From ocregister.com

By MICHAEL CASEY

BOSTON (AP) — Jury deliberations began Friday in the trial of a former Massachusetts police officer accused of killing a pregnant woman to keep her from revealing he had begun sexually abusing her when she was 15.

Federal prosecutors say Matthew Farwell killed Sandra Birchmore, 23, and tried to stage her death as a suicide on Feb. 1, 2021, after learning she was pregnant with what he thought was his child. At the time, Farwell was a married detective with the Stoughton Police Department, where Birchmore had participated in a youth program as a child.

“You know on Feb. 1 Matthew Farwell didn’t go to Sandra Birchmore’s apartment for a clean break,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Fogarty told the jury. “He went to clean up the mess he created for himself years earlier, a mess that could bring serious charges and destroy his life. He cleaned up the mess by taking Sandra’s life.”

Lawyers for Farwell, who is now 40, acknowledge he had an extramarital relationship with Birchmore. But they say he didn’t kill her and didn’t have sex with her until she was old enough to consent under Massachusetts law. They also argued that Birchmore had threatened suicide before and took her own life after Farwell left her apartment the night of her death.

Massachusetts State Police officers and investigators, some with personal connections to Farwell, quickly concluded Birchmore’s death was a suicide after she was found slumped on her apartment floor with a strap around her neck.

“When all is lost and all hope is gone and you’re alone in the world, are you going to pick your phone up or did she sit down and take that strap and make the pain stop?” Farwell’s attorney, Kimberly Stevens, told the jury in closings.

The nearly monthlong trial — with about 50 witnesses and 500 exhibits — has unfolded in federal court in Boston, partly because local prosecutors never brought criminal charges.

The defense contends there is no evidence that Birchmore was going to tell law enforcement about his alleged crimes.

One of the investigators, Fogarty said, saw nothing suspicious in Birchmore’s apartment and concluded this was a “troubled girl who killed herself.”

The state’s medical examiner, relying partly on information from police, initially ruled that Birchmore died by suicide. The office has since changed the official manner of death to “undetermined.”

But Birchmore’s friends and family never believed the teacher’s aide had killed herself.

She had told dozens of friends about her pregnancy and, according to prosecutors, was thrilled to start her next chapter as a single mom. A stroller, still in the box, was found in her apartment along with an ultrasound photo pinned to her refrigerator.

The FBI began looking into Birchmore’s death in 2023, partly at the urging of a former deputy chief at the Stoughton Police Department who had led an internal affairs investigation into Farwell and several other officers accused of misconduct.

Federal investigators concluded the local probe was rushed and compromised. Farwell was interviewed for just 15 minutes in a parking lot, they said. Investigators didn’t take notes, examine him for injuries or sample his DNA. Police did look at Farwell’s phone, but only after he had deleted texts with Birchmore.

Farwell’s twin brother, Billy Farwell, testified that the lead investigator — a longtime family friend — told him he wanted the case closed and needed the investigation like he needed a “bullet in the head.”

The FBI investigation uncovered about 40,000 texts between Farwell and Birchmore, including some in which they reminisced about having sex when he was 27 and she was 15.

The text exchanges also showed how their relationship grew contentious as Birchmore pressed Farwell to get her pregnant and threatened to tell his wife about their relationship. Texts in late 2020, after she was pregnant, showed they argued over what role, if any, Farwell would play in the child’s life.

A paternity test later revealed a different man had gotten Birchmore pregnant.

At trial, a digital forensics expert testified that Birchmore’s phone stopped moving three minutes before the lobby security camera recorded Farwell leaving her building on the night of her death.

An expert hired by prosecutors, Dr. William Smock, testified that Birchmore’s injuries indicated she was strangled with a duffel bag strap and that she struggled before dying.

A defense expert, Dr. Thomas Andrew, the former chief medical examiner in New Hampshire, dismissed Smock’s determination that it was a homicide.

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From ocregister.com

Allan Filguieras’ daughter, Nathalia Filgueiras, was his soulmate.

They spent their happiest moments together in the sky, flying together in his small plane. While she began flying alongside him at age 12, she quickly became a skilled pilot in her own right, earning a private license her senior year of high school.

Now, Allan Filgueiras says he just wishes he was there when that passion led to tragedy.

Nathalia Filgueiras, a West Boca High School graduate, was the co-pilot of a business jet that crashed in Palm Beach County on Sunday. All nine people on board were killed, including seven passengers and two crew members. Nathalia Filgueiras was the flight’s co-pilot and can be heard on harrowing audio transmissions from their final moments. She was just 20 years old.

