The case against a former Massachusetts police officer accused of killing a pregnant woman who he allegedly sexually abused as a teen is set to go to trial next week.
According to federal prosecutors, ex-Stoughton officer Matthew Farwell killed Sandra Birchmore to keep her quiet about his alleged sexual exploitation of her when she was a minor. He is accused of using his position as a police officer to groom and sexually abuse Birchmore since she was 15 years old.
Prosecutors have argued Farwell, now 40, strangled her to death in her Canton apartment in February 2021, and staged her death as a suicide. Birchmore, 23, was around eight to 10 weeks pregnant, according to Farwell’s indictment.
Farwell’s trial will begin on Tuesday, October 6, with the selection of jurors, court records show.
In a Thursday, October 1, court filing viewed by Us, prosecutors opposed Farwell’s recent motion to transfer his trial out of Massachusetts due to pretrial news coverage. A judge then denied Farwell’s defense team’s request on Thursday, after having previously denied an earlier motion to move the trial, records show.
After Farwell was initially indicted in Birchmore’s murder, he was indicted in October 2025 in connection with the death of her unborn son, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts.
He has pleaded not guilty to one count of killing a witness or victim, in relation to Birchmore, and one count of causing the death of her unborn child, records show.
Farwell allegedly killed Birchmore after she told him she was pregnant with his baby and “expected him to be involved, at least in part, in the child’s life,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in an August 2024 news release.
While an officer with the Stoughton Police Department between March 2012 and April 2022, he was an instructor for the department’s Explorer’s Program, an educational law enforcement program for children.
Birchmore joined the program at age 12 in 2010, before Farwell allegedly started to groom and sexually exploit her.
He “continued to have sex with her when she became an adult,” prosecutors said.
Farwell has a wife, who he married in 2013, and three children, including his youngest child who was born one day after Birchmore’s death, according to The Boston Globe.
In the fall of 2020, he agreed to try to impregnate Birchmore in exchange for her keeping the details of their alleged extra-marital affair and relationship dating back to when she was a minor private, according to prosecutors.
After Birchmore revealed to Farwell she was pregnant, she told her loved ones that he had gotten violent with her, prosecutors said. He allegedly said he wished her dead.
Postmortem DNA testing confirmed he wasn’t the father of her unborn son, per The Boston Globe. Federal prosecutors believe Farwell was convinced he was the father at the time of the killing.
Farwell was charged in Birchmore’s death after it was initially determined as a suicide, before federal investigators found new evidence allegedly linking Farwell to the crime.
He has maintained Birchmore’s death was a suicide.
Farwell’s federal public defenders, Joanne M. Daley and Kimberly C. Stevens, didn’t return a request for comment from Us.
If Farwell is found guilty at trial, he faces a mandatory lifetime prison sentence, according to prosecutors.
Following jury selection, opening statements are expected to occur Friday, October 9, or Tuesday, October 13, according to MassLive. Afterward, testimony could last more than two weeks.
