A Massachusetts prosecutor told jurors that a police officer “lulled” Sandra Birchmore into feeling safe before he allegedly strangled her and staged her death as a suicide.
Matthew Farwell, a former Stoughton police officer, sat in federal court in Boston on Friday as prosecutor Torey Cummings delivered opening statements in his murder trial. Farwell, who has been jailed since his 2024 arrest, faces life in prison on charges of killing a witness or victim and causing the death of an unborn child. He has pleaded not guilty.
Cummings alleged that Farwell, 6-foot-4, used a duffel bag strap to strangle the 5-foot Birchmore, 23, inside her Canton apartment on Feb. 1, 2021. He then positioned her body seated by the closet door, hooked the strap around her neck, and latched it onto the doorknob, the prosecutor claimed. “Eight days later, her dead body would be hung from that closet doorknob,” Cummings told the jury.
The alleged murder came just one day before Farwell’s wife gave birth to their third child, prosecutors said. DNA testing later showed Farwell was not the father of Birchmore’s unborn child, though both believed he was, Cummings explained.
The pair’s history stretched back nearly a decade. They met in 2012 when Birchmore, then 14, joined the Stoughton Police Department’s “Explorers” youth program where Farwell volunteered as an instructor. He sent her a Facebook friend request that same year and allegedly groomed her over the following year under the guise of “tutoring” her at the library, Cummings claimed.
“He allegedly first raped a then-15-year-old Birchmore on April 10, 2013,” Cummings told jurors, noting that the age of consent in Massachusetts is 16. “She was a 15-year-old child,” the prosecutor said. “That’s statutory rape and that’s a crime.”
Jurors were shown text messages in which Farwell told Birchmore that the day he allegedly first had sex with her “was the best day of my life,” and that he couldn’t wait to “f–k” her again. Cummings also claimed he shared fantasies involving “domination, causing pain and rape.”
As an adult, Birchmore grew jealous of Farwell’s wife and threatened to expose their affair unless he agreed to have a baby with her too, Cummings alleged. Farwell agreed, and when Birchmore discovered her pregnancy in December 2020, she was ecstatic. She texted Farwell a photo of a poster reading, “Congrats we are going to be parents,” according to prosecutors. She began buying baby essentials—a car seat, stroller, and onesie—and planned a gender reveal photo shoot.
Farwell’s reaction was starkly different. When Birchmore told him she was pregnant, he texted back, “You are truly the worst person on the face of Earth,” Cummings alleged during her opening statement.
Yet in the days before her death, Farwell made what Cummings called “a complete 180.” He stopped acting angry and began laying groundwork for the killing, the prosecutor claimed. He asked Birchmore for a key to her apartment and scoped out her closet and bathroom—a moment Birchmore found odd enough to text a friend about on Jan. 24, 2021, calling it “weird.”
That evening, Feb. 1, Farwell texted Birchmore at 9:07 p.m., “Are you still up. Ok to come by for a second.” She replied at 9:10 p.m., “Yeah you can come say hi. You ok? Doors open when you get here.” Surveillance cameras captured Farwell entering her apartment building at 9:14 p.m. Wearing a blue mask—notable, Cummings pointed out, because he had been outspokenly against masking during COVID. He left about an hour later.
Birchmore, who had struggled with mental health issues, had recently resumed taking antidepressant medication and was actively preparing for motherhood—signs, Cummings argued, that she wanted to live. “There was one person Sandra couldn’t protect her baby from — the defendant,” she said.
Farwell’s defense attorney, Kimberly Stevens, countered that Birchmore killed herself. Stevens told jurors that Birchmore had searched online for “what color is the suicide ribbon” and had viewed an image of a man being held back from jumping off a bridge with the text, “can I die just for a day, I just want to see who would cry when I was gone.” “That’s a window into her mental state as this is all happening,” Stevens added. “Matthew Farwell was a man who had an affair… Matthew Farwell did not kill Sandra Birchmore. He did not,” the lawyer said.
The first witness is scheduled to be called on Tuesday.