More than 20 witnesses have testified in the second Karen Read murder trial and the judge told jurors this week that the trial expected to last six to eight weeks remains on schedule.
Witnesses from the Canton Police Department and Massachusetts State Police testified about the investigative steps they took in the hours after John O‘Keefe’s body was found outside of 34 Fairview Road.
Jurors also heard from two people — Ryan Nagel and Heather Maxon — who arrived at 34 Fairview Road in Canton, where O‘Keefe’s unresponsive body was found, at the same time as Read and O‘Keefe did shortly after midnight on Jan. 29, 2022.
The time around 12:30 a.m. is crucial to the case. Prosecutors say that Read made a three-point turn around then, and fatally struck O‘Keefe and left him to die as a blizzard rolled in.
Nagel and Maxon, however, said they did not see O‘Keefe as they drove away from the home. One witness said they saw Read with her hands on the steering wheel at the “10 and 2” positions and the car’s inner light on.
Here are the biggest takeaways from the third week of trial:
More testimony about Read and O‘Keefe’s arrival at 34 Fairview Road
The prosecution called Nagel to the stand on Monday, and he described what he saw shortly after midnight on Jan. 29, 2022.
He drove in his friend’s car with Maxon, his then-girlfriend, and they went to the Canton house to pick up his sister (she was there for a party). They arrived at the house at the same time as Read and O‘Keefe that night, but neither witness saw O‘Keefe.
Mark Bederow, a New York criminal defense attorney who has followed the case, said in an interview that their testimonies “established a few things, some more readily than others.” Read tried to add Bederow to her defense team, but a judge determined he couldn’t effectively represent her and Aidan Kearney, the blogger “Turtleboy.”
Read’s SUV was a car length away from a flag pole on the left side of the house, Nagel testified.
Nagel’s sister came outside, told her brother she wanted to stay at the house and she went back inside — all within a few minutes.
Nagel confirmed he did not see any damage to Read’s taillight and that no one saw O‘Keefe that night.
Special Prosecutor Hank Brennan asked Nagel what time they were there, and Nagel said roughly between 12:30 a.m. and 12:35 a.m. With only a light dusting of snow on the front yard by then, he said he did not notice anyone lying by the flagpole — the area where O‘Keefe was later found.
Nagel’s testimony raises questions about what happened between 12:30 a.m. and 12:35 a.m.
“Important to the timeline, both are adamant that they saw Karen sitting in the SUV in the area where this is alleged to have happened,” Bederow said. “They saw no accident, saw nothing suspicious, and most importantly, they did not see O‘Keefe in the car or anywhere outside.”
“Which could support a defense claim, which is if he wasn’t in the car and not detected outside, might he have been inside the house?” Bederow added.
Last week, an expert witness for the prosecution testified that O‘Keefe took 36 steps for a total of 84 feet between 12:31 a.m. and 12:32 a.m.
Another witness, Jennifer McCabe, was inside the household at that time. She testified last week about seeing Read’s SUV outside the house and texting O‘Keefe at 12:27 a.m. She then texted him several more times, up until 12:45 a.m., and said she looked out the window at least four times, but never saw O‘Keefe.
Ian Whiffin, a digital intelligence expert with the company Cellebrite, said O‘Keefe’s cell phone arrived outside 34 Fairview Road at 12:24 a.m. and about 30 seconds later, started moving in a “westerly direction … towards the house.”
“With unresolved questions, they tend to favor the party without the burden of proof, meaning the defense,” Bederow said.
The prosecution’s witness list includes an expert witness and a state police investigator who are expected to provide more information about when exactly Read struck O‘Keefe with her vehicle, according to their theory of the case.
Three weeks into the trial, however, the timeline of when Read and O‘Keefe arrived at 34 Fairview Road and what happened immediately after includes a lot of “unknowns,” as Bederow put it.
“Put all of this together and you can see that there are some serious issues that the prosecution will have to contend with to fit their theory in a very specific timeline with all this evidence that does not appear to help,” Bederow said.
Jurors learn more about the firing of former lead investigator, Michael Proctor
Prosecutors have still not called the lead investigator in the Read case: former Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor.
He was fired earlier this year, and state police officials specifically cited his handling of the Read investigation as cause for his dismissal.
On Thursday, Brennan asked Proctor‘s supervisor, Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik, to read some of Proctor‘s texts that eventually led to his firing. Proctor sent the text messages to some of his supervisors, where he provided an update after looking through Read’s cell phone.
