Karen Read Murder Trial Recap, Week 1: Things are Off to a Rough Start for the Prosecution

People are interested in the trial of Karen Read, charged with homicide for allegedly backing her SUV into her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe (Requiescat in Pace) on a snowy night in Canton, MA in January of 2022. I won't go into all the details of what she's charged with, or all the allegations that she's being framed and that the people inside the house she dropped him off at are responsible for Officer O'Keefe's death and subsequent coverup, but here's a brief summary. 

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People are interested. Massholes for sure are interested, especially those who live in and around Canton. CourtTV is interested. Based on the pageviews these blogs are getting, Stoolies are interested. So am I, obviously. 

But there are limits. Like I said before, I'm getting carpet bombed with information about this trial from people who thinks Read is guilty and those who think these charges the greatest miscarriage of justice anyone has ever seen. A well-meaning trial attorney friend of mine tried to clarify some point by sending me a link that read, "Section 1105 - Third-Party Culprit Evidence, Mass R. Evid. 1105 I Casetext Search + Citator." Once I came to after swallowing my tongue from boredom, I politely reminded him I'm a fucking comedian who writes lowest common denominator drivel on a sports and pop culture website. If I wanted a Law degree, I wouldn't have misspent my youth going to state college and memorizing '80s movies.

Personally, I'm operating off the crazy idea that you should be skeptical of everything you read on the internet. (The last four years were proof enough of that.) And that the best approach is to wait and see what is actually presented to the jury. Because that is the literal definition of "evidence."  Not what the lawyers say. Not theories you read on Twitter. Not blogs or YouTubes. Just what comes out on the record in court, with all the Constitutional protections that separate us from your North Koreas.

So now that evidence has, in fact, finally begun to be offered to the 12 People (plus alternates) Good and True from my ancestral homeland of Norfolk County seated in the jury box, I'll cover this with a weekly update on the proceedings. And at the end of Week 1, things don't appear to be going well for the Commonwealth's prosecution. Not. At. All. 

Warnng: I'll be using a lot of sports metaphors as we go forward here. (In the same way that when I'm talking about sports I usually end up using other metaphors.) A trial tends to be less like a basketball game or a boxing match, where you sort of spend the first few minutes feeling each other out. It's more like a baseball postseason series. But one where you've had plenty of time to set up your rotation. Which invariably means sending your Ace out to the mound. If that's been the case here, the state is behind early in this one. As I pointed out on Day 1:

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… in their opening statement, the defense alleged that the lead investigator from the MA State Police Michael Proctor, who has a long-standing friendship with the Albert family whose house Read was dropping O'Keefe off at that that night, texted a group called "High School Buddies" to say he had Read's phone and was searching for nudes on it. And that the owner of the house, Brian Albert, was in no trouble because he's also a Boston cop. 

So not a great first inning. And it hasn't gotten better.

--The first witness called was O'Keefe's brother Paul. He testified to the fact Read and his brother had been having relationship issues. The implication being that they fought over the fact they took in John's niece and nephew after their parent's died. And that he was getting frustrated by the way she had been spending so much money on the kids. Which is the criminal defendant's version of you answering that question in a job interview about what your shortcomings are with, "My problem is I care too much about my work." The defense did the "We have no questions for this witness, Your Honor" thing, and took the W. 

--Most of the week focused on the scene outside the house when the first responders arrived. The prosecution is drilling down on this because much of their case hangs on claims Read was heard straight up admitting she hit O'Keefe with her car Which would be pretty damning, for obvious reasons. But virtually every witness who said this on the stand seemed to be saying it for the first time:

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Not in their incident reports, apparently. Not to State Trooper Proctor during the investigation. And not in Grand Jury testimony. When they train you to write reports, they stress the importance of being precise. Of getting all the details right. From the most important to the least significant. You'd think that someone confessing to the cause of death of a police officer, over and over again in front of everyone would make it straight into the "most important" category. And something the EMT would make note of to tell the emergency room staff about, so they'd know what sort of injuries they were treating. But none of these witnesses ever jotted it down or mentioned it until now. 

--This is especially suspect since everyone of those three people is not only from Canton, they work for the town of Canton. Meaning there are not only careers and future pensions to be considered, but relationships as well. Like the friendship between that last witness Katie McLaughlin and the Albert's daughter:

On cross, she was backed into a corner into admitting her testimony had "evolved," while downplaying the friendship as more of an "acquaintance." 

