My writing has been put on hold lately on account of the court trial that is going on in Massachusetts. This case has caught my attention for the last two years. As I write this, the trial is in its sixth week and I can’t get enough of it of it. By far, it is the craziest I’ve ever seen. Even many of the court observers and bloggers are saying this.

The trial pits the Commonwealth of Massachusetts versus Karen Read. It is a complex, convoluted and highly irregular case that defies easy explanation, but I will do my best to explain it in all its lunacy.

Karen Read worked in high finance and was a professor at Bentley University. She was dating Boston police officer, John Okeefe. They went out to a bar and met some other people at a bar in Canton. One of the people at the bar was legendary (and infamous) Boston police officer, Bryan Albert, and his family. Also there was Brian Higgins, an ATF agent. Everyone went back to Bryan Albert’s house for an after party. Karen Read did not want to go, but John did. She dropped him off at the house just as a nor’easter snow storm started to come down. Then she waited a few minutes. John O’keefe’s lifeless body was found on Bryan Albert’s lawn the next morning. He was officially pronounced dead at the hospital around 7:30 am.

To understand the town of Canton, you must know the tight connections that exist between the citizens there. Everyone knows everyone and has their back. Bryan Albert’s brother is still a cop in town. His brother a town councilor. The police chief and Brian Higgins were close friends, to the pint where Higgins had an office in the Canton P.D. The lead detective on the case was state trooper Michael Proctor, who was good friends with the family, but denied it until finally admitting g it under oath. Complicating matters, Karen Read was discovered to have been flirting over the phone with Brian Higgins. Nothing happened between them, but it appears that she was getting payback against John because he flirted with a girl on a trip to Aruba.

The Commonwealth claims that Karen Read backed into John that night after they engaged in a fight. They claim she drove 24 miles per hour in reverse, up a winding hill, in a snowstorm, and rammed into John. Only John’s injuries are inconsistent with those of getting hit by a car. He has two black-and-blue eyes. Cuts on his nose. And a deep gash on the back of his head. Also, and more interesting, he has a series of scratches on his arms that look like claw marks and dog bites.

Come to find out that the Albert’s owned a German Shepherd named Chloe. Despite their initial statements that the dog was not violent, the defense tracked down public records that revealed that Chloe had attacked two people and put them in the hospital. After the murder, The Albert’s not only rehomed Chloe, but they replaced their basement floor and then sold their house at a loss, and this during Covid when houses in suburban Boston were selling at a premium.

Before John Okeefe’s body was found at 6:30 a.m., Jennifer McCabe, a family member inside the house that night, Googled “Hos long to die in the cold” at 2:30 in the morning. Although she denied making this Google search, the call was discovered on Cellebrite, the most widely used Phone extraction tool, and used by state and fed prosecutors all over the country. Not only did she make this search, but then she deleted it afterward, which are all recorded on the Cellebrite records. Then she deleted all of the calls she made between 12:30 am until 6:30 the next morning. All of these called were extracted using Cellebrite. All of these calls she denied making, including two to her sister that were answered.

Bryan Albert called Bryan Higgins around 2:20 that morning. The call was answered. Then Higgins called Albert. The call was answered. Yet in their testimony both men deny making these calls, claiming they butt dialed each other. Jennifer McCabe called John Okeefe’s phone seven times around 12:30 and deleted them all. But these were discovered on John Okeefe’s phone, proving that she lied. It appears that the people inside the house were trying to locate John’s phone AFTER he was attacked inside the Albert home.

Here are some other interesting facts about the case.

-John was missing a sneaker the morning his body was found and the initial searches didn’t find it.

-John’s Apple data said he got out of the car and walked up a flight of stairs; the exact distance it would have taken for him to go up and into the Albert home.

-Apart from the scratches and bites on his arm, John, who was six-foot-two, had no injuries to his body below the neck, which would be consistent with getting hit by a car.

-The lead investigator, state trooper Michael Proctor, was close friends with the Albert’s and McCabes.

-Proctor seized Karen’s phone before getting a subpoena and illegally searched through it looking for nude photos of her. He called his friends on his private phone and told them this. He called her vulgar names and said he hoped she would kill herself. Then, in a cryptic way, he told his friends that Albert would never be accused of this crime.

-No taillight was found by the Canton police who responded to the crime scene, and this before much snow fell. Even the State police SERT team found nothing hours later. Yet the Proctor claimed to have found 46 pieces of twilight in the following days, WITHOUT any documentation. So didn’t the Canton police chief, who was not only on medical leave, but was good friends with Higgins.

-None of the police searched the Albert house for signs of a crime or considered it a crime scene.

-The members of the family were interviewed together instead of being interviewed separately. And they were interviewed in their own home, and not on video.

-The day before Bryan Albert and Brian Higgins were to receive an order to preserve their phones as evidence, they destroyed their phones and SIM cards, and got new phones and new phone numbers.

-The chain of custody for the clothes and other evidence was broken and never properly logged.

-The town of Canton’s snowplow driver, Lucky Laughran, unequivocally claims not to have seen a body on the Albert lawn the first time he plowed that morning. Later that morning, when he plowed again, he claims to have seen a Ford Edge parked exactly where John’s body was found. Three members of the family own a Ford Edge. Was John’s body planted there?

-Across the street from the Albert’s lived another Canton police officer. He claimed there was nothing on his ring camera. That ring camera was aimed directly where John’s body was found. The police never asked any of the neighbors for their ring cam video.

-Two minutes of the Canton library’s video was missing. It was the exact time Karen’s vehicle would have driven past, revealing no broken taillight, which would have proven that the police broke her taillight later in the morning in order to frame her.

-Currently, the state police is investigating trooper, Michael Proctor. His investigation of the Karen Read case was so weak that he prosecution has yet to call him to the stand to testify. It’s rumored he might take the 5th when the defense calls him.

-The FBI is investigating the DA, the Canton police, and the State police. In addition, the Feds provided the defense with three thousand pages of evidence relevant to the case. The investigation is ongoing throughout this trial and arrests might come after the verdict.

These are just a few of the problems in this messy case. In my opinion, Karen Read is innocent. The defense is using a Third Party Culprit defense, meaning they are trying to prove that someone other than Karen Read killed John. They don’t have to definitively prove who did it. They are allowed to create enough doubt that no jury would believe beyond a reasonable doubt that Karen killed her boyfriend.

Watch the trial yourself and see where you stand. I’m sure it will be turned into a Hollywood movie someday. The case has deeply divided people on the Internet and in the town of Canton. I believe Karen is an innocent woman. What do you think?

One thing is for certain. If you decide to commit a crime, make sure and leave your phone at home.