Shadows of Doubt: The Gripping Tale of Cassie Farrington's Untold Story

In this article, we look at a case that occurred in 2014. Inhabitants of the small town of Silver City, located in the southwestern part of the US state of New Mexico, were shocked when a local resident, 23-year-old Cassie Farrington, was found floating face down in the bathtub of her rented house. Cassie's death, in itself, was a severe blow to her parents, but when they believed it couldn't get any worse, local police officials entered the picture.

Cassie Marie Brooks was born on December 22nd, 1990, in Virginia. She was the second oldest of four children to her parents, Chuck and Darlene Brooks. She performed well in school, joined the National Honor Society, participated in sports, and wanted to be a doctor one day. However, when Cassie was 16, she was forced to alter her plans for the future because she got pregnant. Graduating from high school, having a baby, marrying a guy named Bradley Farrington, and leaving her parents' house happened all in one month. Several years later, she had a second child, but slowly this family relationship started to go sour, and what had once felt Eternal ended in divorce.

At 22 years of age, Cassie, along with her two children, lived in Silver City, a town of around 10,000 people, where she was employed as a nurse at a local hospital and was renting a place from one of her co-workers. By the time she became 23, she had started a new relationship. The name of her new boyfriend was David Barry. He was quick to bond with both of Cassie's children, and she was very pleased with that. She and David did not rush things and just built a life together. Cassie told her family and co-workers that David made her and the children happy, and she was hoping that after her previous frustrating experience with family life, she would finally be able to find happiness and peace.

On March 24th, 2014, Cassie called her parents.After completing her night shift at Silver City hospital, they talked for several minutes, and she told her mother that she was planning to drive home, pick up her children, and bring them to school. Then, she intended to return home again to go to bed. She intended to rest for a couple of hours before picking up her children again later that day. School staff phoned Cassie's parents as they could not reach her themselves. She had not arrived to pick up the children even though their classes had finished. Cassie's mother tried to call her herself, but there was no answer.

Hopeful that her daughter had simply neglected to set her alarm clock and was still asleep after a night shift, Darlene called Charell, the woman Cassie was renting the apartment from. She asked her to go and see if Cassie was home and if she was okay. When Charell reached the house and knocked on the door, there was no one to answer it. She went around the house and peeked inside, eyed through the window on the back door, and noticed that water was pouring out of the bathroom into the kitchen. After knocking on the door again, but this time much harder, Charell shouted Cassie's name, receiving no response from her. The woman unlocked the house with her own key and stepped inside.

As she entered the house, she could hear the sound of the flowing water more and more distinctly. When she walked across the wet floor towards the bathroom, Charell kept calling Cassie's name, but now in a slightly trembling voice. Moments later, when she saw Cassie, her worst fears came true. Wearing a house robe, she was lying face down in the overflowing bathtub as water continued to pour out. Charell was a co-worker of Cassie who also worked at the hospital and had first aid skills. After pulling her out of the water and placing her on the floor, Charell understood that it was already too late to perform CPR as rigor mortis had set in. This meant that Cassie had been dead for a few hours.

After calling 911, the woman reported what had happened, following which paramedics and police were deployed to the house. She also phoned Cassie's parents and regretfully informed them that their daughter was no longer alive. While Charell was waiting for paramedics to arrive, she checked the house and found that the second bath, located in another part of the house, also had a faucet open and water running. However, the hub there had an overflow protection, so the excess water wasn't running onto the floor but going down the drain. Charell's attention had also been attracted by the fact that the towel rack, which had been hung on the wall, had been pulled off and was lying on the floor.

Chuck and Darlene stopped everything they were doing and immediately traveled from Arizona where they lived to Silver City. A couple of hours later, they were at the house where their daughter's lifeless body was found. By that time, the police were on the scene and noted that there were no signs of unlawful entry into the house, as all the locks were intact, the windows were closed, and the glass was not broken. Possessions that could be of interest in case of a theft by breaking and entering were left intact in the house. Therefore, the first thing the local police chief asked Cassie's parents was whether their daughter was inclined to take her own life and if she had any reason to do so.

Chuck and Darlene dismissed such speculation and declared that there was no way Cassie would do such a thing as she would not subject her children to such an ordeal. The police chief told the distraught parents several times that Cassie had most likely done it voluntarily. It was as if he wanted to convince them of that. Normally, the scene of an accident is thoroughly investigated, a process that can take days. In this case, the police left just a few hours after the body was found, telling Charell that she could use the house. This attitude puzzled Cassie's parents, and they resolved to check out the house themselves. There was still water in the bathtub. When they emptied it, Cassie's parents found black streaks on the sides of the tub resembling the marks of rubber-soled shoes.

On the floor, in various places, they found Cassie's glasses, her hairband, and a coat hanger. With all this, as well as the fact that the police hadn't searched the house for fingerprints, Chuck and Darlene wondered if the officials were eager to quickly close their daughter's case as non-criminal. Only a call to the DA's office made the cops work harder, or at least appear to be working harder. They probably would have been happy to close Cassie's case sooner, but the medical examiner's report prevented them from doing so. There were multiple bruises on Cassie's body, including her neck. Her cause of death was determined by a forensic medical examiner to be homicide by an unspecified method.

