145: Girl Groomed at 15-Years-Old By 3 Police Officers Ends Up Dead?
28:54 Share

At Leidos, a brilliant mind is smart, but a brilliant team is smarter. A ship that finds enemy subs is smart, but an autonomous fleet, that's smarter. Defending against cyber attacks, smart. Stopping attacks before they start, smarter. And using AI tools is smart, but integrating trusted mission AI into your technology is smarter. We're not just making technology solutions and national security and health. We're making smart, smarter. Leidos.

Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialistly. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialistly with Annie Elise. Now, although today is a Thursday episode and I know that you guys are expecting updates in a bunch of cases, any new breaking headlines and cases, we're going to do things a little bit differently today because I am currently on vacation.

If you follow me on Instagram, you understand. I'm currently in Morocco with my husband. It is our big vacation. I actually met him here after he finished a race. He came over here for a marathon. I'm not exaggerating when I say this, guys. It's literally the hardest foot race on earth.

It was seven days. It was through the Sahara Desert, over 155 miles. It's all like self-sustainable, meaning like he had to bring his food on his back, his sleeping bag, he had to sleep in the desert. There was one day where it was 55 miles alone and they gave you 48 hours to do it. It took him 27 and he was like running through the desert at 3 a.m. in the pitch black, only with a headlamp on, was hallucinating. I mean, very, very grueling. But anyway, the point of that

is to celebrate I flew out here to meet him after the race and now we are vacationing together so

Because of that and because of the time difference from all over the country, for all of you listeners, it's difficult to get all of the headlines, all of the breaking updates in a week and then record it, edit it, get it out on time. You get what I mean? So today what we are going to do instead of going over all of the updates is we are going to go over a mini case. Not even a mini case, but a very important case and a singular case. And it's one that ties into another case that we've been talking a lot about over here on the podcast. And it's like...

I don't know. It's very unsettling and unnerving. And then, as usual, tomorrow I will be on the mic as well giving you all of the updates with the Chad Daybell trial, what's going on this week. We still have Lindsay, our correspondent, in the courtroom every single day, so she's going to give us the full lowdown of everything going on, some wild testimony, some wild moments, so make sure you check back tomorrow for that. But let's talk about what we're talking about today and the case we're going to be reviewing.

So, as most of you know, the Karen Reid trial has been getting going now for a couple weeks. They started with jury selection and now it's getting into the full actual trial. And it is a real case of, did she do it or is this a cover-up?

And if you aren't familiar with that case, guys, we did do a full deep dive episode. I will link it in the show notes. But to summarize, a very, very quick summary, this girlfriend is accused of murdering her Boston police officer boyfriend, backing into him, leaving him for dead in the snow, and then driving off.

However, she's saying, I didn't kill him. I dropped him off at the house party, which is where, in fact, he was found in the yard, and they are responsible. And there is a lot of conflicting evidence because the house party people are also Boston police officers, and some of them had an ax to grind with her boyfriend. There was some weird Google searches in the middle of the night, not from her, but by one of the boys or one of the men's wives saying, like, how long does it take to die in the cold? And it was like at 2 a.m. A lot of

Very, very weird stuff in this case to where it does make you wonder who's telling the truth. Did she truly murder him or is this a conspiracy, a cover-up, and she's the fall guy? So get fully caught up on that episode if you're curious and if you're not familiar with the case. But the case we're talking about today is one that is kind of adjacent to it because it has a lot of the same key players involved here.

And it kind of makes you wonder, could this really even be a cover-up even more so now, hearing about this new case? Now, the reason I think it's important that we talk about this case is because it also happened in the same area. And it speaks to corruption, cover-ups,

Other cops covering for each other, just like we're talking about in the Karen Reed case. And there's actually some officers and troopers that overlap that were involved in Karen's case and also in Sandra's case, the case we're talking about today.

Now before we get into this episode, guys, please remember everything that is said is either sourced from court documents or strictly my opinion. Please remember to do your own research. Anything that is not included in the documents is, again, my opinion only and all alleged.

