Matthew Farwell Trial: Ryan Breslin, Elyse Hershon discuss case, testimony so far

The trial of Matthew Farwell, a former Stoughton police officer, is underway at the federal courthouse in Boston. Hi, I'm Boston 25 news reporter Ryan Breslin, joined by Elyse Hirshon, a criminal defense attorney. And Elyse, we are talking about this trial because Matthew Farwell, like I mentioned, he's a former Stoughton police officer. He is accused of killing Sandra Birchmore and her unborn baby. Talk to me a little bit about Matthew Farwell and why this case is at the federal courthouse. Great question. So murder itself is usually a state crime. So if it was a straight murder charge, this would be charged in state court. Remember, though, that this case originally was ruled a suicide, and that was under the direction of the district attorney's office at the state level and the Massachusetts examiner's office, a medical examiner's office. so that district attorney's office was satisfied with the finding of suicide and they were not going to pursue any charges against this against Farwell or against anybody at that time now once the feds got involved it doesn't automatically mean this becomes a federal case we saw in Karen Reed the feds got involved they got Proctor's phone all that evidence came into the trial but it stayed at the court at the state court level in this case though the feds not only helped with the investigation. They really reopened and changed the investigation and changed the whole course and turned it into a criminal case. This was not a murder case to begin with. And once the feds got involved, there was some evidence that they saw pointed to homicide. They had their own expert come in and say, this looks more like a homicide. And then there was what we allege, we haven't heard this testimony yet, but some pressure on the medical examiner's office in Massachusetts to change that death certificate, which they did, but they only changed it so far is undetermined so the feds took over essentially this entire investigation reopened it and then they raised it and charged him with federal crimes so not just with the murder of Sandra Burchmore but the murder in order to prevent her from disclosing federal crimes in order to prevent her from being a witness against Farwell from disclosing an illicit relationship that we now know there's evidence that started when she was unable to consent because she was underage an abuse of his authority as a police officer and almost twice her age and the second charge of killing an unborn child all right let's get a little background of this case itself because i know that you touched on several things to do with Sandra Burchmore and Matthew Farwell Sandra Burchmore herself she died or allegedly died on February 1st of 2021 her body was found on February 4th of that year so just a couple days later when she didn't return to work But it was over three years after that, in the fall of 2024, that Matthew Farwell was charged with murder. Now, the prosecution in this case, the government here, they allege that Farwell actually killed Sandra Birchmore and staged her death to look like a suicide. Inside of the courthouse, we have seen pictures of how Sandra Birchmore's body was found. And essentially, and this is a little bit graphic, but essentially she was found with a duffel bag strap around her neck. And that strap, it was attached to the doorknob of her closet door. So what we're talking about is a partially suspended suicide. A lot of the witnesses in this case are a seated suicide. Like I mentioned, a lot of the witnesses in this case, whether they be law enforcement or other people like forensic scientists that respond to scenes, they have been asked have they ever seen or responded to a seated suicide some of them have said yes some of them have said no but it does seem like this is a possible way that someone could die in a seated suicide talk to me a little bit about staging a suicide or whether this could have been or i guess i should say staging a homicide or if this could be a suicide that's kind of what the prosecution and the defense are trying to prove here the prosecution is saying it was a homicide and that Farwell killed Sandra Birchmore whereas the defense their defense is no this was a suicide this was a woman that was financially struggling that had her own mental health issues uh they said after that she got pregnant that she was on Zoloft they said they keep pointing out the black box label of Zoloft. They also point out that at one point after her mother and her grandmother died, she was cutting on her arms and that she also had one previous suicide attempt. So talk to me a little bit about that, the prosecution, the defense, where they're at and the struggles that the prosecution is having right now with really getting to a point where they can prove that this was a homicide. You mentioned a very key word in part of your question which is possibly right that this is possibly a homicide or possibly a suicide i'm going to bring that back to who has the burden of proof here the prosecution does so if anything is a possible second or third explanation that by definition is not beyond a reasonable doubt so remember that the defense has a theory here it's always a stronger position for the defense to have an alternate theory and it's a stronger position for the defense to provide some evidence whether that's through cross-examination or just any type right like her having mental health history her sending messages or one of her friends testifying that she had suicidal thoughts nine months before this um before her death uh that she was on Zoloft which is antidepressant those little pieces