Allan Filgueiras spoke publicly about his daughter’s death for the first time at a Friday news conference in Coral Gables.

“She was gifted, and my soulmate,” Allan Filguieras said through tears on Friday, as photos of his daughter smiling from a cockpit filled the space behind him. “I wanted to be by her side, inside the plane, to help … I had to be next to her.”

As the National Transportation Safety Board investigates what weather, mechanical or tactical factors caused the crash, family members and former mentors are remembering the young pilot as passionate and talented beyond her 20 years.

“She was at the top of her class in everything that she did, and she was perfectly qualified to be the co-pilot on this flight, despite her tender years,” said personal injury attorney Stuart Grossman, whose firm, Grossman, Yaffa and Cohen, was retained by the young pilot’s family. Grossman said at the news conference there were no immediate plans to file a lawsuit over the crash.

Filgueiras had accumulated about 1,300 hours of flight experience up until her death. She earned certifications as a private pilot, commercial pilot and instrument pilot, and she served also as a flight instructor.

Designated pilot examiner Daniel Petrovich still remembers what he told Filgueiras after he finished her check ride, the final test in her pilot training, in 2023.

“I looked at her,” Petrovich told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “And I said, ‘I would let you fly me anywhere.’”

Just 17 years old at the time, Filgueiras didn’t miss a question on her oral exam, Petrovich said. Her flight planning was flawless. When she called the ground control at the tower, clearing her entrance to the runway, the controller commented on her professionalism.

Petrovich kept up with Filgueiras on social media and through friends. He learned of her death in a phone call.

The pilot of 49 years still remembers how Filgueiras flew at a commercial level before even earning her private license — leaving him “thoroughly, thoroughly impressed.”

“It gives me hope for the future, to see people like that,” Petrovich said. “It’s wonderful, but it’s sad at the same time. I think we lost a bright, shining star in the aviation world.”

Investigators earlier this week found the jet’s left tail elevator up to 3.8 miles away from the site of impact, indicating the aircraft began breaking apart before impact. The elevator controls the up and down pitch of the plane.

Teams are still working to recover more evidence, despite initial delays from storms that filled the crater left by the impact, and urging people to come forward if they find debris. Hundreds of residents in the area have been displaced with no timeline for return.

The jet crashed shortly before 1 p.m. on Sunday, minutes after Filgueiras calmly reported turbulence and icing on the plane’s wings. Shortly afterward, Filgueiras gave an urgent “mayday” call as the plane nose-dived at 20,000 feet per minute before exploding into a fireball. Storms were pummeling the region at the time, as they had been throughout the week.

On Friday, Grossman thanked the NTSB for sending nearly 20 investigators to the site and urged people to listen to their instructions.

“I think everyone should stay out of the government’s way and, for once in their lifetime, let law firms relax and just do the right thing,” he said.

Mike Lopez-Trigo, a Miami attorney not involved with the case, said investigators will probe maintenance logs to see what could have caused the plane to begin breaking apart in the air, along with other factors like weather conditions and pilot error.

Investigators will likely complete their initial findings within a month, he said. After that, it’ll be about a year before a full report comes out, at which point the surviving family members will determine next steps.

“Whether it be maintenance protocols or requirements for the planes, or how they’re maintained … whether or not there was pilot error,” Lopez-Trigo said. “Whatever questions are ultimately answered, it’ll be the decision of the survivors of these families on what kind of action they want to take.”

Chris Kirk trained Filgueiras from her early days learning to fly after connecting with her father. The veteran pilot describes her as one of the most naturally gifted he’s taught, but he also remembers her for her bright personality. She showed kindness to everyone, even befriending the man who worked on the airplanes at her flight school, he told the Sun Sentinel.

Kirk himself administered some of her flight checks and even a memorable spin endorsement — where her enthusiasm left him sick with dizziness.

“OK, all right, enough,” he remembers telling her. Filguieras just called him a “sissy.”

Every time she passed another test, he was sent a picture: Filgueiras, smiling, holding up her newest certificate.

“Whether she was going to go on to the airlines or whether she would have stayed in the 135 operator, who knows where she was heading, what her desire was,” Kirk said. “But for her, you know, the world was her oyster. She could have done anything.”

‘A bomb just landed:’ 911 callers describe fiery jet crash as ground-shaking explosion | Listen

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