Massachusetts was home to one of the most closely watched criminal cases in the nation in 2025.
The trial of Karen Read drew viewers from across the nation and throngs of supporters to small-town Dedham.
Will the Read phenomenon will be replicated in 2026? For now, many notable cases are still winding their way through the state’s court system.
Here are five criminal cases you should be paying attention to next year — and one more as a bonus.
Duxbury mother Lindsay Clancy accused of killing her three children
Lindsay Clancy does not contest the facts central to her criminal case: that on Jan. 24, 2023, while her husband, Patrick, was out picking up food, she strangled her three children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan, with exercise bands before throwing herself out of a second-story window.
But the question at the heart of the case is whether, as prosecutors have described, Clancy is a cold-blooded killer who meticulously plotted to kill her children or if, as her lawyer has argued, she was in the throes of postpartum psychosis.
“She obviously had no reason to kill those three beautiful children,” Attorney Kevin Reddington, who represents Clancy, said at a court appearance last October. “You have to ask yourself why. Why? And when you ask yourself why, you consider all these factors, it’s readily apparent that this woman was a troubled soul.”
But Jennifer Sprague, a prosecutor in Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz’s office, argued during Clancy’s arraignment that she “created the situation and she used Apple Maps to make sure she would have enough time to strangle each child before her husband returned from where she had sent him.”
“She did so with deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity and cruelty,” Sprague said.
Clancy’s case is scheduled for trial on July 20 — the date has been moved several times, most recently at the request of Reddington.
Two police officers accused of running an illegal nightclub
A small storefront in Jamaica Plain hid a secret, prosecutors say; it was an illegal, unlicensed nightclub, complete with bouncers, a cover charge, bottle service, hookah pipes, a DJ keeping the crowd entertained and promoters who advertised the club on social media.
An illegal nightclub in and of itself makes a compelling story. The twist here, though, is that Suffolk County prosecutors have accused a pair of police officers of running the club out of a property they initially intended to run an HVAC business out of.
Boston police officer Richard McDermott and Health Commission Campus police officer Luigi D’Addieco are both scheduled to go to trial in May on charges filed in connection with the club’s operation.
Pre-trial proceedings have revealed little about the nature of the club, but the trial is likely to be a stage for prosecutors to reveal more about what happened in the basement of 360B Centre St. for months in 2021.
Matthew Farwell, the ex-police officer accused of sexually abusing and killing Sandra Birchmore
For months after his arrest and indictment, there was little movement in the case of Matthew Farwell.
But now a trial for the former Stoughton police officer is set for October 2026. And prosecutors have revealed they do not intend to seek the death penalty for Farwell, who is accused of killing Sandra Birchmore, a pregnant woman he is accused of sexually abusing beginning when she was a teenager.
Farwell is charged with two crimes — killing a witness or victim and protection of unborn children, for the death of Birchmore’s unborn baby. Prosecutors say Birchmore could have revealed Farwell committed federal crimes, including having sex with her while on duty as a police officer. He is accused of strangling her, then staging her death to look like a suicide after she told him she was pregnant with his baby.
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Massachusetts ruled Birchmore’s death a suicide.
However, two independent experts — one hired by Birchmore’s estate, the other hired by the federal government — deemed Birchmore’s death a homicide. Birchmore was eight-to-10 weeks pregnant and carrying a boy when she died, prosecutors have said. Birchmore believed Farwell was the father of her baby, but DNA testing excluded him as the father, The Boston Globe reported.
Farwell has not appeared in court since his arraignment in August 2024. His federal public defender declined to speak to a reporter following a recent court appearance.
Kelsey Fitzsimmons, the police officer accused of pointing a gun at a fellow officer
Kelsey Fitzsimmons’ case appears to come down to a he-said, she-said.
Fitzsimmons, 29, faces a single count of assault with a dangerous weapon. She is accused of pointing a gun at a fellow North Andover police officer who shot her while serving her with a restraining order obtained by her fiancé. But Fitzsimmons and her defense lawyers have said she never aimed the gun at anyone but herself.
Support for Fitzsimmons has exploded online in the wake of a hearing in September, where a superior court judge sent her to jail after Fitzsimmons’ attorneys reported she could not comply with court-ordered alcohol testing without experiencing pain. She has pursued a series of appeals of that decision, all the way up to the Supreme Judicial Court.
Fitzsimmons’ criminal case is scheduled for trial in February. A long-delayed hearing on the restraining order obtained by her fiancé is scheduled for the same month.
Fitzsimmons’ fiancé has claimed that she assaulted him on multiple occasions and that she threatened the life of their infant son. Her attorneys have denied those claims.
For Fitzsimmons’ family, it’s been difficult to be separated from their grandson.
Aidan ‘Turtleboy’ Kearney, accused of witness intimidation in the Karen Read case
The criminal prosecution of Aidan Kearney, the blogger known as “Turtleboy,” on numerous counts of witness intimidation is almost inextricable from the Read case.
Kearney was one of Read’s staunchest supporters and one of the loudest voices proclaiming her innocence. It’s there that the criminal case emerges: prosecutors say Kearney’s conduct crossed the line from advocacy or reporting to actual intimidation of witnesses against Read. Kearney’s defense, on the other hand, says his conduct is protected by the First Amendment.
The case is tentatively set for trial in December, but during a recent hearing both sides agreed a lot had to happen before then.
For starters, Kearney’s team has moved for Special Prosecutor Robert Cosgrove to be removed from the case over what they have alleged is a conflict of interest. The conflict, they say, arises out of a defamation suit Kearney filed against a former girlfriend, who, in turn, filed a counterclaim that names Cosgrove as a defendant.
Kearney’s lawyers say the girlfriend is a key witness for prosecutors and that Cosgrove can’t proceed as prosecutor because of an interest in promoting her credibility in the criminal case, but a competing interest in undermining her credibility on the civil side. Cosgrove says no such competing interest exists.
The defense has also moved to dismiss the 2023 indictments against Kearney, which are tied to his conduct related to the witnesses in the Read case, arguing that a former special prosecutor mishandled the grand jury process.
Judge Christopher Belezos, who was recently specially assigned to the Kearney case, has yet to rule on either issue. He set a hearing on the disqualification motion for January.
During a recent hearing, Cosgrove signaled that he would like to combine those indictments with a 2025 indictment related to an incident outside a pizza shop owned by one of the witnesses. Kearney’s defense said it was too early for them to take a position on joining the cases.
And of course … Karen Read
At least for now, Karen Read’s time in a criminal courtroom is over.
She was acquitted this year of all charges having to do with the death of her boyfriend, Boston Police officer John O’Keefe, on Jan. 29, 2022. But before Read’s acquittal, O’Keefe’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against her and two bars the couple drank at before his death. Their lawsuit repeats prosecutors’ claim that Read drunkenly and intentionally ran over O’Keefe in her Lexus SUV.
Then, last month, Read filed a blockbuster lawsuit of her own, suing police investigators and civilian witnesses who testified against her for what she has claimed are violations of her civil rights. It’s a furtherance of Read’s defense strategy from her criminal trials, claiming that she was set up and that O’Keefe actually died inside the Canton home of a fellow Boston officer.
Her lawyers in the civil case have indicated they would like to see the two lawsuits consolidated at some point down the road.
It means that the Read saga will no doubt continue in 2026. And there is a chance she could find herself back in a criminal courtroom as a defendant — Cosgrove, the prosecutor on the Kearney case, has sought access to two of her cell phones as he pursues an investigation into whether Read and Kearney conspired to commit witness intimidation.
A judge has yet to rule on whether Cosgrove can search the phones.