So recently we learned that there are a couple of witnesses being called to the stand in Karen Reed's trial who also worked on another very eerie case back in 2021. Massachusetts State Trooper Zachary and Trooper Matthew Doone are both being called to the stand during the Karen Reed trial, and both of them worked on the Sandra Birchmore case. And Matthew Dunn was actually the lead investigator for Sandra's case.

And I really feel like it's fitting that we talk about Sandra's case in light of all of the recent events going on with Karen's trial, and you'll understand why as we get into it. So on the morning of February 2nd, 2021, at Newton Wesley Hospital in Newton, Massachusetts, Michelle Farewell, wife to Matthew Farewell, a police department detective, gave birth to their third child. This happened at 925 a.m.,

However, 12 hours earlier, 34-year-old Matthew was two hours away. He was inside apartment 3307 in the Canton Woods Apartments, and he was visiting Sandra Birchmore, who was just 23 years old.

Matthew was seen entering the apartment complex lobby at 9.14 p.m. and then exiting just 29 minutes later. Then, 12 hours later, while Matthew was holding his brand new baby boy, Sandra Birchmore, who was allegedly three months pregnant with Matthew's baby, was found dead.

Stoughton is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts. The population is a little over 29,000 people, and the town is approximately 17 miles from Boston, and it's 31 miles from Providence, Rhode Island. Now, this quiet little town would soon become the center of news articles and radio.

Reddit threads for the grooming of minors going on inside their Stoughton Police Department Explorers Program. See, the Explorers Program is a program within police departments nationwide, which enables young adults to gain hands-on experience for a potential career in law enforcement. It's also a chance to network with employed law enforcement officials and even go on ride-alongs in their squad cars.

This program never existed in Stoughton until Robert Devine took over in 2001, and the program blew up, and by 2011, more than 300 kids had gone through this program. The kids loved the program, and most kids even found a home within it, and Robert kind of took on like a fatherly figure role for most of these kids. He gave them a sense of stability that a lot of them had never had before.

So in 2013, when 13-year-old Sandra Birchmore entered the program, she was one of those kids looking for stability and a father figure. Sandra was raised by her single mother, Denise Birchmore. However, Sandra's grandmother and aunt also lived with them and helped raise her. Now, Sandra had no relationship with her birth father, and her stepfather died when she was really young. Her mother was also always sick throughout her childhood.

But no matter what Sandra's circumstances were, she was always optimistic about her future. Nonetheless, she was yet another highly vulnerable 13-year-old child, and she was entering this EXPLORERS program, looking for something to be involved in, something to just sink her teeth into. And of course, entering this program, she had no reason not to trust these police officers. They're people that we are taught to trust from a very, very young age.

However, it was just to find out that not all cops are good cops. Like I said earlier, Robert was the leader and the one responsible for the Explorers program. But he also had help from two other members of the Stoughton Police Department, twin brothers, William and Matthew Farewell. Now, prior to joining the department, Matthew and William both served as part of the Explosive Ordinance Team leaders overseas.

By 2012, they were both police officers in Stoughton and also active with the Explorers program. They both donated their time as physical and drill instructors, as well as taught the explosive class. They brought in bomb robots, blast jackets, and shields, and honestly, from the sounds of it, they were both very, very good at what they did. And as for Robert, well, at that point, he was at the peak of his professional career after completing his 15th year at the Stoughton Police Department.

And in many ways, he was even the public face of the department. The community trusted him. But the community really had no idea what was going on behind closed doors within this Explorers program. They had no idea that these three men were grooming, abusing, and raping Sandra Birchmore, and also quite possibly doing this to others.

But this apparently didn't start with Sandra Birchmore. According to past victims that have come forward, Robber has always been the town creep. Back in 2001, he was a school resource officer. And in a perfect world, someone like a school resource officer should be someone that you really trust. But he ended up being the exact opposite.

He allegedly used his power to flirt, to touch, and just get a little too comfortable with vulnerable preteen girls. And there was one specific woman who came forward from his time as a middle school resource officer. She was just 12 years old at the time, and that year her parents were going through a really bad divorce. Now middle school, we can probably all agree, sucks in general, but add in a divorce to the mix and it just puts a lot of stress on a child.

