In the summer of 2024, as federal investigators were closing in on Stoughton Police Detective Matthew Farwell, a man the FBI believed had killed a pregnant young woman in her Canton apartment, wrote a “goodbye letter” to his best friend and, Los Angeles has learned, smashed head-on into a utility pole.
Farwell, the FBI says, believed he was the father of Birchmore’s unborn child and she was making demands about him being a part of her baby’s life when he allegedly strangled her to death and staged her death to look like a suicide on Feb. 1, 2021. “She was going to expose his crimes,” Assistant United States Attorney Torey Cummings told jurors in her opening statement in Farwell’s federal trial earlier this month. “She could end his life with the information she had, so he was going to end hers first.”
It was a crime that testimony in his ongoing federal murder trial suggests he nearly got away with when it was investigated by the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office CPAC unit, a division that included Farwell’s friends, a high school classmate, and colleagues. Massachusetts State Police immediately called Birchmore’s death a suicide, before an autopsy had been performed, a determination that stuck despite what prosecutors call “a flood of her friends and colleagues” who reached out to investigators with suspicions about Matthew Farwell and doubts that the young woman would kill herself.
A day after Birchmore’s death, the Stoughton Police Department launched an independent investigation to probe Birchmore’s death. The conclusion contained in that Internal Affairs report were alarming enough, former Stoughton Deputy Chief Brian Holmes testified, he gave it to the FBI, and the bureau began to take a fresh look at the case in 2023.
In June 2024, reports began to hit the local press that a renowned medical examiner Dr. Michael Baden had raised questions about Birchmore’s suicide determination, insisting that she had been murdered. The report brought new attention to Farwell, a married father of three, who reacted dramatically, according to court filings.
“What does the defendant do as soon as this article comes out? He writes a goodbye letter to his best friend, asks him to take care of his family, and tells him he will see him on the other side,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Riley argued in a pre-trial hearing.
Then, on July 5, 2024, according to police reports obtained by Los Angeles, Matthew Farwell slammed his GMC truck so hard into a National Grid utility pole near his North Easton home, he split the pole in two. That night around 10:30 p.m., Easton Police got a 911 call about the head-on collision, and the bashed in truck blocking the road. When police arrived officers found Farwell – who by then had been forced off the Stoughton Police Department due to the findings of the IAD report – behind the wheel, “all airbags in the vehicle deployed.”
Farwell would come to tell Easton Police that a deer had run “just under his hood,” and he swerved to avoid the animal, losing control of his vehicle and ramming his truck into the pole. He suffered minor injuries, and Easton Police noted there was no suspicion that alcohol or drug use contributed to the crash, which knocked out gas delivery in the area.
At the time of the crash, Farwell was aware he was under investigation, a police official confirmed under the condition of anonymity. The FBI wanted to obtain Farwell’s DNA as part of the investigation into Birchmore’s death, and had investigators working to secure a sample. But the disgraced ex-detective and one-time Stoughton Police union president was “extremely careful,” the source remembered. “He didn’t throw anything out. Not a single Dunkin’ Donuts cup.”
Farwell was arrested in August 2024 by the FBI in a dramatic takedown by a heavily armed team. He has been held without bail at a Rhode Island detention facility. Farwell’s federal public defender, Kimberly Stevens, told the jury in her opening statement that her client, “Matthew Farwell is a man who had an affair. He’s made regrettable mistakes. He’s human. Matthew Farwell did not kill Sandra Birchmore.”
Farwell’s defense could begin to present its case as early as Wednesday.
The post Exclusive: A Month Before His FBI Arrest, Matthew Farwell Smashed Truck Into Pole appeared first on LAmag.
