Guest Post by Miriam Judith
A Former Massachusetts police officer has been accused of murdering a 23-year-old pregnant woman whom he had allegedly been sexually abusing since she was just 15-years-old.
According to NBC Boston, Mathew Farwell was federally indicted on Wednesday for allegedly strangling Sandra Birchmore to death in her apartment back in February 2021 and then staging her death to appear as a suicide. This occurred shortly after Birchmore informed Farwell that he was the likely father of the child she was carrying.
The two met back when Birchmore was a member of the Stoughton Police Explorers Academy which she began in 2010 when she was 12 years old and continued until 2016.
According to the report, Farwell is one of three officers accused of having inappropriate sexual relations with the woman, however, Farwell is the only one who has been accused of sexually abusing Birchmore while she was still underage. While the former officer admitted to having sex with the minor when she was 16, likely hoping that the age of consent laws would yield him a lesser charge, he denied any sexual abuse taking place before then.
However, prosecutors accused Farwell of asking Birchmore to delete any evidence of his sexual activity with her prior to her being 16-years-old, and allegedly researched how to delete the data from his own phone.
Stephen Kelleher who is an assistant special agent in charge of FBI Boston made the following statement, “Let me be clear, Matthew Farwell’s gun and badge did not grant him the authority to ignore the Constitution, and they certainly did not entitle him to sexually abuse and rape a child before killing her and her unborn baby in an attempt to cover up his alleged crimes.”
Farwell’s charges include one count of killing a witness or victim, as well as one count wire fraud. If found guilty he faces a minimum sentence of life in prison.
State investigators originally ruled Birchmore’s cause of death as a suicide, which has been contradicted by the family pathologist reports which allegedly suggest that the woman was killed. The family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the town of Stoughton.
Police Chief Donna McNamara’s full statement:
“The day after Sandra Birchmore was found dead in her Canton apartment, I ordered a lengthy and aggressive internal affairs investigation, the instructions of which made it clear that no stone should be left unturned. The Stoughton Police Department has supported other agencies and worked with other agencies, including the FBI investigation that today resulted in a murder indictment that concluded that Sandra was killed. 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. It has been my life’s work over these past three years to ensure that justice was served. As I have stated previously, Sandra Birchmore received no justice during her life. It is imperative that justice be served in her death, and today’s actions appear to bring our society one step closer to justice.”
