The Matthew Farwell Trial, Week 2: Sandra Birchmore in Her Own Words

Monday, December 28th, 2020. Sandra Birmore gets a blood test back. She's pregnant. It's her first confirmed pregnancy. And she has always wanted this very much out loud to anyone who would listen for years. She makes a sign. She takes pictures of it. And then she texts it to Matthew Farwell. Congrats. We're going to be parents in 2021. He doesn't answer. An FBI agent told a federal jury on Monday what Sandra did while she waited. In those hours, she told at least eight other people. Eight. She couldn't keep it in.

She was 23 and she was going to be a mom. Then finally his reply. I literally have nothing to say right now. And then according to the messages read to the jury, this one, you truly are the worst person on the face of the earth. 11 days later on January 8th, 2021, prosecutors say that Farwell was texting about something else entirely. Massachusetts was in the middle of a fight over police reform, and one proposal would have actually restricted choke holds. Farwell didn't like it. He thought the wording was dangerous.

And according to the FBI agent who read his messages to the jury, he wrote that if it came down to a choice between choking someone or killing someone, he would in fact choose to choke them. 24 days after that text, Sandra Burmore was dead, found seated on her bedroom floor with a duffel bag strap around her neck, tied to the handle of the closet door. Matthew Farwell has pleaded not guilty. His lawyers say that she took her own life after he ended things and told her the baby wasn't his.

And this week, for the first time, they told the jury whose baby it actually was. But this was the week that the jury actually stopped hearing about Sandra and started hearing from her. Tens of thousands of text messages, hours of them, read out loud by an FBI agent in a courtroom with no cameras, read to 12 people who will decide whether the man on the other end of those messages actually killed her. I'm Robin. You're listening to We Saw the Devil, y'all. Let's get into it.

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[music] Hello everyone. Welcome back again. You're listening to We Saw the Devil. I'm Robin. Happy Tuesday. I know that this case has kind of taken off. And I'm actually doing something a little bit different in this episode as I'm actually going to start with the updates from the trial first. Then we're going to do the really quick housekeeping. And then we're just going to get on into it because there is so much to cover. So, the first thing is a ruling. Judge Casper yesterday on Monday, whenever you're listening to this, ruled that the three women the prosecutors say had affairs with Farwell will in fact be allowed to testify.

The judge apparently decided that when the defense stands up in openings and says the mask and you know, the mask is what people having affairs do, that the government gets to call the people that he did in fact have affairs with and ask whether he ever wore one with them. Which honestly, good. Glad to see it. Glad to hear it. Honestly, that is fair. You opened that door, counselor. You know, you opened it, you held it open, and then you said after you, and they took you up on that offer.

So, secondly, remember the last episode and I told you that the US attorney's office had posted the rough transcript of the opening statements. You know, how great it was to have primary sources on trial when we don't actually have cameras. Well, well, well, well. It turns out that the government had also been posting trial exhibits on that same public page, including photos of Sandra's body, her journal entries, and some items seized from the actual scene. The court was notified this past Friday, and also yesterday on Monday, Judge Casper ordered that no more exhibits be released to the public until there is a verdict.

And that is to obviously protect the jury from outside influence. So, that was the big thing. But here's the part that kind of pisses me off, to be honest, and it's not the order. The order is correct. What makes me angry is that someone at the Department of Justice thought photos of a dead 23-year-old woman's body belonged on a public website in the middle of the [ __ ] jury trial, right? Or her family could find them, which is with just a simple Google search because it's out there now.

You are prosecuting this case on the theory that nobody protected her. So, in the spirit of that, do [ __ ] better. Now, third, the baby's father. On Monday, also, for the very first time in front of the jury, the FBI agent identified him by name. He's an Army recruiter from Quincy. He and Sandra met around December of 2019. Every outlet in Boston printed his name Monday night. You know, he's not accused of anything. He's not on trial. His name doesn't change a single fact in this case that the jury has to decide.

He's he is listed as a possible witness and if he testifies we will hear what he has to say. But he now has been listed and given a name. So those three quick three updates guys. Let's go ahead and get the housekeeping out of the way. If you're liking the show, enjoying the show, want to keep listening, don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. I am on over 30 platforms. From there you can go to the website which is weawthedevil.com. Don't forget follow on Instagram.

It's my Instagram and Tik Tok are my two primary platforms. Instagram is We Saw the Devil podcast. If you want to follow me, the food that I eat, the places that I go, adventures of myself and my wife, you can do that at robin_wd. From there, it's we saw the devil literally everywhere else except for threads, which is we sell the devil podcast. Or how about you just go to we saw the devil.com and find all the links there. Separately, there is a Patreon. And y'all, I love you so much and I'm so sorry I have forsaken you for this week.

But new episode coming, multiple episodes, I I promise you. Cross my heart. Don't hope to die. But tomorrow I will have a Patreon only episode for you guys. So beyond that, y'all, let's just go ahead and get into it because we have a lot of ground to cover. We have so much ground to cover. So for anyone just kind of joining in right now, I know week one was a lot. If you want to hear a recap from week one, I did a full week recap in yesterday's episode.

So, an really really quick recap is openings are on the 9th. The government told the jury that Farwell met Sandra through the Stoen Police Department through the Explorers program when she was 12 years old. He friended her on Facebook when she was 15, tutoed her at a library, and started having sex with her in April of 2013 when she was 15 and he was 27 years old. We learned that in the fall of 2020 when she found out that his wife was pregnant, she demanded a baby or she'd tell.

We also learned on January 20th, 2021 that a friend called his police department and told them about the two of them that they were having an affair. And that 12 days later, on February 1st, he walked into her building in a hood and a surgical mask, stayed for about 20 minutes, and then magically she was found strangled with a duffel bag strap. And what people are saying, at least in this trial, is that he strangled her with that strap and then staged it as a suicide.

That is why we were having this trial currently at all. Now, the defense said that he had an affair. He made mistakes. He went over that night to break it off and tell her that the baby wasn't his and she took her own life out of devastation. Then the first week of witnesses, which you heard about in the last episode again, a state police investigation that never collected the straps duffel bag, interviewed Farwell in a parking lot with no notes taken whatsoever, and then also let the recording of that January 20th call purge.

Now, FBI evidence, which there was some, that Sandra's phone stopped moving while the government says that Farwell was still in the building and that the day that he handed over his phone, he searched whether deleted IME messages could be recovered. That's the foundation of this case, guys. This week, the government started building on it with her own words. That's what I just mentioned. This so far this week, we are hearing in her words via those text messages. So, last episode ended Friday, October 16th, right, with FBI special agent Heidi Kelch on the stand, and she was reading the first messages between Sandra and Farwell out loud to the jury with the assistant US attorney, Elizabeth Ry, uh, Riley reading his side.

The jury went home for the weekend with those in their heads and then came back to Kelch. First thing on Monday morning, yesterday morning, Kelch was back on the stand. She was also still there Tuesday morning. By the time that she was excused late Tuesday morning, earlier today, she'd spent roughly 3 days on the stand, almost all of it reading. She'd been up there roughly 8 hours over Friday and Monday alone before the defense was even done with her. The FBI says it pulled about 24,000 communications between the two of them from her devices.

The government told the jury in openings that it was more than 40,000 across everything, all platforms. I mean, either way, this is the spine of the case, right? This is where the government's theory either lives or dies because it's the only place in this trial where the jury actually does get to hear both people speak. Earlier today, Tuesday, the jury actually got to hear Sandra's OBGYn who took a real bite out of one of the defense's central arguments. I'll get to that. Then from the dispatcher who took the January 20th call and then from a childhood friend holding a Winnie the Pooh onesie.

And here's how this episode's going to go. Okay, so part one, Monday's direct examination. So what Kel read in order from the childhood messages to the ultimatum, then the night of the phone call to his job. Next, Monday's cross, which is the paternity reveal, uh, the defense's case for suicide, again, built out of Sandra's own words. Part three is going to be Tuesday earlier today, the rest of Kelch, the doctor, the dispatcher, and the onesie. And then lastly, what it all adds up to. And then obviously, we're going to top it off and end with reality check, which this week is about one specific question.

What changes when the adult grooming a young child is wearing an Elio badge? So again, same rules apply as always. Farwell has pleaded not guilty to both counts and is presumed innocent. The defense hasn't put on his case yet. And when I tell you something um when I tell you that something was said, I mean they said it. All right, so let's start with Monday. What the agent read. We're going to start with Kelch and let's start with how this actually worked in the room. Okay, because it kind of matters for understanding why this week landed as as it did.

And just as an aside too, what is baffling to me is just how much this case has taken off on social media. When I first announced that I was announced an update in this case, multiple people messaged me and they're like, "I haven't heard of this case. Haven't heard of this case. Like, what is this?" and it has taken off and it is very very he being it's being heavily discussed on uh Tik Tok especially especially from yesterday or sorry Twitter especially yesterday when all of these text messages came back because there's no video there's no audio of the texts we just have the messages up on the juror's monitors and two people in the room reading them on Friday Kelch read Sandra's words and the prosecutor read farwells the two of them were essentially roleplaying Sandra and the defendant, right?