“No nudes so far,” Bukhenik read. Brennan had handed him a sheet of paper with the text messages printed. “I hate that man; I truly hate that man,” read one text by Proctor, referring to Read’s attorney.
Bukhenik also described how he faced discipline due to Proctor‘s text messages. Bukhenik said he gave a “thumbs up” to the text about “no nudes,” but that he did so while working a detail at Logan Airport and read the message on his Apple watch.
“I acknowledged the text,” he said. “I did not respond with verbiage.”
An internal affairs investigation resulted in two sustained findings against Bukhenik: one for failing to properly supervise Proctor and a second for inaccuracy in his performance reviews.
Bukhenik lost five days of vacation time.
Still, the state police investigator defended the handling of the case during cross-examination by Alan Jackson, one of Read’s lawyers.
“This investigation was conducted professionally, with integrity, and all the evidence collected, all the statements collected, pointed in one direction,” Bukhenik said.
Former Canton police lieutenant explains why no search inside of 34 Fairview Road
Paul Gallagher, a former Canton police lieutenant, testified this week. He was the highest-ranking member of Canton police at the scene after O‘Keefe was found.
Gallagher testified about how police used a leaf blower to clear the area in the snow where O‘Keefe’s body was found. He said that a shovel could have damaged the scene.
He also described how Canton police used red Solo cups at the scene to store droplets of blood uncovered by the leaf blower. The cups were retrieved by another Canton lieutenant who lived nearby.
“We had a duty and an obligation to check around where he was found to see if there was any explanation as to what caused his medical condition,” Gallagher said. He said he observed “pink blood.”
Gallagher said Canton police initially processed the area since the Massachusetts State Police were not immediately arriving. State police wouldn’t arrive until close to 5 p.m. O‘Keefe’s body was found around 6 a.m.
Blizzard conditions made processing the scene difficult, according to Gallagher. Police found a broken cocktail glass, however, and jurors were shown the evidence on Tuesday.
Jackson questioned Gallagher about why police never searched inside the house for potential evidence of a fight. Police initially believed O‘Keefe could’ve been involved in an altercation based on the injuries to his head.
Gallagher said police did not pursue a search warrant because the house “had nothing to do with the incident based on the evidence at that time.”
Jackson suggested the reason Gallagher and Canton police didn’t seek a warrant is that they knew the home was owned by a police officer.
Gallagher rejected the idea, telling Jackson he had executed search warrants at police officers’ homes before.
Brian Albert, the homeowner, got no special treatment, Gallagher said.
Defense plants seeds for 3rd party theory
At the end of the week, with Bukhenik still on the stand, Read’s defense began hinting toward its theory of the case: that O’Keefe was beaten up inside 34 Fairview Road.
One of the three people publicly accused — Brian Higgins, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — exchanged a series of flirtatious text messages with Read in the weeks prior to Jan. 29, 2022.
On Friday, the jury got to hear those messages.
Jackson had Bukhenik read out the entire “flirtatious” text exchange between Higgins and Read in the weeks leading up to O’Keefe’s death, in doing so revealing to the jury that Read and Higgins had kissed.
The strategy stood in contrast to Read’s first trial, when the courtroom heard Higgins himself read the messages aloud for more than an hour.
Jackson sought to portray the texts as Higgins having a romantic interest in Read, but Bukhenik noted Read initiated their conversation.
In Bukhenik’s view, the texts showed Read trying to get revenge against O’Keefe for an incident on New Year‘s Eve and “hurt John by cheating.”
Jackson suggested the texts should have raised suspicions about Higgins having a “motive” relative to O’Keefe.
Bukhenik denied that they did.
“The evidence spoke for itself,” he said, and pointed to the “honesty and cooperation” of witnesses and the “corroboration of supporting facts.”
Jackson suggested Higgins may have been “less than truthful” with Bukhenik when he described seeing a snow bank outside 34 Fairview Road when he left early on Jan. 29, 2022, but Bukhenik said he had no reason to suspect that.
The lengthy questioning is indicative of not just the defense’s effort to introduce a third-party culprit, but also of the criticisms of the investigation. Bukhenik obtained the messages from Higgins but never sought to search the contents of his entire phone.
The subtext of Jackson’s questioning was clear: Bukhenik and others failed to look at anyone other than Read for the crime of killing O’Keefe.
Read, 45, is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence and leaving the scene of an accident causing injury or death in connection with O‘Keefe’s death.
Read’s lawyers contend that her SUV never struck O‘Keefe and that Jennifer McCabe and others conspired to frame Read.
The trial will resume at 10 a.m. on Monday.
MassLive reporter Irene Rotondo contributed to this report.
