On Feb. 4, 2021 – the day the body of 23-year-old pregnant teacher’s aide Sandra Birchmore was found hanged in her Canton, Massachusetts, home – her therapist got a phone call she testified “shocked her,” one she told the court she listened to repeatedly.
Her client, Birchmore, who she had met with just a day before her death and presented as “her usual bubbly self,” had taken her own life, the caller said in the voicemail, according to Diala Alkhalil, a licensed mental health counselor.
Alkhalil had treated Birchmore since childhood and testified that she was so stunned she immediately called investigators with the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office CPAC unit to report suspicions about her client’s “boyfriend,” Stoughton Police Officer Matthew Farwell. More than four years later, she recalled her disbelief on the witness stand, sitting over Farwell, one trial in Boston’s federal court for the murder of Birchmore and her unborn child, a boy.
“She was a fighter,” the therapist told the court. “She was resilient. She overcame a lot. She was goal-oriented at all times.” With her testimony, Alkhalil became the fifth witness in Farwell’s ongoing federal trial connected to the murder of Birchmore and her unborn baby who testified that they called police officials to say they didn’t believe the pregnant young woman committed suicide, and urged them to look at the man she believed was the baby’s father: Stoughton Police Detective Matthew Farwell.
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What she wasn’t, the therapist testified, was suicidal. So why did the Norfolk County CPAC unit immediately respond to an unattended death and rule it a suicide before a medical examiner could make that determination?
That question is expected to take center stage this week when Dr. Maria Capo Martinez is called to the stand. In March 2021, the death certificate Capo Martinez signed for Birchmore, according to records obtained by Los Angeles, noted Birchmore’s cause of death and her manner of death as “pending” despite investigators from the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office calling it a suicide. In May 2021, Birchmore’s death certificate was updated to cause of death “asphyxiation” and manner of death was listed as “suicide,” which would be changed again this year.
The FBI confronted Capo Martinez and the Norfolk County investigators at a meeting in August 2024 with their own findings that indicated Birchmore was murdered. Ten days later Farwell was arrested, pulled from the big rig he had been driving since he was decertified and forced off the Stoughton PD in 2022 and decertified as a police officer. He has been held without bail at Donald W. Wyatt Correctional Facility in Rhode Island, where defense attorneys have noted he has a detail “cleaning officers’ toilets.”
Federal prosecutors have accused Norfolk County investigators of running a shoddy investigation. Testimony in the first weeks of Farwell’s federal trial, now entering its third week, has illuminated multiple missteps and the intentional destruction of what could be evidence in the Birchmore case. Birchmore’s death was not handled as a crime scene. Fingerprints were not taken. DNA tying Farwell to the ligature around Birchmore’s neck was only found when the FBI stepped into the case. A broken necklace, tangled with Birchmore’s hair, was recovered by her family after her death and was not tagged as evidence of a possible struggle. Crime scene photos show apparent injuries to Birchmore’s face not noted in police reports. Five witnesses testified that they reached out to investigators to say they did not believe Birchmore took her own life, and pointed the finger at Matthew Farwell.
On Monday, that potential police corruption could likely be highlighted with the government’s bombshell witness, William “Billy” Farwell, the defendant’s twin brother whose Stoughton Police career also ended in 2022 when an Internal Affairs report undertaken by his former Deputy Chief Brian Holmes discovered his own inappropriate sexual relationship with Birchmore. Farwell, according to a state report, had sex with Birchmore ten days after she died and while believing she was pregnant with his brother’s baby.
In opening arguments, Assistant United States Attorney Torey Cummings told jurors that when William Farwell was interviewed by state police troopers Lt. John Fanning and Matthew Dunne from the Norfolk County CPAC unit in the weeks after Birchmore’s death, he was told: “Sandra’s death was a suicide, that nothing was criminal, that they weren’t investigating and that they needed an investigation like they, quote, needed a fucking bullet in the head.”
Fanning, like the Farwell twins, had attended Stoughton High School. Before joining the state police, Fanning had been a member of the Stoughton Police Department, like the men he was in charge of investigating. His name is a familiar one to those who watched the Karen Read trial last year. Fanning was the supervisor included in a text chain of cops that led to the firing of Trooper Michael Proctor for writing disparaging remarks about Read, including calling her a “wackjob cunt.” Fanning was investigated and cleared of any wrongdoing after he told MSP’s internal affairs investigators he didn’t see Proctor’s text chain because he was on vacation.
But William Farwell’s revelation about what he said he was told by the lead investigators in the Birchmore case could present a problem. Fanning had initially been on the government’s witness list, but will not be called. The defense also had him listed as a witness, but did not indicate they would call him.
Two well-placed sources told Los Angeles that Fanning indicated he would plead the fifth if called to the stand. Dunne did testify and admitted to investigative flaws in the case, like missing Birchmore’s broken necklace.
There was also testimony about a homicide conference in 2019 attended by Farwell, hosted by the Norfolk County DA’s office. In it, there was a presentation by the medical examiner specific to investigating the mechanisms of hanging that Farwell attended, according to testimony from his former colleague, a one-time “close friend,” Stoughton PD Detective Daniel Barber. Dr. Capo Martinez is expected to take the stand this week and could be called after William Farwell.
Barber told jurors last week that Farwell began acting erratically in late 2020, early 2021. He recalled a specific incident in a car where Farwell was “texting incessantly,” and he asked his fellow detective if everything was okay.
Farwell, he testified, looked up from his phone and barked, “I gotta put crazy back in the bag.”
The post Why Did Police Call Sandra Birchmore’s Death A Suicide? appeared first on LAmag.
