“Matty,” disgraced ex-Stoughton Police Officer William Farwell testified he wrote in a text message to his twin brother about Sandra Birchmore, “tell me you didn’t fuck that girl when she was under 16.”
“No,” Farwell responded, his twin testified.
The text exchange was among the explosive details revealed in Boston’s federal court on Tuesday when William “Billy” Farwell took the stand for the second time in two days to testify against his twin, currently on trial for the murder of Sandra Birchmore and her unborn baby. Billy Farwell was granted federal immunity for his testimony after he told the FBI he also had a sexual relationship with Birchmore, often on duty and in his patrol car, that began when she was an adult in 2018 and he was a married Stoughton cop with three kids.
The Farwell brothers met Birchmore when she was a 13-year-old recruit in the Stoughton Police Explorer’s Program, where the twins acted as mentors to the children who joined to learn about careers in law enforcement. Matthew Farwell is accused of grooming Birchmore a short time later, bringing her to the Stoughton public library for tutoring sessions where the talk turned sexual.
Text messages recovered from Birchmore’s devices after her death showed an exchange about Matthew taking her virginity when she was a four-foot-ten 15 year old, and he was a six-foot-four Stoughton Police Detective, which is statutory rape in Massachusetts. In the texts, Farwell said he considered having sex with her when she was 14.
His twin brother confirmed on the stand Tuesday that in May 2019, Birchmore texted him about her ongoing relationship with his twin brother Matt. In it she that Matthew Farwell first had sex with her at his house “many years ago.” Billy Farwell asked when, and Birchmore responded, he testified, “I was 15.”
Billy Farwell responded, “Nice, raw,” he admitted on the stand.
But, he didn’t take action about the crime she had just accused his brother of committing, telling the court that he didn’t necessarily believe Birchmore. “I didn’t think my brother was that dumb,” he testified, adding that Matthew was “well aware of the laws in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”
In December 2020, Billy Farwell was told by Birchmore that she was pregnant and that “your brother” was the father. He claimed on the stand he never discussed Birchmore with his twin until after her death in February 2021. When he found out that Birchmore was dead, he said he immediately made two phone calls. One was to his brother Matthew. The second was to their friend Robert Devine, who is also accused of sexually exploiting Birchmore.
“I didn’t think my brother was that dumb. Because he’s really smart.”
[This is straight Fs Matt Farwell who dropped out of high school]
“He’s well aware of the laws in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” Farwell testified.
“I was told it was a suicide,” Billy Farwell testified. A federal prosecutor then asked him, “Who did you contact?”
“My brother and Robert Devine,” he testified. He said he reached Matthew and said, “Sandra Birchmore was found Q-5 in Canton,” which he explained was a police code for suicide.
Matthew Farwell responded, “Okay,” he said on the stand. Soon, Billy Farwell testified that he got a call from then Massachusetts State Police Sergeant John Fanning, whom he had grown up with in Stoughton, he told the court. Like the Farwell brothers, Fanning had attended Stoughton High School and had been a Stoughton Police Officer before joining the state police, and was friendly with Billy Farwell’s wife Angela.
“He told me he needed to talk to me,” Billy Farwell testified about the call. He then asked, “is it work related or something else?”
“Something else,” Fanning responded, according to Farwell, who testified he hung up with the CPAC superior officer and called his brother, who was in a Boston area hospital with his wife and newborn son. “He was my confidant. He was our union president,” he testified. Matthew Farwell was the President of the Stoughton Police Union at that time.
Farwell said he drove to a nearby Stoughton parking lot where Fanning and Trooper Matt Dunne, who were leading the investigation into Birchmore’s case. When he pulled in near Chinatown restaurant, Fanning and Dunne took seats in his truck. Fanning sat in he front, with Dunne in the back “taking notes.”
Fanning told Farwell, “was getting a lot of calls,” from people expressing suspicions about Birchmore’s death, doubts about the suicide ruling, and pointing the finger at the Farwell brothers. CPAC, Fanning told Farwell, he testified, needed to “close this out.”
