Karen Read is Taking Her Accusers to Court With a Wild Lawsuit Claiming 'Gross Misconduct' and Covering Up for John O'Keefe's Real Killer

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After several years, two trials, over 100 witnesses, a mistrial, and an acquittal, you knew The Commonwealth v. Karen Read was not about to go quietly into that good night. That in the proud New England tradition of Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski, this whole judicial fiasco was going to unretire to dominate the headlines once again:

Source -  Karen Read, recently acquitted of murder and manslaughter in the 2022 death of Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, has filed a sweeping civil lawsuit in Taunton’s Bristol Superior Court. 

The 46-page complaint accuses multiple Massachusetts State Police troopers and several Canton residents of conspiring to frame her for a crime she says she did not commit. Her attorneys, in the suit, claim “gross misconduct” shielded O’Keefe’s real killer.

“Today’s filing speaks for itself. It is a meticulously documented civil action grounded in evidence, law, and the Constitution,” Read attorney Alan Jackson said in a statement shared with Boston 25 News. “For more than three years, Karen Read was dragged through a baseless criminal prosecution engineered by individuals who abused their authority, manipulated the investigative process, and trampled her rights. Our complaint lays out, in stark detail, the malicious prosecution, the conspiracy, the civil-rights violations, and the intentional misconduct that these defendants visited upon an innocent woman.”

Jackson added, “Unlike the criminal case, this time the defendants don’t get to hide behind badges, back-channel favors, or manufactured narratives. They will have to answer in a court of law for every lie, every omission, every manipulated report, and every constitutional violation they committed.”

Defendants include:

• Michael Proctor – Former MSP trooper and lead investigator
• Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik and Lt. Brian Tully – MSP supervisors
• Brian & Nicole Albert, Jennifer & Matthew McCabe, and Brian Higgins – Canton-area residents tied to the case

The MSP and Town of Canton are expected to be added later.

Whether you believe Read is a wrongfully accused woman who was framed for the murder of her boyfriend by a criminal conspiracy of well-connected families in an incestuous town like Canton, MA righteously fighting for justice, or you think she intentionally murdered a Boston Police Officer in a drunken fit of rage and managed to beat the rap - or if you think the truth lies somewhere in between - we can all agree on one thing.

This civil trial is going be wild. More like the first trial than the retrial. Like a band going back to their roots and playing the hits that made them big in the first place. 

I mean, look at that lineup. That's a "Canton Coverup" All Star team. A (please pardon the pun but there's no other way to phrase it) Murderer's Row of anti-Karen Read people. All of whom came off looking varying degrees of bad in the first court case, as the defense came after them hard. The strategy changed in the retrial as a lot of them weren't even called to the stand. With success, obviously. But the public on both sides of the divide on this Masshole Trial of the Century Parts I & II will be riveted to them testifying once again. And like Jackson said, they'll have no choice. 

For a more detail on what the lawsuit alleges:

Howie Carr, the Boston Herald -  Read’s lawyers, Alan Jackson and Damon Seligson, return again and again to the “planting of evidence at the scene,” as they say for the first time in Paragraph 9.

               

Paragraph 77: Regarding the cops, both MSP and Canton Police: “One or more of them destroyed the taillight, secretly took pieces of it into their possession and then planted some of them.”

They had to do it, to prove that Karen Read had struck her boyfriend, John O’Keefe. Which she didn’t. So there wasn’t any broken taillight, until there was.

Paragraph 80: “Proctor and Bukhenik took taillight pieces from the (CPD) sallyport, brought back to 34 Fairview to place them… and then falsified various documents in an attempt to hide their conduct….”

Paragraph 82: “He could later claim the pieces had been there….”

Paragraph 87: “Proctor also planted pieces of glass on the bumper… to make it look like the shards originated from a cocktail glass.”

But then Karen Read’s lawyers insisted on forensic testing of the shards.

“The five glass pieces originated from multiple different sources…. The only way for the glass to have ended up on the SUV bumper is that Proctor planted it there in an attempt to connect the vehicle to the death of Mr. O’Keefe.”

In paragraph 114, Proctor is accused of lying under oath about discovering the SUV taillight with “large pieces missing.”

That’s just sub paragraph a. Sub paragraph c continues:

“He retrieved taillight pieces on subsequent searches at the Alberts’ home, when he knew he had deposited or arranged for someone to deposit taillight pieces at the property.”

These and other accusations have been at the heart of the Free Karen Read crowd's argument from practically Day 1. They were implied during cross examination in the mistrial, and hardly mentioned in the Not Guilty retrial. But what's different this time around is that Jackson and his legal team will get to be the ones on offense. And the standard of proof in a civil case is a hell of a lot lower than it is than when you're trying to prove someone criminally guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. 

So stay tuned. There'll be a lot of maneuvering going on between now and the time the first witness is called. When it is, we'll see how the third installment of the trilogy compares to the first two. It could be Godfather III or LOTR: Return of the King. Either way, I'm here for all of it. And I suspect most of Massachusetts will be with me.