Sandra Birchmore: How It All Began

Sandra Birchmore wanted to be a cop. She walked into the Stoughton Police Explorers program at twelve years old full of admiration for the badge, looking for belonging, looking for guidance, looking for the kind of structure her difficult childhood hadn’t provided. What she found instead were predators wearing uniforms.

Federal prosecutors allege that Matthew Farwell, an instructor in the program, began grooming Sandra almost immediately. By the time she was fifteen and he was twenty-seven, he had initiated a sexual relationship with her. Text messages uncovered during the investigation show him acknowledging that he took her virginity. One month later, he married his wife. The exploitation continued for nearly a decade.

But Farwell wasn’t the only officer involved. His twin brother William admitted to a sexual relationship with Sandra and allegedly encouraged her to record her encounters with others and send him the material. Their supervisor, Robert Devine, the man who created the Explorers program, communicated with Sandra under the alias “Marty Riggs” and engaged in sexual encounters with her while on duty. A fourth man, former animal control officer Joshua Heal, acknowledged a sexual encounter at the shelter where Sandra came to adopt a cat.

The lawyer for Sandra’s estate said it plainly at a hearing: these officers passed her around like she was a toy. Multiple adults inside one department exploited a vulnerable girl they met through a youth mentoring program, and not one of them reported the other. The internal affairs investigation that revealed these relationships didn’t happen until 2022 — nineteen months after Sandra was found dead.

At his POST Commission hearing, Devine blamed Sandra. He testified that she “pretty much lied about everything” and that she had pursued him. The Commission’s thirty-page ruling found otherwise. All three officers have been permanently decertified. Only one faces a federal murder charge.

This is Part 1 of a five-part series examining the life and death of Sandra Birchmore, the systems that failed her, and the federal case heading to trial in October 2026.

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