Sandra Birchmore’s Final Eight Steps Mean WHAT?!

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

This is The Big Breakdown, a long look back at some of the biggest stories we're covering for you at the Hidden Killers podcast and True Crime Today. This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Drake.

Tony Brueski (0:16)

Let's move over to another topic. Matthew Farwell's federal trial for the murder of Sandra Birchmore is getting underway in Boston. An opening statement scheduled for, I believe, today. Is that right? Today? Yeah, today. They are going down Friday. They've been in jury selection all this week. It's not televised. There's no audio, but we will be covering it and bringing you recaps every single day.

Let's begin talking about this. I'd make this first segment that we're going to discuss about the case against Matthew Farwell. A case you're just catching up. This is a former Stoughton Police detective charged with killing Sandra Birchmore, who was 23 and pregnant in Canton in an apartment in February of 2021 And with causing the death of her unborn son, he says she took her own life. And the state agreed with him for five years until the feds got involved and said, yeah, this isn't quite adding up. It all comes down to the 29 minutes. The whole case leaves inside that span of time, just under a half hour at 907 That night, Farwell texted, asking if he could come by for just a second. At 914, the building camera caught him walking in hood up, wearing a surgical mask. Prosecutors say he otherwise refused to wear. This is COVID time, so a lot of people are wearing masks. So it's not super out of the ordinary, but out of the ordinary for him. Ten minutes after he walked in, a friend texted her photos of custom baby onesies that she never opened. Her phone registered its last movement at 940 At 943, the camera caught him leaving. She was found three days later in the same clothes. Jennifer Coffindaffer, retired FBI special agent, and Robin Drake, retired FBI special agent, with us today to break this down. It's a pretty damning timeline.

I've heard some attorneys, even Eric yesterday, said it's not a slam-dunk case. I know no cases are slam-dunk, but I don't know. I've been watching this. I think we've all been watching this to a certain extent for several years now.

Pardon the pun here, but the news just keeps tightening on Farwell at every turn it seems. How does he walk out of this? I mean, how do you defend a timeline like this, Jen?

Jennifer Coffindaffer (2:44)

Well, I want to start even further to the beginning for a 12-year-old young girl that's a part of the Explorer program.

Tony Brueski (2:51)

I'd be convicting him on that alone.

Jennifer Coffindaffer (2:55)

I've talked about the Explorer program.

I was an Explorer advisor for a year with the FBI, and it's actually a wonderful program. You meet with the individuals about once a month, I think we met, and we taught crime scene, and we taught handcuffing techniques, and we do all these teaching kind of a school for about an hour or so, because we prepare them for competitions, and they compete against the other Explorer teams in these areas. Proper handcuffing, I'm just throwing out a couple crime scenes, things like that. So it's actually a beautiful program. What is not beautiful about it is when you get somebody like this, and I understand he is innocent in the eyes of the law. But factually, he is so guilty of corralling her, of recruiting her, grooming her, and at 15, having sexual relationship with her, which obviously is statutory rape, and then continuing these relationships, a relationship with her, a sexual relationship. Furthermore, introducing his brother and another individual to her, which I would say would not have happened if he didn't have coercive control. You talk about coercive control of her. And absolutely molded her into this. But you go to those minutes, I just want to address this really quick. His fricking sperm was on her panties that day, and his sperm was on the noose around her neck, which was a duffel bag cord. So him lying and saying the last time he had sex with her was the 20th is absolute malarkey. She's not in the middle of doing laundry between loads. Oh, I think I'll kill myself on my door knob.

He's bruising, necklace broken. He's toast.

Robin Drake (4:50)

And also on the way to the birth of his third child for the planned C-section on his wife. Oh, oh, just an hour. He does this on the way to the hospital.

This case has got me so enraged. I sit here reading the timeline. I print out the timelines of everything we do, and it just brings me to tears every time I look at this little girl who didn't have a father in her life that tried to get into the explorers program because she wants to be a cop because she's searching for longing, good role models and all that, and she was nothing but abused the entire stinking time by these abhorrent monsters. So, yeah, you're right, not guilty until proven, right? But you can still be an incredibly abhorrent, disgusting human being. So I think he's guilty of that by every stretch of the imagination.