I feel like I ought to offer something uplifting this holiday week, but what I’ve got this morning is the opposite of that. Last week The Boston Globe published a two-part story (here and here) on Sandra Birchmore, the young woman who, we were originally told, died by suicide after years of a sexual affair with a Stoughton police officer. She was pregnant, and the officer, Matthew Farwell, may have been the father.
Following an investigation by federal authorities, Farwell has since been charged with murder. The Globe story, by Laura Crimaldi and Yvonne Abraham, unfolds in narrative style, telling a horrendous tale involving allegations that Farwell and Birchmore began having sex when she was just 15 (which would be statutory rape) and that she also had sex with Farwell’s brother, William, and another officer, Robert Devine; Devine denies the allegation. Crimaldi and Abraham write:
The immense power imbalance that Birchmore endured in her life persisted long after she was gone. Time and again, investigators gave the benefit of the doubt to the police officer now accused of killing a young woman who was rarely, if ever, granted the same consideration.
It’s a story that alleges shocking depravity on the part of the officers. It’s hard to come away from it with anything but despair over the human condition. But a Globe editorial accompanying the story does manage to find some heroes: Birchmore’s family and friends, who never gave up their conviction that Sandra had not killed herself.
“If it weren’t for the friends and family of Sandra Birchmore who pushed and prodded for justice after her death, there’s a good chance that Matthew Farwell, the man accused of killing her, would still be walking free,” the editorial says, adding: “The fact that Farwell was a police officer raises disturbing questions about whether police are capable of investigating themselves.”
The story appears in yesterday’s Sunday magazine as well as online. The Sandra Birchmore saga has received an enormous amount of coverage during the past few years, but Crimaldi and Abraham’s account will make you see it in a new light, through Birchmore’s eyes and those who believed in her. Depressing and upsetting though it may be, it is also a triumph of narrative journalism.