Shortly after Sandra Birchmore’s death, Matthew Farwell admitted to his twin brother that he “wiped” his phones just as the state police began its investigation, prompting a joke about whether the cop pulled a Tom Brady.
Twin brother William “Billy” Farwell, also a former Stoughton Police officer, recounted working a road detail following Birchmore’s death when Matthew told him the state police had “dumped” his phones before making a startling revelation.
“I wiped ’em,” Matthew Farwell said of his phones, his brother testified in federal court on Tuesday.
William Farwell told prosecutor Brian A. Fogerty that he believed his brother meant that he “deleted the data” on the phones, as the Massachusetts State Police started investigating Birchmore’s death in February 2021.
“I said, ‘Did you Tom Brady that shit?’” William Farwell testified, explaining he was making a joke about the former Patriots quarterback allegedly destroying his cellphone during the 2015 Deflategate scandal.
“When you made the joke about Tom Brady and the cellphone,” Fogerty asked, “how did (Matthew) respond?”
“We were laughing,” William Farwell responded.
William Farwell later told defense attorney Kimberly Stevens during cross-examination that he didn’t know for sure whether his brother actually wiped his phones.
Earlier in the trial, FBI Special Agent Heidi Kelsch, who led the probe into Matthew Farwell, testified that the ex-cop’s devices contained no messages with Birchmore.
Probing Birchmore’s devices, Kelsch said she found 40,000 messages between the young woman and Farwell, many containing details about their sexual encounters.
Matthew Farwell is accused of killing Birchmore and causing the death of her unborn son in an effort to cover up his other alleged crimes, including that he started having a sexual relationship with the victim when she was 15 years old.
Federal prosecutors allege that Farwell killed Birchmore at the age of 23 in her Canton apartment on Feb. 1, 2021, then staged her body to make it look like a suicide.
Farwell’s defense counters that Birchmore died by suicide in her apartment shortly after Farwell ended their relationship that night and told her he was not the father of her unborn child.
Rebutting the defense’s suicide claim, Dr. William Smock, an independent forensic physician who consulted the FBI during the federal probe into Farwell, concluded the cause of Birchmore’s death as “asphyxiation related to strangulation.”
Testifying on Tuesday, Smock said he determined the manner of the death as a homicide, based on the “totality of the evidence.” That included Birchmore’s injuries being inconsistent with the position her body was found, indicating she was strangled during an attack.
“This was a homicide,” Smock testified.
Days after her death, William Farwell said he learned that Birchmore was deceased through a phone call from a fellow Stoughton Police officer, Heather Cheevers. He was told that it was self-harm.
William Farwell testified that he then quickly called his brother and SPD Deputy Chief Robert Devine about what he learned, saying, “Sandra Birchmore was found Q5 in Canton” – which he referred to as “cop slang for a suicide or potential suicide.”
An internal affairs investigation that Stoughton PD conducted into Matthew Farwell found that he, William Farwell and Devine engaged in “inappropriate relationships” with Birchmore while on the job.
After the internal report came out, all three cops lost their jobs and their police certifications. William Farwell said Tuesday that he has also been fired from the TSA in Baltimore and the Department of Energy in New Mexico because of the investigation.
Under cross-examination, William Farwell admitted to having sex with Birchmore in his Stoughton PD patrol car and at Birchmore’s apartment while he was blackout drunk in January 2021.
Because of the conduct, William Farwell added he was testifying under immunity because he was “concerned” that he would be criminally charged.
In May 2019, Birchmore messaged William Farwell, alerting him that his brother first had sex with her when she was 15. William Farwell responded, “nice, raw” – he testified that he didn’t really believe Birchmore.
“I didn’t think my brother was that dumb,” William Farwell said. He added of Matthew, “Because he knows very well the laws in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”
William Farwell said he was surprised when the Norfolk DA’s Massachusetts State Police unit contacted him on Feb. 11, 2021. Sgt. John Fanning, the lead state investigator and a former Stoughton cop himself, told Farwell that they had to meet promptly to discuss Birchmore’s death.
Fanning told William Farwell that his name would not be included in any reports.
“He told me I was not a suspect and that there were no suspects,” Farwell recounted of his interaction with Fanning. “He told me, ‘I needed this like I need a bullet in the (expletive) head.’ He told me he had his own problems.”
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