Hidden Killers Live! Daily True Crime News & Breakdowns

Sandra Birchmore lost her mother and grew up without a father. Officers from the Stoughton Police Department — men who ran the youth program Sandra joined as a child — allegedly stepped into those gaps. Psychotherapist Shavaun Scott examines how those missing pieces in Sandra’s life became the entry points that officers used to build trust that went far beyond what a badge is supposed to carry. Sandra’s closest friend took one look at the Farwell situation and saw through it. Sandra drafted a text to Farwell’s wife that would have broken everything open, then stopped. Scott, author of Nightbi...

Tony and Bob Motta go officer by officer through the Sandra Birchmore investigation in one sitting. Trooper Matthew Dunne, who met Matthew Farwell in a school parking lot, took no notes, and now says Farwell lied to him. Examiner Nicholas Guarino, who found Sandra's DoorDash password was mfarwell1 and then found nothing on Farwell's phone. Sgt. John Fanning, who ran the unit, chose the parking lot, never sought a warrant, and allegedly told Farwell's brother they needed the case like a bullet in the head. And William Farwell, the twin who worked in the Stoughton station, admitted his own...

Caleb Flynn stood convicted on all nine counts, sentenced to life without parole for the murder of his wife Ashley, and told the courtroom God is his judge. Timmy Gibson heard that and recognized doctrine, not defiance. Gibson spent thirty years as an evangelical pastor before walking away. On Homicide Happy Hour, he laid out the theology. The Bible teaches that when you do wrong, the first relationship to repair is between you and God. God will cast your sins as far as the east is from the west. When that's the system, the people you actually harmed become...

Stoughton police got a call about Matthew Farwell and Sandra Birchmore on January 20th, 2021. Three minutes. Two holds. Former Deputy Chief Brian Holmes testified he listened to the recording before the department's system automatically deleted it. The federal indictment says a department employee told Farwell about the call. Twelve days later, Sandra was dead. Inside that same department was Matthew's twin, Officer William Farwell, who admitted his own relationship with Sandra, lied to state police, and searched her in the law enforcement database dozens of times with no official reason. He was permanently decertified in 2024. Stoughton's internal investigation found...

William Farwell is a Stoughton cop, Matthew Farwell's twin, and a man who admitted to state police that he'd been with Sandra Birchmore himself. Prosecutors say that when Sgt. John Fanning interviewed him on February 11th, 2021, Fanning told him the death was a suicide, nothing was criminal, and they needed the investigation like they needed a bullet in the head. Fanning ran the unit. Trooper Dunne testified Fanning made the decision to interview Matthew Farwell in a parking lot without a recorder. The unit never asked a judge for a warrant. Fanning later oversaw the Karen Read investigation that...

State police examiner Nicholas Guarino searched Matthew Farwell's phone on February 9th, 2021, found no messages with Sandra Birchmore, and returned it. Days earlier he'd unlocked Sandra's laptop using a password she'd set to Farwell's own name. Prosecutors say Farwell wiped his messages after his first state police interview. The FBI later found tens of thousands of them. On the stand, Guarino also admitted deleting a partial extraction of Sandra's laptop, being unable to read her Apple Watch, and losing track of when an external hard drive failed. Bob Motta joins Tony live to explain what a forensic examiner is...

A pregnant woman is found dead. The last man known to see her alive is a cop. The trooper assigned to find out what happened meets that cop in a parking lot, keeps it friendly, and tells a jury five years later he did it that way so the cop wouldn't ask for a lawyer. That's Trooper Matthew Dunne's testimony in the Matthew Farwell trial. Dunne also admitted he skipped Sandra Birchmore's autopsy, never interviewed her neighbors, never went to Stoughton PD to question Farwell's coworkers, and later learned Farwell lied to him about the relationship. Bob Motta joins...

Two courtrooms produced evidence that had been sitting untouched. At Murdaugh's pretrial hearing, his defense showed unknown male DNA under both of Maggie's hands and on her phone — SLED never ran further tests. A drug dealer's statement connecting $15,000-a-week pill sales to the Murdaugh family had sat in evidence files for three years. Harpootlian claimed a passed polygraph; the judge put the failure on the record and warned him about candor. At Farwell's federal murder trial, an FBI agent and a prosecutor read his text messages with Sandra Birchmore to the jury. He told her he figured she would ha...

Timmy Gibson didn't just attend church for forty-eight years. He ran one. He led worship teams, traveled as a healing evangelist, and served on staff at a megachurch. Then he walked away and became an atheist. On Homicide Happy Hour, he brought that history to the Caleb Flynn case, and the first thing he said is that what Flynn was doing on the worship team happened at every church Gibson ever served. Flynn was convicted on all nine counts in the murder of his wife Ashley in Tipp City, Ohio. He'd been carrying on with a fellow worship team...

State Police had Matthew Farwell's personal phone. That didn't stop his searching. Eight days after Sandra Birchmore's death, Farwell used his department-issued phone to look up consent revocation in Massachusetts and whether Cellebrite can extract deleted iMessages. The FBI's forensics examiner presented phone data from the night Sandra died: her device tracked six steps at 9:10 PM, screen lock at 9:13, eight steps at 9:40, then zero activity. Surveillance placed Farwell inside her building. A baby names list found on Sandra's phone — saved two days before she died — ended with the name Matthew. She had been sharing ultrasound images. The defense cited a se...

