Moments before Matthew Farwell was seen leaving Sandra Birchmore’s Canton apartment the night of Feb. 1, 2021, the young pregnant woman’s iPhone 12 recorded its last steps.
Birchmore’s phone marked eight steps within 3 seconds at 9:40 p.m., nearly a half hour after she texted Farwell that the door to her apartment was open. The device locked at 9:13 p.m., staying that way until its battery died two nights later. Surveillance video showed Farwell leaving Birchmore’s apartment building at 9:43 p.m.
“There are no steps detected after 9:40 p.m. on February 1st until February 4th when the phone was recovered,” digital forensics expert Jessica Hyde testified in federal court on Wednesday, walking jurors through the final moments that Birchmore’s phone recorded any activity.
The last time the phone’s camera app recorded a “user interaction” was when it was “swiped away” at 9:18 p.m., just minutes after Farwell entered the apartment, Hyde testified. A day after Farwell was seen entering and leaving the apartment building, Birchmore’s phone received an incoming FaceTime call, initiating the device’s camera app, Hyde further testified, adding that there was “no user interaction.”
Birchmore’s friends, family and closest supporters have said she couldn’t live without her phone and that she was always communicating on it in some way.
On Feb. 4, 2021, Canton police officers responding to Birchmore’s apartment to perform a wellness check found the 23-year-old woman slumped on her bedroom floor, with a duffel bag strap looped around her neck and tied to a closet doorknob.
Rebutting the defense’s suicide claim, Dr. William Smock, an independent forensic physician who consulted the FBI during the federal probe into Farwell, concluded the cause of Birchmore’s death was “asphyxiation related to strangulation.”
“This was a homicide,” Smock testified on Tuesday.
Hyde’s testimony concluded the prosecution’s weeks-long argument that Farwell killed Birchmore then staged her body to make it look like a suicide.
Farwell is also accused of causing the death of Birchmore’s unborn son 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 after she joined the Stoughton Police Explorer program.
Hyde said in court Wednesday that Birchmore conducted internet searches the morning of Feb. 1, 2021, for “what color is the suicide ribbon” and “purple ribbon meaning.”
A bulk of the prosecution’s witnesses said during testimony, which started Oct. 13, that Birchmore couldn’t wait to become a mother.
One of those witnesses, Birchmore’s therapist Diala Alkhalil, recounted how her client did not show any signs of being suicidal during an appointment the day before she died. The therapist is among the handful of witnesses who alerted local and state police to their concerns about Farwell after the death.
The former Stoughton Police officer’s defense counters that Birchmore died by suicide in her apartment shortly after Farwell ended their relationship the night of Feb. 1, 2021, and told her he was not the father of her unborn child.
The defense called Joseph Harris, vice president of student services and enrollment management at Massasoit Community College, as its first witness. In 2017, Harris, then an academic coordinator, knew Birchmore, who was a peer tutor.
On Nov. 28, 2017, Harris submitted a CARE report — a notice of concern — after Birchmore told him that she engaged in suicidal behavior that weekend and needed a guarantee of tutoring hours so she could leave her home.
“What were the words that she used?” Farwell’s defense attorney Joanne Daley asked.
Harris responded, “That she had tried to kill herself over the weekend.”
Birchmore’s report of suicidal behavior, though, did not warrant any emergency notice to campus police or 911, Harris said.
Prosecutor Torrey B. Cummings pointed out the purported suicidal behavior came in 2017, “not 2018, not 2019, not 2020.”
Harris agreed. The defense continues its case today in the Seaport court.
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