in Ms. Birchmore's death. He certainly never encouraged her to take her life, nor did he have any reason to fear that she would take her own life. Throughout your conversations with my client, and later with myself... You have indicated that you view him as a witness in your investigation. This is consistent with reality.

Mr.

Farwell has committed no crime.

Sergeant Fanning doesn't press the issue. Massachusetts State Police don't collect Farwell's DNA. There is no follow-up interview.

The End.

Last spring, I requested the complete case file on the investigation into Sandra's death from the Norfolk County District Attorney's Office, which by law directed the investigation. The DA's office released 27 investigative reports to me. Looking through it all, I could trace exactly what the investigators did in 2021 and just as clearly what they didn't do. Sandra's cousin Angelique watched it all happen in real time. Throughout that year, she kept up a steady line of communication with the lead investigator, Sergeant Fanning. But their relationship was never easy.

In her words, they sparred.

I just, from the very beginning, I didn't have any sense that they were interested in learning what happened. I think I got a sense from the very beginning that they were interested in collecting as much evidence to support suicide.

In some ways, Angelique understood why. Sandra's life and mental health had not always been stable. And there was evidence of this. Sandra had gone through a very hard time after she lost her mother and grandmother five years prior.

Those were the two people in her life that loved her the most and cared for her the most her entire life. Her mother was ill and not physically well for years. A large part of Sandra's life and her grandmother was a rock for Sandra and the two most important relationships in her life. She lost 90% of her support system when they both died.

Sandra had had a history of depression. Investigators found medication in her apartment and her toxicology report was positive for Sertraline, also known as Zoloft. It was clear that Sandra was in a difficult, emotionally fraught relationship, that she'd been rejected by the man she believed had fathered her child. All of it could be read as a case for suicide.

By Angelique's account, that's the theory Fanning kept coming back to.

He and I were in pretty constant contact, and I was just pushing him the entire time. He was always giving Matt Farwell the benefit of the doubt. Honestly, I was very open to the idea that it could have been suicide. What was repelling to me and repulsive is that they seemed so closed to the idea that it could be homicide.

Angelique believed that Farwell deserved far more scrutiny considering the circumstances.

I think most people could look at the forest through the trees here and see what a threat this could be to his life and to his livelihood. I saw it very clearly, the kind of pressure cooker that his life was building up in this moment to be. I understood the pressures that Sandra was placing on him and her expectations and her vocalizing those expectations.

Angelique wanted the state police to collect more evidence to do a more thorough investigation. For example, she wanted the state to test the fetal tissue and establish paternity on paper.

I kept saying to Fanning that we, the family, want the DNA of the fetus tested, right? He was like, I don't understand why you want that. What does it prove? We already knew that he was in a sexual relationship with her. It doesn't prove murder. And I'm like, it proves motive. Like, why am I telling you this?

But Sandra's family learned that her next of kin could ask for this testing directly. That was Sandra's aunt, Darlene. Angelique and her sisters wrote the letter for Darlene, and she signed it and sent it in, even though Fanning hadn't seen the point.

He was obtuse that way. Like, he wouldn't see it any other way in how he engaged in the investigation. He only saw it through the lens of suicide. He wouldn't entertain anything else.

Investigators had recovered some items from Sandra's apartment and sent them to the Massachusetts State Police Crime Laboratory for testing. That spring, they found male DNA on the ligature that was around Sandra's neck, and her underwear tested positive for the presence of sperm cells. But they had no DNA from anyone who knew Sandra to compare with anything they found.

When they had asked Farwell for a DNA sample, he declined, as was his right. His lawyer called the request far outside the norm for a mere witness. The thing is, if they had viewed him as a suspect, they could have sought a court order compelling his DNA. But they didn't do that. Massachusetts State Police declined to comment on their investigation or on Angelique's criticisms of it. For months, the family held out hope that Sandra's death certificate might shed light on what had really happened and disprove that Sandra had taken her own life. The medical examiner, Dr.