of evidence it's not required that the defense prove anything but it helps their theory it helps show that it is a viable option the prosecution is the one that has to prove it is homicide, not to the total exclusion of suicide, but almost. So if there's some evidence of another possibility here, and there's no conclusive evidence of homicide, the prosecution has a problem. Now, that's the first problem. Second problem is we still don't have a death certificate that says that this is a homicide. And that usually is the conclusive evidence that is already part of the trial. And the prosecution doesn't have to prove a murder happened usually before they're proving that it's this person it's usually it was this person and this was their intent so they have a huge hurdle here and then not only do they have to prove it's homicide and that essentially it's not suicide but then they have to prove that it was done by Farwell in order to prevent her from disclosing this illicit relationship which evidence is pointing to rape rape right statutory rape when she was 15 um based on that digital forensic evidence text messages between the two of them, her friends, reports to detectives, apparently admissions by Farwell, and abuse of authority and other civil rights federal crimes. So the prosecution has a huge hurdle here. Yes, we can sit back and say, he did all these terrible things. He cheated on his wife. He had multiple affairs with three or four women. He was very volatile. He was blocking her. He was manipulating her. He was grooming her. He was raping her. But none of those things prove that he's a murderer let's also think about there's a surveillance video that puts him at her apartment the night the last night that she's alive that in and of itself doesn't prove murder it's not conclusive because they were in a relationship at that point and she's not under age at that time um i think she was 22 years old by the time she died so just because he's in her apartment doesn't mean he was there to murder her just because his dna is found on the strap that was tied around her neck doesn't mean that he's the one that put it there we don't know because it's not and we can get into sort of the DNA evidence but we're not talking about a gun we're not talking about fingerprints or DNA on a gun or bullets or a knife where if it's found to have been the cause of death we know that the manner usually is homicide in that sense unless it's self-inflicted but a strap to a gym bag his DNA could be on that because maybe it's his gym bag and he touched it a year ago so we don't know so again there's a lot of things circumstantially that could point to him murdering her but if that's not enough for beyond a reasonable doubt so the prosecution does have a big hill to climb even though there's motive DNA he's in the apartment um and he's done some some illegal and some bad things yeah you touched on a lot there one of the questions i was going to have was does Farwell even have to be likable in this case because like you mentioned he he's not he's not he won't be he had multiple affairs and not only was that alleged but three women who had affairs with Farwell came and testified in this trial they were basically asked if he ever disguised himself or wore a mask when he went over to meet them and that all had to do with the surveillance video that you also touched on so we know that Farwell was over at Sandra Birchmore's apartment the night that she died because he was wearing a mask in and out of the apartment building and identified in that video by his colleagues And every single one of his colleagues that has testified so far, one said, no, he would never wear a mask because he was very against masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. He was the president of the Stoughton Police Department union at that time and was very against having to wear masks. They also he was a very identifiable person without the mask. Every single one of them mentioned that they they kind of knew how he walked. So when they saw him on the surveillance video, they didn't really need to see, even though he had a hoodie and a mask on, they kind of recognized him by, by the way, he even walked into a apartment building apartment building, um, for this case, when a jury is supposed to rely on just the facts, can they, I mean, can they still eventually come to an outcome where they say, Hey, we might not have the specific DNA evidence. we might not have this but there's no way that that this was a suicide this this defendant must have been the one that that killed her they absolutely can do that uh you know as a trial lawyer and i've tried many homicide cases and all types of serious and minor criminal cases you want the jury and i think most juries follow the law they follow the instructions and they hold the prosecutor to their burden. But there are cases, I mean, we still listen to Lindsay Clancy and it's still, we're still waiting to see how that plays out. There's some communications and some reportings that there's a juror that didn't want to follow the instructions, but that's not enough to overturn or to dismiss the case, to get rid of a case. So the jurors are supposed to follow these instructions, but what happens in that jury room is supposed to remain private. It is not supposed to be known or inquired upon by the court, by the lawyers, by the judge. If the jurors come out to the media and say this is what we discussed, they have a right to do that. But otherwise, we don't ever know what and how they came to their verdict. And as a defense attorney, I'm always saying, you know, a lot of times you're hammering reasonable doubt. And you're admitting what you