Latest news with #JohnOkeefe
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
Karen Read denies noticing confrontation between deceased boyfriend and ATF agent hours before death
Shortly after her lawyers played video that appeared to show the late John O'Keefe and ATF Agent Brian Higgins gesturing aggressively at one another in a bar in Canton, Massachusetts, Karen Read told reporters she wasn't paying attention to the interaction. "The video speaks for itself," she said on her way to a waiting SUV on Thursday. Read is on trial for the second time in the January 2022 murder of her boyfriend, O'Keefe, a Boston police officer. "Do you think John and Brian Higgins were at odds?" a reporter asked her. "It appears that way," Read replied. "It appears that way." Karen Read Defense Gets Boost As Plow Driver Testifies He Saw No Body In Snow During Boston Cop Death Case "Did you pick up on that, though?" the reporter pressed. "I mean, you were with John all night. Were they fighting? Did it seem like they were at each other's throats at all?" Read On The Fox News App "I was not paying attention," Read replied. "As you can see, if you watch the full length of the Waterfall [Waterfall Bar and Grille] between the two trials, I was pretty much in that spot with [witness] Karina [Kolokithas]. We were there for about 90 minutes." "So you didn't notice that?" the reporter asked. Karen Read Defense Floats Theory That 'Jealous' Brian Higgins Fought John O'keefe Before Death "I didn't pick up on it," she said. Read was talking about Karina Kolokithas, a witness for the defense who was present at the Waterfall Bar and Grille in Canton in the hours before O'Keefe was last seen alive. Kolokithas testified that she saw a strange interaction between Jennifer McCabe, whose brother-in-law owns the home where O'Keefe would later be found dead, and Read as they were leaving, but she did not say anything about a fight between Higgins and O'Keefe. "This is exactly why she shouldn't talk about the case," said David Gelman, a Philadelphia-area defense attorney and former prosecutor who has warned for months that Read's public commentary could hurt her at trial. "The prosecution will certainly use this." Karen Read Trial Reveals Flirty Text Messages With Atf Agent Behind Boyfriend's Back Follow The Fox True Crime Team On X On the other hand, Read appears on the video speaking with Kolokithas at length, as she told reporters. "She was having a great conversation with Kolokithas," said Grace Edwards, a Massachusetts trial attorney who is also following the case. Read, O'Keefe, Higgins and several other people who attended an after-party at the nearby home where the Boston police officer would later be found dead were seen on surveillance video at the bar as it was closing for the night. Sign Up To Get The True Crime Newsletter An interaction played in court that took place on their way out appears to show Higgins gesturing toward O'Keefe from across the room and another man, identified as Chris Albert, grabbing his arm. It happened less than an hour before she is accused of killing O'Keefe by striking him with the back corner of her Lexus SUV and leaving him to die on the ground in a blizzard outside Albert's brother's house at 34 Fairview Road. GET REAL-TIME UPDATES DIRECTLY ON THE True Crime Hub Read's defense has denied her vehicle hit him and has been inviting witness testimony to illustrate other potential causes for his injuries, including a potential fight with Higgins, who was not charged with a crime but was carrying on a flirtatious relationship with Read behind O'Keefe's back. Prosecutors have alleged that investigators recovered from O'Keefe's clothes taillight pieces that matched the Lexus. Multiple witnesses testified that after his remains were found on Jan. 29, 2022, Read repeated the phrase "I hit him. I hit him. I hit him."Original article source: Karen Read denies noticing confrontation between deceased boyfriend and ATF agent hours before death
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Yahoo
Karen Read judge blocks Sandra Birchmore mentions; expert says cases should be wake-up call for police
A Massachusetts judge has agreed to bar references to an unrelated, botched murder investigation in Karen Read's second trial on murder and other charges in the 2022 death of her Boston police officer boyfriend, John O'Keefe. Police in Canton, a suburb about 20 miles south of Boston, inaccurately determined the Feb. 4, 2021 death of Sandra Birchmore, 24, was a suicide before federal investigators said she had been strangled and charged a Stoughton officer with her murder. The FBI arrested former Stoughton Police Officer Matthew Farwell, 38, in August in Birchmore's murder. Karen Read Defense Floats Theory That 'Jealous' Brian Higgins Fought John O'keefe Before Death He is accused of grooming her since she was a teenager, maintaining a sexual relationship for years and then killing her when she told him she'd become pregnant and staging the murder to look like a suicide. Canton Police were also the first to respond after O'Keefe was reported unresponsive outside another Boston Police officer's house Jan. 29, 2022, during a blizzard. Read On The Fox News App Local police collected bloody snow evidence in red Solo cups and placed them in a Stop and Shop grocery bag. A Canton lieutenant used a leaf blower to move snow from where O'Keefe's body had been found. Witnesses were interviewed informally, off camera and not at the police station. Karen Read Trial Reveals Flirty Text Messages With Atf Agent Behind Boyfriend's Back O'Keefe was found dead on Brian Albert's front lawn. Albert's brother is a Canton Police detective. State police took over the investigation later that day. But their involvement wasn't without controversy. The lead detective was fired earlier this year after an internal investigation into unprofessional text messages revealed in court during Read's first trial, which ended in a mistrial. Read the motion: State Trooper Points To Possible Weapon In John O'keefe Death – And It's Not Karen Read's Car "Gov. [Maura] Healey should have ordered the revamping of police training in the state after the debacle in Karen Read 1.0," said Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant and criminal justice professor at Penn State Lehigh Valley. "Everything from response to the scene by patrol officers to securing the scene to identifying evidence, the proper collection of evidence, the proper containers for that evidence and so on." The two cases prompted town residents to demand an audit into their own police department, and the town board