Overview

• Chief Judge Denise J. Casper scheduled the federal trial and told both sides to be ready regardless of any capital decision.
• Matthew Farwell, 39, is charged with one count of killing a witness in connection with the 2021 death of Sandra Birchmore and has pleaded not guilty while being held without bail.
• Birchmore, 23 and three months pregnant, was found dead on Feb. 4, 2021; her death was first ruled a suicide before a federal re-examination led to Farwell’s August 2024 indictment.
• Prosecutors allege Farwell groomed Birchmore through a police Explorers program, had sex with her while on duty, and strangled her before staging the scene to look like a suicide.
• Court filings note surveillance placing Farwell at Birchmore’s building the night she was last seen alive, and DNA testing has excluded him as the father of her unborn child.