can't deny and denying what you can't admit. So the defense here, they have to admit, yes, they were in a relationship. their client Matthew Farwell is a cheater he's a liar right he's cheating him with multiple women so he's not only cheating on his wife but potentially cheating on Sandra Birchmore with other women like very complicated web of lies he's also lying to his colleagues and his boss because there's evidence from the text messages between the two of them that 250,000 worth of them uh that um sorry my larynx went off um that and i just lost my train of thought no it's okay well i want to jump in because what i want to say is so one of the things that the defense is also kind of doing so yeah they might be saying hey here's we get he's a bad guy but he's not a murderer unlikeable they're also kind of poking a little bit at Sandra Birchmore in terms of you know some people have gotten on the stand that are friends that i don't know the exact quote of what they said but maybe she didn't always tell the same stories to each of her friends a lot of the a lot of the stories as they pertain to Matthew Farwell seemed to be pretty identical except there was one friend that she was telling that Farwell was the one that wanted to have a baby with her and this was a year before they even tried to to get pregnant now if you are just joining us and you don't know all about the case essentially Sandra Birchmore said to Matthew Farwell or it's alleged through the prosecution and through witnesses who have testified that she went to Matthew Farwell and said that she wanted him to father his baby and in doing so she wouldn't expose him of his crimes including having sex with her when she was a minor um so they they've started to poke holes a little bit in some of Sandra Birchmore may or may not have told different people um at one point too that they mentioned there were two people that she may have told that Matt Farwell was not the father but so far anyone that has testified has said Matt Farwell was the father or that Sandra Birchmore told them that Matt Farwell was the father we also have learned during this trial that DNA testing came back and Matt Farwell was not actually the biological father of Sandra Birchmore's baby and that father did have to testify on Thursday one of the things that he had to do was he testified under a grant of immunity maybe we could talk a little bit about that have you have you seen something like this before he essentially said that he wanted that grant of immunity he would only testify under the in court in this federal proceeding if he got the grant of immunity because of a uniform code of military justice where apparently adultery is a crime and a recruit or a recruiter having sex with a recruit is a crime and at the time that he met Sandra Birchmore he was an army recruiter in Quincy so very interesting testimony from from this person who was identified as the father of the unborn baby his name is Jason Pickard Pickard so and right before i answer the question i'm going to say there's one thing i think that he actually said or a strong thing that helped the defense and what he testified to is that he encouraged Sandra Birchmore to tell about what she's alleging or told him was rape and and she had sex with him when she was 15 too young to consent yes he encouraged her to report he encouraged her to report it and she didn't want to but if the prosecution has to prove that Matthew Farwell killed her in order to prevent her from telling people about that and other things but we have the father of her baby who she's in a relationship from 2019 purportedly through 2021 because she was pregnant with his baby she's telling him she's not going to tell on him and she doesn't want to despite him encouraging her to where does that motive go and where does that piece of what they have to prove go so that came out and even though he's a prosecution witness testifying under immunity they can't go after him i think that piece helped the defense so putting that aside for a moment um when you get immunity in a murder case uh it is never to prevent or protect against perjury so it protects against prosecution for crimes not future crimes and not perjury perjuring yourself on the stand false testimony under oath etc but this grant of immunity which goes up many levels and it has to get a lot of approvals it is not something that they just write a note and it gets sent it is only for very important key witnesses that the prosecution needs and wants in order to prove their case someone getting immunity can imply that there is a crime that they're trying to protect them from it could be related to the crime that they're testifying about the death of Sandra Barclay or could what he's saying is these army codes that said he could be prosecuted they could go after him for adultery very antiquated by the way um so in a way it just credits him to a certain extent someone's testifying under the grant of immunity that means he can say anything that the prosecution wants it that that was what that's what i'd argue as a defense attorney he's going to testify for the prosecution um because they're giving him immunity so anything he says he's getting he's getting get out of jail free card or he's getting protection from that so they wouldn't bring him in unless he was going to point the finger at Farwell because also remember the prosecution in this case is the federal government and that's what he was concerned about was because he essentially works for the federal government right but also think about this he is also having an affair with Sandra Birchmore in his wife so that also makes him by definition a liar right because when