Sandra Birchmore's Department Called Its Own Officers This in Writing

Uh, let's, uh, let's take a look into the, uh, the prosecution end of this and the other folks, uh, or the defense end of this and, and the other folks that are involved in, uh, the Sandra Birchmore case.

Sandra joined the, the Stoughton Police Explorers in 2010, uh, the year, uh, she turned 13.

The department's own internal-

Hmm

... affairs investigation later found three officers from that program had inappropriate relationships with her: Matthew Farwell, his twin brother William, and Robert Devine, the deputy chief who ran it.

Only Matthew is on trial here, and the state called her death an S for five years.

We talked about this a little bit.

Um, the other folks that seem to have been involved, uh, with her, uh, over that, uh, that course of time.

Uh, are, are you surprised that there isn't any other charges going on here for covering up a murder [laughs] or, or conspiracy to cover up a murder, considering these other folks had a lot to lose should, uh, all of this come out, which obviously eventually it did.

But it took many years, and they continued to operate as officers for a long period of time between the death of Sandra Birchmore and all of this coming to light.

It came to light because of a federal investigation, because the people who should've been investigating it were the very ones perpetrating, uh, or, or, if it was ...

Let's say perpetrating a crime, but they were the ones that were having these inappropriate relationships with Birchmore, and none of them wanted that to come out.

Um, so everybody had a, a motivation to not investigate this thing properly and let it lie as an S. Um, do you th- Okay, we talked about it earlier a little bit, but do you think, Jen, we're gonna see an investigation here or, or, or further charges, uh, once this trial wraps up into some of these other people? Not for the relationship, but for something to do with why this took the feds to come in and, and charge it.

Well, the venue over this, of course, as, as far as investigations, would've been the state police-

Yeah

...

in Massachusetts.

And again, I think the biggest problem that started, uh, nobody investigating this was the ME.

But secondarily to that, I think more to your point, is about the brother and about this, you know, the, the captain.

The captain.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

Uh, as to what about them? Did they know? I've always said I would bet dollars to donuts William knew, and I wouldn't doubt that the captain knew either.

Hmm.

Because they probably said, "Did you kill her?" [laughs] I mean, I bet those conversations could have happened.