What Happened to Her

Sandra’s family asks an outside medical expert to review her autopsy, and his findings send shockwaves throughout the community. Meanwhile, the FBI turns its lens on Sandra’s case.
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Stoughton’s police chief orders an internal investigation into Sandra Birchmore’s ties to the department, and to the men inside it. What it uncovers changes not only the story of Sandra’s death, but the story of her life.
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Massachusetts State police interview the man Sandra was seeing, married Stoughton police detective Matthew Farwell. During a non-recorded conversation in a school parking lot, Farwell refers to Sandra as a casual fling. But her friends tell the police a very different story. And Sandra’s death certificate puts investigators and the family further at odds.
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In February 2021, 23-year-old Sandra Birchmore is found dead in her apartment in eastern Massachusetts. Officers quickly label the death a suicide. This news confounds her family, because Sandra was pregnant and planning for her future. And they worry about the mystery man she was dating—an older, married cop from her hometown.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741-741. Please take care while listening.
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When Isolde Raftery was in her senior year of high school in the late 90s, the budding journalist and her best friend published a piece in the school newspaper that deeply fractured — even shattered — the image the school had of itself. Not only that, it led the two teenage friends to believe they were responsible for the death of a teacher, who died by suicide. Twenty-five years later, Isolde, now managing editor at KUOW, and her friend Ella, a civil rights attorney, reinvestigate their own story to get to the bottom of the guilt they carried, in a fantastic podcast called, Adults in the Room. In this episode of What Happened to Her, Melissa Jeltsen talks to Isolde about the web of grooming and abuse they uncovered, what it was like to turn her investigative lens on herself, and how the story has changed her perspective of what they and their fellow students experienced.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741-741. Please take care while listening.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.