And the effect is that it stopped sounding like evidence and started sounding like a conversation. It puts you inside the conversation, like a real one, right, between two real people. It humanizes. And it just so happens that one of the people that they're roleplaying is sitting at the defense table listening to somebody else read read his half of the the conversation. Now, Kelch is one of the FBI agents who took the case in October of 2023. After that uh Stoen internal affairs report made its way to the FBI, she told the jury that she went through hundreds of thousands of messages from devices belonging to both of them.

On Monday, she picked up roughly where she left off. And we're going to start at the beginning. All right. So on Friday of last week, the jury the jury already seen the Facebook friend request, October 28th, 2012. Sandra was 15 years old and Farwell was a Stoen police officer and an instructor in the explorers program that she joined when she was 12. I think we have well established that at this point. They also heard that the first of the messages in which the two of them years later as adults, you know, went back to the beginning.

The date Sandra wrote down is the day he first had sex with with her was April 10th, 2013. She was 15, a high school sophomore. He was 27. And a month later, he married someone else. On Monday, the jury heard more of that, like a lot more of it. Kelch told the jury that she identified about two dozen times over the last years of Sandra's life where the two of them went back over that first encounter or the tutoring sessions at the library, you know, that predated that.

And in none of them did Farwell deny having sex with her or correct her. The jury also heard a journal entry. Sandra wrote it in October of 2013 when she was 16 years old and she wrote it about Farwell's upcoming birthday. It's, you know, by 16 we have a girl's private diary, the one place a teenager gets to think without any, you know, without anyone having eyes on or, you know, watching. And she's already organized around what a married police officer, don't forget, more than a decade older than her, wanted.

You know, that's not a love story. That's what it looks like from the inside when grooming is working. Then Kelch described a pattern across the notebooks in the text. There were conversations where sex was framed as a punishment. Farwell punishing Sandra. Kelch identified about 18 of those conversations and then there were the choking messages. Kelch testified that there were many of those lengthy in the context of sex and that the topic came up in her words many times. Now, prosecutors care about this for one specific reason, okay?

And it's not just to make us uncomfortable or him uncomfortable, although it obviously does. Their theory is that Farwell had put his hands on her neck so many times during sex, you know, in a context that she'd been taught to accept that on February 1st, 2021, she let him do it again. That's how the government explains why there was no struggle in her bedroom. no defensive wounds, you know, none of his DNA under her fingernails, which the defense keeps pointing out, by the way. You know, their answer is, well, she didn't fight because she didn't know this time was different.

And I want to kind of slow down on one particular text from the government's direct because I think it's going to be one of the most important exhibits in the trial, and it actually isn't sexual at all. January 8th, 2021, Massachusetts is arguing about police reform. One of the proposals would limit choke holds. And the, you know, I I mentioned this in the beginning of the episode. Kelch told the jury that Farwell texted about it. He objected to it. He asked about an amendment saying an officer should not use a chokeold.

And he said the wording was dangerous and explained why. And then he said that if he had to choose between, you know, choking someone or killing someone, he would choke the person. Now, the defense is going to have an answer for this. So, here it is. That's obviously just a cop talking about use of force on the job. It's just a policy argument, right? Plenty of police officers texted or discussed or made that exact same argument in Massachusetts in 2020 and 2021. On its own, it proves absolutely nothing about what happened in Sandra's apartment.

Okay? But it was sent just 24 days before she died, 11 days after she told him that she was pregnant by a man that the government is obviously now saying had choked her dozens and dozens and dozens of times during sex. And the government put it in front of the jury on purpose right next to the choking messages so that the jurors would hear the word choke in his own voice, right, in two different contexts just a few minutes apart. So, I don't know if a lot of you keep up with the theatrics of trials and all of that, but that was definitely a theatrical that was a purposeful decision on the side of the prosecution.

They wanted the the choking put into those separate contexts. And that's not an accident, right? They are building a bridge and they're kind of trying to invite the jury like here, take our hands and, you know, cross this bridge with us. That's what they're doing. But in any case, I just wanted to point that out as well. The biggest news out of Monday though was definitely the ultimatum. Okay, October 5th, 2020. A Monday, Sandra is 23 years old and she finds out that Farwell's wife is pregnant with their third child.

So, she texts her friend Josh Heel. Now, Heel was working in Stoton as an animal control officer when they met in 2019, and he became one of the people that Sandra basically told everything to. And Kelse read the exchange to the jury. Sandra tells Heels she's going to tell Farwell's wife. She says, quote, "I'm telling her what he's been doing the last 10 years." 10 years, y'all do the math on that. October 2020 minus 10 years is 2010. Sandra was 12 or 13 in 2010. That's the year that she joined the Explorers.

He asks what she thinks that Farwell will do. And Sandra says, "Not my problem. He took my virginity before I was 16." And I've mentioned that multiple times because that has been a text messages uh text message available to us because she wasn't confessing anything, right? She wasn't crying for help. She said it as a threat, as leverage, as the most dangerous fact that she possessed. By 23, she understood exactly what that sentence meant legally, professionally, you know, all the above for Farwell. She knew that it could end his career.

She knew that it would end his marriage most likely. And the government's whole case is that she was right and that is why she is now dead. But it gets more specific. Kelch testified that Sandra told Heal that Farwell had previously tried to force her to have an abortion. She also showed Heal a draft of a message she planned to send Farwell's wife, telling her that he'd been cheating on her since before they were even married. Heel asked if she was really going to send it, and Sandra said, quote, "Once he makes his decision, I have the upper hand in this." And that same day, she texted Farwell directly.

Kelch read those two. Sandra demanded to know whether his wife was pregnant, and she told him that she would expose the relationship unless he agreed to give her a baby. Farwell went to see her that very evening. And afterward, Sandra told Heel that he'd agreed to give her what she wanted so his wife wouldn't find out. Now, the defense is going to wave this exchange in front of the jury and say one word, okay? And that word is blackmail. and they're going to have his own text to back it up, right?

Because the jury heard Farwell say exactly that. He wrote, quote, "You blackmailed me into getting what you wanted." Or, I mean, depending on whose notes you're from the courtroom, you know, you read, "You extorted me to get what you wanted." Right? Either way, that's what they're going to call it. So, let's take that seriously. Was it a threat? Absolutely, 100%. Did she use the only leverage that she had in that situation, that power imbalance? Abso freakingutely she did. Was it ugly? Sure. But what that framing leaves out is that the leverage she had was the fact that they've been having sex with, you know, he'd been having sex with her since before she was 15.

The thing she was threatening to reveal was his crime against her. The blackmail story only works if you start the clock right back in October of 2020. started in 2012 at the friend request when he sent her one and it's very different. So, we're gonna talk about that more in reality check when we get through the episode. But the dispute didn't end that night. Kelch testified that over the following weeks the two of them fought about what exactly he had agreed to. Farwell insisted that he'd agreed to only try on limited occasions.

Sandra pushed to keep him uh pushed him to keep what she called his promises. October 20th, 2020. Sandra asks him whether he'd be okay if she got pregnant. Far Farwell replied, "Not really, but you made it clear I don't have an option." In December, the argument kept going. Farwell accused Sandra of changing the terms. Sandra said that he wasn't keeping his word. Then in mid December, Sandra told him about a doctor's visit about a possible pregnancy. And Farwell wrote back that he was freaking out. And Sandra answered him and said, quote, "If anyone should be scared, it's not you.

And I think that's the most like cleareyed sentence here, right? Like she knew who had the power. She knew who'd be left holding a baby, no money, and in a secret if things went bad, right? And it wasn't him. It was not Farwell. But then on December 28th, we have this sign. Congrats, we're going to be parents in 2021. Again, hours of nothing, no response from Farwell. She told eight people. quote, "I literally have nothing to say right now. You are truly the worst person on the face of the earth." That was obviously from him.

And the jury heard more from that stretch as well. Farwell writing that she didn't care about anything but herself. And then he said, "This is completely my fault. I should have just walked away and let you hurt yourself." Now, the defense reads that as she'd threatened to hurt herself before. He knew it, and he stayed because he was afraid of what she'd do. The government reads it as a man telling a pregnant woman he wishes that he'd let her harm herself. Okay, I don't have to tell you which reading I find more natural, but I'll tell you it's going to, you know, be in both closing arguments.

But the detail that I I can't stop thinking about here is while he was sending her these messages, okay, while he was sending her these messages, Sandra was texting a friend about themes for her baby shower. the cognitive dissonance and I don't I'm not a very nice person. I'm truly not. But obviously this is a murder victim, right? Sandra is obviously a murder victim and that is heinous and horrible and awful and sad. And I have heard multiple people in this case close to this case like involved and and personal friends and whatnot say that she was a little bit intellectually challenged.

