The medical examiner who performed Sandra Birchmore’s autopsy said she was never made aware that there was anything suspicious about the 23-year-old pregnant woman’s death.
“I was not asked to consider whether this was a homicide,” Dr. Maria Capó Martínez of the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner testified Monday in federal court.
If she had been asked or informed that there was a question that Birchmore had been killed, she told jurors she probably would have done things differently.
“I would have asked why,” she said. “I would have asked if there was anything in particular they wanted me to focus on.”
Capó Martínez discussed her examination of Birchmore and her initial findings that the manner of death was suicide at the murder trial of former Stoughton Police Officer Matthew Farwell.
Farwell is accused of killing Birchmore and causing the death of her unborn child in an effort to cover up his other alleged crimes, including that he started having a sexual relationship with the victim when she was 15 years old.
Federal prosecutors allege that Farwell killed Birchmore in her Canton apartment on Feb. 1, 2021, then staged her body to make it look like she’d hung herself.
Farwell’s defense maintains that their client went to Birchmore’s apartment on the last night she was seen alive to tell her he wasn’t the father of her baby, like she purported but DNA evidence ultimately proved to be untrue. His attorneys say he ended their relationship, and after he left, Birchmore hung herself.
Capó Martínez originally ruled that Birchmore’s death was a suicide in May 2021, based in part on an investigation from the Mass State Police.
Right before she released her findings, she reached out to MSP Lt. John Fanning for photos from the scene and to ask if there was more information about the case.
“Nothing new to report,” Fanning wrote back.
But earlier this year, Capó Martínez changed Birchmore’s manner of death to “undetermined.”
The doctor testified that she has changed death certificates once or twice before, but noted, “We don’t take it lightly.”
After meeting with members of the FBI and the United State Attorney’s Office and one of the prosecution’s experts in August of 2024, the medical examiner said they provided her with information that she didn’t have when she initially ruled on the case.
Before her May 2021 report, Capó Martínez said she’d performed the autopsy and reviewed toxicology reports and photos taken from Birchmore’s Canton home. But there was other information she’d never learned, including that Farwell’s DNA was found on Birchmore’s underwear and the ligature that was around her neck.
“I was not pressured to change her certificate,” Capó Martínez said, explaining to jurors that the “undetermined” designation is “used in cases where there may be multiple manners of death being considered and [they] can’t be excluded from one another.”
During her testimony, jurors were shown photos of Birchmore’s body from her autopsy and the alleged crime scene.
Capó Martínez explained that her body had already been processed, meaning her clothes were taken off and she was washed and x-rayed before the doctor’s examination, which wouldn’t have been the protocol had she’d known the death was suspicious.
She didn’t see any obvious signs of a struggle, although a mark on Birchmore’s chin and bruising that could have been from before her death on her chest were noted.
Much of the testimony on direct and cross examination focused on Birchmore’s hyoid bone, a part of the neck that Capó Martínez found was broken.
In people younger than 30, the bone often hasn’t fused yet and is more flexible, although the doctor wouldn’t go as far as to say it would have been harder to break.
Capó Martínez noted that in partially suspended hangings — Birchmore was found in a sitting position, leaning back, hanging from her closet door knob — her office has seen hyoid bones break. She also said she’s seen them break in hangings of people younger than 30. But the medical examiner said she can’t recall seeing it in a person who hung themselves partially suspended who was also less than 30 years old.
During cross examination, Farwell’s attorney Kimberly Stevens asked the medical examiner whether she’d received any information about Birchmore’s mental health history from federal authorities.
She said she was aware that Birchmore was on Zoloft at the time of her death and that in the past she had cut herself and written a suicide note.
The defense has sought to present evidence about Birchmore’s anxiety and depression leading up to her death, including her worries over money and the viability of her pregnancy.
But Capó Martinez noted that there were not any recent cuts or scars on Birchmore’s body. A photo of Birchmore’s fetus, about eight to ten weeks old and viable at the time, was quickly shown to the jury, despite the objections of the defense.
In the last 30 minutes of testimony, jurors also heard from William Farwell, the defendant’s fraternal twin.
William Farwell testified under immunity that he also had a sexual relationship with Birchmore starting around 2018, when she was an adult. Sometimes, he said, they had sex while he was on duty.
He is set to resume his testimony Tuesday morning.
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