Karen Read returned to court Wednesday for a hearing centered around phone records as the date of her murder trial rapidly approaches.
Read — accused of killing John O'Keefe, her Boston police officer boyfriend, in Canton, Massachusetts, in 2022 — had last appeared in court on March 12, where her attorneys argued the case should be dismissed and Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey disqualified from the case. Judge Beverly Cannone has yet to rule on those motions and as of now the trial remains set for April 16.
Attorneys for both sides presented arguments Wednesday on three motions filed by the defense seeking records pertaining to various witnesses in the case.
The first motion seeks records from the Massachusetts State Police internal affairs division pertaining to Trooper Michael Proctor, the lead investigator in the Read case, who is under internal investigation for an undisclosed potential violation of department policy. Neither prosecutors nor Proctor's attorney objected to that motion.
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The second motion seeks phone records from Brian Albert, Brian Higgins and Kevin Albert from April 1, 2023 to present. Brian Albert and Brian Higgins were reportedly inside Brian Albert's house on the night of O'Keefe's death, and Kevin Albert is Brian's brother and a Canton police officer.
Defense attorney David Yannetti said the phone records would help to establish the defense's argument that someone other than Read was responsible for O'Keefe's death and there is a conspiracy to frame her for the murder.
"We're entitled to explore whether this investigation was conducted ethically," Yannetti said. "The records are relevant because they tend to show a cover up. They show a Canton police officer inserting himself into a case his department was conflicted out of precisely because he is an officer there."
"We need these records," he added. "Going to trial without them would violate my client's rights."
Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally argued that the defense's statements were "largely inaccurate" and "injected with hyperbole" and the motion should be denied.
The final motion argued Wednesday was a request from the defense for phone records from Brian Albert, Brian Higgins and former Canton Police Chief Kenneth Berkowitz. Yannetti focused much of his argument on two phone calls between Albert and Brian Higgins around 2:22 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, less than four hours before O'Keefe's body was found on Albert's lawn.
Albert and Higgins both reportedly tried to claim the calls were accidental, but Yannetti said that seems impossible given both the late hour and the fact that they both said they were in bed at the time.
"When he was first confronted, Brian Higgins tried to claim it was a butt dial," Yannetti said. "I've never seen a case where there have been so many butt dials, to be frank."
Cannone allowed the first motion on Wednesday but did not rule on the second two. The next hearing in the case is scheduled for March 26.
Wednesday's proceedings followed a heated court hearing last week at which defense attorney Alan Jackson argued that the criminal charges against Read should be dismissed because prosecutors and their investigators distorted evidence on multiple occasions. He said several of the police investigators involved in the case, including Canton Police Sgt. Michael Lank and Proctor, had longstanding relationships with witnesses in the case and that was never mentioned to grand jurors.
"That conflict was never described to the grand jury and we've been rebuffed at every single turn," he said.
Jackson referred to text messages between Proctor and a family member about having a relative of one of the witnesses in the case babysit for his toddler. He also cited another text sent from Proctor's sister to Proctor where his sister referenced a member of that same family saying, "when all this is over she wants to give you a thank you gift."
One day after that hearing, state police confirmed Proctor was under investigation.
In what he called "the most obvious distortion of facts," Jackson said prosecutors hid the fact that one of the witnesses in the case had made a Google search for "ho[w] long to die in cold" at 2:27 a.m. on the night O'Keefe was killed.
"Any one of these examples would be enough to dismiss the charges as they sit here today, but the cumulative effect of this deception is too much for the court to ignore," Jackson said in asking for the dismissal of the indictment.
But Lally countered that the defense is just trying to distract from the evidence pointing to Read being the killer.
"The defense is trying to say, 'Look the other way.' It's a three-card monte trick. 'Look at this relationship, look at that relationship.' The defense is obfuscating from the extensive evidence. They don't want you to look at that. They want you to look at who texted who when," he said.
Yannetti also argued a separate motion to disqualify Morrissey from prosecuting the case, based mostly on a video the district attorney released last summer condemning the harassment of witnesses in the Read case.
"DA Morrissey has an interest in this case not to do justice, but to win," Yannetti said. "My client deserves a neutral, impartial prosecutor. Morrissey isn't that. That is why he should be disqualified."
But Lally said Morrissey released the video specifically because key witnesses in the case were being harassed and he wanted to put a stop to it.