And Robert became very close with this young girl, often calling her hot and telling her all about the dates that he was going to take her on when she turned 18. I mean, just a creep through and through. He would constantly flirt with her and he would hang out with her in his squad car. And Robert really abused his power for years and years and he just got away with it. Until one day when he didn't.

Now, Sandra Birchmore was described as happy, fun, sweet, and loving. However, Sandra had another side to her as well. She was an oversharer, and she would often make people uncomfortable with this.

She seemed emotionally stunted through her teenage years and was also pretty immature as well. She struggled to keep friends, and she could often ask too many questions while also offering too much of herself at the same time. She was also very naive and never had proper male role models in her life to look up to. So when Matthew, William, and Robert came into her life, she kind of clinged to them, particularly Matthew.

Here it was, these guys in power, in powerful positions, these responsible, educated adults. Why wouldn't you seek their guidance, their attention, right? And they all took advantage of it. So much so that Matthew and Sandra began a sexual relationship when Sandra was just 15 years old and he was 26 years old. And this relationship would carry on through her adult life. In

In December of 2020, when Sandra was 21 years old, she found out that she was pregnant. She was pregnant with Matthew's baby.

She was so excited, and she began telling everybody almost immediately. Now at the time, she was working as a first year's teacher's assistant at Sharon Middle School. She told one of her co-workers that she was about four or five weeks along, and the co-worker found it a little bit weird because usually people will wait until they're a little bit further along, and usually only the first people to know are people who are really close or family members, but it seemed like Sandra was just over the moon, and she couldn't keep this excitement to herself.

She had even reached out to friends that she hadn't spoken to in years to tell them about this pregnancy. She also told people at her apartment complex who she had only really spoken to a few times before. She was just so excited, and she wanted people to know. However, Matthew, he wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.

A few days after Christmas, Sandra had told Matthew that she was pregnant, and they ended up in a pretty heated verbal argument, which led Sandra kicking Matthew out of her apartment. And as Matthew was leaving, he stopped and looked back at Sandra, and he said, "'I wish you would kill yourself. I wish you were dead.'"

Now, while the fight was a big one, it didn't make Sandra any less excited for this baby. It was not uncommon for them to have these huge fights and then inevitably reconcile a few days later, so she just began buying things for the baby and preparing to give the baby a good life, no matter who was or wasn't going to be in their lives. Then, on Friday, January 29th, Sandra ran into a co-worker in the hallway at work, and being the overshare that Sandra was, she began to tell her everything. Now,

Now, this wasn't a co-worker who Sandra really ever talked to. They had opposite teaching schedules, so they rarely saw each other. And really, they barely knew each other. But Sandra told her she was pregnant. And she also told her that she was very stressed out because of issues she was having with her boyfriend. See, Sandra told her how Matthew, her boyfriend, was married. He had other children. And she mentioned that he was a Stoughton police officer.

Sandra said that he was very angry about the pregnancy and that he had told her to get rid of the baby because this was not the plan that he had in mind. But she said she was still super excited about the baby. She was overwhelmed but excited. The last thing that Sandra told her co-worker was, "...if something happens to me, he would be the one responsible."

The coworker immediately asked her about a restraining order, but Sandra explained that he was too high up in the police department, and he knew too many people, so it wouldn't do any good anyway. It wasn't going to help the situation. So after hearing this huge bombshell and allegation, Sandra's coworker allegedly went to Darren Reynolds, the school principal, so she could tell him all about it and relay the information that she had just learned from Sandra. She told him every single detail that Sandra had shared with her, and she said, "'Sandra needs help, and she needs it now.'"

The principal assured her that he would take the appropriate action, and that was the end of the conversation. Now, the conversation happened on a Friday, and that following Monday night on February 1st, a snowstorm was set to hit. Sandra texted a co-worker to ask if she thought that the school would be canceled due to the storm, and even though school didn't end up being canceled the next day, Sandra never showed up, and she didn't show up the day after either.