“He said he needed to talk about Sandra Birchmore, and said don’t lie to me,” Farwell told the court. He then testified that Fanning told him, “I need this like a need a fucking bullet to the head,” referring to the Birchmore calls. There was also a social media post asking questions about Birchmore’s death that Fanning shared with Farwell.
Five witnesses have testified that they contacted the MSP about Birchmore’s death, including her boss, an elementary school principal, her longtime therapist, and several friends.
Fanning told Billy Farwell, according to his testimony, “he wasn’t there to investigate people’s marriages. I have my own problems.” He then promised to keep Billy Farwell’s name out of police reports, and to protect him from problems in the Stoughton Police Department.
Fanning told him, “I didn’t need to tell the Chief and that he was going to try to to leave me out of it,” according to his testimony. When pushed for an explanation, Farwell testified: “I believe he was referring to leaving me out of his report.”
Billy Farwell left that meeting and called his brother, “his go-to,” from the truck, telling his twin: “I had a lot of vulnerability. I was exposed.” He testified that his brother “reassured me it would be all right.”
And it was. A short time later Matt told him the MSP investigation into the alleged statutory rape was “wrapping up.” By then, Matthew Farwell had been interviewed by Fanning and Dunne and had given them access to his personal phones.
But Matt Farwell told his brother, “I wiped them,” Farwell testified, adding that he took that to mean that his twin “deleted the data.”
The brothers then joked about it, with Billy Farwell asking: “Did you Tom Brady that shit?” That was a reference to the “Deflategate scandal” involving New England Patriots NFL quarterback Tom Brady, who was accused of destroying his phone during a league investigation.
It was around this time that Billy asked about the alleged statutory rape, recalling on the stand: “Matty tell me you didn’t fuck that girl when she was under 16,” he testified as a copy of the text was shown to jurors. “He answered in the affirmative no.”
On cross-examination, his brother’s attorney grilled Billy Farwell about his own sexual relationship with Birchmore.
“Do you recall having sex with Ms. Birchmore in your patrol car?”
“Yes, Ma’am, I did have sex with Ms. Birchmore in my patrol car.”
“And that’s a crime, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And you got immunity for that crime from this government, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And in October of 2020, Ms. Birchmore sent you a picture of herself and Jason Pickard engage in a sex act?”
Pickard was the U.S. Army recruiter who testified that he learned he was the father of Birchmore’s baby last summer after he voluntarily submitted to a DNA buccal swab test.
The Farwell brothers and Robert Devine were forced off the Stoughton Police Department after an IAD report confirmed the men all had inappropriate sexual relationships with the former young explorer. Billy Farwell and Devine have not been criminally charged, but have, like Matthew, been decertified as police officers.
Matthew Farwell was arrested in August 2024 by the FBI and has been held without bail since. Billy Farwell now lives in New Mexico. Devine is a licensed Massachusetts attorney.
Jurors also heard testimony from Dr. William Smock on Birchmore’s hanging, which he has described as a homicide. He took note of a large bruise shaped like the buckle of the duffle bag strap wrapped around a doorknob, the other end around her neck. He also noted facial injuries suffered by Birchmore that were overlooked by MSP investigators and Dr. Maria Capo Martinez, who changed her ruling on the cause of the pregnant woman’s death this year from “suicide” to “undetermined.”
“Her heart was beating at the time the ligature was applied to her neck,” Smock testified. He also told jurors, who reviewed crime scene and autopsy photos, that she had suffered what could be interpreted as “defensive injuries.”
“She also had abrasions on her nose where her skin peeled off,” Smock testified of Birchmore’s bruised, misshapen nose. “It says that there has been some pressure applied to the nose,” Smock testified. “If someone’s suffocating you, your natural reaction is going to move.”
He also testified about a broken necklace which was not taken into evidence by MSP investigators, which he said pointed toward homicide, not suicide, as Birchmore’s cause of death. Her hair, Smock noted, is “tangled” both in the ligature and in the broken necklace.
“One is one of the biggest red flags in a homicidal event,” he testified about her tangled hair. Capo Martinez was not told about the necklace, which was recovered on Birchmore’s bedroom floor by her parents after her body was transported to be autopsied.
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