Crime 
Karen Read left Norfolk County Superior Court for a lunch break on the first day of opening statements in her retrial on Tuesday, April 22, 2025. Jessica Rinaldi/Boston Globe Staff
By Abby Patkin
April 22, 2025 | 6:52 PM
The specter of Michael Proctor loomed large over opening statements in Karen Read’s retrial as defense attorneys accused the former Massachusetts State Police trooper of “pre-selecting” Read as the main suspect in her boyfriend’s murder.
“You’ll see from the evidence in this case that this case carries a malignancy,” defense attorney Alan Jackson told jurors Tuesday. “A cancer that cannot be cut out, a cancer that cannot be cured. And that cancer has a name. His name is Michael Proctor.”
Leading the investigation into the death of Read’s boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, Proctor rose to infamy over his handling of the case. State Police fired Proctor last month in light of his conduct during the investigation, particularly his vulgar personal texts about Read. But while prosecutors have attempted to distance their case from the ex-trooper’s malfeasance, Jackson argued the two are inextricably linked.
“The evidence will show in this case that Michael Proctor is the very definition of the commonwealth’s case,” Jackson told jurors. “Every single bit of it has his fingerprints on it.”
Prosecutors allege Read, 45, drunkenly and deliberately backed her SUV into O’Keefe while dropping him off at a home in Canton following a night of bar-hopping in January 2022. They’ve pointed to angry texts and voicemails suggesting the couple’s relationship was on the rocks, arguing Read left her boyfriend of two years to die alone in the snow.
Yet Read’s lawyers say she was a “convenient outsider” framed in a vast conspiracy among afterparty guests and law enforcement. To hear the defense tell it, O’Keefe was actually beaten inside the home, attacked by the homeowner’s pet dog, and ultimately tossed outside in the snow.
When O’Keefe didn’t return home from the afterparty, Read and two other women — Kerry Roberts and Jennifer McCabe — went out looking for him and found him unresponsive outside 34 Fairview Road.
First responders dispatched to the scene after 6 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, “stepped out into bedlam,” special prosecutor Hank Brennan said in his opening remarks. He painted a vivid picture: Wind howling, blizzard raging, and Read’s frantic screams echoing through the dark.
Amid the chaos, a Canton firefighter asked Read what happened.
“She said, ‘I hit him, I hit him, I hit him,’” Brennan alleged. “And it was at that time, through the words of the defendant, that she admitted what she had done that night, that she hit John O’Keefe.”
Pointing dramatically to Read, he added: “We are here today because John O’Keefe was killed by the actions and conduct of that defendant, Karen Read.”
The couple had argued en route to Fairview Road, according to Brennan, who alleged Read waited until her boyfriend exited the SUV before slamming her foot down on the gas pedal and accelerating toward him in reverse.
“She clipped John O’Keefe, who fell backward, hit his head, broke his skull,” Brennan told jurors. And Read, he alleged, “simply drove away.”
Special prosecutor Hank Brennan gives his opening statement at Karen Read’s second murder trial at Norfolk Superior Court on Tuesday, April 22, 2025 in Dedham, Mass. – Stuart Cahill /The Boston Herald via AP, Pool
Brennan teased expert testimony from a neurosurgeon and an independent crash reconstructionist, also citing data from Read’s SUV and O’Keefe’s cellphone. He alleged that a log tracking the cellphone’s battery temperature showed the cold gradually seeping in as O’Keefe lay in the snow for hours.
Investigators also found O’Keefe’s DNA on Read’s SUV and pieces of broken taillight “littered” around where his body lay, according to Brennan.
“This case will come down to the science and the data,” Brennan said, adding, “It doesn’t suffer from intoxication. It doesn’t suffer from memory loss. It doesn’t suffer from emotion, pride, or prejudice. It is facts; it is data.”
He played a clip from Read’s NBC “Dateline” special, in which she questioned whether she could have struck O’Keefe and said her boyfriend “didn’t look mortally wounded as far as I could see.”
Read has pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence, and leaving the scene of a fatal collision. Her first trial ended in a mistrial last July after jurors returned deadlocked.