So finally, on the morning of February 4th, Ensley Codard, a patrolman for the Canton Police Department, got a call from the school resource officer. The call was requesting to complete a welfare check on Sandra. Sandra had not shown up to work for the third day in a row now, and when they called her, her phone was going straight to voicemail. The resource officer provided Officer Codard with Sandra's address, and at 11 a.m., two officers knocked on her door, announcing that they were there.

The officers contacted their sergeant to let them know that nobody was answering, and that's when they were told to try to locate her vehicle in the parking lot. The car was found, and it appeared untouched, and the reason that it appeared untouched was since there had been that snowstorm, it would have been clear if the car had been touched, somebody had tried to gain access to it, and the snow wouldn't have looked untouched. But when they saw it, the snow was certainly untouched. So officers were able to retrieve a copy of Sandra's apartment key from the building management, and they entered her apartment.

They immediately noticed that the apartment was completely disheveled, and it was unkept and also had two cats running around. When they approached the bedroom door and opened it, there was Sandra. She was on the floor, against a door with what appeared to be a lanyard-type rope secured tightly around her neck, which was also secured tightly to the door handle of the bedroom closet.

It was very obvious that she was dead, and she had been there for a while because rigor mortis was already setting in, and there was a large pool of dried blood around her mouth. So they immediately called for backup, and after Sandra was pronounced dead, an investigation was launched into her death, with Matthew Doone taking the role as the lead investigator on her case. And ultimately, the medical examiner ruled Sandra's death as suicide with asphyxiation by hanging.

When Sandra's friends and family began to learn of her passing, they were absolutely shocked, I mean, to say the least. Speculation was running wild that Sandra committed suicide due to her fight with Matthew, and him wanting to end things, not wanting the baby. But Sandra's family knew that she would never commit suicide over a fight with Matthew. They felt like she had way too much to look forward to, and that suicide just did not make sense because she was so excited to be a mom.

The day after Sandra's body was found, the Stoughton Police Chief Donna McNamara was contacted by a detective from the Massachusetts State Police because family had reached out to them to inform them of Sandra's relationship with Matthew at this point. Now, none of the family knew that he was in the apartment that night.

But they did know that she was pregnant. They knew that she was in a relationship with a married police officer who was not happy about her pregnancy, and now she was dead. So that day, the police chief directed Deputy Chief Brian Holmes to conduct an internal investigation into, quote, "...the matter of the unattended death of Sandra Birchmore."

The investigation report, although heavily redacted, was released 19 months later, and by then, Robert, Matthew, and William had all already resigned from the Stoughton Police Department.

The property manager of the apartment complex that Sandra lived in assisted the detectives in going through video footage, and it only showed the front lobby. But they looked through this footage that was prior to the day that she was found dead. And sure enough, on Sunday, January 31st, Sandra was seen multiple times. She left the building at 9.51 a.m. while talking on the phone. She re-entered the building at 10.08 a.m. carrying a large box, which we now know was a car seat. She

She left again at 10.11 and came back three hours later, talking on the phone, this time holding two pizza boxes. Then she left again at 4.39 p.m. and returned two minutes later, texting on her phone. On February 1st, she was seen at 5.46 p.m. holding a snow brush, and that was the last time that Sandra was ever seen alive.

The maintenance man and property manager recognized everybody entering and exiting the lobby on the video surveillance that evening, all except one man, who was described as tall, burly, wearing jeans, work boots, a dark hoodie with the hood over his head, and a blue medical mask. He was seen entering the lobby at 9.13 p.m. and then leaving the building at 9.43 p.m.

It was later confirmed that this person was in fact Matthew. And this also confirmed that Matthew was the last person to ever see Sandra alive.

Now Matthew was allegedly there to end things with Sandra for good that night. But what's weird about this situation is that we know how needy Sandra was. She was constantly oversharing, and she was quick to tell people things as soon as they happened. She had even gotten in trouble in the past at work for oversharing details of her life. So if Matthew went over there and broke things off with her for good, you would think that she would text somebody to talk about it, to tell somebody what was going on. But she didn't do that at all.

