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Scott Stump
Karen Read says her late boyfriend is “the reason we’re doing this” after she filed a lawsuit against the law enforcement agencies that investigated the death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe.
Read, 46, spoke June 5 in an exclusive live interview on TODAY about her goals for the lawsuit that in court documents alleges a culture of “institutional rot.” She also shared her memories of O’Keefe and the motivation behind filing the litigation.
“He’s the reason we’re doing this,” she told Craig Melvin and Laura Jarrett. “John was the victim of this institutional corruption, and we’re the voice for John.”
One of Read’s attorneys, Alan Jackson, said on TODAY that Read is seeking more than financial damages with the lawsuit.
“What Karen wants, you cannot write on a check, which is exposure,” he said. “Exposure of the corruption that is the DNA of the Massachusetts State Police and the Canton Police Department.”
Read’s comments come a day after she filed a lawsuit in Bristol Superior Court that alleges the trial resulting in Read’s acquittal on second-degree murder and other charges in June 2025 revealed “an (embedded) culture of bigotry, misogyny, systemic failures, and institutional rot at the very core of both organizations,” according to court documents.
Read, 46, was found not guilty by a jury in Norfolk County after prosecutors retried her in the 2022 death of O’Keefe. Her first trial a year earlier resulted in a mistrial after a hung jury.
She says her lawsuit was the next step in an ongoing fight against ways in which she feels she has been wronged.
“This was always our plan, that I had to save my own life first,” she said. “I can’t do anything if I’m not free. I had to fight for my freedom for years, and I knew as it unfolded I was never going to be able to just forget that this happened to me, that I was wronged in this way. I couldn’t just go back to life as it was. I have to continue fighting for justice.
“The acquittal is deserved, but the wrongs have not been completely righted,” she continued. “They have been happening along the way, but I always knew this was going to happen if I could get the help legally to do this.”
O’Keefe, 46, was found mortally wounded on the lawn of the suburban home of now-retired Boston police sergeant Brian Albert on Jan. 29, 2022. He died of blunt force trauma to the head, according to the medical examiner’s report.
Prosecutors alleged that an intoxicated Read drove her SUV into O’Keefe in reverse out of anger over their relationship and left him for dead in a blizzard after having initially dropped him off at the house.
Read denied the allegations and said she watched O’Keefe enter Albert’s home. Her attorneys have long maintained that O’Keefe was killed at a house party after a heavy night of drinking with fellow officers who then tried to cover it up by falsely accusing Read of hitting O’Keefe with her SUV and leaving him to die. No one else has been charged in connection with O’Keefe’s death.
She faced charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter and leaving the scene. The jury convicted her of a lesser charge of driving while intoxicated.
The complaint filed on June 4 centers on voicemails, text messages and other communications by lead investigator Michael Proctor and former Canton police Sgt. Michael Goode, who was among the officers who responded to the scene. They are not named as defendants in the lawsuit.
Proctor was fired in 2025 by the Massachusetts State Police over revelations that he sent defamatory text messages about Read and shared details about the case to people who are not law enforcement while leading the investigation.
Goode resigned from his position on June 2, town officials told The Boston Globe, after he was placed on leave for misconduct in November 2025. It’s not clear if Goode’s leave was related to Read.
In response to the new lawsuit, Proctor’s lawyer told NBC Boston that “it is a matter of undisputed fact that anything Mr. Proctor did or said in his personal life, years before Officer O’Keefe was killed, had no bearing whatsoever on the investigation of Karen Read.”
Goode did not return NBC News’ request for comment.
Read’s lawsuit highlights crude communications between Proctor and Goode that it alleges illustrate “an insidious culture of bigotry and misogyny” by “biased and corrupt police officers, whose actions violated her constitutional rights and caused her immense harm,” per the court documents.
The messages between the two that are included in court documents include racial slurs and derogatory terms about women, most of which are unrelated to Read’s case.
“They were in a position where they felt comfortable within their own family, the family of law enforcement, to send these vile text messages, to send these vile voicemails, that are reflective of a deeper problem in the culture,” Jackson said on TODAY about Goode and Proctor. “That’s what we want to expose.”
Read is asking for “damages in an amount to be determined at trial” in her lawsuit, as well as attorneys’ fees and other expenses, according to court documents.
Massachusetts State Police Superintendent Col. Geoffrey D. Noble issued a statement on June 4 about Read’s lawsuit.
“These disturbing messages are entirely inconsistent with any basic standard of decency and certainly with the expectations of a Massachusetts State Trooper,” he said. “These racist, sexist and abhorrent comments absolutely do not reflect the values of the Massachusetts State Police and are not tolerated within our ranks. They underscore and fully support my decision to terminate Michael Proctor.”
The town of Canton said in a statement that it learned about Read’s lawsuit from media reports and had not yet been served by the lawsuit, so it has no comment on the litigation.
“The Town of Canton has the utmost faith and confidence in the new leadership of Canton Police Department under Chief Michael Daniels, and we would refute any broad stroke characterizations about the brave and dedicated men and women who serve in the Department,” the town said in its statement. “The Department has made significant strides forward over the past two years, including the acceptance and implementation of findings and recommendations in the outside audit report. The Department is poised to move further ahead as a modern public safety agency, which the citizens of Canton rightfully expect and deserve.”
Read also opened up about what her life has been like since her acquittal nearly a year ago. Read, who previously worked as a financial analyst, said she is not working and still doesn’t have her license, though it was not clear what license she was referring to.
“We’ve brought in civil lawyers, but this case is so comprehensive that we need all hands on deck. I’m working on the case every day. I don’t really know that I ever took time off, and I don’t know that I felt like I wanted to take time off. I want this to be over, but it’s not done yet.”
Read is still facing a wrongful death civil lawsuit filed against her in 2024 by relatives of O’Keefe.
“I don’t have anything to say to his family,” she said on TODAY. “I interacted with them for several years. John and I had actually dated a long time ago when we were in our early 20s, and I was caring and I believe generous with them, with my time. We did spend a lot of time together, and they experienced who I am, and they know who I am.”
Craig asked her about what her plans for the future look like after the lawsuit she filed June 4 comes to a conclusion.
“Personally, I’d like to keep talking about what I’ve experienced,” she said. “I’ve never really been free enough, especially with all these lawsuits, to say all that I’ve experienced. And I think it would be a waste for me to just disappear and go live on an island, although I would like to do that.”
Scott Stump is a trending reporter and the writer of the daily newsletter This is TODAY (which you should subscribe to here!) that brings the day’s news, health tips, parenting stories, recipes and uplifting stories right to your inbox. He has been a regular contributor for TODAY.com since 2011, producing features and news for pop culture, parents, politics, health, style, food and pretty much everything else.
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