Karen Read trial Day 25: What did Michael Proctor say about the case over text?
Editor's note: This page summarizes testimony in the Karen Read trial for Monday, June 2. For the latest updates on the Karen Read retrial, visit Paste BN's coverage for Tuesday, June 3.
Jurors in Karen Read’s second murder trial got a window Monday into the mind of one of the most mystifying characters in her case: former lead investigator Michael Proctor.
As the trial stretched into its seventh week, Read’s defense team called three new witnesses, including Proctor’s longtime friend Jonathan Diamandis, who testified about a series of crude text messages the former Massachusetts state trooper sent to friends while investigating the case.
Some were so intense, Diamandis didn't want to read them on the stand.
Read, 45, is on trial for manslaughter and second-degree murder in the death of her Boston cop boyfriend, John O’Keefe. Her first trial ended in a hung jury in 2024.
Prosecutors say she backed into him with her Lexus SUV after a night of drinking with friends and left him to die in the snow outside the home of another police officer in January 2022.
Her defense team alleges that something even darker occurred. Cops beat O’Keefe inside the home, let a ravenous dog attack him and then dropped his bloodied and bruised body in a pile of snow in the middle of a blizzard, they say.
Proctor, they argue, purposefully bungled the investigation to protect the officers.
In addition to the texts, Read’s defense presented testimony Monday from a police officer on duty when O’Keefe’s body was discovered and a dog bite expert who analyzed his wounds.
Here’s what you missed from Day 25 of the trial in Dedham, Massachusetts.
Prosecutors grill dog bite expert
The prosecution attempted to cast doubt about the expertise of Marie Russell, an emergency physician and forensic pathologist and the defense’s dog bite expert. Prosecutors first asked whether she had ever before testified as an expert on dog bites. She replied “no.”
"Prosecutor Hank Brennan pushed further. He asked Russell if she had identified the origin of a wound as a dog bite without knowing where it came from. She said she hadn’t but mentioned that she has taken photos of dog bites since the 1990s.
The prosecutor then highlighted the medical examiner’s findings that cuts on O'Keefe's arm were superficial and had no depth. She said that wasn’t inconsistent with her conclusion.
When pressed about inconsistencies in her statements, Russell told Brennan that nothing in medicine is 100%, but that she was confident O’Keefe’s injuries were caused by a dog attack.
The judge dismissed the jury for the day around 4 p.m. Russell’s testimony is expected to resume on Tuesday.
Dog bite expert begins testimony in Karen Read trial
Russell began testifying Monday about O’Keefe’s injuries.
Much of the beginning of her testimony focused on her decades of experience as a doctor and medical expert who specializes in reviewing canine-related wounds. She told defense attorney Robert Alessi that she has seen at least 500 dog bites over the course of her career.
Russell said she looked at records from O’Keefe’s case and believed wounds on his arm were inflicted by a dog, noting patterns she says were caused by claws and teeth.
The Albert family, who lived at the property where O'Keefe's body was found, owned a German Shepard named Chloe. After O'Keefe's body was found, the dog was sent to live on a farm in Vermont.
Pointing to a picture of O’Keefe’s battered arm, Russell described what she said were multiple groupings of incomplete dog bites, which are among the most common. The bites, she said, didn't penetrate the “full thickness of the skin.”
Russell later questioned the analysis of prosecution witness Judson Welcher, a crash reconstruction expert. Welcher presented a case study from a car crash where a victim sustained several injuries, including skin loss. Russell said O’Keefe did not have the same injuries.
Defense Attorney Robert Alessi then asked about the holes found in O’Keefe’s sweatshirt. Russell noted the round shape of the holes. She said they were consistent with a canine tooth sinking into the shirt, reaching the skin, retracting and pulling the fabric.
Defense calls former Canton cop
The defense team called former Canton Police Officer Kelly Dever to the stand to confront an apparent contradiction between two previous statements. Dever was a patrol officer on duty when O’Keefe’s body was found. She left the Canton Police more than two years ago and has since worked for the Boston Police Department.
Much of her testimony revolved around an interview she had with law enforcement agents in 2022, during which she said she saw Canton Police Chief Ken Berkowitz and officer Brian Higgins in the sally port, where Read's SUV was kept as evidence, for a long time on Jan. 29, 2022.
