FBI Adds Charge Over Unborn Child in Birchmore Murder Case

Matthew Farwell, who was arrested by the FBI and charged with the murder Sandra Birchmore in Aug. 2024, is now charged with killing her unborn 8-to-10 week child

Accused killer and former Massachusetts cop Matthew Farwell – who was arrested in Aug. 2024 for the murder of a 23-year-old pregnant woman he is also accused of grooming, a murder federal prosecutors say he then staged her death to look like a suicide – was hit with an additional charge connected to the death of her unborn 8 to 10-week-old boy.

Farwell, multiple sources confirm, was not the father of the child, but believed that he was when he drove to her house in Canton, Massachusetts, on Feb. 1, 2021, and allegedly strangled her to death during a blizzard. According to the first indictment unsealed in the summer of 2024, which charged him, he then drove to a Boston area hospital to be there alongside his wife for the birth of the couple’s third child.

In the lead-up to her brutal alleged murder, she was pestering Farwell, according to a federal complaint, “regarding her due date, ultrasounds, genetic testing, gender reveals, and doctor appointments.” Farwell, a married man whose third baby was due around the time Birchmore was excitedly telling everyone she was expecting and the detective was the father, wasn’t as excited and had texted her that he “wish she would die.”

During a Nor’easter, Farwell had a change of heart. He texted Birchmore he “wanted to come by for a minute,” braving an ongoing blizzard that had created treacherous conditions, dumping a foot of snow on Boston’s south shore area. That night, Birchmore was captured on her apartment building’s security cameras coming in and out with an ice scraper. She texted Farwell at 9:10 p.m. that her door would be open. 

Farwell showed up four minutes later – wearing a COVID mask with a hoodie pulled tight over his head – and left twenty minutes later, driving directly to a Boston area hospital where his wife Michelle was giving birth to their third child, a boy. 

Credit: Courtesy of The Case Podcast

The six-foot-four detective, 38, was the last person to see her alive, and her body was found days later after Canton Police were asked to do a well-being check when Birchmore didn’t show up for work and couldn’t be reached. Yet, he was never seriously considered a suspect in her death despite multiple tips to the Norfolk County D.A.’s office about Farwell’s long history with Birchmore, who had been involved in a police mentoring program since she was a girl. 

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It would take nearly four years, and an FBI investigation before Farwell would be arrested in Birchmore’s death, essentially charged with framing the young woman for her own murder. Federal prosecutors now say he used his “knowledge and experience as a law enforcement officer to stage her death to make it look like a suicide.”

The case was thrust into the national spotlight with the trial of Karen Read, the woman acquitted this summer after going on trial for the murder of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe. Her Los Angeles attorney, Alan Jackson, said his client was framed by a corrupt state trooper assigned to the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office, the same investigators who determined Birchmore’s case was a suicide. A judge in Read’s trial earlier this year barred any mention of Birchmore’s investigation by her attorneys.

Birchmore first met Farwell when she joined the Stoughton Police Explorers Academy at 12 years old. Farwell is accused of initiating a relationship with Birchmore when she was 15 and he was 26, which is considered statutory rape under Massachusetts law.

The handling of both cases has become the focus of intense scrutiny. The lead investigator in Read’s case, Michael Proctor, was fired, and a trove of his text messages was recently uncovered. Last week, he ended his fight to be reinstated, leading Jackson to say Proctor’s withdrawal of his appeal was an act of “self-preservation.”

“He learned investigators had recovered text messages from his private phone dating back years, and he wanted no part of what those messages would reveal,” Jackson said. “He didn’t accept accountability—it hunted him down.”