In federal court, a prosecutor read Matthew Farwell's texts while an FBI agent read Sandra Birchmore's. His own words: he figured she would have said no because she was young. He got addicted. He called it tutoring at the library — prosecutors say the relationship became physical there while she was a high school student. He admitted to the FBI that 2012 was on the table. Sandra Birchmore was fourteen years old. Farwell directed Sandra to wipe their text history — not once, but multiple times. FBI testimony placed his conduct within the legal definition of aggravated statutory offense. He was a poli...

Harpootlian claimed flying colors. The record says failure. Alex Murdaugh's polygraph tested financial deception, not the murders of Maggie and Paul — and Murdaugh was never tested about the killings at all. The judge rebuked Harpootlian on the record: candor with the court is not optional, and this conduct will not be tolerated going forward. The hearing also laid bare fights over evidence handling — the state delivered 73 gigabytes of material three days before the first trial. A SLED ballistics expert who testified he'd never encountered .300 Blackout in a homicide was undercut by SLED's own logs showing those cartridges processed routinely. The...

At a pretrial hearing ahead of Alex Murdaugh's retrial, defense attorneys laid out DNA evidence the first jury never saw. Maggie Murdaugh had unknown male DNA under both sets of fingernails — not just the one hand SLED disclosed — and on the cell phone thrown from the car. Alex Murdaugh matches none of it. Three days before the original trial, the state delivered a data dump containing a federal prisoner's statement: Ryan Spencer North claimed he sold $15,000 a week in prescription pills to the family. He named Eddie Smith and a $165,000 debt to a violent gang. That statement went uninvestigated. The...

Two deaths. Two investigations where the scene was compromised before law enforcement got the chance to protect it. In Sandra Birchmore's case, the compromise came from inside the department. In Ken Urker's case, it came from a relative of his ex-partner. Tony and Bob Motta ask what a defense attorney makes of both and whether either investigation was built to find the truth.Listen Anywhere You Get Podcasts: https://pod.link/1655749292Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/@hiddenkillerspod?sub_confirmation=1...

Leaked recordings reportedly capture Gypsy Rose Blanchard telling Ryan Anderson she hoped Ken Urker would overdose. That was 2020 and 2021. Ken is dead with drug paraphernalia at the scene and no official cause of death released. Tony and Bob Motta ask whether those recordings change what the sheriff's office should be investigating, what it means that Gypsy's brother entered the scene first, and what the Urker family should be demanding.Listen Anywhere You Get Podcasts: https://pod.link/1655749292Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube...

Canton PD, State Police, and the Norfolk DA all looked at Sandra Birchmore's death and called it self-inflicted. The defense is telling the jury the people who were actually in that apartment and had the evidence in their hands all reached the same conclusion. Prosecutors say Farwell's DNA is on the strap. Tony and Bob Motta ask whether a defense attorney can turn a failed investigation into reasonable doubt — and what it means for a juror who believes the original investigation was compromised.Listen Anywhere You Get Podcasts: https://pod.link/1655749292Want to comment and wa...

The federal case against Matthew Farwell exists because the FBI reopened an investigation that local and state agencies closed. His twin brother, a former deputy chief, the DA's office, and the medical examiner all moved in the same direction on the same case. Tony and Bob Motta ask at what point a pattern of failures stops looking like incompetence, what charges could exist for the people and institutions that let it happen, and what Sandra's family was supposed to accept as justice.Listen Anywhere You Get Podcasts: https://pod.link/1655749292Want to comment and watch...

Lobby footage showed Matthew Farwell entering Sandra Birchmore's building the night before she was found. His phone stopped transmitting near her apartment. DNA was collected from the strap around her neck and from her underwear. Witnesses reported that he made statements about wanting her to end her own life. Prosecutors allege all of it existed during the original investigation and none of it moved the case forward. Tony and Bob Motta ask what a defense attorney sees when an investigation has everything it needs and still calls it closed.Listen Anywhere You Get Podcasts: https://pod.link/1655749292<...

Bryan Kohberger told Judge Steven Hippler under oath that he was guilty of killing four University of Idaho students. A year later, he filed a petition saying his legal team convinced him to enter a plea he did not freely choose. Which version can a court rely on?Kohberger accuses Anne Taylor and other members of his former defense team of misleading him about conditions on death row and evidence they allegedly did not share. Those claims will need proof. The judge can compare any testimony or records about the plea talks with Kohberger’s own answers in...

Gypsy Rose Blanchard reached toward a phone as Ken Urker tried to end a July 2025 livestream. She appeared to be slurring her speech, and the exchange ended abruptly. People watching a few seconds of video argued over what it meant for their relationship. Ken’s death more than a year later made that old clip circulate in a very different atmosphere.There is a longer history behind that public moment. Gypsy left prison in December 2023 after serving about eight and a half years for her role in Dee Dee Blanchard’s killing. She has described those years as a...