There was a problem as the scene of the crime was no longer of particular relevance because after the incident, the owners of the property had done some cleanup and minor renovations. As the months went by, the police had nothing new to say to Cassie's parents. David Barry, the man Cassie had been meeting before her death, was investigated and excluded as a suspect since he had a solid alibi. The more time passed, the more Cassie's parents became certain that the local police were being less than diligent. Things only moved forward when Chuck and Darlene went to see the chief district attorney again and requested that action be taken against Detective Jose Sanchez, who was handling the investigation into their daughter's death.

Upon reviewing the case file, the district attorney concurred that Sanchez had committed many mistakes. He was relieved of the case, and a more experienced detective was assigned, who immediately turned his attention to the man Chuck and Darlene believed was responsible for their daughter's death. Cassie's family and close friends felt right from the start that only one person could have wanted her dead, and that was her ex-husband, Bradley Farrington. She and Bradley were at odds at the time of her death and were vying for custody of their children in a court ruling. The scales probably would have tipped to favor the children staying with their mother. It was apparent to everyone that Bradley was the only individual who stood to benefit from Cassie's death by eliminating her.

Not only would he get custody of the children, but he would also be free of his obligation to pay child support. The questions that are likely already going around in your head are why wasn't Bradley Farrington brought to attention right away and why wasn't he made a suspect from the very first day. On one hand, the answers to these two questions are clear to the ordinary person. On the other hand, looking ahead, we can state that officials at all levels of authority will be denying the obvious conclusions. Nobody will admit that Bradley Farrington hadn't become a suspect simply because he was on the Silver City police force and had a good relationship with everyone who came to Cassie's house to investigate her death.

He quit the police force just a few months prior to Cassie's death. Besides having a motive, Bradley also possessed the required know-how. He knew very well about police modus operandi and the way to destroy evidence. The bathwater had washed off any possible DNA samples left behind from the body and also washed away the shoe prints on the floor. There would be no need for him to break down the front door as Cassie would have opened it herself. Even if there had been any evidence inside the house that could have connected Bradley Farrington to the scene of the crime, it had been irreversibly lost because of the poor work of the local police. The only way now to hold Bradley accountable was through eyewitness testimony.

Cassie informed her parents that Bradley had often been abusive to her and the children. Moreover, he tauntingly suggested that she tried to report him to the police. He himself was a Silver City police officer at that time and felt he had total impunity. It's difficult to fathom what it was like for Cassie to live knowing that she couldn't ask the police for help because the friends of her abusive husband worked there. She shared with co-workers at her workplace that Bradley had threatened her, saying he would just make her vanish and that nobody would ever know about it. One day, Cassie rushed into an insurance office in Silver City. She was extremely terrified and reported to the staff that her husband had attempted to drive her car off the road. Cassie was found dead on March 24th, 2014.

Nineteen months after that, on October 23rd, 2015, 28-year-old Bradley Farrington was arrested. He claimed when he was charged that he had no part in Cassie's death. Again, it is worth pointing out that because of the misconduct of local police officers, no physical evidence linking Farrington to the death of his ex-wife was present, and so the judge took the rather extraordinary decision of allowing testimony through the words of Cassie herself. At the trial, the prosecution introduced numerous witnesses to the jury, including Cassie's parents, her friends, and co-workers whom she told about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her police officer husband. San Francisco's leading forensic expert, Dr. Michael Hunter, also appeared at the trial and was asked to give his assessment of the local expert's conclusion.

Hunter attested to his more than 20 years of experience. He showed the jury all the autopsy photographs and declared that based on the injuries on Cassie's neck, she probably lost her life as a result of a strangulation hold. She suffered neck injuries. To me, the cause of her death is strangulation,' he said. One witness who came to court only after the judge issued the warrant was the former detective Sanchez, who had by then retired from the police force. He had originally handled the case and stated at trial that he had never treated Bradley Farrington as a possible suspect as there was no reason to do so.

He also testified that no fingerprints were taken from the house. 'We thought this crime scene was just too clean,' he claimed. 'I believe the scene was cleaned after the commission of the crime. That's why fingerprints were not collected.' Following 4 and 1/2 hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Bradley Farrington on September 7th, 2018. He was given a life sentence with the possibility of asking for parole after 30 years. In 2020, Farrington filed an appeal to the New Mexico Supreme Court. In his appeal, Farrington contended that the trial court improperly allowed testimony at trial by co-workers, friends, and family members of the victim who recounted statements she had made about Farrington's threats and acts of domestic violence.

In a unanimous decision, the state's highest court concluded there was sufficient evidence to support Farrington's conviction and it rejected his legal challenge to hearsay testimony allowed at trial. The man is presently serving his sentence while the two children, in a rather strange court ruling, are now living with his parents who are doing their best to keep their contact with Cassie's parents at a minimum.