By Abby Patkin
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Just one day after filing a bombshell lawsuit against state and local police, Karen Read appeared on the “Today” show Friday to discuss her ongoing fight to expose purported corruption in the law enforcement agencies that charged her with murder.
Flanked by two of her attorneys, Read said she’s been working with her legal team around the clock — even after she was acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges last summer in the death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe.
“I want this to be over, but it’s not done yet,” she explained.
The 46-year-old was accused of drunkenly backing her SUV into O’Keefe while dropping him off at an afterparty in Canton shortly after midnight on Jan. 29, 2022. Read and her lawyers have long maintained that other afterparty guests were to blame for killing O’Keefe, who was found unresponsive outside the home later that morning.
After a 2024 mistrial and highly publicized retrial, Read was convicted only of a drunk driving misdemeanor.
Yet despite her victory last summer, Read’s legal troubles aren’t over; she still faces a wrongful death lawsuit from O’Keefe’s family, as well as a defamation suit from several witnesses who claim she falsely implicated them in O’Keefe’s death. Separately, Read has a pending federal lawsuit against several witnesses and investigators she’s accused of framing her for murder.
She filed yet another lawsuit in Bristol Superior Court Thursday, alleging two law enforcement officials who worked on her murder case are “virulent bigots” whose private messages reveal an “institutional rot at the very core” of Massachusetts State Police and the Town of Canton.
Included in the lawsuit were a number of expletive- and slur-filled messages between the lead investigator, ex-Trooper Michael Proctor, and former Canton Police Sgt. Sean Goode. State Police fired Proctor last year over his handling of Read’s case, while Goode resigned earlier this week amid an ongoing internal affairs probe into allegations of misconduct.
According to Read, messages from both men support claims of civil conspiracy and negligent hiring, training, and supervision by state and local police. Appearing on the “Today” show, she explained her decision to pivot toward civil litigation now that her criminal case has concluded.
“This was always our plan, that I had to save my own life first — I can’t do anything if I’m not free, and I had to fight for my freedom for years,” Read said. “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.”
Attorney Alan Jackson, who spearheaded Read’s criminal defense and has now joined her civil team, said Read hopes for more than just compensation.
“The law speaks in dollars, but that’s not what the ultimate goal is here,” he said. “The ultimate goal is to ensure that we bring to the light the institutional biases, the institutional corruption that permeates the Massachusetts law enforcement system.”
Jackson added: “What Karen wants you cannot write on a check, which is exposure — exposure of the corruption that is the DNA of the Massachusetts State Police, of the Canton Police Department, which is evidenced by these two individuals and their text messages.”
Read was also adamant that O’Keefe’s memory has not been lost or overlooked in this new chapter of her legal saga.
“John was the victim of this institutional corruption, and we’re the voice for John,” she said. “This all revolves around John.”
Asked what her life may look like beyond her civil cases, Read said she wants to keep the conversation aimed at corruption in law enforcement and “what’s wrong with Massachusetts.”
“Personally, I’d like to keep talking about what I’ve experienced,” she added. “I haven’t 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.”
Abby Patkin is a general assignment news reporter whose work touches on public transit, crime, health, and everything in between.
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