Lawyers in Karen Read case set to argue new motions

By Jay Turner

After successfully dodging the commonwealth’s pre-trial gag order request and not seeming the least bit fazed by District Attorney Michael Morrissey’s rare public rebuke issued last month via videotaped message, defense attorneys for Karen Read are instead doubling down on their claims of prosecutorial misconduct and widespread corruption in the murder case against their client.

In a series of new motions that they plan to argue in Norfolk Superior Court at a hearing scheduled for tomorrow morning, September 15, Read’s attorneys have introduced what they claim to be significant eyewitness testimony and other “shocking” and “disturbing” revelations that they say point directly to Read’s innocence while implicating others in the January 29, 2022 death of Read’s then-boyfriend, Boston Police Officer and Canton resident John O’Keefe.

Atty. Alan Jackson, standing beside his client, Karen Read, gives a statement to reporters outside Norfolk Superior Court after a pre-trial hearing. (Jay Turner photo)

Whereas prosecutors remain steadfast in their belief that Read, of Mansfield, struck and killed O’Keefe on Fairview Road following a night of bar-hopping — leaving him to die in a snowstorm outside the home of fellow BPD officer Brian Albert — Read’s attorneys have long maintained that O’Keefe not only made it inside Albert’s home that evening to attend a party, but was viciously beaten by one or more individuals, who they believe then conspired with law enforcement to frame Read.

Now, in a new motion filed on September 1, Read’s attorneys are seeking GPS records from the town of Canton that they believe will further corroborate the testimony of a veteran DPW plow driver — Brian Loughran — who was responsible for plowing Fairview Road on the night in question.

Brian Loughran, according to the defense motion, emphatically told both a private investigator hired by Read and officers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that he made multiple passes by the Alberts’ home between 2:30 and 3:30 a.m. on January 29, 2022 and O’Keefe’s body was not on the lawn where he was found by Read shortly after 6 a.m. Loughran’s testimony, the defense motion alleges, directly contradicts the commonwealth’s assertion that O’Keefe had been “lying incapacitated in Brian Albert’s front yard” since around 12:30 a.m., when he was allegedly struck by Read. The defense also cites additional testimony by Loughran claiming to have observed a vehicle he believed to be a Ford Edge parked near the location of where O’Keefe’s body was discovered sometime after 3:30 a.m.

Loughran’s testimony, according to the defense motion, not only establishes reasonable doubt as to the commonwealth’s version of events; it also highlights what they allege to be “extraordinarily misleading and inaccurate information” provided by State Trooper Michael Proctor, a Canton resident and one of the investigators handling the case. Specifically, the defense references a police report prepared by Proctor on February 3, 2022, which cites an interview with DPW Superintendent Michael Trotta stating that “no snowplows were dispatched to the area of 34 Fairview Road” during the snowstorm on January 29. According to the defense motion, however, not only is that statement “patently false,” but two DPW employees, Brian Loughran and Bill Walsh, reportedly told the defense team’s private investigator that Loughran was in fact dispatched to plow Fairview Road.

In addition to the request for town GPS records, Read’s attorneys also plan to ask the court, via a separate motion filed last week, to compel Google LLC to turn over any records pertaining to a Nest home surveillance system owned or set up by Brian Albert prior to January 29, 2022. According to the motion, a review of grand jury testimony given by Brian Albert, who has not been charged with any wrongdoing, revealed that his wife had given him a Nest camera as a Christmas gift. While Albert testified that he had not set up the camera as of January 29, 2022, Read’s attorneys state in the motion that neither law enforcement nor Assistant DA Adam Lally asked the Alberts or any witnesses about video surveillance at the home. Instead, according to Read’s lawyers, this potentially critical piece of discovery information only came to light after a juror posed the question when Albert was on the stand.

In a third new motion filed by the defense, Read’s attorneys will ask the court to modify the terms of their client’s release. Specifically, they are requesting that the judge reduce her bail from $80,000 in the second-degree murder case to a release on personal recognizance, citing, among other factors, the extraordinary expense Read has incurred hiring experts to “do the work that the commonwealth has neglected and/or refused to do” and to “rebut mistakes and errors made by the commonwealth during the course of its investigation.” As one example, they cite a strand of hair that the commonwealth found on the rear of Read’s vehicle that their expert determined to be human. However, according to the defense motion, exhaustive DNA testing, paid for by Read at the urging of the commonwealth, demonstrated that it was not a human hair.

While the new defense motions clearly seek to solidify a third-party culpability defense, prosecutors have filed several new motions of their own to strengthen what they believe is already a strong case against Read. In particular, they are asking the court to compel the company Alarm.com to turn over records showing exterior footage from the Dighton home of Read’s parents during the time that Read was visited and interviewed by state troopers on January 29, 2022. The footage, according to prosecutors, would also show Read’s SUV being secured and towed away while showing indisputable proof that her rear taillight had been damaged. (Plastic pieces that are consistent with Read’s taillight recovered from the scene at 34 Fairview Road, along with witness testimony from those who were with Read on the morning that she discovered O’Keefe’s body, are believed to be central to the prosecution’s case.)

According to the commonwealth’s motion, Read’s attorneys have advanced two “conflicting theories” related to the alleged taillight evidence — either the defendant broke the taillight by striking O’Keefe’s parked vehicle in the driveway of their Canton home, or the “commonwealth [allegedly] broke the taillight after it seized the vehicle and planted evidence at the crime scene.”

Prosecutors are confident that the footage from Alarm.com would “depict the arrival of [Read’s] vehicle in the hours following O’Keefe’s death and the subsequent actions by law enforcement,” thereby directly refuting what they insist are the defendant’s “baseless” claims of police misconduct.

Besides the motion for surveillance footage in Dighton, prosecutors also plan to argue for two motions asking the court to compel both ABC News and NBC News to turn over unaired footage of their recent interviews with Read. Both stations aired short segments but the commonwealth believes additional relevant information can be gleaned from segments that have not yet been aired.

In their motions arguing for the unaired footage, prosecutors note that Read’s attorneys have made allegations of a widespread cover-up and conspiracy “without a scintilla of evidence to support them.” Meanwhile, they “continue to use the media to both contradict [Read’s] prior statements and to facilitate her profession of innocence, while making baseless accusations against nearly every witness, law enforcement officer, or expert involved in the substantial case against her.”

In requesting the unaired news footage, prosecutors have noted that unlike federal law, in Massachusetts there is no qualified journalist privilege that protects against disclosure of confidential and non-confidential press materials. They are seeking all “raw, edited, aired or unaired” footage of the defendant, noting that relevant information can be gleaned through the “defendant’s body language or physical reaction to questions posed during the course of the interview.”

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