Why Matthew Farwell Deleted Two Searches Five Days After Sandra Birchmore Died

Federal prosecutors put it in a 2026 court filing: at no point was Matthew Farwell seriously considered as a suspect in a homicide. Part 2 of the Sandra Birchmore story is the investigation that produced that sentence, from the hour her body was found to the federal courtroom where jury selection begins October 5, 2026.

Canton police found Sandra on February 4, 2021, seated on her bedroom floor with a duffel-bag strap around her neck. A trooper checked the suicide box that day. By February 6 the state had video of Farwell entering her building masked and leaving 29 minutes later, and a caller's report that Sandra's police-officer boyfriend had said he would take care of the problem himself. Detectives met him in a parking lot, unrecorded. He told them it began in 2020; the department's own investigators put it at 2013, when she was 15.

On February 9, the FBI says, Farwell used his Stoughton-issued phone to look up whether deleted iMessages can be recovered and whether consent can be revoked, then wiped both searches. In March his lawyer refused a DNA sample and the state didn't seek a warrant. In May the medical examiner ruled suicide. The lieutenant who supervised the case had been a Stoughton officer alongside the deputy chief who ran the Explorers program, and later worked the Karen Read investigation.

The Norfolk DA's office declined to prosecute in 2022, citing Sandra's death. The FBI arrested Farwell in August 2024. Prosecutors' 2026 filings say his DNA is the major contributor on the strap; the defense says the strap carries a mixture from at least four people and that Sandra died by suicide. He has pleaded not guilty.

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This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.

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