Mass. investigators saw a suicide. Feds saw a murder. Sandra Birchmore’s friends and family made sure no one looked away. - The Boston Globe (2024)

Now, more than three years later, federal authorities have drawn a shockingly different conclusion that calls into question the competence — or worse — of that initial investigation and pitches law enforcement agencies in Massachusetts into yet another controversy: that Birchmore was murdered by the man she had said was the father of her unborn child, a married police officer in neighboring Stoughton, whom she had met as a teenager through the department’s youth program.

On Wednesday, federal prosecutors charged a former Stoughton police detective, Matthew Farwell, with killing Birchmore and then staging the scene to make her death look like a suicide. They allege Farwell, 38, killed Birchmore to keep her from divulging their sexual relationship, which began as an act of statutory rape, and from disclosing that the two met for sex while on the clock for Stoughton police — two acts that could be charged as federal crimes.

The scene inside Birchmore’s apartment, the joyful preparations for motherhood, were among the clues federal investigators cited in court filings that informed their decision that her life was suddenly interrupted at the hands of someone else.

Another sign that proved telling in the federal case: A gold chain with a pink flamingo pendant that Birchmore wore around her neck was broken.

“There were clear markers here of criminal conduct,” said Djuna Perkins, a lawyer who has been tracking the case and previously led the domestic violence unit at the Suffolk district attorney’s office. She said the state’s failure to bring murder charges based on evidence later shared with federal authorities was “very strange,” and suggested the US attorney’s office stepped in “because the DA had done nothing.”

“At first you think maybe it’s just incompetence, maybe it’s negligence, sloppiness,” Perkins said. “But this is so much it makes you start to question intentional conduct.”

There were other prosaic markers at the scene that could read that, far from being distraught, Birchmore was busy keeping up with the ordinary chores of life, such as the laundry: there were loads of clothes in both the washer and the dryer.

“I’m pretty sure if your mind was that wrecked and you were about to do something bad to yourself, you wouldn’t be worrying about your laundry,” said Tracey Strausbaugh, a Birchmore cousin who was among the members of her family who had publicly pressed Massachusetts authorities to reconsider their official conclusion that she died by suicide.

“There was almost like a bucket of evidence that was neglected.”

A former prosecutor not connected to the case told the Globe that the suicide declaration by Massachusetts authorities had all the telltale signs of “confirmation bias,” in which the initial assessment by officers on the scene set the frame for other investigators to conclude she had killed herself; that in this case, investigators trusted the word of a police officer over concerns for a woman who had faced hardship, a bias that can jeopardize an investigation from the start.

“There’s a framing of the case that seems to blind people to the truth,” said Casey Gwinn, president of Alliance for HOPE International, a California nonprofit that trains law enforcement officials to identify and investigate domestic violence strangulation cases that are staged to look like suicides or accidents.

“Confirmation bias literally happens within minutes of when a body is discovered. There is someone at the scene who says it’s a suicide,” added Gwinn, who served for eight years as city attorney for San Diego, an elected position. “That message is put out on a police radio, and carries over to the forensic investigation, and is relayed to the medical examiner.”

First on the scene at Birchmore’s apartment were police officers in Canton. They notified the Norfolk district attorney’s office that it was an “apparent suicide.” Investigators from the State Police assigned to the Norfolk DA’s office agreed there was no foul play involved in her death. Three months after the body was found, the office of chief medical examiner ruled she died of suicide, a determination that remained on her official death certificate as of Thursday.

Massachusetts authorities stuck with the suicide verdict even after Farwell resigned from Stoughton police in April 2022, pending the outcome of an internal affairs investigation that concluded he and two other former officers had “inappropriate” relationships with Birchmore.

In September 2022, a spokesperson for Norfolk DA Michael Morrissey said in a statement that State Police and the state medical examiner’s office “found no evidence of foul play” in Birchmore’s death and no criminal charges were brought in state court.

But Birchmore’s relatives and friends refused to believe the official story and mounted a campaign that eventually led to the charges against Farwell this past week. They had repeatedly urged State Police to scrutinize Farwell, who allegedly initiated sexual contact with Birchmore eight years earlier, when she was 15 and in a police youth program and he was a 27-year-old officer and instructor, who continued to have sex with her until her death.

Birchmore had told some friends and relatives that Farwell was the father of her unborn child and that he had reacted angrily when she disclosed her pregnancy in late December 2020. They relayed that information to State Police detectives soon after she died, adamant she was killed. Farwell was the last person to see Birchmore alive.

“It’s impossible,” Birchmore’s friend Sylvie Matte recalled telling a detective. The ex-wife of Birchmore’s cousin, Matte saw Birchmore in New Hampshire about one month before her death. “I told him she did not kill herself.”

Birchmore’s friends and relatives took up the case on their own. Her aunt filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Farwell and the two other former Stoughton police officers, including Farwell’s twin brother. She hired an independent pathologist who determined Birchmore was murdered.

Other relatives and friends went to the media, in blogs and podcasts. The Globe was the first to report on concerns about Farwell’s interactions with Birchmore in April 2022, when he resigned from Stoughton police.

The suspicions made their way last year to the US attorney’s office and the FBI in Boston, who said they reexamined the evidence previously collected by State Police and pursued new information.

In announcing the charges Wednesday against Farwell, Acting US Attorney Joshua S. Levy said federal investigators could not turn away “when someone comes to our office with credible information that a police officer may have been involved in a murder,” though he did not elaborate.

