The Prosecutor's Opening Statement U.S. V. Matthew Farwell. As Reported By Grant Smith Ellis

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: This is Sandra. She was about to finish her nursing school requirements. The evidence will show that she had no idea the defendant decided she would die that night. The defendant knew he had a real problem. His wife was going to give birth the next day. The evidence will show that when Matthew Farwell was a 27-year-old Stoughton police officer, he had sex with Sandra when she was 15 years old. That is a crime. But he didn't stop there. Farwell met Sandra over the next eight years to have sex while he was on duty. That was a crime. Farwell worked hard to keep Sandra quiet. He worked hard to keep her quiet to hide his crimes. The evidence will show that once Farwell discovered Sandra had been telling people about his crimes, Sandra was killed as a result. The evidence will show the defendant staged Sandra's body to make it look like she died by suicide. Farwell tried to simulate a hanging by seating Sandra by her closet door. The evidence will not only show that the defendant murdered Sandra Birchmore. The evidence will show why he did so. He did so to prevent his crimes against Sandra from being reported. He coerced her into sex when she was a small child. He abused his position as a police officer to have sex with her, and he defrauded the town of Stoughton to do so. In the second count of the indictment, the defendant Matthew Farwell is charged with murdering Sandra's unborn baby. The defendant met Sandra through the police explorers program when she was 12 years old. Sandra was one of the kids who needed help. She struggled in school and she needed special education services. She was a little different from the other kids. She never knew her father, she had no siblings, and her mother was very sick. Sandra's mother hoped joining the police explorers program would help her to find positive role models. She was enamored with police officers. Instead, this is where she met the defendant. In October 2012, while Sandra was 15 and Matthew Farwell was her instructor, he began using Facebook to groom Sandra. It went from messaging her to putting his hands on her. And later, in 2013, while Sandra was still 15, he put his fingers inside her. Then, on April 15, 2013, he put his penis inside her. That was statutory rape. That is a crime. There are over 40,000 messages from Sandra's phone and laptop with Matthew Farwell. In those messages, Farwell states the best day of his life was taking Sandra's virginity. "I absolutely would have fucked you in 2012," Farwell tells her. She was 14, turning 15. Farwell continued to sexually abuse Sandra for years. Yet, Sandra told the defendant, he was her best friend. The defendant told Sandra to delete all their communications from her phone to hide evidence of his crimes. Farwell's sexual activities escalated over the years to involve violence and domination. The defendant routinely assaulted Sandra. He told her in one of his text messages he loved it when she tried to say no and he pinned her down. The defendant liked to engage in rape fantasies. In 20 messages to Sandra, Farwell talked about choking her. He says in his texts, "I'll grab your throat and say, 'Trust me, I'll do whatever I want.'" At times, Sandra felt sadness. In 2017, she endured extreme grief overcome with the loss of her mother and grandmother. At times, she struggled. Her first sexual experience involved a crime and she was abused for the rest of her life. Sandra also engaged in sexual relationships with others, including Matthew Farwell's brother. While Farwell was busy grooming Sandra, he also started a family of his own. In May 2013, just a few months after taking Sandra's virginity, he and his wife welcomed their first child. By 2019, he had two children. Sandra, for her part, wanted to have children with the defendant, and her messages suggest she told him as much as early as 2019. As Sandra got older, she began to realize what was happening to her and started to tell people. She told Joshua Heal. It was Heal who shared with Sandra in 2020 that Farwell's wife was pregnant with their third child. Over the next several hours, Sandra told Joshua Heal that she would expose Farewell and what he had been doing over the last 10 years unless he gave her what he wanted. Unless he gave her a baby. Sandra, when asked what the defendant would do, said, "Not my problem. He took my virginity before I turned 16." The defendant agreed to impregnate Sandra to silence her for the purpose of covering up his crimes. Farwell had unprotected sex with her on the days she was most likely to conceive, but she didn't get pregnant in October or November. Then she asked him to try again in December. In December 2020, the defendant again had unprotected sex multiple times with Sandra. On December 8th, Sandra learned she was pregnant. All day long, she tried to reach the defendant to share the news. All day, he ignored her. She then sent him a picture saying, "Congrats. We are going to be parents." The defendant replied, "You are truly the worst person on the face of the earth." The evidence will show, over the course of hundreds of messages, at no point did the defendant ever doubt that he was the father of her baby. One day later, on December 9th, Sandra texted the defendant that he scared her. Sandra was barely five feet tall. The defendant is six foot four. Farwell had taken her phone, shoved her, and threatened her. At no time, however, did he deny he was the father, and at no time did he stop engaging in a sexual relationship with Sandra up until the time of her death. January 20th, 2021, a woman who knew Sandra made a call to the Stoughton Police Department. This