Her Death Was Ruled A Suicide. Now A Former Officer Is Charged With Killing Her To Hide His Abuse.

A former Stoughton, Massachusetts, police detective this week was charged with killing a pregnant woman whom he had allegedly sexually exploited since she was 15 and part of a youth vocational program.

The death of 23-year-old Sandra Birchmore in 2021 was initially ruled a suicide, but her family and supporters spoke out about her death for years, claiming to local media, in posts online and in a lawsuit that Matthew Farwell — allegedly the father of her unborn child — was responsible.

Then on Wednesday, federal authorities dropped the bombshell that Farwell had been indicted on a count of killing a witness or victim and alleged that he had staged Birchmore’s death as a suicide to keep her from speaking up about his potential commission of crimes.

Farwell was taken into custody; his attorneys did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment.

“Matthew Farwell’s gun and badge did not grant him authority to violate the Constitution, and it certainly didn’t entitle him to sexually exploit, abuse and rape a child before killing her and her unborn baby in an attempt to cover up his alleged crimes,” Stephen Kelleher, an FBI assistant special agent in charge, told reporters.

According to a bail motion obtained by HuffPost, Birchmore first applied for a local “Police Explorers” program in March 2010 when she was 12. Farwell was a volunteer for the vocational program before joining the Stoughton Police Department in 2012, and then became a Police Explorers instructor.

Prosecutors said that Farwell began communicating with Birchmore online by 2012, when he was 26 and she was 15, and would meet her at the Stoughton Public Library “where he would sexually groom her under the guise of providing academic tutoring.” His