Read's defense has previously questioned whether pieces of her taillight were planted at the crime scene by police.
Dever said she later retracted her statement about Berkowitz and Higgins after she saw the defense team's timeline of the case. She said she realized that she wouldn’t have been at the police station at that time and said it was a “false memory.”
“This was just a random shift for me 3 1/2 years,” she said. “I wasn't asked to recollect for about a year and a half after the occurrences of that night.”
Dever said she was “confused” about why she was on the stand. She alleged that Read’s defense previously told her she could be charged with perjury if she did not testify about what she saw in the sally port.
“My entire job revolves around what I say on the stand right now. If I was to lie, I lose my job. I lose everything. I'm here to tell the truth. I cannot lie while sitting on this stand,” she said.
Dever was not called as a witness during Read’s first trial.
Defense, prosecution probe witness about Proctor's misconduct
Read’s defense attorney probed Diamandis about whether the information Proctor disclosed in the texts was public at the time. Diamandis said he did not know anything about the case when the messages were sent.
In a series of questions, Read's lawyer asked Diamandis if he knew why Proctor was fired. They asked about possible reasons why Proctor could have been fired, including revealing confidential information and acting in a manner unbecoming of a state trooper. Diamandis said he did not know what led to Proctor's firing.
The prosecution then appeared to emphasize that, despite Proctor's misconduct, his handling of evidence in the case was not in question. Brennan, the prosecutor, suggested in a question to Diamandis that Proctor was not fired for tampering with evidence. Diamandis repeated that he did not know why Proctor was fired.
Proctor’s text messages read aloud
Upon cross-examination, Brennan asked Diamandis to read aloud several messages about O’Keefe’s case that were sent in the text chain.
In the first, on Jan. 29, 2022, Proctor tells his friends about O’Keefe’s background and mentions that he took custody of his niece and nephew after both their parents died.
“All the powers that be want answers ASAP,” he then wrote about the investigation.
“I’m sure the owner of the house will receive some shit,” one friend texted, to which Proctor responded: “Nope, homeowner is a Boston cop too.”
Proctor told them, “she waffled him,” about Read. After some confusion, a friend asked whether the owner of the home O’Keefe was found near was a “woman cop who beat him.” Proctor said he initially thought that was the case, but after seeing O’Keefe’s body, he believed he was hit by a car.
A friend in the group chat then asked whether the investigation would be “cut and dry” because it involved a cop. “Something stinks,” they wrote.
“There will be some serious charges brought on the girl. She hot at least,” Proctor wrote.
Diamandis then paused and said he was uncomfortable reading more of the texts aloud because they weren’t his words. After a brief sidebar, Brennan agreed to read the messages and have Diamandis confirm whether they were accurate.
In the series of crude messages sent on Feb. 2, 2022, Proctor called Read a “whack job,” used vulgar language and then called her a “babe.”
After he finished reading the messages, Brennan asked Diamandis whether Proctor ever suggested that he tampered with evidence. Diamandis said he did not.
Defense calls Michael Proctor's longtime friend
Defense attorney David Yannetti called Diamandis to the stand and asked him a few brief questions about his relationship with Proctor, who he has been friends with for more than 30 years, and a group chat he belonged to with Proctor and other friends.
Judge rules to allow Michael Proctor texts into evidence
Judge Beverly Cannone ruled Monday morning to allow Diamandis, a longtime friend of former Massachusetts State Trooper Michael Proctor, to testify about a text message chain he was in with Proctor, the former lead investigator in O’Keefe’s case.
Read’s defense has long alleged that Proctor mishandled the investigation into O’Keefe’s death and was biased against Read. Cannone said the text messages provided evidence of Proctor’s state of mind during the investigation and could shed light on whether there was bias in the case.
How to watch the Karen Read trial
CourtTV has been covering the case against Read and the criminal investigation since early 2022, when O'Keefe's body was found outside a Massachusetts home.
You can watch CourtTV’s live feed of the Read trial proceedings from Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Massachusetts. Proceedings began at 10 a.m. ET.