Sandra Birchmore: One Hour to Bury the Truth
Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary
True Crime Today
3.3 • 907 Ratings
🗓️ 1 May 2026
⏱️ 16 minutes
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Summary
Within one hour of finding Sandra Birchmore’s body, officers told the medical examiner there had been no foul play. That call shaped everything. The medical examiner never visited the scene. Canton police misidentified the murder weapon as a scarf. Investigators never compelled a DNA sample from the man seen on surveillance entering Sandra’s building the night she was last seen alive. They let him keep his phone for days. They never searched his home.
Federal prosecutors later wrote it plainly: at no point was Matthew Farwell seriously considered as a suspect in a homicide. He was a decorated police detective, a union president, a veteran. He had the kind of standing that makes people not ask uncomfortable questions. Sandra was a twenty-three-year-old with documented emotional challenges. His credibility was assumed. Hers was dismissed.
Sandra’s family refused to accept the official story. They said she was looking forward to being a mother. She was making plans. She was not in crisis. They filed a wrongful death lawsuit and hired an independent forensic pathologist. Dr. Michael Baden determined Sandra’s death was a homicide. A fractured hyoid bone supported the finding. The FBI’s own expert, Dr. William Smock, reached the same conclusion. Two independent analyses overturned what the state had decided in an hour.
Norfolk County DA Michael Morrissey has since announced he won’t seek reelection. Sandra’s family has endorsed a former federal prosecutor to replace him. The Birchmore case didn’t just expose a murder. It exposed the infrastructure that allowed it to be buried.
This is Part 4 of a five-part series on the Sandra Birchmore case.
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is Hidden Killers with Tony Bruske. |
| 0:03.2 | Here now, Tony Bruske. |
| 0:06.5 | Within one hour of finding Sandra Birchmore's body, |
| 0:12.0 | local officers told the state medical examiner |
| 0:14.9 | there had been no foul play. |
| 0:19.3 | Within one hour, one hour one hour before the forensic analysis was complete there was no |
| 0:29.4 | forensic analysis before the crime scene had been thoroughly examined before anyone |
| 0:34.6 | identified the ligature correctly. |
| 0:42.6 | Before anyone reviewed the surveillance footage that showed Matthew Farwell entering the building the night, Sandra was last seen alive. |
| 0:44.3 | Before anyone checked Sandra's phone, before anyone asked for Farwell's DNA, before anyone |
| 0:48.7 | did any of the things you're supposed to do when a pregnant 23-year-old woman is found dead |
| 0:53.9 | with a strap around her neck |
| 0:55.2 | that you call a scarf. They made a call within 60 minutes of walking into that apartment. |
| 1:03.1 | The officer's unseen communicated to the medical examiner that they were looking at a straightforward |
| 1:08.8 | case and that snap judgment became the foundation |
| 1:12.0 | on which everything else was built, or more accurately, not built. |
| 1:17.8 | Once the word went out that there was nothing suspicious, the investigation didn't just slow down. |
| 1:23.3 | It just stopped looking that this doesn't exist anymore. |
| 1:26.7 | This is part four of our five-part series on the Sandra Birchmore case. |
| 1:31.9 | In parts one through three, we covered how Sandra was groomed by these officers in a police youth program. |
| 1:42.9 | The pregnancy and the final days that preceded her end. |
| 1:46.2 | And the forensic evidence that prosecutors say proves that she was murdered. |
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