Now, according to detectives, she instead walked into her bedroom, put a lanyard around her neck, sat down on the ground, and hung herself on a closet doorknob, killing not only herself, but also her baby that she was so excited to have. It just was not adding up, and anyone close to Sandra knew that she would never, ever do this.

And then come to find out, Darren Reynolds, the principal at the middle school that Sandra worked at, he never contacted the police about that concerning information that was reported to him by Sandra's coworker. So now it really wasn't adding up.

When Darren was confronted about why that call was never made, he stated that he didn't even remember having the conversation about Sandra feeling unsafe with any of the staff members, which is not really a type of conversation that you would forget, right? And when the staff members caught wind of that, they were all extremely upset because this was obviously not the truth.

When Sandra's co-workers learned of her death, everybody was in shock, and they had staff meetings, and they were even offered counseling. However, as the days went on, nobody ever mentioned Sandra again. Not even Principal Reynolds. There was allegedly no follow-up on their mental health, no asking about how they were coping with the unexpected death of one of their own. I mean, nothing. It was almost as if it never even happened, and that they, or Darren Reynolds, just wanted it all to go away.

On April 8th, just over two months after her death, Robert, the head of that Explorers program, the one who spearheaded the whole thing, was interviewed by a couple of people, by a retired police chief and also a unit detective. And this was part of Stoughton's internal investigation into the death of Sandra.

During the interview, Robert, of course, continuously denied that he had any type of relationship or contact with her, and at that point, there had been no communication between the two of them ever found, and when he was informed of that, he said, However, just over a month later, investigators were reviewing the contents of Sandra's laptop when a conversation thread was discovered in her Facebook Messenger.

the profile that she was communicating with appeared to be a blocked or anonymous Facebook user. But based on the context of the conversation, they actually quickly learned that the user appeared to be Robert himself.

The context led investigators to learn that this person was an attorney as well as a Stoughton police officer, just like Robert was. And there was discussion of meeting in all different locations throughout Stoughton, all while on duty in his patrol car. Now get this, the name of this profile, this Facebook profile, was noted as Marty Riggs. Just like that movie Lethal Weapon, where Mel Gibson played a police officer named Martin Riggs.

So now we have 47-year-old Robert, head of this program that Sandra was in, using an undercover Facebook account of a fictional character all so he could communicate with Sandra and other minors in his explorer group. And to make it even worse, sources stated that these messages were so graphic and explicit that they could not even be released to the public.

A second interview with Robert was scheduled for mid-August. However, just three days before this interview took place, the police chief was notified that he had resigned from his recently demoted position as a patrol officer. His resignation was effective the next day. The resignation letter indicated that he was filing for retirement, and if there were any other further questions or areas to cover within the investigation, they needed to provide it to him in writing.

So investigators sent Robert a letter with questions, and a few days later, Robert responded. He stated that he desired to cooperate and suggested that his account was hacked, which internal investigator leaders claimed was absolutely outrageous. Not true. Robert retired about five weeks before the findings of the internal investigation was released, and in fact, he collected a full pension of nearly $5,000 a month. He's also still a licensed attorney in the state of Massachusetts.

Now, during the investigation, detectives came across two letters in his personal file. One of the letters was from April 17, 2014, and it was from the parent of one of the explorers in his program. In this letter, the police department and Robert in particular are commended and praised for what they were doing for the community. And that letter was from Sandra's mom, Denise Birchmore.

Now, at the time that this letter was written, Sandra was 16 years old and at least a year into this sexual relationship with Matthew, another lead adult of this program. Matthew, of course, was also being investigated. And a few days after Sandra's death, he consented to a data extraction from his iPhone. And then a couple of months later, Matthew's work phone from the police department was also turned over and analyzed. There

There was no communication on either phone. However, they knew that there was some sort of communication because Matthew had stated in a previous interview that he deleted all of his communication with Sandra. So really, they just couldn't find it. It's not that it never happened.