you're having an affair you're cheating you're lying so then they're going to ask the jury to believe this guy who now has a benefit to give them testimony that they want and is established as a liar how credible is he so it doesn't mean he can be discredited altogether but the defense i anticipate will argue he got immunity he was also cheating and lying himself maybe he had an axe to grind and he didn't like that Sandra Birchmore was with Farwell um but it does also bring up that there's another possibility here did we hear about an alibi did we hear about where he was on that date um you know is it possible that he was involved all it has to be is a possibility for reasonable doubt so we have him essentially either not credible and or offering testimony that says she wasn't going to tell on Farwell so that's that's the lead charge here so that actually i think hurt the prosecution on uh monday potentially tuesday i believe it will be monday the medical examiner is expected to testify and so that is one of the things that we've kind of been talking about this whole trial is the cause and manner of death talk a little bit about initially this this was determined to be a suicide and then it was changed to undetermined um talk a little bit about how this could affect the trial also will either side be able to ask about the original uh manner and cause of death it being determined to be a suicide and then changed absolutely okay yeah that's one of the interesting things that has been happening a lot in this court um is that there are just there are very specific ways that each side can ask questions and dependent on you know what exhibit has been introduced whether either side open the door for the other side to then ask the question so i that that's just one of the things that i was wondering that's something you have to be very careful about as an attorney um i mostly do state work but i am um practice uh admitted to the federal bar i've worked on um overdose death cases in federal court uh yet there are very specific rules and certain pieces of evidence are a lot of evidence is argued about admissibility before the trial starts but if the person who doesn't want it in inadvertently asks a question that sort of blows that wide open then it's fair game for the other side to question about something that wasn't supposed to come in so that's true on a state court level it's true on a federal court level but there is a more serious and intense atmosphere in federal court you'd agree right here it's um you know they start on time they're very controlled and scheduled um a little bit more than state court and there are some different rules but remember that the federal constitution is based on the massachusetts constitution we wrote ours first we're the basis for it so we have the most similar constitution to to federal um in this in the country so the biggest problem here for the prosecution and the best part of the defense case and i i'm saying that because as a defense attorney this is what i would be going after what you and i have been discussing the cause and manner of death the manner of death is accidental suicide homicide and the cause of death is gunshot wounds stab wounds blunt force trauma, strangulation, asphyxiation in this case. So we're talking about a trained medical examiner that works for the state that normally is erring on the side of a prosecution, but they're finding it not to be a homicide. And then it begs the question, Farwell was a police officer. is there a conflict there with a medical examiner that falls under the commonwealth of massachusetts where the detectives from stoughton where their colleague is involved in in this case they're declaring it not a suspicious not a crime scene they're declaring it a suicide on the spot is there something there we know this is the same county as the karen reed as the state trooper as proctor that corruption it's not just it's not and it's not just the same county it's the same town because her body in her apartment was in canton so canton is the same exact town where john o'keefe was found dead and that that is once we get through the whole um cause and manner of death that's what i want to ask you about we'll go there investigation itself because of the fact that how is it there's invested parties this investigation close to home we're hearing some of the same exact names some of the same troopers that were involved in the john o'keefe karen reed case um and it gets to three years later a federal investigation happens after an internal affairs investigation in Stoughton Police Department now this is what the special agent from the FBI said she said there was the deputy chief from the Stoughton Police Department he had done the internal affairs investigation in Stoughton when he passed that over to the FBI when Ah I believe one of Birchmore's friends had reached out and when someone that was being interviewed on a separate matter those three things were what made the FBI decide to open up and investigate and then a year later Farwell was arrested um let's go back to cause and manner of death and then we'll get there okay and we have six minutes left okay okay so we'll focus on the manner of death the manner of death was initially a suicide so no one's going to be charged with a crime because suicide is not a crime and it's not there's no third party that can be said to be to blame or to be investigated so there was no investigation at that point the investigation was closed feds got involved and they brought in a forensic expert and you know are they looking at the autopsy report are they looking at and it's not just a the death certificate it's a big report there's toxicology