And it certainly does seem that way, I would say. And it's very sad, especially when you take into account her horrible home life when she was a child. She was groomed from such a young age. And to be 23 in her early 20s, still consumed by this and wanting a a a baby by a man who obviously hates her, it's just it's just so [ __ ] up. But in any case, let's move on to January 20th, 2021. Okay. And again, you know this part from last week, but on Monday, the jury heard it again.

A friend of Sandra's called the Stone Police Department. The call started as a complaint about money. It turned into a report that Sandra and Farwell were having sex. The dispatcher was a man named James Filton, and he still works for the town, by the way, in a different department. and he immediately went and told Farwell and Farwell texted Sandra. NBC actually printed it in with the swears uh bleeped out the uh he said, "Dude, your [ __ ] friend called my [ __ ] job, Sandra.

What the fuck?" And then he said, "You told me nobody knew about us, but she said that we were [ __ ] What else do I have to worry about now? You have no idea how bad what she did really is." That's the motive. Okay. as the government sees it. In one evening, the secret that he'd kept since 2012 had just walked in the front door of his own police station, you know, via phone call, obviously, and and made itself known. But then he changed. 4 days later, January 24th, Sandra text a friend and Kel read it out loud in court.

Quote, "He asked me if I'd give him a key and said that if I keep it a secret, he'll be around." She called it a complete 180 from where they'd been. The jury also saw a Walmart receipt. The next day, January 25th, Sandra went and had a copy of her apartment key made. She texted Farwell that their conversation had given her some kind of hope and reassurance that they could make it work and be okay again. And that same day, she wrote that they'd both been cold-hearted toward each other, and she wanted to start over.

She called the year ahead a beautiful adventure. And that same night, the 24th, she told more than one person that something had been off, that he'd opened her closet door, that he looked around her bathroom. Was just really odd, she said. He just started looking around. That closet is where she was found 8 days later. The government's word for that week is lulled. That's what they're calling it. Their theory is that after the call to his job, he stopped fighting her and started showing up. brought her ginger ale for her morning sickness, asked her for a key, made her feel safe, so that when he texted, "Are you still up?" at 9:07 p.m. on February 1st, she told him that the door would be open.

And a few more pieces of Monday's direct, got less attention, but a couple of them, at least in my opinion, are pretty important. The first is a spreadsheet. Kelch told the jury that she charted 49 instances of the two of them meeting in person. And for each one, she logged where they met, who reached out to who first, whether Farwell was on the clock, and whether he claimed comp time. 49, y'all. And there was a column for on duty as well. That chart is for the wire fraud count.

Okay. The federal crime. The government says that Farwell killed her to hide, right? You know, that's what that is for. Remember the chief last week walking the jury through the duty rosters and the shift schedules and all the boring [ __ ] and everyone was like, "Why is this happening?" This is why. Now, second, after the pregnancy news, things got dark real fast. After a meeting on December 29th, 2020, uh 20 I almost said 2020. It's been a day. Um, after December 29th, 2020, which was the day after the sign, Sandra wrote that she was frightened that Farwell might kill her and that she'd been crying.

That lines up perfectly with what her friends told the jury last week, that he grabbed her phone, took her laptop, and actually shoved her hard. And then two days later on December 31st, which obviously New Year's Eve, Sam Sandra writes to him, quote, "I want you around for the baby. I don't want to lose my best friend. Frightened that he'd hit her on the 29th, calling him her best friend on the 31st. If you've never been in a relationship like that, bless you. It probably sounds absolutely impossible for that to happen.

If you have, which I also have, that absolutely sounds exactly right and like something that would happen. Now, third, Kel testified that Sandra told about 85 people that she was pregnant. again. 85 85. And in January 2021, she consulted lawyers about a possible custody dispute. She told a friend a court fight was likely. That's the attorney on the government's witness list. Jessica Catz, she's the lawyer that Sandra contacted in January of 2021. Now, we know, at least in kind of in a broad sense, why she called a custody fight, which means that Sandra was planning for this baby to exist. obviously, right?

And then obviously planning for a court to decide um you know what Matthew Farwell owed it. Think about for a second what a custody fight with a married Stoen police detective would look like. Lawyers, filings, the paternity question, questions about how long the relationship had been going on, questions about when it started. A courtroom is exactly the place where he took my virginity before I was 15 or before I was 16. That stops being just a little text to a friend and it becomes actual legal testimony that could end someone's life.

And then lastly, the night of the call after the January 20th call along, you know, with a called my [ __ ] job text, you know, I literally, he said, I literally can't believe this is even real life. One more piece of evidence on Monday. Okay. Kelch testified that in July 2018 when Sandra was 21, she had a brief relationship with Farwell's twin brother, William, and said that there was no evidence of sexual contact between them before Sandra turned 18. William Farwell has never been charged with any crime.

He's actually on the government's witness list. That's all I'll say about him until he testifies again. But I just wanted to at least point that out that she did in fact apparently have a relationship with his twin brother. Now, one more exhibit from Monday's Direct, and it's kind of a weird one. In June of 2021, just four months after Sandra died, Farwell went through an evaluation connected to disability benefits. Prosecutors put the report in front of the jury. And in it, Farwell reported that he'd had an affair in 2016 or 2017 with a woman who later threatened to tell his wife.

And then the report said this quote, "According to Matt, the woman later completed suicide in response to the entire situation." Again, again, there was a report. Okay. Four months after Sandra died, Farwell went through an evaluation connected to disability benefits and prosecutors put it in front of and you know in it he said that he'd had an affair in 2016 or 2017 with a woman who threatened to tell his wife and she completed suicide. Now I'll tell you what the defense did with that. They did earlier today actually because they did actually have a real answer for for that.

But think about what the government wants the jury to hear here, right? Four months after Sandra's death, Farwell is telling an evaluator a story about an affair with a woman who threatened to tell his wife and then killed herself. The government's position is that is that Sandra and that he'd already settled on the version of events that he wanted the world to believe and investigators, all of it. And that's where Monday's direct ended. Okay. And then Joanne Daly stood up. Joanne Dailyaly is the defense attorney who handled most of the state police witnesses last week and she does not waste time.

She gets to it within minutes. I mean just literally two minutes of starting her cross-examination of Kelch. She got the thing she got to the thing that the defense has been waiting all trial to say in front of the jury and that is that Matthew Farwell is not the father of Sandra's baby. Now you know that you know I told you in the very first episode because it was already common knowledge. The government has never disputed that DNA testing after her death excluded Farwell. But until Monday, the jury had only heard of it in the abstract.

On Monday, Daly medal made the FBI say who the father actually was. Kelch testified that a DNA swab was taken from a man that Sandra had a sexual relationship with during the same period that she was seeing Farwell. He again he was an Army recruiter from Quincy. They'd met around December 2019. The paternity test identified him as the father. And then Daly asked when Kelch learned that. And Kelch's answer was not until after Farwell was arrested. which means the FBI arrested Farwell in August of 2024 for killing a woman he believed was carrying his child without yet knowing whose child it was.

The defense wants the jury to hear that is sloppy. The government's answer is that it doesn't really matter because their theory has never been about who the father was. It's about who Farwell thought the father was. And then came what I think is the defense's best moment of the week. Under questioning, Kelse recalled that Sandra texted two people. two people that Farwell was not the father. And le let's let's not pretend that's nothing, right? The government's case leans hard on well, both of them believed he was the father.

The FBI said Monday again that Farwell never once expressed doubt about paternity in his text to her. But if Sandra herself told two people it wasn't his, then the defense gets to say she knew. You know, she knew. Maybe she knew. Maybe that's exactly, you know, what he went over to say on February 1st. It's not mine, which I mean, which is their whole story. We don't know. But, you know, sometimes the accounts in the courtroom don't line up. So, you get both versions of this.

On direct, Kelch testified that Sandra told about 85 people she was pregnant and never expressed doubt that Farwell was the father. On cross, she recalled Sandra texting two people that he wasn't the father. Now, those can obviously both be true. Never doubting it to most people and saying something completely different is it's very human. You know what I mean? Especially if you're scared or angry at him or trying to protect someone. But that is a real tension and the defense is going to have to address it.

Then Daily turned to the part of the cross that took up the rest of Monday. Sandra's mental health. In again in Sandra's own words. Now, this is the heart of the defense, okay? Because the defense is entitled to have its case heard. Um, I think, guys, I'm just going to say this once. I'm going to say it out loud. I never do this again. We all know he did it, right? Like, does anyone listening to this genuinely believe that this man did not kill her? I mean, seriously, please let me know if that is how you feel.

