“We are here today because John O’Keefe was killed by the actions and conduct” of Read, Brennan said.
Prosecutors allege Read hit O’Keefe with her car and left him for dead in the snow outside a Canton home where she dropped him off after a night of heavy drinking. She has pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence, and leaving the scene of a crash resulting in death. Brennan said Read was “very intoxicated” and angry at O’Keefe on the night of his death.
Her defense attorneys, however, say Read was framed and that O’Keefe entered the house, owned at the time by a fellow Boston officer, where he was fatally beaten and possibly bitten by a German shepherd before his body was put on the front lawn.
As proceedings got underway in the courtroom, a group of about 10 people championing Read’s innocence had formed a small encampment in a parking lot near Norfolk Superior Court.
“We’re standing up for our own rights,” said Allison Taggart, 40, of Dedham. “We’re standing up for her rights. We’re standing up for everyone’s rights.”
Judge Beverly J. Cannone, who has presided over both of Read’s trials, had prohibited demonstrations within 200 feet of the courthouse, ruling that the largely pro-Read rallies could influence jurors. On Tuesday, a Woburn man, Bao Nguyen, 42, was arrested and charged with trespassing after State Police say he was “lingering and filming” within the restricted area.
During the defense’s opening statement, Alan Jackson, one of Read’s attorneys, seized on the credibility of Michael Proctor, the former State Police trooper who led the investigation. Proctor was suspended and later fired from the State Police after he was forced on the witness stand last year to read aloud vulgar texts he sent about Read to friends and co-workers during the early stages of the investigation.
“The evidence will show in this case that Michael Proctor is the very definition of the Commonwealth’s case,” Jackson said. “Every single bit of it has his fingerprints on it.”
The home in Canton was owned at the time by Brian Albert, a now retired Boston police officer. Jackson said Proctor was a longtime friend of the Albert family and “didn’t care about finding the truth” in the O’Keefe investigation. He instead wanted to “protect his friends who were at the Alberts’ house that night,” Jackson said.
The first day of testimony focused heavily on the moments surrounding the discovery of O’Keefe’s body on the front lawn of the Alberts’ Fairview Road home in the early morning of Jan. 29, 2022.
The prosecution’s first witness was Timothy Nuttall, a Canton firefighter-paramedic, one of the first emergency responders to reach the scene after Read and two other women discovered O’Keefe’s body.
Nuttall testified Tuesday that it was snowing and dark as he approached the scene, and he heard “distant screaming.” As he knelt down to tend to O’Keefe, Nuttall said, he looked up and saw Read standing over him with blood on her face.
Read said, “‘I hit him. I hit him. I hit him.’ … I remember it very distinctly,” Nuttall testified.
He said O’Keefe had no pulse and was “very cold to the touch.”
During cross-examination, Jackson told Nuttall that he testified during the first trial last year that Read said, “I hit him” twice, not three times. Nuttall acknowledged the inconsistency.
Prosecutors also called to the stand Kerry Roberts, who was friends with Read at the time, and one of two women who accompanied Read to search for O’Keefe and later found him in front of the Alberts’ home.
Roberts, Read, and a third woman, Jennifer McCabe, the sister-in-law of Brian Albert, searched O’Keefe’s house but did not find him and decided to go to the Alberts’ home and look there.
Read told the women earlier she had left O’Keefe at a Canton bar where they had been drinking that evening, but McCabe reminded her that she had brought him to her sister’s residence, Roberts testified.
As they approached the Fairview home, Read shouted, “There he is,” but the other two women couldn’t see anything in the stormy conditions, Roberts said.
Roberts said she told McCabe “she’s crazy” as Read “ran right over to the mound of snow,” which she later realized was covering a body.
Nick Stoico can be reached at [email protected]. Travis Andersen can be reached at [email protected]. Camilo Fonseca can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X @fonseca_esq and on Instagram @camilo_fonseca.reports. Sarah Mesdjian can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @sarahs_journal.
