Overview
- Farwell, a former Stoughton police detective, waived appearance as the court entered not guilty pleas on the new count and the underlying homicide charge.
- Prosecutors allege he strangled 23-year-old Birchmore in her Canton apartment in February 2021 and staged the scene to look like a suicide to conceal a sexual relationship that began when she was a minor in the police Explorers program.
- The state medical examiner had ruled Birchmore’s death a suicide, but a federal reexamination led to charges first in 2024 and then the new fetal-death count returned last month.
- Farwell’s trial is scheduled for next October, and the Justice Department faces a Jan. 20, 2026 deadline to decide whether to seek the death penalty.
- The defense is seeking to move the case out of Massachusetts, and the Boston Globe has reported DNA testing excluded Farwell as the fetus’s father, with paternity still unresolved.