You can email info@ weawthedevil.com. Let me know. Give me your take. I want to hear it. But I think like it's pretty we're pretty safe altogether me just making a lump conclusion that we all believe that he did it right. Okay. Because Yeah. But um I want to make sure that I give both the defense and the prosecution or the state um you know the the same amount of uh time and attention. But let's talk about that. All right. February 19th, 2019. Sandra was 21. She texted Farwell about her mental health and she wrote about harming herself.

Farwell's response, "That's not good." That legitimately was this man's response. October 26, 2019, Sandra tells him that she has no reason to be around anymore and that she's more damaged than is fixable. She said, "I'm not ever gonna have what I want in life." And Farwell's answer was, "I have already apologized 400 times." Okay, I'm I'm I'mma let you decide how you feel about that reply because I already know how I feel about it. A young woman tells the man that she's been involved with since she was 15 [ __ ] years old that she has no reason to stay alive, and he quite literally responds with a complaint about how much she's had to apologize for that.

But I digress. January 17th, 2020. Another exchange, this time about an appointment where she says she feels like there's no point. December 28th, 2020, the same day as the pregnancy announcement. In text with Farwell that day, Sandra threatened to move far away because nobody cared about her and talked about hurting herself. In the middle of that fight, she wrote, "I wish I was never born." Which, if you think about the timeline, is the same day that she sent the sign, the picture of the sign to him.

"Congrats, we're going to be parents." waited for for hours and then he finally got back telling her that she was the worst person on the face of the earth. But on direct, the government had already gotten ahead of that one. Kelch testified that she found no searches, no messages to anyone else, and no journal entries connected to those statements. Said in a fight to him and nowhere else. The jury also heard about May 2020. Sandra was involuntarily hospitalized under what Massachusetts calls a section 12, which is an emergency psychiatric hold.

That's the well-being check that Detective Chver testified about last week. And from the hospital, Sandra texted Farwell that she wasn't suicidal and asked for her best friend to come visit her. Her best friend was him, y'all. Farwell was her best friend. And Daly read a note in which Sandra described a past suicide attempt where she apologized to Farwell and thanked him for being her number one supporter. She also pointed to other messages where Sandra called herself a mistake and an inconvenience. And here's what that does to me.

All right, the defense is reading those words to prove that she was suicidal, and they are absolutely heartbreaking. But read them again and look at who she's talking to. She's talking to the man who'd been having sex with her since she was a child. You know, that's the person that she apologizes to after she tries to die. He's the one that she calls her number one supporter. He's who she asked for from a hospital bed. The defense calls that history of mental illness. And I'd call it what happens when a person's whole world whole world, you know, that's what happens to a person's whole world. when the most important adult in her life is the one that is actually actively abusing her and has been.

There was also an undated message to Farwell that Daly read directly to the jury. Quote, "Please understand that I will not be around forever unless things change. I feel you use me just to get laid." Again, that's what Sandra sent to Farwell. Then Daly went into the notebooks. July 1st, 2017, Sandra was 20. her mother and grandmother had both died the year before. She wrote that she didn't feel that there was any point going on and that she'd been treated badly and she wrote an actual goodbye.

We made a lot of memories. I hope you cherish your memories of me. Kelch also acknowledged on the stand that Sandra had discussed a previous suicide attempt. Then we're going to talk about the money. In mid January 2021, Kelch testified that Sandra had $264 in her bank account. Kelch described her finances, you know, as she just got paid, like she paid her bills. Dailyy asked whether financial stress as a factor in suicide, and Kelch said it would depend on the individual. In late 2021, Sandra was actually rejected from the nursing program at Simmons.

Remember from openings on the day that she died, she'd just paid to take the entric exam. Well, the defense version of that is there was a rejection, a pregnancy, a pregnancy she was scared about, $2 in her bank account, a married man pulling away from their affair. The government version is she got rejected from the nursing school program, immediately signed up for the entrance exam at another one. Like, that's not a woman planning to die, right? That's a woman with a plan B who has her [ __ ] at least relatively together.

But then on Monday, we're finishing up Monday here. The last piece of the defense's cross on Monday, we got pictures. And before she got there though, Daly did something really, really interesting. She walked Kelch through what Sandra was doing in the days before she died. And it included again scheduling a newborn photo shoot, buying things for the baby. On February 1st itself, Kel testified Sandra looked up an EMT course. She searched baby names. She asked for medical advice. She messaged Farwell about her stomach pain and not sleeping well.

And she told him to be careful in the winter weather because there was a noraster coming. She was worried about Farwell driving in it. And then Daly showed the jury images recovered from Sandra's Instagram cache, the uh you know the store data from the app. And those were dated February 1st, 2021, the day she died. One of them was a graphic with text about dying for a day just to see who would cry. And you know that's that's the defense's best physical evidence they have of suicidal thinking on her on the at least related to the last um that they can plot on the last day of her life, right?

Is just a meme about seeing who would cry if you died for a day. And that's what they're trying to do that to prove that she was um had suicidal thoughts. I'll be putting that up next against what happened earlier today on Tuesday, but we're getting there in a second. But in any case, court ended Monday with Kelch still on cross. All right. Now, outside the courtroom Monday also produced two orders from Judge Casper that actually do matter. The first one was the one that I told you about in housekeeping.

No more exhibits posted publicly until there is a verdict. And then also the ruling on the three women. They will be allowed to testify. And those women, according to the government's motion, will say that Farwell never ever hid his encounters with them. He never wore a mask. He never wore a disguise, which that is a sincere problem for the defense, whose entire explanation for the mask on February 1st is that he was hiding the affair. Now, after Kelch, the government planned to call two doctors and the first one came in early this morning.

Kelch took the stand Tuesday again for the third day in a row. uh third day in a row and daily picked right back up. First, she covered Sandra's searches in January of 2021. Kelch walked through them. How much bleeding is normal in early pregnancy, ultrasound pictures, miscarriages, baby shower locations, the baby's heartbeat, daycare, how to store breast milk, and Planned Parenthood. And the defense wants that list read is a woman terrified that she was losing the baby. And Planned Parenthood is the item on that list that they're going to lean on real [ __ ] hard.

The government wants the same list read as what it actually looks like. Like a first time mom googling everything, right? Like every first-time mom in America does at some point, you know, at 2 in the morning when they can't sleep. But breast milk storage is not a search that you're going to run or make if you've given up and don't plan to get there. Can we agree on that? Next, a medical record from September 2013. There was a well visit when Sandra was 16, and it mentions issues that could have been controlled with birth control.

And in it, Sandra denied that she was having sex. And I know why the defense brought that up. And I mean, it is in fact the smart thing to do. Last week, the government corroborated that the April 2013 date, partly um they corroborated it like partly with the medical record showing that Sandra first asked for birth control in May of 2013. So, the defense's point here is well, her own medical chart from that fall says that she wasn't sexually active. And y'all, a 16-year-old girl who has been told over and over and over by a police officer to keep their relationship secret, to delete their messages, told a told her pediatrician she wasn't having sex.

That isn't evidence that the abuse did not happen. That's the secrecy, right? The proddding her, the telling her to be quiet. That's what worked. That is quite [ __ ] literally what grooming is for. But now, you know, here are the two answers from Tuesday's cross that I think actually help the defense. All right. And again, I think that these two items actually help the defense. First, Daly asked whether Kelch ever saw any message from Farwell threatening to kill Sandra if she told anyone. And Kelch said that she wasn't aware of anything like that.

All right? And I know that may seem simple, right? And I mean, do not get me wrong, y'all. Again, I think that this man is going to fry, but that could be potentially helpful for him. I'm just I'm trying to be honest here. And it um you know, the government's theory doesn't really need a direct threat to Sandra because their theory is that he went quiet. He got nice. He lulled her at the end. But you can bet that that line ends up in the defense's closing.

Thousands of messages, years of fighting, and there's not a single threat from Farwell to Sandra via text. Now, secondly, the key. The government made a huge fuss on Monday about Sandra telling a friend that Farwell asked her for a key. Well, on Tuesday, earlier today, Daly got Kelch to agree that there are texts where Sandra says that he asked her for a key. And there are other texts where Sandra asks him if he wants one. In other words, the defense says the keys, you know, that the key wasn't some sinister request.

It actually went both ways between both of them. Fair point and duly noted. All right. You know, also the Walmart receipt is dated the day after, you know, he asked me if I give him a key, that particular text. So, whoever brought it up first, the key was copied right after the phone call to his job, right after he started acting like a different man. The defense can split hairs over who said key first. Sure. You know, then that timing is what the government is probably going to argue.

But then back to the back to trial. Daily went back to the disability evaluation, the one with the line about the woman who uh completed suicide. Kelch confirmed the document says Farwell reported an affair with a woman who later died by suicide who tried to blackmail him. And then Daly got to the part where she, you know, that that that she wanted, which was there's no specific mention of Sandra's name in it, and it was created after Sandra's death. Okay, then it was the government's turn again.

