Jurors in Boston recoiled Tuesday as gruesome death-scene photos of Sandra Birchmore were displayed at the federal murder trial of ex-cop Matthew Farwell.
The images showed Birchmore, 23 and heavily pregnant, with her exposed belly bruised and discolored, her face blue-purple, her body slumped near a door with a ligature visible, inside the sparsely furnished Canton apartment she had just moved into. Several jurors shifted uncomfortably in their chairs and touched their eyes as the graphic pictures were shown repeatedly during testimony from the officer who discovered her, according to courtroom observers.
Canton police Officer Ensley Cotard took the stand on the first day of testimony in Farwell’s trial and described what he found on February 4, 2021. “I saw a deceased body in a bedroom,” he told the jury. Cotard explained that he was not investigating a crime scene but conducting a well-being check after Birchmore’s boss reported she had failed to show up for work. He noted he saw no signs of a struggle and no suicide note, and that he was inside the apartment for only about eight minutes. “My job was a well-being check on Ms. Birchmore,” he said.
Prosecutors allege Farwell, 40, strangled Birchmore three days earlier, on February 1, because she was threatening to expose their long-running affair to his wife. The timing was particularly explosive: Farwell’s wife had given birth to his third child the very day after Birchmore’s death.
The relationship between Farwell and Birchmore began when she was just 15, prosecutors say, an aspiring police officer enrolled in a Stoughton Police youth program that Farwell helped oversee. The sexual abuse continued into her adulthood, and Birchmore eventually issued an ultimatum: Farwell would have a baby with her, or she would reveal everything. Farwell bitterly agreed, according to prosecutors, and when Birchmore texted him the news of her pregnancy, he responded with venom. “You are truly the worst person on the face of Earth,” prosecutors quoted him as writing.
Two witnesses testified Tuesday that Birchmore was elated about her pregnancy, directly challenging any notion she would take her own life. Cheryl Carlson, the former assistant principal at East Elementary School in Sharon where Birchmore worked as an instructional assistant, told jurors the original suicide determination made no sense to her. “It didn’t make sense to me. Because she was so excited to have that baby,” Carlson testified. “It didn’t fit with her character,” Carlson added that Birchmore had confided in her about fighting with the baby’s father but remained determined to have the child “no matter what.” Concerned by the suicide ruling, Carlson said she reached out to State Police investigators.
Erin Porter, the property manager at Birchmore’s building, reinforced that picture of anticipation. Porter testified that Birchmore had begun renting the apartment only in December 2020, and that she was “just as excited as any other expecting mother would be.”
Farwell’s defense team offered a starkly different account of February 1. His lawyers claimed he went to Birchmore’s apartment that day to break off the relationship, and that she killed herself after he left.
The jury also saw surveillance footage of a hooded and masked figure entering Birchmore’s apartment building that night, a detail prosecutors emphasized given Farwell’s outspoken opposition to masking during COVID. The images were released publicly by the U.S. Attorney’s office, though major outlets have declined to publish the most graphic frames.
Farwell began sexually abusing Birchmore seven years before her death, prosecutors allege, exploiting his position in the youth program to target a vulnerable teenager who dreamed of a law enforcement career. The relationship persisted as she aged into adulthood, with Farwell allegedly maintaining control through secrecy and manipulation until Birchmore’s pregnancy threatened to unravel everything.