--And in what sounds like one of those things you hear in a JFK assassination conspiracy podcast, one of the EMTs just happened to show up to work two hours early that day and got the call not 10 minutes after he walked in. So 1:50 before anyone expected him to be on the clock:

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--One first responder on the scene DID testify that he never heard Read yell "I hit him" or anything of the sort. Perhaps it's just a coincidence or speaks to a larger truth in all this, but that Canton firefighter was a rookie at the time:

--I think in an earlier blog I misidentified Jen McCabe as Brian Albert's wife, when in fact she's his sister-in-law. For that I apologize. These names and relationships get confusing, and there's no scorecard. (Another sports reference.) McCabe is significant because she's the friend Read called to come help her look for O'Keefe hours later when he still hadn't come home. And she's the one who Googled "hos long to die in cold." The fact she did so is not in dispute. What is disputed is when. The phone data said it was at 2:27 am. The state claims the data is wrong, and it was after 6:30 when he'd been found. Their theory goes that she made the Google search only after a very distraught Read asked her to. That the two had taken shelter in a car to try and calm Read down and that's what prompted the search. But the dashboard cameras on the police cruisers were on. And don't show the two ever being in a car together:

--If you want to put your faith in this supposedly enhanced audio from that recording, then you'll believe that Read was very clearly in upset verging on hysterical. But said nothing close to admitting guilt or making web browsing demands:

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--Worse still, the defense's claim is that the dashboard video shows McCabe slipping behind other police cruisers and into her sister and brother-in-law's house. Which no one made note of, reported, or tried to stop. And that internet I don't have much trust in is saying her phone tracking data confirms her steps:

--While it's been claimed before that O'Keefe's phone showed him walking all over the house and across the yard after he'd allegedly been hit by the SUV:

--Finally, the elements I find most disturbing - beyond, of course, one of Boston's Finest laying dying in the snow, is the fact that if Jen McCabe did go in or out of 34 Fairview Road, she was the only one. A person is found left for dead in the front yard of a house, and no one asked the people inside that home what they knew? If they'd seen anything? And no one inside came out to find out what the ruckus was? With however many cruisers, fire trucks and ambuli rolled up with their sirens on and lights flashing, that didn't elicit even a little bit of curiosity? Most suburban homeowners on nice, leafy neighborhood side streets won't let someone walk their dog without scrutinizing their every move. But this little 911 emergency inspired a uniquely aggressive form of None of My Businessishness. 

--Which is made all the stranger by this weird detail:

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Not so much for the taillight, whether it was broken, when it was broken, or how broken it was. That'll all come out as the trial goes on. No, I'm talking about the leaf blower. First of all, since when are those a tool used in law enforcement? Especially Crime Scene Investigation? I've been doing some deep dives into old '70s TV detective dramas, and I have yet to see Columbo show up to a the apartment of some wealthy socialite homicide victim and start blasting the shag carpeting with a Husqvarna 150 BT backpack unit in order to crack the case. I don't know how crime scenes are maintained. But I'd assume blowing all the trace evidence in every direction with supercharged gusts of gas-powered wind would be detrimental. Though like anyone else hearing about it, we've all seen enough leaf blowers used to clear off the yard markers on snowy football fields to realize they'd be ideal for getting rid of those pesky murder scene problems like incriminating footprints. Again, what do I know?

What I can speak intelligently on though, are two things: Power equipment and sleep. Specifically how the former messes with the latter. Leaf blowers are so bloody noisy that a lot of cities have passed ordinances saying they can only be used at certain times of day. And there's not a suburban homeowner like me who hasn't at some point been woken up on a Saturday by the neighbor or the neighbor's landscaper getting an early start to the weekend without contemplating what that blower could do if it was properly shoved up their ass. So no one on Fairview Road being even the tiniest bit curious about all that commotion is sketchy, to say the least. 

But what's even worse though in my opinion, is that the appalling lack of curiosity was a two-way street. No one from the Canton PD asked if anyone at 34 Fairview had information. No one asked the neighbors if they'd seen or heard anything. No doors were knocked on. Even though the first rule of police work is to always knock on doors:

Right now the only logical explanation is that no one tried to find anything out because they didn't want to know. Someday soon, we'll find out if that's how the jurors see it. Until then, the Commonwealth's prosecution better hope they comeback with a better week or this series will be over as soon as it's begun.