Maria Capo-Martinez, had performed Sandra's autopsy on the 5th of February, the day after Sandra was found. But she wrote that the cause and manner of death were still pending investigation. Angelique was concerned that what was pending... what she felt was a lack of investigation, would be reflected in the final decision. She called the medical examiner's office herself and let them know the family's concerns.

I had no faith that the state police was going to tell the medical examiner. All of this background in circumstantial information about the relationship, about her pregnancy, about our misgivings, about whether this was suicide.

Then, on May 21st, Dr. Martinez amended Sandra's death certificate. She wrote, cause of death, asphyxia by hanging. Manner of death, suicide.

It felt like I got the wind knocked out of me. It felt like a punch in the gut. It felt like my worst fears were realized. No one was listening. It felt hasty. How could this have happened so quickly? We haven't even done a proper investigation. I was like, oh gosh, this really is a mountain that we're going to have to climb. It felt like a repudiation of everything my sisters and I had been trying to do.

After the medical examiner ruled Sandra's death a suicide, the case file thins out fast. It's as if the investigation lost whatever momentum it had left. Looking at the Massachusetts State Police's file I received on Sandra's death, there's only one more unredacted document. It's about Sandra's laptop. Troopers had carried it out of her apartment back in February, in the days after her body was found. It held a record of Sandra's life. Her documents, social media, and her text messages. Farwell had deleted his communications with Sandra, but her laptop held a copy. Eventually, investigators would count more than 32,000 messages between them across Sandra's phones and computer, stretching from December 2019 to the last days of her life.

What I knew is what Fanning told me. He only said that the text messages revealed an inappropriate sexual relationship. It was enough for me to understand that. I didn't need him to get into details about what that meant. That felt inappropriate to Sandra's memory for me.

The messages showed a relationship far more expansive than the one Farwell had described in that parking lot. Not a few encounters. but constant contact, thousands upon thousands of texts. Still, Fanning found nothing in them he flagged as a threat, nothing he recorded as suggesting anyone else had a hand in Sandra's death. Here's how he summarized the texts, as read by a voice actor.

It was clear based on the text with Matt that he and Sandra had a sexual relationship, as he told us in his previous interview. It appeared that Sandra had sexual relationships with other men in the months leading up to her death. There were no threats of harm by any of these individuals, including Matt.

That report is dated August 16th, 2021, about six and a half months after Sandra's body was found. And then, the inquiry into Sandra's death appears to have petered out. At some point, Angelique isn't sure of the date. She got a phone call from Fanning.

He said there is no evidence to support homicide. And he said, and I think there is more evidence than not to support suicide. And I said, it's because of how you're looking at the evidence. You have a hypothesis that you want to prove to be true. And you are looking through that lens at every piece of evidence to support it.

Both the medical examiner and the state police had found no evidence of foul play. While the case technically remained open, the death investigation had run its course. Angelique hung up, and she says she never spoke to Fanning again.

I told him I was disgusted and redoubled, really, my belief that this needed sunlight and it needed eyeballs. And if it never got it, it would never go anywhere.

Here's what Angelique didn't know. The state police weren't the only ones investigating. Since the very first week, a second investigation had been running. Quietly, out of a building Sandra knew all too well, the Stoughton Police Department, the place where she'd first met Matthew Farwell. That fall, the state police turned Sandra's text messages over to Stoughton Police. What they revealed would blow the department open.

What I am here to talk about today is her life and how she was failed by, manipulated by, and used by people of authority that she admired and trusted right up until her final days.

That's next time on What Happened to Her? The Sandra Birchmore Story. What Happened to Her? is hosted, reported, and written by me, Melissa Jeltsin. Additional writing and story editing by Marissa Brown. Editing, sound design, and mixing by Evan Tyer. Original music by Aaron Kaufman. Executive producers are Jason English, Lauren Hansen, Ryan Murdoch, and Melissa Jeltsin. If you have a story you think we should look into or just something to say, you can reach us at whathappenedtoherpodcast at gmail.com.

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline at thehotline.org or call them at 800-799-SAFE. for free confidential support 24 hours a day. Thank you so much for listening.

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