A Boston FBI agent testified that the father of Sandra Birchmore’s unborn baby is U.S. Army recruiter Jason Pickard, which was first reported by Los Angeles.
Pickard, FBI Special Agent Heidi Kelsch told jurors from the witness stand on Monday, met Birchmore in December 2019 and was having “sexual intercourse” with her at the same time as Stoughton Police Detective Matthew Farwell when she got pregnant in November 2020. Farwell is currently on trial in connection with the killing of Birchmore and her unborn baby, a boy. Federal prosecutors say Farwell asphyxiated her and staged her death to appear to be a suicide to keep her quiet about sex crimes he is accused of subjecting her to when he was a 27-year-old police officer and she was a 15-year-old minor he was supposed to be mentoring in a Police Explorer’s Program.
“Mr. Pickard is the father of the fetus,” Kelsch told the jury. Farwell’s defense attorneys referenced Pickard as the father in open court last month, after his identity was revealed by Los Angeles. He is now expected, like William Farwell, to testify for the government in Matthew Farwell’s ongoing trial in Boston’s federal court.
Birchmore, according to police records, was introduced to Pickard by Matthew Farwell’s twin brother William, also a Stoughton cop, in 2018. A Stoughton internal affairs report noted that investigators recovered explicit videos of Pickard and Birchmore on the Farwell brothers’ cell phones. Former Stoughton Deputy Police Chief Brian Holmes, who initiated the internal affairs report, testified last week that the photos and videos regarding Pickard were concerning enough that he reported them to a “U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel” and the FBI.
“I saw some information in there that made me think times were happening in other places in the country,” Holmes told the court.
Birchmore, prosecutors say, believed Farwell was the father of her baby. Farwell’s DNA, Los Angeles reported this week, was recovered in her underwear, at the crime scene, and on the murder weapon, which was the strap of a duffel bag she had been issued by the U.S. Army when she initially enlisted.
The bombshell revelation came after jurors heard hours of graphic and often violent text messages exchanged between Farwell and Birchmore, with many pertaining to him choking her.
The post Testimony Confirms Father of Sandra Birchmore’s Baby appeared first on LAmag.
