A former Massachusetts police detective accused of strangling a woman who recently told him she was pregnant with his child and then staging the scene to make it look like a suicide has been charged in her 2021 death, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
They claim Matthew Farwell killed Sandra Birchmore years after he began manipulating and sexually abusing her as a young girl at the Stoughton Police Explorers Academy. Farwell was an instructor in the program designed to foster interest in police work and worked for the Stoughton Police Department from 2012 to 2022.
Farwell, 38, began having sexual relations, including while on duty, with Birchmore when she was 15, Acting U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy said at a news conference Wednesday.
She “survived years of grooming, statutory rape and then sexual violence, all at the hands of Matthew Farwell,” Levy said.
Farwell befriended her, contacted her online and went to the library with her before he began committing statutory rape, Levy said.
Prosecutors said Farwell killed Birchmore, 23, on Feb. 1, 2021, in her Canton, Massachusetts, apartment after he could no longer control her and word began to spread that he had been having sex with her for years.
“He would have shut him up for good,” Levy said.
Authorities initially ruled Birchmore’s death a suicide.
Farwell was charged with killing a witness or victim. The FBI arrested him Wednesday in Revere, Massachusetts.
A lawyer for Farwell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In October 2020, Birchmore told Farwell she wanted to have a baby and he agreed to try to get her pregnant if she kept quiet about his past behavior and their relationship, according to a motion filed by prosecutors for pretrial detention.
Birchmore wanted to have a child and was excited about her pregnancy, but Farwell was not, and her behavior became more erratic and dangerous, Levy said.
Birchmore told Farwell the child was his and began asking him questions about doctor appointments, ultrasounds and what information would be on the birth certificate.
“Losing control”
A month before Birchmore’s murder, one of his friends told Stoughton police that Farwell had had sex with Birchmore, according to the indictment.
“Mr. Farwell was losing control in late 2020, early 2021, and the information Sandra Birchmore had about his illegal conduct was at risk of slipping away from him. In fact, news of their relationship began to spread less than two weeks before she was found dead,” Levy said.
After her friend came forward, Farwell, who is 6’4″, allegedly attacked Birchmore, who is 5’6″. He pushed her and put her in a chokehold, Levy said.
Prosecutors say Farwell killed Birchmore hours before his wife gave birth to their third child. Birchmore was strangled as a snowstorm approached the Boston area, which prosecutors say allowed Farwell to justify Birchmore’s absence from work for several days.
Prosecutors say Farwell concealed evidence of Birchmore’s death by telling her to delete evidence from her phone that they had sex before she was 16, repositioning her lifeless body and staging her apartment to look like the scene of a suicide, according to the motion.
He also lied to investigators with the Massachusetts State Police, the agency that initially investigated Birchmore’s death, by telling them their sexual relationship began in 2020, not seven years earlier, and by claiming he had sex with her only a few times, prosecutors said. He also allowed only “limited consent” to the search of her cellphone, according to the detention motion.
Disturbing allegations
The allegations of sexual abuse at Birchmore’s police Explorers club were included in a Marshall Project investigation, published in partnership with NBC News in May, into allegations of abuse at law enforcement Explorers stations across the country. The program, created by the Boy Scouts of America, aims to teach teens and young adults about police work.
News of Farwell’s arrest comes two years after the Stoughton police chief announced that Farwell and two other former officers in the agency, including Farwell’s twin brother, William, had inappropriate relationships with Birchmore.
William Farwell has denied the allegations.
The conclusion is the result of a lengthy internal investigation sparked by Birchmore’s death, said Chief Donna McNamara, who called the former officers’ behavior “deeply troubling.”
“Through a deliberate and sustained combination of lies, deception and betrayal, they violated the policies and core values of the Stoughton Police Department,” McNamara said at the time. “Not to mention human decency.”
McNamara said the Farwell brothers started out as young participants in the Explorers Club under the leadership of Robert Devine, the third former officer accused of having an inappropriate relationship with Birchmore. Devine has denied the allegations.
Devine, a former deputy chief of the Stoughton Police Department, transformed the Explorers program from a scouting club into a paramilitary group that taught aspects of policing to young people, McNamara said.
Like Matthew Farwell, William Farwell was also an instructor in the program in the town about 25 miles south of Boston, McNamara said.
Before Birchmore joined the Explorers club as a young teenager, she had a difficult childhood but developed a deep admiration for police, according to a wrongful death lawsuit filed by her family against the Farwell and Devine brothers in 2022.
“People who took an oath and had a duty to protect and serve led her into relationships with men who were willing to take advantage of her,” McNamara said.
McNamara said Matthew Farwell was 27 when he allegedly began his sexual relationship with Birchmore when she was 15.
The internal investigation uncovered hundreds of explicit messages and exchanges between them over a period of years, McNamara said. The investigation also showed that William Farwell had introduced Birchmore to other men, she added.
McNamara said all three men resigned before they could be questioned.
Asked Wednesday about the other former officers, Levy declined to comment.
The department recommended that their police officer certifications be permanently revoked so they cannot serve in law enforcement anywhere in the country, McNamara said.
Attorneys for William Farwell and Devine did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the status of their decertification.
In a statement Wednesday, McNamara said his priority over the past three years has been to ensure justice is served in this case.
“Sandra Birchmore did not receive justice in her lifetime,” she said. “It is imperative that justice be served in her death, and today’s actions appear to bring our society closer to justice.”