there's you know drawings um there's photographs there's video there's a lot that they look at but what autopsies are is they're supposed to be they're supposed to be in a vacuum they're supposed to be based on the body the evaluation of the body the physical the chemical testing the toxicology what is in the room where they do the autopsy at the medical examiner's office it's not supposed to be based on ancillary information so it's a problem and it's doubt right for the manner of death to be changed from suicide to undetermined and now suddenly we're at murder and homicide well where is the independent autopsy report that supports that it says it could be homicide undetermined means it could be homicide or it could be accidental or it could be suicide it's unknown so if it's unknown how do they prove beyond a reasonable doubt it's homicide circumstantially through all this other stuff is motive in and of itself someone benefiting from the death of someone enough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt no but there is motive here and there is a benefit to Farwell if she disappears or she's dead. So that's one piece. So they're trying to build up this wall because they don't have the foundation from the medical examiner's office. And then they're changing it. And the fact that they changed it, if it was undetermined to begin with, you can argue that it's still an uphill battle. You can argue that. But to say it was a suicide, that's saying it's not a homicide. And you're talking about detectives. You're talking about medical examiners. So when the feds came in and their expert looked at whatever they looked at and we don't know yet because we haven't heard from them yet we expect this next week did they look did they do another autopsy did they look at the body or is the body long gone right it's clearly not anywhere close to the condition where it was when they did the autopsy unlikely they looked at the physical body unlikely they did their own autopsy it was all this time later so are they looking at photos and determining no that's not a suicide and if so what is that what made them change you know and then the media is reporting it was an affair and alleged inappropriate relationship, you know, pointing towards statutory rape between a 15-year-old and almost 30-year-old. But how does that change the manner of death? The autopsy and the forensic examiners and these medical examiners are not supposed to be considering those facts in it. So what is it that alerted the feds besides the circumstantial evidence? And if it got the feds involved and now we're in federal court and now he's being charged and he's charged with homicide, if the feds are convinced on the other hand right if the feds are convinced shouldn't a jury be convinced that it's homicide uh it's a big question and it's really the biggest achilles heel and the biggest problem for the prosecution here and i'm sure that they face a lot of pressure from the feds to change the ME report and they still wouldn't go all the way over to homicide they left it as undetermined so i am very much interested to hear what that testimony is going to be is the prosecution going to admit all of that and take the wind out of the sails of the defense or are they going to only focus on what the findings are by the feds and let the defense really go at it and that's one of the things that defense attorneys do best is the cross-examination and the aha moment where it says prosecution didn't tell you this because they don't want you to know this they're afraid of it because it's reasonable doubt so i anticipate that'll come next week yeah and at this point we've learned the prosecution they only have four witnesses left so far they've brought on 34 so they will have a total of 38 people testifying and that's not that many days yeah we're right we're i mean we're only 10 days into the trial so in 10 days they brought 34 people up they plan to finish probably wednesday it sounds like and the defense would be calling their witnesses that same day um we don't know how many people the defense will ultimately call they gave they gave us a couple names but we're looking now at closing arguments either being thursday november 5th or friday november 6th depending on how long the defense goes the judge thinks there'll be about a week but when she said that the defense said yeah we might need a little bit more than a week to to give our case um and closing the best part, right? Because some information, you know what it means. And we talk about it. This looks bad. This looks bad. This looks good. This is reasonable doubt. This is, you know, there's something conclusive. When the lawyers get up and they tie it all together, there are always things that you're like, oh, I didn't see that. I didn't know what the purpose was at the time. And sometimes we leave these little breadcrumbs on the trail and some of them are obvious and some of them are big and some of them are small. And then when they're looped together at the end for both sides it really paints a very clear picture of what the case is the lawyer's words are not evidence but it's very compelling to hear it all at the end okay final thoughts in 30 seconds i think the medical examiner testimony and the cross-examination is going to be the most interesting part of the trial it's the biggest weakness in the prosecution's case and the biggest thing that the defense has to go after to support a possibility of suicide so that'll be really interesting next week we should definitely come back and talk about that all right thank you so much, Elise. We will be doing these again and sharing more thoughts about the trial of Matthew Farwell.