John O’Keefe and Karen Read. (Images via Boston Police Department portrait and WBZ-TV screengrab, respectively.)
Karen Read‘s attorneys on Tuesday argued for the charges against her in the death of her Boston police officer boyfriend to be dismissed, citing what they called conflicts of interests between investigators and witnesses.
Her attorney, Alan Jackson, also revealed a potentially explosive tidbit: That federal investigators looking into potential corruption of prosecutors and law enforcement in the case hired an accident reconstruction expert who concluded that John O’Keefe was not hit by Read’s car on Jan. 29, 2022. Jackson said the expert believes that the damage on the car was inconsistent with hitting someone and O’Keefe’s injuries were not consistent with being hit by a car.
“In other words the car didn’t hit him and he wasn’t hit by the car. Period. Full stop,” said Jackson while noting the feds — not the defense — hired the expert.
The judge did not make a decision Tuesday on the dismissal and will issue a decision later.
Oddly enough, that was the only time the new piece of information was mentioned in the roughly hourlong hearing. Read’s request for dismissal centers on the close familial relationships and friendships between investigators and the witnesses in the case that her defense lawyers say are actually suspects. Her attorneys also asked that Norfolk County District Attorney Michael Morrisey be removed from the case because a video he released to the media defending his case was prejudicial to potential jurors and violated professional standards of conduct.
O’Keefe was found dead following a blizzard outside the Canton home of Brian Albert, also a Boston cop, and his wife Nicole Albert. Prosecutors say Read hit O’Keefe and fled the scene, leaving him for dead, while dropping him off at the Albert home after a night of drinking. She is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence and leaving the scene of an accident while causing death.
Read’s attorneys believe O’Keefe actually made it into the Albert home that night and was injured in an altercation in the basement. O’Keefe was then moved outside to die and Read is a victim of a wide-scale conspiracy and cover-up by law enforcement, they claim
Jackson highlighted the close friendship between Brian Albert and Canton police Sgt. Michael Lank, one of the first officers on scene after the discovery of O’Keefe. Jackson claimed Lank helped Brian Albert out of trouble after a bar fight in 2002. The attorney also alleged Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor, the lead investigator on the case, and the Alberts were like family. Proctor had asked Brian Albert’s sister-in-law to babysit his kids about 10 days before O’Keefe’s death, Jackson said.
Also at issue is a Google search Jennifer McCabe, Nicole Albert’s sister, made on “ho[w] long to die in the cold” and when she looked it up. Defense attorneys say their experts, including an FBI agent, says she made it at 2:27 a.m. — well before O’Keefe was reportedly found. But prosecutors say McCabe actually made the search around 6:23 a.m., after the discovery of the body.
Read’s attorneys are arguing for the dismissal under an O’Dell motion, which allows a judge to toss an indictment if prosecutors knowingly submitted false or misleading information to a grand jury leading to the indictment.
Jackson said all the cumulative alleged misdeeds by prosecutors to the grand jury is grounds for dismissal.
“It just wasn’t fair, that’s the easiest way to say it. It just didn’t give Karen Read a fair shot,” he said.
But prosecutor Adam Lally said the defense falls short of proving malfeasance to the grand jury. He said all the talk about relationships between the Alberts and investigators is just distracting from the heart of the case.
“What the defense is obfuscating from is the overwhelming evidence that was presented to this grand jury from a multitude of sources: 42 separate witnesses, 56 exhibits, over 1,400 pages of transcripts which clearly demonstrate and indicate that the defendant Karen Read killed John O’Keefe.”
Among the key pieces of evidence is pieces of Read’s SUV taillight on O’Keefe’s body and his DNA outside the vehicle’s passenger side. There’s also evidence of a deteriorating relationship between the couple with Read sending O’Keefe a text message that said “John, I f—— hate you.”
It was during Jackson’s rebuttal of Lally’s argument when he brought up the crash reconstruction expert hired by the feds. Lally never addressed it.
Read’s attorneys have also asked the judge to remove Morrissey from the case. The main sticking point is the August 2023 video Morrissey released where he defended the state’s witnesses and refuted the growing conspiracy that the Alberts, law enforcement and others were framing Read. Attorney David Yannetti said he’s never seen “such unethical conduct” from a prosecutor. He called the prosecutor’s video “unprecedented” and he knows of at least one law professor who used it as an example to his students on how a prosecutor should not act.
Yannetti said the video violated professional standards and the judge’s order that said attorneys on the case should be careful on what they say to the media.
Lally said Morrissey released the video to stop the “relentless harassment” of witnesses in the case and a “rolling rally” led by “Turtleboy” blogger Aidan Kearney, who is now indicted on a charge of intimidating witnesses. Lally also revealed that there were nearly 200 phone calls between Read and Kearney along with several encrypted messages exchanged between the two.
The case is scheduled to go to trial on April 16.
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