The report of the investigation was handed over to the district attorney, and then he put out a statement saying, After state police detectives and the medical examiner found no evidence of foul play in the death of Ms. Birchmore, the Norfolk District Attorney's Office referred information developed in the death to the Stoughton Police Department for action.

While prosecutors will review any additional information, it should be noted that in light of Ms. Birchmore's death at age 23, the investigation to date has not developed a prosecutable statutory rape case against any individual. So at the end of 2022, Sandra's family filed a lawsuit against Robert, Matthew, and William for her wrongful death, alleging that the officers groomed her from her early teens into her adult life.

And the civil suit named Matthew, William, and Robert as defendants in an ongoing scheme of grooming, misconduct, and negligence in a 10-year period of sexual abuse and mistreatment. Sandra's family also sued the police department and the town.

The suit claims that the Stoughton Internal Investigation found that Matthew had known Sandra since she was 13 years old and began having sex with her when she was 15 years old, which definitely would have constituted statutory rape, as the age of consent in Massachusetts is 16 years old.

Police released their heavily redacted report on everything, which said that there was insufficient evidence to prove or disprove that Matthew violated any laws, in part because, quote, investigators would need the testimony of Sandra, who is deceased. Both the Stoughton report and the lawsuit said that William and Robert had similar sexual relationships with Sandra as well.

Robert has risen to deputy chief before being demoted in 2016 over his allegedly improper handling of anti-harassment orders. He ran the Explorers program, and Matthew and William participated. Robert effectively established the guys as his understudies in using their positions and influence while on duty to engage in inappropriate behaviors with minors and with Sandra. So again, nothing that screams correctness.

corruption, but I don't know. Where there's smoke, there's fire to me, and like there's a lot of similar people involved. For example, one of the tech guys who allegedly covered up text messages between Sandra and some of the police officers also is the one who couldn't find anything in Jennifer McCabe's Google history and the Karen Reid case. I mean, it just kind of feels like a lot of men in power covering up for each other, and I'm not trying to like go off on this like fear-mongering conspiracy thing, guys, but

I'm just looking at the two because a lot of people do see parallels in these cases. Now why all of this may or may not tie to Karen Reed, who knows? Again, it's just a coincidence and I thought I would bring it up because a lot of people are seeing the parallels. But basically, Matthew, the one who reportedly was Sandra's baby daddy and had been having this affair with her since she was just 15 years old,

He also was involved in questioning the witnesses in the Karen Reid case. And that doesn't necessarily mean anything, but I think if there is a history or an inclination of dirty cops or cover-up and then now we're in another case where he's involved and there's another cover-up alleged, I mean, where there's smoke, is there fire? I don't know.

I mean, when you talk about the Sander case, you have to ask yourself, what makes more sense here? A man wildly upset about accidentally getting his mistress pregnant, overpowering her and making this crime scene look like a suicide using his expertise as a police detective?

or Sandra Birchmore, an extremely excited, expecting mother hanging herself from a doorknob? I mean, there are so many questions, and for this poor little girl not getting the justice that she deserves, it just breaks my heart. Sandra was just a young, vulnerable girl. She was supposed to be able to trust these men, and instead, she was taken advantage of, and she was groomed by them.

I don't know. Let me know what you guys think about this case. Is there a parallel? Is there something in the water in Canton, Massachusetts with corruption and cover-ups? What do you guys think? I'll keep you updated for everything going on with Karen Reid for sure, and hopefully this does ignite a new interest in Sandra's case being looked into because I have seen so many of the protesters out front of the courthouse for Karen Reid's trial are now also holding posters saying, "'Justice for Sandra.'"

So what's really going on here? What's going on in Boston? All right, guys, thanks again for tuning into another episode. I will be back on the mic with you first thing tomorrow morning to talk all things Chad Daybell trial. And then, of course, I will be on the mic with you first thing Monday with a brand new deep dive case. All right. Thank you, guys. Until then, stay safe. Be nice. Don't kill people. And I will talk with you soon. All right. Bye.