BOSTON (AP) — A former police detective was convicted Tuesday of murdering a pregnant Massachusetts woman, Sandra Birchmore, to keep her from revealing that he had sexually abused her when she was 15.
Matthew Farwell, 40, was found guilty of strangling Birchmore on Feb. 1, 2021 — 12 days after a tipster called the suburban Boston police department where he worked and reported that they’d had an improper relationship. Birchmore, who was 23 when she died, had been in a tumultuous relationship with the detective, whom she first met while participating in a Stoughton Police Department youth program as a child.
Prosecutors said Farwell staged the crime scene to make her death look like a suicide — and that it nearly worked. Massachusetts State Police investigators quickly concluded that Birchmore killed herself. But the FBI began looking into the case two years later and concluded it was a homicide.
Federal prosecutors harshly criticized the initial police investigation at Farwell’s trial, saying officers didn’t follow leads and closed the case too quickly.
“Justice requires persistence, not deference, not convenience, and certainly not the protection of those who wear the badge and misuse their authority,” Ted Docks, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston office, said at a news conference after the verdict. “No badge, no title, no position places anyone above the law.”
Birchmore’s cousin, Ray Cosgrove, said the family was grateful to those who pursued answers but emphasized that no verdict could bring back Birchmore or her unborn son.
“Our family knew the person. The public knew the case,” Cosgrove said. “Sandra mattered before anyone outside her family knew her name.”
Farwell’s lawyers acknowledged that the married detective had an affair with Birchmore, but said it began when she was 16, making her old enough to consent under Massachusetts law. They also maintained that he did not kill her. They argued that Birchmore had threatened suicide before and that she killed herself after he went to her apartment to break up with her.
Farwell’s conviction carries a mandatory life sentence.
The nearly monthlong trial — with about 50 witnesses and 500 exhibits — unfolded in federal court in Boston, partly because local prosecutors never brought criminal charges.
Massachusetts State Police officers and investigators, some with personal connections to Farwell, quickly concluded Birchmore’s death was a suicide after she was found slumped on her apartment floor with a strap around her neck. One investigator, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Fogarty told jurors, saw nothing suspicious in Birchmore’s apartment and concluded this was a “troubled girl who killed herself.”
The state’s medical examiner, relying partly on information from police, initially ruled Birchmore died by suicide. The office has since changed the official manner of death to “undetermined.”
The FBI began looking into Birchmore’s death in 2023, partly at the urging of a former deputy chief at the Stoughton Police Department who had led an internal affairs investigation into Farwell based on the tip the department received before Birchmore’s death.
Federal investigators concluded the local probe into her death was rushed and compromised. Farwell was interviewed for just 15 minutes in a parking lot, they said. Investigators didn’t take notes, examine him for injuries or sample his DNA. Police looked at Farwell’s phone only after he had deleted texts with Birchmore.
The FBI investigation uncovered about 40,000 texts between Farwell and Birchmore, including some in which they reminisced about having sex when he was 27 and she was 15 — too young to consent under Massachusetts law.
The texts also showed how their relationship grew contentious as Birchmore pressed Farwell to get her pregnant and threatened to tell his wife about their relationship.
Texts in late 2020, after she was pregnant, showed they argued over what role, if any, Farwell would play in the child’s life. A paternity test after Birchmore’s death revealed a different man was the father.
At trial, a digital forensics expert testified that Birchmore’s phone stopped moving three minutes before the lobby security camera recorded Farwell leaving her building on the night of her death.
An expert hired by prosecutors, Dr. William Smock, testified that Birchmore’s injuries indicated she was strangled with a duffel bag strap and that she struggled before dying.
A defense expert, Dr. Thomas Andrew, the former chief medical examiner in New Hampshire, dismissed Smock’s determination that it was a homicide.
This photo provided by the Stoughton, Mass., Police Department shows Matthew Farwell, a former police officer who pleaded not guilty Aug. 28, 2024, (Stoughton Police Department via AP, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House is set to vote Tuesday on whether to advance an effort to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has accused lawmakers of undermining American troops in war zones by targeting him over mere “policy disagreements."
The procedural vote will either block the impeachment resolution or set up a final vote Wednesday. With Democratic leadership backing the effort brought by GOP Rep. Thomas Massie, the outcome will likely hinge on whether Republican lawmakers break ranks after their sweeping losses in the midterm elections.
Hegseth dug in for a congressional fight in his first news conference in months on Tuesday, portraying Massie as a rogue lawmaker and arguing that he had committed none of the high crimes required in the Constitution for his removal. He framed the effort as an indictment against the nation’s service members and their successes while undermining American forces “in real time.”
“This is not patriotism,” Hegseth said. “This is sabotage.”
Massie's resolution includes eight counts of impeachment. It largely focuses on the war in Iran but also includes references to Hegseth's role in carrying out military actions in Yemen and Venezuela.