Assistant US Attorney Elizabeth Riley did redirect and she went right at what the defense had spent an entire day and a half building here. And that she went back to the messages, okay? And she didn't pick the soft ones either. She put up an exhibit describing a sexual encounter and focused the jury on what it showed about Farwell. It was about him being physical with her and about how he liked having power over her. Then another exchange and in that one Farwell says one of their encounters really felt like rape and Sandra writes back that she cried after he left.

Okay, I'm there are so many of these messages and I'm not going to continue going through each one individually. Okay, but here is why the government used it on redirect. The defense had just spent hours telling the jury about Sandra's pain, her journal, her self harm, her suicidal messages, hospitalization, all of this [ __ ] right? Well, the government's answer was, "Well, yeah, she was in pain. Look at the [ __ ] you know, man who was causing a lot of it." And then we got the text messages for that.

So, Kelch testified that in many of the messages, Farwell didn't want to talk about specific things in writing. He preferred to do everything in person. I mean, that's a detective who doesn't want things in writing, right? Who tells her to delete her messages, who deletes his, who then Googles whether deleted eye messages can be recovered. Like, you see what the the shape of that, right? Then two messages from December 2020. In one of those, Sandra asked for a heart-to-heart with Farwell and told him that she'd been hurt from day one.

In another, she said that she'd never been cold-hearted until the past year or two. And she asked to sit down with him and asked if he was okay. She asked if he was okay. Eight years in, pregnant, fighting with him, and she was still checking on him. Prosecutors also went back to the Instagram images. They asked Kelch about the two suicide related images from her feed. And Kelch said there's no way to confirm that Sandra actually saw them. You know, they were two of at least a thousand images in that cache.

So, she was not able to prove that. And that is a big deal, right? Because a cache isn't a search history. It's what the app loaded onto her phone. So, two images in a pile of a thousand doesn't really tell you what she specifically decided to look like. It just tells you that the algorithm showed a sad meme to a to a sad woman, basically. And then one last recross from Daily today. She got Kelch to say that there's no evidence that Farwell tried to delete anything off of Sandra's devices, you know, the ones that were found in her apartment.

And with that, Kelch was excused up there for 3 days. Again, well over uh eight hours of testimony on the stand. And then the court got a 22minute break. When it came back, the government called Priyanka Vinkan Termaran, Sandra's OBGYn. And before she started, Judge Casper actually gave the jury an instruction. The doctor wasn't testifying as a hired expert. She was Sandra's treating physician, testifying about facts and some opinions, and that the jury should weigh her opinions like any other. So, assistant US Attorney Tori Cummings did the direct.

And this testimony was very, very quiet, very, very clinical, and it was pretty devastating. So, I'm going to give you quite a bit of this. Sandra was her patient from 2019 until her death. And the doctor said that Sandra came to her and said that she was interested in getting pregnant soon. And the doctor helped her to prepare to try. She said Sandra's chart noted that she was in a relationship with a police officer and that she worked at East Elementary in Sharon. And here's a small detail from the chart that that tells you a lot.

All right. The record noted that both Sandra's mother and her partner were twins. Doctors note that because twins on both sides can mean a higher chance of twins. And Matthew Farwell is a twin. The man Sandra told her doctor was her partner before she was even pregnant was Matthew Farwell. Then the timeline, there was a blood test on December 28th, 2020 confirmed the pregnancy. Another one on January 8th showed it progressing. At an ultrasound on January 18th, the fetus measured 6 weeks and 4 days. There was a heartbeat.

The due date was September 9th, 2021. And by the date math, on the night she died, she was about 8 and 12 weeks along. Okay. So, the doctor explained that pregnancy care includes mental health screening. One of the questions asked whether in the last seven days the patient thought about hurting herself or someone else. Sandra's score showed no suicidal ideiation. Then they discussed the Zoloft. And you'll remember from last week the defense made a huge stink of a prescription written on January 21st which was 11 days before her death.

You know that the warning that anti-depressants can increase suicidal thoughts in younger patients. And the doctor addressed that directly. She testified about that risk as a whole. And she said if Sandra had screened with any sign of suicidal thinking that they would have requested an evaluation right away. On January 22nd, Sandra sent a message through the patient portal saying that she felt shaky on the medication. So, the doctor slowed down the dose increase. Look at what that is. That's a 23-year-old 8 weeks pregnant. starts a new medication, notices a side effect, messages her doctor about it the very next day through the patient portal.

The doctor adjusts it. That's not someone spiraling into the abyss, y'all. That's a patient taking care of herself and her baby with her medical team that was being attentive and paying attention. Sandra was also seeing a therapist twice a week, so taking care of herself. Then we have the spotting. The defense has hammered this in openings all through Cross. Sandra was afraid that she was losing the pregnancy. And the doctor testified that yes, Sandra had concerns about spotting back in mid January. But that's not unusual and it cleared up.

You know, a week before Sandra died on January 25th, the office told her that the baby was growing and viable, that the heartbeat was getting faster and stronger. Their last interaction of Sandra and the doctor was January 29th, just 3 days before her death. And the doctor said that by every indication, the pregnancy was wanted. She said Sandra was holding down a job, making every appointment, every followup. She regularly contacted the office with any concern or any change. And when the doctor heard that Sandra had died and that state authorities had called it suicide, she was takenback because they had just talked days earlier. her words, quote, "I was surprised.

We had no indications of her destabilizing." Now, on Cross, Farwell's lawyers went to the pregnancy complications. You know, the doctor confirmed that Sandra had a perest uh gestational um hemorrhage, which is bleeding near the pregnancy and the uterus. Those can be dangerous. They're also pretty common, and they often resolve completely on their own. The doctor said that they were monitoring it with repeated uh ultrasounds and it hadn't seemed to affect the pres uh the pregnancy by the time that Sandra died. So, the defense has a real medical finding to point at here, right?

Like they do actually have something to say, hey, look at that. But the doctor who was actually treating it says it wasn't affecting the pregnancy at all. Then the court went to lunch and when they came back before the jury returned, Judge Casper handed a ruling that, you know, according to a reporter that I read who was live posting from inside the courtroom, went the government's way. You see, the defense wanted to introduce two exhibits. The first a record, the second a letter, and it would be from a provider named Dr.

Leonard. The judge kept them out, and her reasoning is that the last appointment in those records was back in March of 2012. So, they're a long way from the actual events of this case. It wasn't even clear from the document that he saw Sandra that day. The record the records were there and the judge just walked through the exceptions one by one and found that none of them fit. And Dr. Leonard has since died. So, it's not like he can be called from the grave to explain them, right?

Which meant that whatever value they had was outweighed by the risk of unfair prejudice. So, moving on, March 2012, Sandra was 14 years old. So, the defense wanted to reach back to a record from her early teens from a provider who can't be cross-examined to tell the jury about her state of mind 9 years later. The judge said no, and I personally agree with that. Then the doctor came back for redirect and the government's point was simple. When Sandra had a concern, did she tell you?

And the doctor said, "Yes, yes, she absolutely did." Sometimes multiple messages back and forth in the same day. She asked for her ultrasound results in a day she was already coming in to see the nurse practitioner. She wanted to keep the doctor in the loop with everything. And the doctor described her as advocating for herself and her own care. This did she message about side effects? Yes. The jitteriness was bothering her and not just once. There were multiple reports of that. Did she report worsening depression or anxiety after starting the Zoloft?

Not that the doctor knew of. Did she ever report thoughts of self harm? Absolutely not. And that's the whole point of the redirect. The defense's theory needs a, you know, Sandra who was silently spiraling in her last days. Her doctor described a Sandra who told them everything sometimes several times a day, super communicative, including the very little, you know, the small stuff. If she'd been in crisis, which is what the doctor is saying here, the patient was the type to tell us. On recross, the defense went back to the Zoloft.

They pointed the doctor to a record saying that Sandra hadn't been on medication in the last 9 or 10 years and suggested that there was a question about whether she'd actually taken um certulin before. The doctor said that she couldn't confirm that either way. The defense's point with that is whether a patient has tolerated a medication before matters and that the record may not have been as clean as the government suggested is. And then the last question was you only knew what Sandra reported to you, right?

Obviously, the doctor had to say yes, which is true. And which also cuts the other way as well. Like what Sandra reported right up to January 29th was a wanted viable pregnancy. You know, side effects that she was managing herself, being very vocal about to get support with and no thoughts of harming herself. After that conversation, the doctor was excused. And then the government called the witness the whole trial has been waiting on since openings, and that's James Fitton, who was the dispatcher. Now, Fitton works as a public safety dispatcher at the Stoen Police Department from 2018 to late 2022, and that's when he moved back to the town's uh building department, and that's where he still works to this day.

He told the jury that dispatchers are not sworn officers. In January 2021, he was at that point working the night shift, and he was asked about masks during the pandemic, and he said that the department had a mask protocol, and he didn't recall Farwell wearing one. add him to the list. Right, that's five Stotton witnesses now who have made comments. I mean, five Stoen Witnesses as a whole right now. And then here we go. You know, more on the masks. On January 20th, 2021, a call came into the department's business line and it was late in the evening.