Farwell has pleaded not guilty to killing a witness or victim, a charge that carries the potential for the death penalty. Federal prosecutors said the US Department of Justice hasn’t decided whether to seek capital punishment.

A lawyer for Farwell declined to comment Friday.

Farwell has denied in the wrongful death lawsuit that he had sex with Birchmore when she was underage. In an interview with State Police on Feb. 6, 2021, he admitted to beginning a sexual relationship with Birchmore a year earlier when she was 22 and having sex with her two or three times during that period, according to a redacted report.

It is not clear from the report whether State Police knew about and confronted Farwell during the interview about the allegation he engaged in statutory rape with Birchmore years earlier when she was 15.

The chasm between the federal and state findings has raised questions about the handling of the initial investigation and how law enforcement agencies poring over much of the same evidence could reach such vastly different conclusions.

After Farwell was indicted Wednesday, a spokesperson for Morrissey, the Norfolk district attorney, said its probe into Birchmore’s death had always remained active and ongoing, and that much of the evidence federal prosecutors disclosed against Farwell was previously gathered by State Police. Federal officials haven’t specified what evidence their investigators developed independently.

Pressed by the Globe for more details about their handling of the case, Morrissey’s spokesperson, David Traub, and Canton police Chief Helena Rafferty, whose officers initially described Birchmore’s death as an “apparent suicide,” said they were seeking authorization from the Massachusetts US attorney’s office to respond. Rafferty later declined to comment.

A spokesperson for the state medical examiner’s office said the agency “remains open to reviewing its findings as new information arises.”

Critics say the early finding ruling out foul play raises concerns about investigators’ regard for Birchmore and whether Farwell’s status as a detective held undue influence. State Police descriptions of Birchmore’s home provided to the Globe under public records requests describe a “generally unorganized and unkempt” apartment but make no mention of the broken necklace around her neck or laundry in the washer and dryer.

“There’s this devaluing that happens. People take biases and apply them to their analysis of whether a death is suspicious,” said Gwinn, of the California law enforcement training organization. “That bias actually distorts investigations. Everywhere we go we are seeing this.”

The case has also raised concerns about how State Police treated information shared with them about Birchmore’s final weeks.

Friends, relatives, and colleagues had told the State Police in interviews in 2021 of growing friction between Birchmore and the man she claimed to have fathered her unborn child, though some didn’t know his identity at the time. Some repeated those claims to The Boston Globe.

One friend described to police how Birchmore had told her that the father of her unborn child had said, “I wish you would kill yourself,” or “I wish you were dead.”

“It seems someone didn’t listen to those witnesses,” said Perkins, the former Suffolk County official.

Birchmore’s friend who told State Police about Farwell’s angry reaction to her pregnancy also told the same investigators that in January 2021 she had alerted a Stoughton police employee of their sexual relationship. Her phone call was relayed to Farwell, who lashed out.

“You told me that no one knew about us,” Farwell texted Birchmore, according to a FBI affidavit. “She called my job that’s insane.”

Twelve days later, Birchmore was dead.

Federal authorities considered the call important, and included it in the indictment against Farwell.

One friend, who asked not to be named, told the Globe for a story published in April 2022 that she was exchanging Snapchat messages with Birchmore on Feb. 1, 2021, the night she was last seen. Birchmore never opened the last communication at 9:28 p.m., which she described as out of character.

The FBI affidavit could help explain why: Birchmore’s cellphone, which was found a foot from her right hand, had stopped recording movement at 9:40 p.m. that night, while Farwell was visiting her apartment. Farwell was captured on video surveillance leaving Birchmore’s building three minutes later.

The friend told State Police about the Snapchat communications on Feb. 12, 2021, records show.

This year, two forensic pathologists — one hired by Birchmore’s estate and the other commissioned by the FBI — directly contradicted the state medical examiner’s conclusion that she died of suicide.

Both forensic pathologists said Birchmore fractured her right hyoid bone, a crescent-shaped bone at the front of the neck. Dr. Michael Baden, who was hired by the estate, said such a fracture occurs “rarely, if at all, in suicidal hanging and does occur in half of homicidal strangulations of women.”

Dr. William Smock, the FBI’s forensic pathologist, said the fracture was inconsistent with the seated position in which Birchmore was found. He said hyoid bone fractures “are more commonly seen in strangulation assaults and in hangings with full body weight applied to the ligature, but not seated hangings,” the FBI affidavit said.

Smock also found a “pattern imprint” on Sandra’s upper right chest from a “buckle or buckles from the ligature strap being forced downward into” her chest. Such an injury is consistent with “blunt force trauma from an assault,” but not a hanging, the affidavit said.

Moreover, he said, Birchmore’s broken gold chain indicated there was a struggle.

Birchmore’s friend Sylvie Matte questioned why state investigators didn’t see evidence of a crime when Birchmore’s body was found.

“You have to be investigating with your eyes closed,” she said.

Another cousin of Birchmore’s, Barbara Wright, expressed relief that federal prosecutors charged Farwell with her death.

“I’ve known from day one, from the minute I was told she had passed away and that it was suicide, I’m like, ‘No way, no, no way,’” she said. “I never, ever believed it. Not for a minute.”

Nick Stoico of the Globe staff contributed to this report.

Laura Crimaldi can be reached at laura.crimaldi@globe.com. Follow her @lauracrimaldi. Shelley Murphy can be reached at shelley.murphy@globe.com. Follow her @shelleymurph.