Judge Beverly Cannone previously set limitations on Read’s third-party culprit defense, barring Jackson from trying to blame someone else for O’Keefe’s death during opening statements. The veteran defense attorney tried a different tack, repeating the same simple phrase throughout his remarks: “There was no collision.”
“John O’Keefe did not die from being hit by a vehicle. Period,” Jackson asserted. “The facts will show that. The evidence will show that. The data will show that. The science will show that, and the experts will tell you that.”
He suggested Read actually broke her taillight while backing out of O’Keefe’s driveway the morning of Jan. 29 — a theory prosecutors have disputed — and cast doubt on several prosecution witnesses, among them homeowner Brian Albert, his sister-in-law Jennifer McCabe, and fellow afterparty guest Brian Higgins. According to Jackson, Higgins had “romantic designs” on Read during her relationship with O’Keefe, though she “ghosted” him shortly before O’Keefe died.
“The story you’ll hear is about an investigation that was riddled with errors from the beginning, a rush to judgment conflicted and corrupted from the start — corrupted by bias, corrupted by incompetence, and corrupted by deceit. Finally, it was corrupted by a deliberate effort to avoid and cover up the very truth that you are seeking.”
Jackson took frequent shots at Proctor, emphasizing the former trooper’s personal ties to the Albert family and accusing him of lying and fabricating evidence.
“He didn’t care about finding the truth,” Jackson alleged. “In his world, his priority was to protect the brotherhood. To protect that blue wall. To protect his friends that were at the Albert house that night.”
He also asserted the wound on the back of O’Keefe’s head came from a raised or ledged surface, which he said did not exist where O’Keefe was found on Albert’s front lawn.
“The data, the science, the witnesses will all unequivocally establish that John O’Keefe went into the Albert home that night,” Jackson argued.
He said investigators found no pieces of the broken taillight outside 34 Fairview Road before Proctor gained access to Read’s SUV. Further, Jackson noted, O’Keefe’s DNA didn’t appear on the taillight shards prosecutors claim slashed into his arm.
He said Read’s speculation about whether she could have struck O’Keefe was not an admission of guilt, but “a woman desperately trying to piece together what could have happened on this tragic night.”
Tuesday’s opening statements featured a change in lineup, as Norfolk County Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally and defense attorney David Yannetti delivered opening remarks during Read’s first trial. In a phone interview, attorney Katherine Loftus said both Brennan and Jackson came off “fairly strong” and “evenly matched” the second time around.
Brennan’s presentation for the prosecution “appeared to be much clearer and more concise than we heard in trial number one,” she said, adding, “He sort of weaved this story in a way that we almost never really heard from Adam Lally.”
On the other hand, “I thought Alan Jackson did a really good job as well at really outlining the concern relative to the police investigation,” Loftus said, though she questioned whether he might have oversold the evidence purportedly placing O’Keefe inside 34 Fairview Road.
Supporters of Karen Read gather on the steps at Norfolk Superior Court prior to Read’s trial, Tuesday, April 22, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. – AP Photo/Charles Krupa
Even with the constraints Cannone placed on Read’s third-party culprit defense, “I think [Jackson] did a really good job of sort of weaving the substandard police investigation, the issues with Michael Proctor, and sort of laying the foundation for what will likely come out relative to third-party,” Loftus added.
Asked about Proctor’s lingering influence, Daniel Medwed, a criminal law professor at Northeastern University, said the ex-trooper “might be the elephant in the courtroom throughout the trial.”
“The defense likely wants to point out his indiscretions every chance they get, while the prosecution will seek to minimize the importance of his missteps, possibly through new witnesses, or by highlighting evidence that was unrelated to his role in the investigation,” Medwed explained by email.
Loftus said she was a little surprised Brennan didn’t try to get ahead of the Proctor controversy in his opening statement. She said the defense’s heightened focus on Proctor suggests a strategy shift toward more of an attack on the investigation and the officers themselves.
“And I think if they focus on that, even more so than the third-party, that’s their best avenue to a ‘not guilty,’” Loftus added.
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