Fitten said that he doesn't specifically remember the day, but the record shows the call and he remember being the one taking it. It was a woman. She wanted to speak with Matthew Farwell about a relationship between her friend and Farwell. Fitten took down her information on a memo pad or on a piece of scrap paper. And then he went to the detective's office where Farwell was alone and told him about the call. And here's what Fitton said happened. Farwell got upset visibly, like audibly. His expression changed to anger and he told Fitton with expletives never to talk about this again and never to tell anyone.

Fitten told the jury that that reaction was different than how Farwell had acted toward him before. Then prosecutors showed the jury a text that Farwell sent Fitton afterward. It starts with let's never discuss that again. So that's the moment. Not prosecutors describing, you know, it in an opening, not text read out loud by an FBI agent. That was a man who was standing in that office telling a jury under oath what Matthew Farwell's face did when he found out that someone had called his police station about Sandra Burmore.

And that was 12 days before she died. And then it got worse. According to the live coverage, Fitton testified that he went back to dispatch and told the desk officer on duty that night who was in the dispatch room when the call came in. And that desk officer, Fenton said, told him to forget about the call. So that is two people, two people inside the Stoen Police Department who knew that night that someone had called to report one of their detectives was having sex with a young woman that he'd met through their youth program.

One went and told the detective directly and the other said, "Forget that that ever happened." In the note, Fitton said that it got thrown away, like thrown out and thrown away with his notes. At the end of every shift, he threw his notes away. on cross. The defense went about, you know, after how the call was framed. They tried to ask whether the woman was calling about some kind of debt and the judge sustained the government's objection there. Remember from openings, the call started as a complaint about money that Sandra supposedly owed her.

Then agreed that he treated it as a personal call for an officer, which is why it went on a scrap piece of uh, you know, scrap piece of paper instead of into an actual formal report. And then the defense asked the question that tells you exactly where they're going to be going with this. If the caller had said a detective was having sex with an underage child, would you have written that down? Fitton said he would, you know, he would have given the call to his supervisor.

And that is a fair point, right? Like January 2021, Sandra was 23 years old. The caller, as Fitton remembers it, was talking about a relationship and not about a child. So the defense is going to say this was a call about an affair, right? It was handled like a call about an affair. And Farwell's anger is the anger of just a married man whose affair just got called in at his job. Okay. And then the government's going to say, "Okay, yes." Right. And Farwell knew what the dispatcher didn't.

He knew when that relationship started. You know, you know, that's why he was angry. And that's why just a few minutes later, he texted Sandra, "You have no idea how bad what she did really is." The last witness of today was a childhood friend of Sandra's. It was a nurse who also paints. They'd known each other since 2nd grade. Her mom used to babysit Sandra. They ended up losing touch and then they reconnected on Instagram in December of 2020. The day after Sandra found out she was pregnant.

Sandra wanted some custom baby onesies, three of them to be exact. She wanted a Disney design and they collectively settled on Winnie the Pooh. The friend told the jury that she sent Sandra the first finished onesie on January 26, 2021 at 10:25 p.m. Sandra answered at 10:26 in less than a minute. And then on January 29th, Sandra asked if her friend was working on February 13th and whether she'd take pictures with her for a baby announcement, a Valentine's Day pregnancy announcement. 3 days before she died, Sandra was booking a photo shoot to announce her baby on Valentine's Day with a Winnie the Pooh onesie. you know, her childhood friend had painted for her.

The press row, I read, was enamored with the exhibit, and I believe it, right? The defense's theory is that the woman who answered a onesie in 60 seconds and scheduled a Valentine's Day baby announcement killed herself just 4 days later. Well, the jury just saw the onesie today. And on cross, the defense mostly just confirmed the history. Like, right, like there was no good cross to do there. They knew that. They knew that there was nothing that they possibly had there, like no move that they could make.

And then the uh the judge let the jury go early today. The judge had to be downstairs for a ceremony. And her words to the jury were basically like, "I imagine you won't complain about this." Then then the jury left. Now, after the jury left, two more things happened that matter. Okay, so first the witness list. Wednesday's lineup. So today, for when most of you are listening to this episode, all of you, I guess, considering the time, it is going to include the forensic psychologist, that's Dr.

Rochio, the grooming expert, and someone from the Stoen Police Department, uh, the Explorers program. Also, uh, Sandra's hair stylist, a friend who messaged Sarah on February 1st, 2021 about shoveling around her car, a criminalist from the state police crime lab who did the DNA testing, and the last one is the trillion number. And the list for Thursday includes another expert and the baby's biological father. We have a lot coming this week. Now, secondly, after the judge left, Judge Casper put limits on the three women, right?

She said that the testimony is relevant to one issue, which is concealment. Whether Farwell deleted texts with them, wore masks with them, or otherwise hid those relationships. And she told the government that it cannot argue that Farwell was guilty because he didn't commit the same crimes with those women. The government agreed. It said that it can cover the relationships, you know, that they existed, how long they lasted, that the women were adults, how much he did or didn't hide them, and the government asked to add one more thing, which is how close those women were to Farwell's wife, either in relationship or physical distance.

And let's think about why that's on this list to begin with, right? Like if Farwell was openly carrying on and having affairs with these women, women who potentially are in his wife's own orbit and he never once bothered to hide that, then the idea that he suddenly needed a surgical mask and a hood to visit Sandra on that night is a very, very, very, very hard cell. And with that, after those decisions, Tuesday was done. So this episode covers just Monday and Tuesday, two days. Okay.

So, what actually moved? What's moved so far this week? Well, for the government, I would say three things got a lot stronger this week. First, we have the motive is just no longer a theory, right? Like, we have an official spreadsheet for the motive. Now, 49 meetings also with the column on whether he was on or off the clock. We had that, you know, it's in his own words. Now, it's in witnesses as well. His quote, "Your [ __ ] friend called my [ __ ] job.

You have no idea how bad what she did really is. What else do I have to worry about now? Before Monday, the jury had heard prosecutors describe those messages. Now, they've heard them read aloud in sequence right after eight years of messages showing exactly what he had to worry about. Again, all of the scandalous, insanely sexual messages about them when she was 15 years old, like during texting while she was 15 years old. Then we have the, you know, the the dispatcher who walked in, described Farwell's face changing when he heard about the call and then saying, "Let's never discuss that again." Secondly, the lull, right?

The lull is real, and it's in Sandra's words, not the government. He did a complete 180. He'll be around. The key, the Walmart receipt, the hope, the reassurance, and then the same night, the closet in the bathroom, and him remember going to her apartment and just looking around. was just really odd. She texted, "It's going to be very difficult for the jury to hear that sequence and not feel the floor just drop a little bit." And then lastly, earlier today, the defense's version of Sanders last month took a real hit.

The defense told the jury in openings that the walls were closing in. She was broke, alone, scared that she was losing the baby. And then her own doctor walked in and said, "Uh, the baby was viable. Her spotting cleared. She screened negative for suicidal thoughts. She was messaging us on the side effects and you know we were adjusting her meds and we had just talked. We had no indications of her destabilizing whatsoever. She was being very communicative and that is the most credible kind of witness that there is.

That that's the best kind of witness that you can get because she has no stake in this whatsoever. Right? She wasn't hired. She just happened to be Sandra's doctor. Now I will give the defense credit for a couple things as well. First, the father, right? The jury now knows by name that the baby belonged to another man and that Sandra told two people it wasn't Farwells. The government's, you know, he believed he was the father argument is still alive. Sure, but it's considering that she knew and didn't tell him, that argument is carrying a little bit more weight now.

Secondly, Sandra's pain is now all over the record, right? Like in her own handwriting, in her own text going back years. the 2017 note, the 2019 one, the previous suicide attempt. The jury has heard all of it, right? And it's real. Sandra struggled for a very, very, very long time. And I think the defense kind of popped out with a W on this one because she was a very mentally unwell person most of the time, it appeared. And then lastly, no threats. And again, in all of those messages, the case agent isn't aware of a single instance where Farwell threatened to kill her or had a threat.

And there's no evidence he even tried to wipe her devices. Now, almost everything the defense showed the jury this week is evidence that Sandra was suffering, right? Like almost nothing they showed the jury is evidence that she was suffering in some brand new way on February 1st. the government's whole response, which is, you know, they obviously started billing earlier today with the doctor, is that, well, she had struggled for years and she'd survived it for years and in January 2021, she was in therapy twice a week, managing her meds, going to the appointment, planning a baby shower.

