Massachusetts Officer Accused of Killing Woman He Met Through Youth Police Program — While She Was Pregnant With His Child

Sandra Birchmore wanted to wear a badge one day. She joined the Stoughton Police Explorers as a kid, eager to learn how justice worked from the inside. What she didn’t know was that one of the officers guiding her, Matthew Farwell, was allegedly studying her too—learning her vulnerabilities, building trust, and tightening control. Prosecutors describe years of manipulation that began when she was 15 and he was already married and working as a sworn police officer. Behind closed doors, the man who should have been a mentor became the center of her world, while keeping her a secret in his.

Digital records and interviews show how carefully the walls were built around their relationship. Farwell told investigators they only became involved in 2020. Texts contradict him. They show sexual conversations, plans to meet while he was supposed to be on shift, and him billing the police department for time actually spent with her. Messages reveal both intimacy and power: he gave attention when it suited him and cold dismissal when she pushed for more. For Sandra, he was love and hope. For Farwell, she was increasingly a liability.

Everything changed when Sandra got pregnant in late 2020. She believed this child made their relationship real. She Googled nursery themes, booked prenatal appointments that would never happen, ordered baby clothes. She texted him joyfully about ultrasound dates and gender reveals. Investigators would later find she had drafted a Valentine’s Day announcement celebrating the pregnancy. She told Farwell he would sign the birth certificate. She told friends she was done hiding.

But prosecutors say Farwell didn’t see a new beginning—he saw exposure. In January 2021, a friend of Sandra’s called his police department, referencing a decade of sexual involvement with a minor. The call threatened to crack everything open: statutory rape, abuse of power, defrauding the town he swore to serve. According to the indictment, Farwell realized Sandra had reached the point where the truth was no longer containable.

Then came February 1st. Investigators say Farwell drove to her apartment with a mask covering half his face. Inside, there was a struggle. Forensic experts later noted abrasions along Sandra’s nose consistent with suffocation. Her signature flamingo-pendant necklace was broken. A belt buckle imprint on her chest didn’t match the story the scene was staged to tell. When police eventually found her days later, her body was posed to mimic a suicide attempt. Early medical findings wrongly agreed with that appearance. The case nearly closed there.

But phone extractions, autopsy reviews, statements he made that didn’t match the timeline, and a closer forensic analysis slowly unraveled the lie. A forensic pathologist reviewed the evidence and found the cause of death was asphyxia and the manner was homicide. Meanwhile, texts showed that Farwell continued to have sex with Sandra long after the time he told detectives he stopped, eliminating his excuse that he couldn’t have been the father.

The most chilling detail? Sandra’s unborn baby. Federal prosecutors allege that when Farwell took her life, he also killed the eight-to-ten-week-old pregnancy he had reluctantly helped create—and which she believed would finally bring her the love and acknowledgment she deserved.

Sandra’s death could have disappeared quietly into misclassification. Instead, a meticulous review of digital trails, forensic contradictions, and Farwell’s own shifting story pulled the truth into the light. He was arrested in August 2024 and now sits in federal custody awaiting trial, facing mandatory life if convicted of causing the death of that unborn child alone.

What lingers is the heartbreak of what Sandra wrote, planned, and hoped for. She was preparing to become a mother. She believed she was finally being chosen. Behind the tragic evidence and legal language is a young woman longing for love and recognition from the man who taught her how justice works—and then, according to investigators, denied her both.

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