“He killed her so that she couldn’t talk about what he had done to her.” That’s how federal prosecutors opened their case Friday against Matthew Farwell, the former Stoughton police detective accused of strangling Sandra Birchmore and staging her death as a suicide.
His lawyer answered in one line: “Matthew Farwell did not kill Sandra Birchmore. He did not.” Testimony begins Tuesday.
What did prosecutors say in their opening statement?
Assistant U.S. Attorney Torey Cummings walked jurors through what she called eight years of abuse. Farwell, a volunteer instructor in the police Explorers program, was supposed to mentor Birchmore. Instead, she said, he started having sex with her when she was 15. She showed jurors a photo of Birchmore as “the littlest one” at the end of a line of cadets, Boston.com reported.
Cummings said the two exchanged more than 40,000 messages, some about choking and strangulation. When Birchmore, then 22, learned Farwell’s wife was pregnant, prosecutors say she threatened to expose him unless he got her pregnant too. On Jan. 20, 2021, a friend called the Stoughton police to report the relationship. “It was no longer a matter of whether his crimes would be exposed, it was a matter of when,” Cummings said. “He needed a way to silence her, permanently.”
What is Farwell’s defense?
Defense attorney Kimberly Stevens told jurors Farwell “had an affair” and “made regrettable mistakes,” but that Birchmore took her own life in “an impulsive act of despair” after he broke up with her and denied he was the father. She read messages and searches she said showed Birchmore was in crisis, including a search for the color of the suicide awareness ribbon. Stevens said Birchmore had attempted suicide as a young teenager, had spent the holidays alone and had $2.90 in her bank account at the end of January 2021.
Stevens also attacked the physical evidence. She said Farwell’s DNA wasn’t found under Birchmore’s fingernails, that there were no drag marks or signs her body was moved, and that he wore a mask and hood on lobby video because he was hiding an affair, not planning a murder. She said the prosecution’s key medical witness, Dr. William Smock, isn’t a forensic pathologist.
The BeezLoop Take
The defense’s opening is careful about one thing: it never disputes that a police officer began having sex with a 15-year-old in a program meant to mentor her. It calls that “an affair.” Jurors will decide whether Farwell killed Birchmore, but nobody should accept that word for what prosecutors describe.
The case will likely come down to dueling medical experts on hanging versus strangulation. Whatever they conclude, the trial is already exposing how a girl who joined a police program looking for role models ended up alone, broke and dead at 23, and how long it took anyone to look closely.
The open question: which expert will jurors believe when testimony starts Tuesday?
Earlier: the ex-cop accused of killing Sandra Birchmore goes on trial.
Sources: Boston.com · CBS Boston · NBC Boston · NBC10 Boston (video)
