Former Stoughton police officer Matthew Farwell charged with the murder of Sandra Birchmore
The 23-year-old was pregnant at the time of her death. As authorities discovered during the investigation, the father was the law enforcement officer who had been having sex with her for years.
Screenshot of a photograph of Sandra Birchmore.
A grand jury gave a formal indictment this Tuesday in federal court against former police officer of Stoughton (Massachusetts) Matthew Farwell for the murder of Sandra Birchmore in 2021.
The 23-year-old was also pregnant with a baby girl. By her own admission at the time, her daughter's alleged father turned out to be Farwell, with whom she had been having sex since she was 15.
In court documents obtained by CBS News it is revealed that former police officer Farwell strangled Birchmore to death inside her Canton apartment. He then staged the scene to make it look like a suicide.
It appeared that he had succeeded, as the local Chief Medical Examiner's Office initially determined that the cause of death was suicide and that there was no indication that it had been a homicide.
However, days before her death, a friend of Birchmore's called the Stoughton Police Department and reported that Farwell had been having sex with the girl since before she turned 16. As she explained to authorities, the two met when Birchmore enrolled in a program for young people interested in police careers where Farwell was an instructor.
This prompted federal prosecutors to launch an investigation that ended with the former law enforcement officer being formally charged.
As they alleged, Farwell "used his authority and access to groom, sexually exploit and ultimately sexually abuse Birchmore when she was 15 years old and continued to have sex with her when she became an adult."
But, Massachusetts acting federal prosecutor Joshua Levy claimed, when Matthew Farwell could no longer control Sandra Birchmore and it became a problem for him, more so when he learned of her pregnancy, he murdered her.
"When it became clear that Mr. Farwell, that he could no longer control Sandra Birchmore, he allegedly silenced her permanently. He allegedly attempted to cover his tracks to literally try and get away with murder. And he almost did, until today."
A fact that, Stoughton Police Chief Donna McNamara said in a statement represents a "horrific injustice" that they have been able to investigate with the FBI to bring the person responsible to justice.
"The alleged murder of Sandra is a horrific injustice. The allegations against the suspect, a former Stoughton Police Officer, represent the single worst act of not just professional misconduct but indeed human indecency that I have observed in a nearly three-decade career in law enforcement," McNamara stated.
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