The Pathologist Matthew Farwell Hired Concluded THIS

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Drake.

Tony Brueski (0:08)

Jury selection is underway for Matthew Farwell, the former police officer accused of killing Sandra Birchmore and causing the death of her unborn child. Prosecutors say he s-abused Sandra starting when she was 15, then killed her at 23 to keep her from exposing him. Farwell is pled not guilty, and his defense says Sandra died by self-elimination. Put yourself here at the defense table for a minute. Where do you start when the jury is about to hear allegations like these? That's, that's, you know, it's an interesting place to put yourself. Eric Faddis is here, defense attorney and former prosecutor, Robin Drake, retired FBI special agent, chief of the counterintelligence behavioral analysis program and master class instructor to help us break down where the defense might be going here.

Let's take a look at where things are landing here. The official manner of Sandra's death is still sitting at undetermined. And sometimes just labels are confusing to folks that are not in these, in these worlds. They think they might mean something that it does not or assign something to it that it does not mean or does mean. And the defense has a doctor who couldn't rule out S hanging.

That gives a defense lawyer something very concrete to work with here when it comes to defending their client. Eric, how much of the defense here do you build around the fact that there's still this medical disagreement over how she died? Yes, one could get up and educate the jury, but why this is, you don't want to educate the jury if you're defending Farwell in this and what the undetermined might actually mean in a case like this.

Eric Faddis (1:50)

You know, I think if your defense, you place such an emphasis, such a spotlight on this apparent medical disagreement and try to sort of deflect from some of the other uglier alleged accusations against the client regarding grooming and things like that. I think you say, hey, look, undetermined, what does that mean? That means we don't know.

And is it we don't know in terms of the manner of death? Isn't that, doesn't that mean we have doubt as to the manner of death? And if that doubt is reasonable, isn't that reasonable doubt? And if that doubt is based on the opinions of medical professionals who conducted an examination and reached these conclusions, then isn't it a reasonable basis for that doubt? And so I think that the defense really has to focus, put the focus on that and away from these sort of untoward allegations that would make somebody's stomach hurt.

Tony Brueski (2:47)

I mean, having struggled before doesn't tell us what happened that night. And the judge is allowing the defense to bring in Sandra's mental health history. And it could get ugly. Having struggled before, like I said, doesn't tell us what happened that night. How do you make a legitimate argument about self-elimination without turning Sandra into the person on trial? Because you're going to have all of the evidence piling up of what was done to her mentally, emotionally, with all these officers. It's not going to look pretty.

It's going to be a tough road to travel if you're the defense to Triango. Yes, treated horribly in all these different ways.

Lied to, gaslit, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's why she's self-eliminated. But that doesn't make my client a murderer.

SPEAKER_1 (3:46)

Does it though?

Tony Brueski (3:48)

I mean, you're almost going to get coerced if it's a point here, you know?

Eric Faddis (3:52)

You know, and I think there are cases where it, as a defense attorney, sometimes you have to try and illustrate blame on the alleged victim. Here you got to be very careful. You know, as Sandra Birchmore, you got to present it as, hey, she's not the bad guy, but she was broken and she had been contending with all of these issues and they were affecting her and you'll hear from her therapist who will tell you what her emotional state was at the time and how it was unstable, according to the defense.

And all of these precursors, unfortunately, gave rise to this escalation, as we've seen in young girls and young people over time. This is an epidemic when it comes to self-elimination. And unfortunately, this epidemic has gripped Sandra Birchmore in this case. I think the defense goes down a route like that, but you got to do it so delicately. Yeah.

Robin Drake (4:46)

Yeah, I would think, because again, I'm looking up, because it's hard for me to even fathom taking the defense side on this whatsoever, because there's so much wrongdoings and things that have been going against Farwell throughout his career, because he's been under investigation multiple times. So even if they wanted to try to paint her as this broken person, do you think it would be an easier task, and they'll probably do it, for the prosecution to go down the road of, yeah, well, Farwell targets those vulnerable people. So of course, this is who he went after, because this is what he has a track record of going after. Is that something they'd be able to do?