The question for the jury isn't, "Was Sandra Burchmore ever in pain?" It's, "Well, what changed at 9:13 p.m. on February 1st?" And what changed the government is saying is that Matthew Farwell walked into her building wearing a mask. Okay, so where does my verdict prediction stand now? Last week I said guilty on both counts, maybe about 70% with most of the rest being a hung jury that hangs on the science aspect of this. All right, I'm y'all I'm I'm thinking 90% or above guilty on both counts at this point to be perfectly honest.

Like there is absolutely no way. We have coming up the crime lab criminalist, you know, Wednesday who's going to give the jury the DNA on the strap. We're going to have the baby's biological father possibly Thursday. And if he testifies, I'll tell you what he says, obviously, you know, and then eventually the medical experts, Dr. Smok, the defense pathologist, that's where this case is going to be decided. All right. So, there's a lot going on here and I will absolutely keep y'all informed. We're going to I think like every two I'll do um an case update every two days for this to get some you know genuinely good solid content.

But with that that's court so far this week Monday and Tuesday. So we're going to change gears a little bit guys and you know what that means. Reality check [music] it down

reality [music] check.

reality check, y'all. And there has been one particular topic that I very much have wanted to discuss since the beginning of this case. All week, people have been sending me more or less the same message about this trial. And it's some version of she was 23. She threatened him. She wanted his baby. She participated. I'm seeing a whole lot of [ __ ] victim blaming going on, y'all. And I want to talk about that word in particular, participated, because I think it's one of the most dishonest words in the entirety of the English language when you put it next to a [ __ ] child and an adult with power over her.

Okay? And I think that this case is the clearest illustration I have ever seen of it. Not just because Matthew Farwell was older than Sandra. You know, lots of predators are older than their victims, because of what he was. And I want to start with something that's not about sex at all. In 1974, a psychologist named Leonard Bickman ran a set of experiments on the streets of Brooklyn. He had a man stop random pedestrians and give them very simple, very slightly odd instructions. Pick up this bag.

Give this stranger a dime for the parking meter. Move away from this bus stop. And sometimes the man wore regular clothes. Sometimes he dressed as a milkman. And sometimes he wore a guard's uniform with a badge. And people obeyed the guard significantly more than the civilian. The Milman's uniform didn't help at all. Only, you know, only the one that looked like authority did. And Bickman ran a second version where the man in the uniform walked away and couldn't even see whether people did what he said.

And they still complied. And the part that I love is when when when Bickman later asked college students whether a uniform would make them more or less likely to obey, they said no. They didn't think the guard had any more legitimacy than the milkman. They were wrong. Like that's adults, guys. Grown adults on a sidewalk complying for a dime. Think about what a uniform does to a child. So, here's the first thing that's different about grooming by a police officer is that he doesn't have to build authority.

He organically just walks in already possessing it. A predator who's a stranger has to earn trust from zero. A predator who's an uncle or a coach has to build it over months and months. Sometimes a cop shows up in a uniform that every single child in America has been taught, you know, since kindergarten. That uniform means safety. He means he's a good guy. Means the person, he's the person you go to when something's wrong. Sandra was told that her entire life. And then her mother, who was sick and wanted a good role model for her daughter, signed her up for a program where she'd be surrounded by these exact people at a police station every single week.

Remember what Sergeant [ __ ] testified to last week? He said that Sandra was incredibly impressionable. That if you told her something, it was like gospel to her. And [ __ ] told the jury most of the kids in the program came from homes without a father figure. So just look at the structure of this, right? a 12-year-old who never knew her dad, who looked up to every single police officer that she met, who was the smallest kid in the entire program, who wanted to be a cop when she grew up.

And the adults she was told to admire were the same adults who had guns, handcuffs, the authority to arrest people, the ability to make her career or end it right before it started, and also the prestige of the only place in her life that felt like a structured environment. That's not a relationship between two people. That is the relationship between a child, you know, in an institution more or less, but the institution was just wearing a man's face. And the second thing that's different is, you know, something that experts call grooming the environment.

Dr. Lisa Roshio is the forensic psychologist that the uh government plans to call this week. She testified about this in federal court before. She actually testified in the Gelain Maxwell trial. I don't know if you guys are aware, but she actually testified in the Julian Maxwell trial. One of the concepts that she's explained to juries is that grooming isn't just about the child. Perpetrators also build trust with the people around the child, right? Parents, siblings, other authority figures, so that when something feels off, the adults in the child's life just wave it away.

Now, think about how much easier that is with a badge. What mother worries, right, when a police officer offers to help her struggling daughter with her homework? Who at the library will look twice at a cop sitting with a teenager? Who questions if a police officer you taking an explorer on a ride along? That's literally what the program is for. Heather Chver, that Stoen detective, testified that she didn't even know Farwell was tutoring Sandra oneonone. when asked, she said that it wouldn't have seemed appropriate, but nobody asked because nobody had to.

The badge did all of that work for him. And then there's the third thing. The badge doesn't just open the door, right? It locks it behind you. When a child is being abused by a teacher, she can tell the police. When she's being abused by a coach, she can tell the police. Who the [ __ ] does a child tell when she's being abused by the police? And that's not a hypothetical in this case. It is the entire thing. On January 20th, 2021, someone did exactly what people are told what we tell people to do.

She called the police. She called the Stoen Police Department and told them. And the person who answered that call worked with Farwell and told Farwell. He testified this very week that the desk officer told him just to forget about it. His notes from the call went into the trash can at the end of the shift that night because that's what happened to personal calls for officers. and the recording of that call was purged. They let it get purged automatically while the department's own deputy chief was looking into it.

The system for reporting abuse by a cop ran straight through that cop's own office. And that pattern shows up again and again and again in these cases. In Santa Maria, California, there was a 17-year-old explorer. She sued after alleging that officer Albert Cavarius Jr., her supervisor in the program raped her repeatedly over a month starting in December of 2011. Her lawsuit said that he got her alone in his patrol car past midnight against the program's own rules and that he told her that he uh he wouldn't be punished because he was a police officer.

He had friends in the department. So when fellow officers went to arrest him in January of 2012, he resisted, fired his gun, and was shot and killed by another officer who was also one of his best friends. The city later ended up settling her lawsuit. He told her his badge will protect him. And that's the threat underneath every single one of these cases. Whether anyone says that out loud or not, who is going to believe you over me? Who are you going to call? And here's what everyone needs to understand about how common this is, guys.

This is not just one bad apple in Massachusetts. In 2024, the Marshall Project published an investigation into police explorer programs. They found almost 200 allegations, at least 194 formal allegations going back to 1974, of law enforcement personnel, mostly police officers, grooming, sexually abusing, or behaving inappropriately with explorers. The vast majority of those affected were teenage girls. Some of them were as young as 13. At least 14 departments had a history of repeated allegations, more than one. and Sandra's case is in that database. By 2025, the database had grown to 217 cases, and the Marshall Project went back through them to look at where the abuse happened.

At least a third of them involved alleged abuse in an officer's vehicle. About a quarter involved officers grooming, harassing, or assaulting young people during ridealongs specifically. And they couldn't even figure out the location in more than half of the cases. So those numbers are actually likely underounted. They also cited a 2003 University of Nebraska and Omaha report that found more than 40% of the cases that researchers identified nationally of officers abusing teenage girls involved police explorer programs. 40%. In 2003, Sandra joined the Stoen Explorers in 2010.

Can you imagine 40% back in 2003? Sandra joined in 2010. The warning was seven years old by the time that she even walked in the door. And the detail that I genuinely can't [ __ ] get past it pass is Scouting America, right? The organization formerly known as the Boy Scouts runs the National Explorers program. They have two core safety rules for every single program they oversee. Two adults present with young people at all times and no one-on-one contact between adults and minors. Those are the rules everywhere, right?

Camping, robotics, everything. Except, according to the Marshall Project, for police ride alongs. For decades, Scouting America carved out an exception that let officers be alone in cars with explorers for hours at a time. Of all the programs to exempt from, never leave, you know, an adult alone with a kid, they picked the one where the adult is armed, has arrest powers, and is driving the car. They didn't end that exception until the summer of 2025 while reporters were asking them about it. But why the car, right?

Like if you're thinking about this, why the car? Well, that's because the patrol car is the purest version of the problem. A teenager can't get out of it, right? She doesn't control where it goes. There's a gun in it, a radio connected to everyone who'd be responsible for, you know, for helping her, and a man in power who's driving it. An attorney for a former explorer told the Marshall Project that the police vehicle carries the same air of authority as the uniform itself. And the officer isn't just the abuser.

He's the gatekeeper to the career that a lot of these explorers want. And of the cases the Marshall Project reviewed that led to criminal charges, only about half of the officers served time behind bars. So I just want to to to really throw this point home. I want to cover just a couple of these cases. Irwindale, California. Officer Daniel Camarano. He supervised the department's explorers. Between 2007 and 2010, according to their victim's attorney, he molested underage girls in the program, girls between 14 and 17. He would take them to dark, isolated parts of the city.

