Birchmore, a former participant in a Stoughton police youth program, was 23 and pregnant when she was found dead in her Canton apartment in 2021.
Federal prosecutors last year charged Matthew G. Farwell, a former Stoughton police detective, with killing her to conceal a sexual relationship they had that began when she was a teenager. He has pleaded not guilty and is being held awaiting trial.
Heal became an Abington police officer in 2020 and the school resource officer the following year.
Heal’s lawyer, Peter S. Farrell, told the Globe in June that the accusations stemmed from a consensual sexual encounter between Heal and Birchmore, then 22, that occurred after business hours at Stoughton’s animal control office in 2019.
In a statement Thursday, Farrell said Heal’s cooperation with POST “is not and should not be construed as an admission of fault or liability for any of the allegations asserted by POST or any other entity.”
“Mr. Heal has not now, has never been, and will not be the target of any criminal charges in the future because he has not broken any laws,” Farrell said in the statement.
After Birchmore‘s death, Stoughton police launched an internal affairs investigation examining her interactions with local officers. The internal investigators accused Heal of not being truthful when they asked him about a sexual encounter with her, according to Abington police records previously reported by the Globe.
At a subsequent interview in 2022, Heal acknowledged having a single sexual encounter with Birchmore, but insisted it was consensual and never happened again, court records show.
An internal investigator hired by Abington found Heal’s conduct during Stoughton’s administrative probe was “unbecoming” of an officer, records show.
A Norfolk Superior Court judge last year dismissed civil claims against Heal in a wrongful death lawsuit brought by Birchmore’s estate.
In the civil case, Superior Court Judge Brian A. Davis wrote Heal’s “only alleged misdeed was having consensual sex with Ms. Birchmore on a single occasion when she was an adult.”
“In dismissing the wrongful death suit against Mr. Heal, the Court determined that Mr. Heal is not on the same factual or legal footing as the other individuals involved,” Farrell, Heal’s attorney, said Thursday.
Heal resigned from the Abington Police Department in 2023, and his state law enforcement certification expired on July 1, according to the POST commission.
The offices of Norfolk District Attorney Michael W. Morrissey and the state medical examiner said Birchmore killed herself, even as many of her friends and relatives insisted she was excited to become a mother and would never take her own life. Morrissey did not file any criminal charges.
Last year, the FBI arrested Farwell, and accused him of strangling Birchmore and then staging the scene to look like a suicide.
Birchmore met Farwell when she joined a Stoughton police youth program as a teenager.
Birchmore frequently shared deeply personal information with Heal, who described himself to Stoughton police internal investigators as “more of a therapist than a friend.”
In court records, Heal said Birchmore told him about having sex with Farwell when she was a minor and an adult as well as about sexual encounters she had as an adult with Farwell’s twin brother, William, who was also a Stoughton officer, and their mentor, Robert C. Devine, a former deputy chief. Devine denies the claim.
The Farwell brothers voluntarily agreed last year to be decertified by the commission. Devine is fighting efforts to have his certification revoked or suspended.
Material from previous Globe coverage was used in this report.