BOSTON (WHDH) - Federal prosecutors rested their case Wednesday in the Matthew Farwell murder trial, after offering jurors a timeline of Sandra Birchmore’s movement in her final hours.
Farwell is charged with killing 23-year-old Sandra Birchmore and her unborn child and staging the death to look like a suicide. 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.
Farwell’s defense argues Birchmore took her own life.
Jessica Hyde, an FBI Digital Forensic Expert, was the last witness for the prosecution. She helped prosecutors lay out a timeline of Birchmore’s last moments alive using data from her iPhone, as well as video of her in the lobby of her Canton apartment.
Prosecutors said at 9:07 p.m. on February 1, Farwell texted Birchmore asking to come over. She replied telling him the door would be open when he arrived. Six minutes later, prosecutors said Birchmore’s phone locked.
They next showed surveillance video they say captured a masked Farwell arriving at Birchmore’s apartment building at 9:14 p.m.
Hyde testified that four minutes after Farwell arrived, someone tried to open the camera on Birchmore’s phone from the lockscreen, but no picture or video was taken. The next movement of the phone was eight steps taken at 9:40 p.m. Twenty-five seconds later, the power button was pressed. That was the last time anyone did anything with her phone, prosecutors said.
Less than three minutes later, Farwell was seen leaving Birchmore’s building.
The defense then called their first witness to the stand Wednesday – a Massasoit Community College Administrator who said Birchmore came to him in 2017 and told him she had attempted to kill herself during an argument with her mother.
On cross examination, the prosecution pointed out that was four years before Birchmore died.
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