He was convicted in connection with one victim. The city and the group that runs the Explorers program paid out more than $6.5 million in settlements to four women in his case. Whittier, California. In March of this year, the city paid $ three and a half million dollars to four women who say they were sexually abused as teenagers in the Police Explorer program in the late 1970s, mainly by an officer named Charles Dryley. According to the lawsuits, officers regularly used ridealongs to isolate underage female explorers. One lawsuit alleges that after Dryley stopped uh supervising one girl, the corporal who replaced him as advisor kept on molesting and abusing her.

The city didn't even admit wrongdoing. The women's attorney called right along some of the least safe youth programs there are when it comes to protecting minors. Texar Cano, Texas. This one ended just a month ago here now in 2026. Officer Zachary Gilly started grooming a 15-year-old explorer in early 2024. According to the probable cause affidavit, he told her he had a crush on her, and he made her pinky swear not to tell. It escalated to sexual assault, much of it during overnight ride alongs in his patrol car.

Gilly took the stand at his own trial, admitted to sexual acts with her in his patrol vict uh vehicle, admitted to an emotional relationship with her, and denied grooming her. His defense, according to the local reporting that I read, pointed to the girl's maturity level and her home life. That's what they blamed it on. In September, a Bowie County jury convicted him of seven felonies, including child grooming. They sentenced him to 70 years. The girl, according to a lawsuit that her mother filed, had wanted to be a police officer.

After Gilly, she lost all interest and completely withdrew into herself. And the prosecutor in that case said something to the jury that I they I think should be printed on every single wall of every single police academy in the country. Gilly's lawyers tried to argue that he had a relationship with the girl but didn't groom her. And the prosecutor to this in response said a relationship with the child is called grooming. That's it. That's it, guys. Yes. Yes. Which is why the comments that I'm seeing about this uh the Sandra Birch case, you know, people saying she participated, guys.

In Massachusetts, a person under 16 cannot consent to sex. Full stop. That's Massachusetts state law. Full stop. Sandra was 15 years old in April of 2013. So whatever she wrote about, you know, that day later on as an adult, whatever she called it, however she's romanticizing it, the law's answer to that is that a crime was committed against her, a child. Her opinion of it at 15 or 23 does not change what it was. And here's what's changed since then. Up until this summer, Massachusetts had what advocates called the age of consent loophole.

The age of consent is 16. Okay? So, a teacher, coach, or cop who started a sexual relationship with a 16 or 17year-old in their care could argue the kid consented. 39 states and Washington DC had already closed that loophole. Well, in July, Governor Mora Healey signed the law here in Mass. Now, a child under 18 cannot legally consent to sexual conduct with a mandated reporter who has or had authority over them. And police officers are included. That authority doesn't stop counting just because the job ended.

All right. Again, let's talk about that in the context of this case. The position of authority doesn't expire just because the kid aged out of the program. The legislature figured out in 2026, earlier this year, you know what the families of explorers have been screaming about since the 1970s. The psychological way is that grooming works by manufacturing participation. That's what it is. A groomer doesn't want a terrified child. A terrified child tells someone. A groomer wants a child who believes, you know, that she chose this.

She believes she's special. She believes it's a secret that because it's precious, she's so special and wonderful. Not because it's a crime. You know who keeps the secret? Who deletes the messages? Who tells her pediatrician she isn't sexually active? Writes about him in her diary. So when a girl who is groomed starting at 15 grows up and calls the first time the best day of my life, that's not evidence that it was consensual. That is the evidence that the grooming worked. Her participation isn't the defense to the crime, y'all.

Her participation is the product of the crime. And you want to know what the inside of that looks like eight years later? It looks like her Door Dash password was his [ __ ] name. Her laptop password was his name. When she listed baby names on her phone, one of the last ones was Matthew. That isn't a woman who freely fell in love with a peer, right? That is a person whose entire emotional architecture was built from adolescence around a singular man who had power over her.

And it didn't reset on her 18th birthday. It didn't stop then. That's not how people work. You know, no one wakes up when they on their 18th birthday with a brand new brain and a clean slate of emotions. And what's going to happen, and the defense is going to try this in closing, mark my words, the blackmail. Well, she threatened him. She gave him an ultimatum. You know, you blackmailed me into getting what you wanted. He wrote her. You know, I've heard it from the defense table and I've read, you know, already have been thinking about it, and I'm sure you have, too, is during this episode.

Yes. At 23 years old, Sandra used the only power she had. I mean, think about what that power was, right? It was the only truth. It was the truth about what he did to her when she was 15. That's what she was holding. Her leverage was her own abuse. Again, I will say it out loud for those in the back. Her leverage, her blackmail, her threats to him. It was the leverage was her own abuse. The upper hand that she texted about was the fact that a police officer raped her when she was a child and that it would end his career if anyone found out.

When an abuser complains that his victim is blackmailing him with the evidence of his abuse, he's not describing a relationship between equals, he's describing the moment the person that he groomed finally figured out what happened to her. And even then, look at what she asked for. It wasn't money. It wasn't for him to leave his wife. She asked for a baby to have someone to love. She told her boss. Eight years of being taught that love meant that this man, you know, love meant this man to her.

And when she finally had power over him, the only thing that she wanted was a family. And then there's the question that people always ask, right? Okay, well fine, but why didn't she just leave when she turned 18? Why stay for five more years? First of all, are you [ __ ] stupid? And secondly, because the power dynamic doesn't end magically at 18. He was still a cop in her town, still a married man, which meant that she'd be the home wrecker if it came out.

Still the keeper of a, you know, secret about what happened when she was 15, which was heinously illegal. That would put him in jail for a very long time if it was prosecuted. And still this, you know, he's still the center of the world that she's been building since she was a child. Understanding what was done, you know, understanding what was done to you doesn't just arrive and pass on a birthday. For a lot of survivors, it arrives years later, maybe even in the therapist's office, if that day even comes at all.

And for Sandra, if the government is right, it arrived at 23, right? In text to a friend, and it that that very may well have been what got her killed. So, no, I'm not going to sit here and say, "Well, she participated. She survived. She blackmailed him, you know, blah blah blah." No. You know, and separately just to close this up because this episode is very long. If you're a parent and your kid is in any youth program run by adults with authority, police explorers, sports, church, scouting, music, tutoring, any of it, ask for the rules in writing.

Can adults message kids privately? Can they be alone with them, drive with them, tutor them one-on-one? If the answer is, "We trust our people?" Absolutely the [ __ ] not. That's not a policy. For a police explore program, asked about ridealongs. The national rule now requires two adults and a woman officer if an underage girl is writing. Ask if they follow it. Ask how they lock it. The criminologist the Marshall Project interviewed who studies police sexual violence for an actual living said he'd discourage his own teenage daughter from even joining them to begin with.

If you're in law enforcement, and I know some of you listen to this show, I've spoken with a handful of you. Your job in this specific situation is not loyalty. If you see a colleague s singling out a teenage explorer requesting the same kid on his shifts, tutoring her on the side, friending her on Facebook, you are the only person in a position to stop it. The parents already trust him, right? The kids trust him. You're the back stop. And if your department doesn't have a reporting channel that goes outside the main chain of command, then that report needs to go outside the department.

In Massachusetts, that's the post commission or the DA or the FBI. And if you're a survivor, if you were groomed by someone with a badge or a caller or a whistle or a classroom and you've been carrying the idea that you participated, that you said yes, that you went back, that you wrote him love letters or called that the best day of your life or kept his name as your password. I just want you to sincerely know that you did not participate in what was done to you.

You were a kid and an adult with power used that on you and the fact that it worked doesn't make it yours. What you did was survive. That's allowed to be complicated. It's not though allowed to be your fault. And it is never too late to tell someone. Okay? You you know the show, you know, I always have to throw out resources there. Rape Abuse Incest National Network's National Sex Sexual Assault Hotline is 1 800656-4673. The Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline is 1 8004224453. And if the person who hurt you was a cop, please report it somewhere that isn't his department.

The FBI takes tips at FBI.go tips.fbi.gov. And in Massachusetts, the post commission takes complaints about officers. And make sure too that you report in multiple places in writing. Make it impossible to lose because someone called his department 12 days before and the call went basically straight to him. So that is this episode today, guys. This is where everything stands as of Tuesday afternoon, week two of the trial, and we have a lot coming. Again, this trial is far more involved than I actually fully anticipated, but I will have uh episode two of the Micah Miller case coming up this week as well.

I am 1,000% love you, my Patreon patrons. I will have an episode for you guys this week as well. Um, yeah, but this is the kind of the case that I'm I'm focusing on at this moment. Again, if you've enjoyed the episode, consider joining Patreon. $5 a month, unlimited ad free episodes. If you're tired with the ad, tired of the ads, just $5 and you get unlimited ad free episodes. That's like over 40 hours of adree content a month. So, pretty good deal. If not, please support by following the show on social medias.

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Until next crime.