The Boston FBI SWAT team arrested former Stoughton Police Officer Matthew Farwell and charged him with allegedly killing Sandra Birchmore, a woman he is accused of having sex with since she was a minor.
“FBI Boston’s SWAT Team has arrested former Stoughton Police Officer Matthew Farwell for allegedly killing Sandra Birchmore. We took him into custody without incident,” the agency tweeted on X a little before noon. The post added that additional information would be revealed at the federal courthouse in Boston at 1:45 p.m.
Prosecutors allege that Farwell on or about Feb. 1, 2021, strangled Birchmore to death, according to a short indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Boston.
Birchmore was born in 1997 and in March 2010, at the age of 12, Birchmore applied to be a participant in the Police Explorer’s Academy, a youth program run by the SPD for which Farwell taught. Prosecutors allege Farwell began raping the girl before she was 16.
Birchmore found out she was pregnant in December 2020 and told Farwell that he was the father of the child. The next month, one of Birchmore’s friends called the police department to report what Farwell had allegedly been doing, but, according to the indictment, a police department employee tipped Farwell off to the complaint.
Birchmore would die less than two weeks later.
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