True Crime Today | Daily True Crime News & Interviews

The Sandra Birchmore murder trial of former Stoughton police officer Matthew Farwell opened with jury selection on October 6 in Boston, and the paperwork at the center of it has been rewritten. The original 2021 ruling called Sandra's cause of death asphyxia by hanging and the manner suicide. The revised version says asphyxia, manner undetermined. The word homicide has never appeared on it.
Farwell, 40, has pleaded not guilty. His account is that he went to Sandra's Canton apartment on February 1, 2021, told her he was not the father of the child she was carrying, ended the relationship and left her alive.
His lawyers have a forensic pathologist, Dr. Thomas Andrew, former chief medical examiner of New Hampshire, who concluded a suicidal hanging cannot be ruled out. They have Judge Denise Casper's ruling allowing Sandra's mental health history and prior suicidal thoughts in front of the jury, which the government fought and lost. They also have a concession from prosecutors that Farwell's DNA was not found under Sandra's fingernails, and a disclosure that State Police lost the raw data pulled from her laptop in 2024.
Defense attorney and former prosecutor Eric Faddis joins Tony Brueski on which of those actually moves a juror.
Listen Anywhere You Get Podcasts: https://pod.link/1655749292 Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/@hiddenkillerspod?sub_confirmation=1 Join Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/ Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspod X Twitter https://x.com/tonybpod
This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.
#SandraBirchmore #MatthewFarwell #HiddenKillers #MedicalExaminer #CauseOfDeath #StoughtonPolice #FederalTrial #DeniseCasper #DefenseStrategy #TrueCrimePodcast

Christa Pike's failed lethal injection is the second execution Tennessee couldn't finish in five months, and the state keeps choosing the method. The Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that a prisoner can only beat a method by proving the state could easily carry out a less painful one, and Tennessee's answer to hanging and firing squads is that it isn't equipped. When a firing squad bill came up in 2023, the department had already written that it didn't know where it would begin. Amherst professor Austin Sarat's research found lethal injection botched more often than any other method, and between 2018 and 2020 five men on Tennessee's death row picked the electric chair over the needle. Idaho switched to the firing squad after its own failed IV. Tony Brueski lays out why a state that can't do this keeps doing it, and the three-word defense it offered on September 30.
Listen Anywhere You Get Podcasts: https://pod.link/1655749292
Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/@hiddenkillerspod?sub_confirmation=1
Join Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/
Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspod
X Twitter https://x.com/tonybpod
This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.
#ChristaPike #BillLee #TrueCrimeToday #LethalInjection #BotchedExecution #Tennessee #DeathPenalty #TDOC #Execution #TrueCrime

Jury selection in the Sandra Birchmore murder trial began October 6 in federal court in Boston, where Matthew Farwell faces charges of killing a witness and causing the death of her unborn child. He has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty, and a conviction carries a mandatory life sentence.
The paternity test in this case excluded Farwell. Prosecutors say the man they accuse of strangling Sandra in her Canton apartment believed the baby was his because she told him so, and because his own messages through late 2020 and early 2021 read like a man who took it as true.
The physical case runs on timing. Farwell texted Sandra asking to come by. Six minutes later surveillance caught a hooded figure in a surgical mask entering her building at 9:14 p.m. He left at 9:43, and the health data on her phone recorded its last movement at 9:40. Prosecutors say his DNA was on the strap found around her neck, and they have conceded it was not under her fingernails.
Defense attorney and former prosecutor Eric Faddis joins Tony Brueski on what a juror does with an explanation that replaced the first one, and where the defense still has room.
Listen Anywhere You Get Podcasts: https://pod.link/1655749292 
Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/@hiddenkillerspod?sub_confirmation=1 
Join Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/ 
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/ 
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/ 
Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspod 
X Twitter https://x.com/tonybpod
This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.
#SandraBirchmore #MatthewFarwell #HiddenKillers #StoughtonPolice #FederalTrial #CantonMA #DNAEvidence #Paternity #EricFaddis #TrueCrimePodcast

Caleb Flynn's father and mother wrote the judge before his sentencing for the murder of Ashley Flynn, and this episode reads both letters out loud with the trial record next to them. The letters are dated October 2, 2026. Mike Flynn, a Church of God pastor for twenty-two years, told Judge Jeannine Pratt that his son had "never even seen the inside of a courtroom until now" and that the family's pain was "unimaginable." He also told her that a corrections officer at the county jail had praised his parenting during a video call with Caleb. He asked her to "use clemency," which in Ohio is a power that belongs to the governor. Kim Flynn wrote that her son was "close to God and his family," that his awards "would be too numerous to mention," and that she knows he "has repented to his Lord and is remorseful for his decisions." She never names a decision. Three days earlier, after the verdict, she told a TV camera the evidence was "circumstantial junk" and that "He didn't do it." The two letters run more than five hundred words combined and never say Ashley, never mention the two granddaughters, and never use the words killed, shot or murder. Prosecutors asked the judge to weigh a different story about Caleb's character: their memo alleges he met privately with each daughter before her forensic interview and told the girls their words could mean life or death for him. The defense argued the jury never heard that claim and that it didn't match the interviews, and Pratt overruled the objection. She found that Caleb Flynn demonstrates no remorse and sentenced him to life without parole. His daughters' letters were read the same afternoon, and one of them is addressed "Dear Caleb."
Listen Anywhere You Get Podcasts: https://pod.link/1655749292
Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/@hiddenkillerspod?sub_confirmation=1
Join Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/
Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspod
X Twitter https://x.com/tonybpod
This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.
#CalebFlynn #AshleyFlynn #TrueCrimeToday #CalebFlynnParents #CalebFlynnSentencing #MikeFlynn #KimFlynn #TippCityOhio #TrueCrime #AmericanIdol

The Christa Pike botched execution on September 30 ended with two doses of pentobarbital administered and Pike still breathing, and the state insists its protocol was followed. The deeper problem is who Tennessee has left to work with. The American Medical Association and nursing groups direct their members away from executions. Drug makers producing pentobarbital for medical use will not sell it for this. A state with a death sentence to carry out still needs both.
What fills that gap is a supplier the public is not allowed to identify. Tennessee has argued that disclosure would expose suppliers to pressure and cost the state its source, and state law keeps parts of the process out of public records.
That argument has a history attached. Former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton's 2022 review found Tennessee never gave the pharmacy that made and tested its execution chemicals a copy of the protocol, and that endotoxin testing required by that protocol never occurred before seven executions. Two officials were fired. Lee has now ordered a new Stanton review and stopped the state's remaining executions for the year.
Defense attorney and former prosecutor Eric Faddis joins Tony Brueski on where the line sits between protecting a supplier and hiding a failure.
Listen Anywhere You Get Podcasts: https://pod.link/1655749292 
Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/@hiddenkillerspod?sub_confirmation=1 
Join Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/ 
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/ 
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/ 
Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspod 
X Twitter https://x.com/tonybpod
This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.
#ChristaPike #ColleenSlemmer #HiddenKillers #LethalInjection #Pentobarbital #ExecutionSecrecy #Tennessee #DeathPenalty #EricFaddis #TrueCrimePodcast