STOUGHTON, Mass. — The twin brother of a former Stoughton Police Department detective accused in the 2021 death of Sandra Birchmore has agreed to no longer work in law enforcement in Massachusetts.
[ 25 Investigates: The Birchmore murder investigation recording you were never supposed to hear ]
The Peace Officers Standards Training Commission voted on Tuesday to decertify William Farwell, who worked as a police officer in Stoughton from March 2017 to Aug. 1, 2022, when he resigned. His name was also added to the NDI Database, a national registry of police officers whose law enforcement credentials have been revoked.
Farwell agreed to the permanent revocation of his certification as a law enforcement officer in the Commonwealth, POST commission documents showed.
He is the brother of Matthew Farwell, who is currently in federal custody as he awaits trial in Birchmore’s death. In August, Mathew was indicted on charges that he killed Birchmore, a 23-year-old woman who was pregnant with his child, inside her Canton apartment and then staged her death as a suicide.
William Farwell is accused of misleading Massachusetts State Police investigators about the extent of his relationship with Birchmore, who first met him in 2011 when she was a teenage member of the Stoughton Police Department Explorers Program. Farwell was working as a guest instructor in the youth program at the time.
Matthew Farwell is accused of grooming Birchmore through the youth program, having a sexual relationship with her for years, and killing her at the age of 23 after announcing she was allegedly carrying his child.
The commission alleged William Farwell exchanged “sexually explicit messages,” including photos and videos, with Birchmore while on duty when she was about 22 years of age.
William Farwell is also accused of conducting 26 unauthorized searches for Birchmore and 24 for himself in an official law enforcement database, “despite having no official law enforcement purpose for doing so.”
A 2022 internal investigation by Stoughton police found that Matthew Farwell, William Farwell, and Robert C. Devine, a former deputy chief in Stoughton, had all had “inappropriate” relationships with Birchmore.
After Matthew Farwell’s indictment, Attorney Philip Tracy told Boston 25 that prosecutors could seek the death penalty because of the federal killing a witness or a victim charge he faces.
Read Tuesday’s decertification order:
William Farwell Decertification Order by Fox Boston Staff on Scribd
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