woman told dispatch about the affair between her and Matthew Farwell. Other than reporting the relationship, however, the dispatcher notified Farwell directly, at which time he told them never to mention it to anyone. You will see evidence that after the January 20th call, the defendant texted Sandra enraged, saying the girl who made that call had caused all sorts of problems for him. People had no idea Sandra had told anyone about their relationship, not until that phone call. "Which other friend will do something tomorrow?" Farwell texted Sandra. Just 12 days after that call to the Stoughton Police, Sandra was dead. It was no longer a question of if the defendant's crimes would be exposed. It was a matter of when. The defendant had lost control of Sandra. Then, in the weeks before her death, Farwell suddenly had a change of heart and did a 180. He would show interest, even care and concern for her. He went out of his way to make Sandra feel safe. He even brought her ginger ale for her morning sickness. Noting it was odd, Sandra told friends and family that he also had asked her for a key to her apartment and that she saw him looking over her bathroom, her kitchen and inside her closets. Though she didn't know why, she knew something was off. Eight days later, Farwell hung Sandra from her closet door. Sandra had told 81 people she was pregnant. She took all sorts of steps to prepare for the baby's arrival. She had photo shoots booked. She had a venue selected for the baby shower. She worked with her doctors to prepare. She restarted her medications. She wanted to protect her unborn child. The one person she could not protect her son from, however, was the defendant. What friend was Matthew Farwell going to run into next? Farwell lost control. His wife was about to give birth, a blizzard was coming in, and he knew it opened the door to a potential delay before Sandra's body would be found. On February 1st, she took steps to make sure her baby would be healthy. She was looking at an EMT position. She was paying for college entrance exams. She also talked to multiple friends and, at 4:43 p.m., Sandra died in the clothes she was wearing in this video. Notice Sandra's hair is in a bun when she moves her car to clean the snow. Just four hours later, she was dead. In her last hour alone, Sandra searched for bookshelves, baby shower venues, and more. Farwell then texted Sandra to ask if she was up. She said yes. He asked if he could come by. She said yes. The last message she ever sent was a message telling him the door was open. Sandra's phone locked at 9:13 p.m., and she never unlocked it again. Strangely, as you will learn, the defendant did not take COVID-19 seriously. She never wore masks and resisted doing so, even when it was required during COVID. In this video, on this day, however, we see the defendant is wearing a face mask. The defendant killed Sandra by putting pressure on her neck and preventing her from breathing. He then moved her lifeless body and hung Sandra from a door to stage her death to look like self-harm. The defendant was counting on the fact that because Sandra was vulnerable, because she has struggled in the past, no one would look into her death. People would see a vulnerable girl tied to a door and assume she did it to herself. Maybe they won't even investigate. And that's exactly what happened. Sandra's hair was no longer in a bun when she was found dead. There was no suicide note. Sandra's cell phone, which had stopped moving when Farwell entered the apartment, was out of her reach. Her flip-flops were oddly upside down near her body. State Police CPAC officers out of Norfolk County were assigned to investigate Sandra's death. Despite all of the evidence you will see, these officers told the medical examiner there was no indication of this being a suspicious death. When the OCME made her initial ruling, she knew less than you just learned in the last 30 minutes. She did not know that Farwell had strangled Sandra in the past, did not know that he had been in her apartment, did not know the history of sexual abuse. The CPAC unit knew all of this from Sandra's family and friends, yet they ignored it. The Norfolk County DA's office did not do even the slightest investigation. Instead, they met Farwell casually in a parking lot, let him keep his phone for days before searching and allowed him to delete material from his phone. The only person that the unit called in the days after her death was the defendant's brother, William Farwell, who had also had a sexual relationship with Sandra over the years. Billy Farwell was also interviewed, and Lieutenant Detective John Fanning told him, "We need this investigation like we need a bullet in the fucking head." MSP got no search warrants and did nothing further. After the FBI began investigating, the OCME changed her opinion. This was a premeditated homicide, and the evidence will prove it. You will hear from Dr. Smock, and he'll tell you about the injuries to Sandra's hyoid bone that are incredibly difficult to inflict on people, in particular when they're younger. You will hear the OCME and Dr. Smock testifying about the injuries to Sandra. You will hear about Farwell's DNA on important evidence, and all of this evidence will confirm for you what the people who knew Sandra best will tell you. Sandra was happy and excited for her future, and she never would have harmed her unborn child. There were zero searches on her devices for ways to commit suicide. Sandra spent the day she died planning for her future, a future that the defendant took away. Over this trial, you'll see the defendant counted on people writing Sandra's death off a suicide. You won't be able to do that. Return a verdict of guilty on both charges.