Ex-detective Matthew Farwell accused of strangling pregnant woman, trying to make death look like suicide
Matthew Farwell is charged in the 2021 death in Massachusetts of Sandra Birchmore, who weeks earlier had told him she was pregnant with his child, officials said.
A former Massachusetts police detective accused of strangling a woman who had recently told him she was pregnant with his child and then staging the scene to appear as a suicide has been charged in her 2021 death, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
They allege that Matthew Farwell killed Sandra Birchmore years after he began grooming and sexually abusing her as a youth in the Stoughton Police Explorers Academy. Farwell was an instructor in the program designed to foster an interest in police work and worked for the Stoughton Police Department from 2012 to 2022.
Sandra Birchmore sought direction in law enforcement. via FacebookFarwell, 38, began having sex, 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.
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