Minihane, who appeared Thursday on Family Feud as part of a charity fundraiser, clarified Friday that he was the only Family Feud contestant also appearing on Dateline who “has solved a murder” rather than committing one.
Minihane was instrumental in helping solve the 2021 murder of teacher’s aide Sandra Birchmore, according to BostonMagazine.com.
Birchmore, 23, was found dead in her Canton, Massachusetts apartment, her death initially ruled as a suicide by asphyxia.
But federal authorities later determined that she had been killed, with a local police officer alleged to have murdered her.
Minihane was “the first journalist to raise questions about the Birchmore case,” reported the magazine’s Michelle McPhee.
“The tide began to turn in 2023, when Minihane released his podcast about Birchmore’s case,” McPhee says.
Minihane and Dave Cullinane, hosts of the true crime podcast “The Case,” weren’t convinced it was a suicide, focusing on the case for an entire season of their podcast, according to Boston.com’s account of the Dateline episode featuring their work.
The months of effort that Minihane and Cullinane spent pushing for access to evidence finally paid off when the district attorney’s office turned over footage from Birchmore’s apartment building,” says Boston.com’s Darin Zullo.
The footage showed a cop who later became the prime suspect in Birchmore’s death entering and leaving her apartment on the night she died.