Massie, a Kentucky Republican leaving Congress in January after losing his primary to a Trump-backed opponent, says Hegseth has “knowingly executed and implemented unlawful orders."
Tuesday morning, Hegseth gave a defiant and politicized defense of his stewardship of the U.S. military in his first news conference at the Pentagon in six months. He chose to hit back at the rising bipartisan anger over battlefield strategy while offering few details about intermittent operations against Iran or fatal strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in Latin America.
President Donald Trump praised Hegseth’s performance at the briefing in a social media post, while Vice President JD Vance said in his own post that the impeachment effort is “a ridiculous show that stands in for actual policymaking.”
Hegseth said the impeachment resolution “tells our enemies — Iran, the cartels, every adversary watching — the United States will actually punish its own warriors and its own civilian leadership for successfully executing lawful military operations.”
Massie filed the resolution in the House on Monday, giving Republican leaders two days to bring it to a vote. Tuesday's vote is a procedural attempt to stop the impeachment push outright by sending the matter back to committee.
If the impeachment resolution advances, it would set the stage for a dramatic vote Wednesday on whether to impeach a key Trump Cabinet member following sweeping losses for Republicans in last week's midterm elections, which many at least partly blamed on the Iran conflict and its economic impact. If the resolution were to pass the House, it would ultimately be sent to the Senate, where a two-thirds vote would be needed for Hegseth's removal.
“The law requires our military to withdraw from hostilities within 60 days if Congress does not authorize the activity,” Massie wrote on social media Tuesday. The Iran war "has been underway for 256 days. Congress has not authorized it. Hegseth is breaking the law."
What constitutes “high crimes and misdemeanors” is not spelled out in the Constitution, leaving it to lawmakers to decide what are impeachable acts.
Hegseth said Massie’s concerns are not impeachable, calling them “policy disagreements, not high crimes, not misdemeanors, not treason, not bribery, not the kinds of offenses the founders intended when they wrote the impeachment clause.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson called it a “political gambit for attention” and predicted that Republicans would defeat it “one way or the other.”
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is on the cusp of becoming the nation’s first Black House speaker, said Monday that he is a “hard yes” on the resolution. He called Hegseth the “architect” of the war in Iran.
In the Senate, meanwhile, next steps were uncertain if the impeachment resolution cleared the House.
Outgoing GOP Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa said Tuesday that she wants to ensure “that the right information is flowing from the Pentagon to the president.”
“Is he being truthful in the way the war is going?” Ernst said of Hegseth.
Hegseth cast Massie's resolution in historic terms, arguing that no defense secretary has been impeached in the nation's 250-year history “for carrying out lawful military operations.”
But more recently, a Cabinet official in President Joe Biden's administration, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, was impeached by House Republicans over his handling of the U.S.-Mexico border. But the Senate dismissed all impeachment charges, shutting down his trial before arguments even began.
Mayorkas, who did not appear to testify before the impeachment proceedings, put the border crisis squarely on Congress for failing to update immigration laws during a time of global migration. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had said then, in April 2024, that House Republicans’ charges failed to meet “the high standard of high crimes and misdemeanors” and could set a dangerous precedent.
Republican Rep. Nick LaLota, who voted to impeach Mayorkas, said he didn't believe Hegseth had committed any impeachable offense.
“Impeachment has been watered down,” LaLota said.
Before Mayorkas, no sitting Cabinet secretary had ever been impeached. It was nearly 150 years ago that the House voted to impeach President Ulysses S. Grant’s war secretary, William Belknap, over a kickback scheme in government contracts. He resigned before the vote.
Trump has backed Hegseth in the wake of Massie's impeachment resolution, pointing to the U.S. military raid to capture then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January as well as operations against Iran that he asserts have “obliterated” its navy and air force.
“Pete Hegseth gets an “A” PLUS, PLUS, PLUS for his defense against a disgruntled, angry, defeated, former Congressman, Thomas Massie, a TOTAL LOSER!” Trump wrote Tuesday on Truth Social.
Iran, however, has been able to keep striking U.S. military bases in the Middle East and has disrupted shipping in the Strait of Hormuz during the more than 8-month-old conflict, driving up global oil prices.
Associated Press writer Steve Peoples in New York and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., speaks outside of the Capitol about articles of impeachment he introduced against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Monday, Nov. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., speaks outside of the Capitol about articles of impeachment he introduced against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Monday, Nov. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a press conference at the Pentagon in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a press conference at the Pentagon in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a press conference at the Pentagon in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a press conference at the Pentagon in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a press conference at the Pentagon in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)
FILE - Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks at an event for Anduril Industries, Inc., at Sparrows Point Shipyard, Oct. 6, 2026, in Sparrows Point, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)
FILE - Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth waits to welcome Britain's Defense Secretary Wes Streeting to the Pentagon during an arrival ceremony, Thursday, Oct 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
