In May 2021, the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled that Birchmore, 23, a former participant in a Stoughton police youth program who was pregnant when she died, killed herself by hanging, according to her death certificate.
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“I must disagree,” Baden wrote in the letter.
“Ms. Birchmore did not die of suicidal hanging … The cause of Ms. Birchmore’s death is ‘Strangulation’ and the manner of death is ‘Homicide,’” Baden wrote.
Baden’s determination opens a new front in the controversial case that has prompted investigations by the FBI and the state attorney general’s office. Stoughton police also conducted its own internal affairs investigation of the three former officers. No criminal charges have been brought.
Baden’s career has spanned 50 years, and he has been involved in a series of high-profile investigations. He led a panel on a US House committee that reinvestigated the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1970s, conducted autopsies of the bodies of George Floyd and Michael Brown at the request of their families, and testified for the defense at O.J. Simpson’s murder trial. Baden didn’t respond Friday to requests for comment.
Birchmore’s estate is suing three former Stoughton police officers for wrongful death in a complaint that accuses them of engaging in a “near decade long scheme of grooming and repeated assaults,” which culminated in her death.
They are Matthew G. Farwell, 38, a married former Stoughton police detective, patrolmen’s union president, and father that Birchmore met through the department’s youth program, as well as his twin brother, William, and Robert C. Devine, 52, a former deputy chief in Stoughton who previously led the department’s youth program. They resigned from the department in 2022 and deny the allegations in the civil suit.
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The estate is also suing the Town of Stoughton for negligence, which it denies.
Before she died, Birchmore claimed the father of her unborn child was Matthew Farwell. Farwell denied he fathered a baby with Birchmore during a 2021 interview, State Police records show.
Last year, State Police Lieutenant John Fanning wrote in an affidavit filed in Stoughton District Court that investigators have looked into whether Farwell could be charged with aggravated statutory rape based on allegations that he began having sex with Birchmore when she was 15 and he was 27.
If true, those actions would be statutory rape; the age of consent in Massachusetts is 16. In court papers, Matthew Farwell has denied having sex with Birchmore when she was underage.
Birchmore participated in the Stoughton police youth program from the time she was 13 until she graduated from high school in 2015 and met the Farwell brothers and Devine in that setting.
In a decision in the wrongful death suit earlier this year, Superior Court Judge Brian A. Davis wrote that Devine and William Farwell had sex with Birchmore in their patrol cars when she was an adult. Davis cited an unredacted copy of the Stoughton police internal affairs report as a source.
Baden’s letter also raised other concerns about the investigation into Birchmore’s death.
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While the state medical examiner found that Birchmore was pregnant when she died, the office “apparently did not send fetal tissue for DNA analysis to determine who the father was.”
State Police records show that investigators asked Farwell in 2021 to provide a DNA sample, but he declined.
Swabs from Birchmore’s body, hair and fingernail clippings, and clothing she was wearing were taken for a sexual assault kit. But Baden wrote in his report that it “appears” the evidence was not tested. He said he believes the kit and fetal tissue could still be examined.
Spokespeople for the Massachusetts State Police and state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, which helped to investigate Birchmore’s death, didn’t respond Friday to questions about Baden’s claims about the fetal tissue and sexual assault kit. They also declined to comment on Baden’s letter, citing ongoing investigations by several agencies.
On Monday, David Traub, a spokesperson for Norfolk District Attorney Michael W. Morrissey, said “DNA testing has been done on items with the potential to produce evidence of the potential crimes being investigated, and other items have been preserved.” He declined to provide more details “while multiple agencies continue to investigate.”
On Feb. 1, 2021, surveillance cameras captured Matthew Farwell arriving and then leaving Birchmore’s apartment building in Canton, and he was the last known person to see her alive, according to the Stoughton police internal affairs report. Birchmore’s body was found there three days later.
Related: Here's what to know about the Sandra Birchmore case
Asked for comment Friday, a lawyer for Farwell pointed to a March statement in which he denied the allegations in the civil suit. Farwell and another attorney representing him didn’t return messages Friday.
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In 2022, Matthew Farwell told the Globe in a statement that he had “not committed any crimes.”
During an interview with State Police two days after Birchmore’s body was found, Farwell gave an account of their encounter at her apartment on Feb. 1, 2021.
He said he told Birchmore that he wasn’t the father of her unborn child, “it was all over,” and he was “blocking her from all forms of communication,” Fanning wrote in a report. .
