Federal prosecutors gave their closing argument in the Matthew Farwell murder trial on Friday.
Farwell is charged with killing 23-year-old Sandra Birchmore and her unborn child and staging the death to look like a suicide. Her body was found in a seated position with a strap around her neck and tied to a doorknob. Prosecutors allege Farwell killed her to stop her from exposing federal crimes, including sexual exploitation of a child. They claim Farwell had been grooming her for sex since she was 15 years old and part of the Stoughton Police Explorers mentoring program.
Prosecutors hammered home the motive for Farwell to kill Birchmore would be that Birchmore would expose their long-running sexual relationship.
“He went to clean up the mess that he had created for himself years earlier, a mess that could bring serious charges and destroy his life,” prosecutors said.
Prosecutors showed jurors Birchmore going to her Canton apartment the night she died. They also showed Farwell arriving wearing a mask that friends and co-workers testified he hated.
Birchmore was found dead four days later, hanging from a strap tied to a doorknob. State investigators and the medical examiner called it a suicide.
Federal prosecutors said Farwell staged it to look like a suicide. They said Farwell couldn’t hide the fractured bone in Birchmore’s neck that the prosecutor told jurors could only have come from someone strangling her.
“None of these medical witnesses can point to a single instance where a young person like Sandra suffered a fracture from a seated hanging position like the one she was found in,” prosecutors said. “None.”
In their final points, defense attorney Kimberly Stevens emphasized that their own experts disagreed with the prosecution witnesses. She told jurors about Birchmore’s long history of mental health challenges and past talk of suicide.
The defense claims she killed herself when Farwell came over and told her he was breaking off the relationship and refused to claim her baby as his own.
“Who would premeditate a murder, walk into the scene in plain view of the camera recording, wearing the clothes he always wears, putting bare hands on an elevator button where DNA would be transferred, going upstairs, and afterwards leaving behind computers and a phone?” the defense argued.
The defense focused on an online search from Birchmore’s laptop hours before she died, asking, “What color is the suicide ribbon?”
“What better insight into a person’s mind and way of thinking than they would search for something?” the defense asked.
The defense returned to reasonable doubt, saying, “Can they prove beyond a reasonable doubt of killing? No, and you know why? Because Matthew didn’t kill her.
Countering that point, the prosecution’s last statement to jurors said that in her final hours, Birchmore searched baby names online.
“You know beyond any reasonable doubt that the defendant murdered Sandra,” Elizabeth Riley said. “That he struggled with her. He strangled her, and he staged her. And when Sandra Birchmore’s breathing ceased, when her heart stopped beating, that child she had prayed for and planned for, and had done everything in her power to protect, died too.”
Birchmore’s family said they were satisfied with what they heard.
“They stuck with the facts, and you can’t argue with the facts,” Barbara Wright said, Sandra’s cousin. “Facts matter.”
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