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A former police detective has been convicted of murdering pregnant Massachusetts woman Sandra Birchmore to keep her from revealing that he sexually abused her when she was 15.
Matthew Farwell, 40, was found guilty Tuesday of strangling Birchmore on Feb. 1, 2021, twelve days after a tipster called the suburban Boston police department where he worked and reported that they’d had an improper relationship. He faced federal charges of killing a witness or victim and of violating a federal law protecting unborn children.
Birchmore was 23 when she died and had been in a tumultuous relationship with the detective, whom she first met while participating in a Stoughton Police Department youth program as a child. Prosecutors said Farwell staged the crime scene to make her death look like a suicide and nearly got away with it.
At the time, Massachusetts State Police investigators quickly concluded that Birchmore killed herself - but the FBI began looking into the case two years later and concluded it was murder. Federal prosecutors blasted the initial police investigation at Farwell’s trial, saying officers didn’t follow leads and closed the case too quickly.
Farwell’s lawyers acknowledged that the married detective had an affair with Birchmore but claimed it…