“Matt said that Sandra was upset, but she did not make any suicidal statements at all,” Fanning wrote. “Matt said that he left and Sandra was standing in the kitchen when he walked out.”
In his letter, Baden wrote that the Stoughton internal affairs investigation found that Birchmore was “happy that she was pregnant.” He also wrote “there was no suicide note.”
Attorney Steven J. Marullo, who represents Birchmore’s estate in the civil suit, said he asked Baden to review records in the case after examining the autopsy conducted by the state medical examiner’s office.
“I saw certain things in the autopsy report that didn’t gel with the conclusion that it was a suicide. I decided at that time we needed to hire our own expert pathologist,” Marullo said Thursday.
The state medical examiner’s autopsy of Birchmore hasn’t been released, and the records are not public under state law.
In Baden’s letter, he said Birchmore fractured her right hyoid bone, a small, U-shaped bone in her neck. Such an injury “occurs rarely, if at all, in suicidal hanging and does occur in half of homicidal strangulations of women,” wrote Baden, citing a textbook by forensic pathologists Dr. Vincent DiMaio and Dr. Dominick J. DiMaio.
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The fracture, along with Birchmore’s other injuries, “are commonly found in homicidal strangulation — manual and ligature — but not in suicidal hanging,” Baden wrote.
Also, autopsy photos showed a ligature was entangled in Birchmore’s hair, which “occurs when there is resistance during homicidal strangulation,” Baden wrote.
Baden said Birchmore would have lost consciousness “within seconds” after the ligature was fastened around her neck and died “within a few minutes.”
He also wrote that the ligature was found tied to a doorknob, adding that he believes that was done to “give the appearance of a suicidal hanging.”
Trauma to the hyoid bone and cartilages in the larynx in suicide cases has been widely researched, with a 2018 article in “Forensic Science International” calling such injuries “one of the most studied and paradoxically contradictory topics in forensic pathology.”
The article described a study of 178 people who died by suicidal hanging over a three-year period and found at least one fracture of the hyoid bone in 39 percent of the cases.
In a 2021 report, State Police Trooper Matthew Dunne described finding Birchmore’s body in her bedroom on Feb. 4, 2021.
He said he found no indications of physical abuse or bruising, swelling, external trauma, or markings suggesting a struggle, the report said.
A toxicology report found Birchmore was taking sertraline, a prescription psychotropic medication usually taken for depression, Baden wrote. The civil suit brought by Birchmore’s estate said she endured “significant mental and emotional problems,” and lost her grandmother and mother who raised her when she was a teenager.
In a statement Sunday , Stoughton Police Chief Donna McNamara said she had read Baden’s findings.
“I was profoundly disturbed and troubled by what I read. While I am not a trained medical examiner, and I am not qualified to draw any direct conclusions, the findings certainly warrant further examination at the highest level,” said McNamara, who was named chief in 2017 after being appointed to lead the department on an interim basis the year before.
Stoughton police didn’t have the authority to investigate Birchmore’s death because she died in Canton, McNamara said, but the force has assisted other agencies pursue the case.
“Sandra received not so much as a sliver of justice during her life, and we will not cease in our efforts to ensure our duty to administer justice,” McNamara said. “Every good and decent police officer should be aware of and angry about the injustices inflicted upon Sandra Birchmore. Sandra idolized police officers and what policing stood for in America, and she was victimized as a result.”
On Friday, Traub, the spokesperson for Morrissey, referred to a 2022 statement in which the office said the investigation to date had found “no evidence of foul play” in Birchmore’s death, but promised that “prosecutors will review any additional information.”
“That includes this report,” he said. “This is an active and open investigation and multiple law enforcement agencies continue to review all information as it comes available. That review is underway.”
Morrissey’s office is under scrutiny by federal investigators over allegations of a police coverup involving the 2022 death of Boston police Officer John O’Keefe in Canton. Closing arguments are expected Tuesday in the second-degree murder trial of O’Keefe’s girlfriend, Karen Read. She has pleaded not guilty.
In March, the Peace Officers Standards and Training Commission, the state’s law enforcement oversight agency, approved an agreement with Matthew Farwell that prohibits him from working as a police officer in Massachusetts and added him to a national database of sanctioned officers. Under the agreement, he didn’t admit to any wrongdoing.
The commission is also seeking to decertify William Farwell and suspend or decertify Devine, records show. Those proceedings are pending.
Shelley Murphy of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Laura Crimaldi can be reached at laura.crimaldi@globe.com. Follow her @lauracrimaldi.