hired a firm called 5 Stones Intelligence, or 5Si. Karen Read's Google Timeline Derailed Again As 2Nd Expert Disputes Defense Claims The firm released its findings in a 206-page report April 1, the same day jury selection began in Read's retrial. It found no evidence that Canton Police had conspired to frame Read, but the auditors recommended that all death cases be reviewed by supervisors in the future. In the report, 5Si recommended that Canton detectives undergo "advanced training" on crime scene investigations and that all patrol vehicles be equipped with crime scene kits and evidence collection bags. They called for an increase in the police department's budget. GET REAL-TIME UPDATES DIRECTLY ON THE True Crime Hub There was also a federal investigation into the handling of O'Keefe's death. Read remains the only person charged. She faces charges of second-degree murder, drunken driving manslaughter and fleeing a deadly accident for allegedly striking O'Keefe with her Lexus SUV during an argument and leaving him for dead around 12:30 a.m. She and two friends returned at 6 a.m. and found O'Keefe on the ground, covered in snow that had intensified throughout the day. An autopsy found his cause of death was trauma to the head and hypothermia. The manner was undetermined. Follow The Fox True Crime Team On X Read has denied striking O'Keefe at all, pleaded not guilty and suggested she is being framed by local police and their allies. She was first tried on the charges last year, but jurors deadlocked, and Judge Beverly Cannone declared a mistrial. So far in the retrial, at least one evidence bag appears to have been mislabeled, and another had more pieces of broken taillight than expected. Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Yuri Bukhenik was also grilled about a lack of photographs for some evidence and a delay of hundreds of days for some reports in the investigation. "If nothing else, they should be taught documentation, documentation and documentation," Giacalone told Fox News Digital. "These aren't small mistakes. These are errors that will cost you cases, will cause lawsuits in the state of Massachusetts and it just makes everybody in the criminal justice system look bad." "If Massachusetts has this problem, what about other states?" Giacalone said. "Now's the time to nip them in the bud before we find out another Karen Reed trial disaster." Special prosecutor Hank Brennan, a high-profile defense attorney whose clients have included mobster Whitey Bulger, was brought in to lead the second trial. He asked Cannone last week to block the defense from bringing up the Birchmore case as Read's lawyers look to paint the investigation as unreliable and corrupt. She agreed, unless the "door is opened" by prosecutors. "They're not gonna open that door," said Linda Kenney Baden, a high-profile defense attorney who squared off against Read lawyer Alan Jackson, a prosecutor during the first trial of record producer Phil Spector in 2007. Like Read's, it ended in a mistrial. WATCH: Zoomed-in clip appears to show Karen Read backing into parked SUV Still, she said, she believes there is plenty of room for jurors to find reasonable doubt. "They gotta prove she hit him," she said. "It's really as simple as that. It's a drunk-driving hit-and-run." Read's SUV has a broken taillight, and police witnesses described finding matching pieces on Albert's front lawn. But the defense also played surveillance video from O'Keefe's garage that appears to show her backing her SUV into his parked vehicle shortly before she found his remains along with two other women, Kerry Roberts and Jennifer McCabe. Still, the veteran trial attorney praised Brennan's handling of the case and how he's left out key witnesses who may have tanked the prosecution in the first trial and gave the defense less room to maneuver. "The way Brennan has tried this case is that he's not letting any of the bad stuff in, so whenever Alan Jackson goes to the stuff that really hurts them, he doesn't have a place to go there," she said. For one, he left former Massachusetts State Tpr. Michael Proctor off the prosecution's witness list. Proctor sent a series of rude, lewd and unprofessional text messages about Read and the investigation, which led to his firing. He is still on the defense's witness list and could be called to the stand article source: Karen Read judge blocks Sandra Birchmore mentions; expert says cases should be wake-up call for police
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Yahoo
Karen Read trial reveals flirty text messages with ATF agent behind boyfriend's back
Legal experts are handing Karen Read's defense team the win for Friday's heated cross-examination of Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Yuri Bukhenik – who returned for his second day on the stand as prosecutors look to convince the jury that Read fatally struck her boyfriend, Boston cop John O'Keefe, and left him to die in a blizzard in January 2022. During hours of cross-examination from defense attorney Alan Jackson, the homicide investigator was asked to read a long string of text messages exchanged between Read and Brian Higgins, a Canton-based ATF agent with whom she was flirting behind O'Keefe's back. Having Bukhenik read the texts allows the defense to introduce hearsay statements into the case, according to Grace Edwards, a Massachusetts defense attorney who is following the case closely. They also raise questions about the integrity of the investigation, something the defense has aimed to discredit entirely. State Trooper Points To Possible Weapon In John O'keefe Death – And It's Not Karen Read's Car "They are being entered not for the truth of what is contained in them but to show that they existed," she told Fox News Digital. "That is important because the defense wants to be able to argue that these messages existed, and did or did not the investigation consider them as a lead? Wouldn't the knowledge of a romantic flirtation between Karen Read and Brian Higgins create the possibility of conflict between Brian Higgins and John O'Keefe?" She said that both sides performed well Friday and credited Hank Brennan, the special prosecutor brought in to handle Read's retrial, with devising a new strategy after the first trial ended in a mistrial. But she said the defense won out slightly. Read On The Fox News App "Great lawyering on both sides today. Hank Brennan's new trial strategy indicates he won't need to call upon Brian Albert or Brian Higgins or Michael Proctor," she said. "They have stretched the witness to the max the last few days. Alan Jackson appears to have worn the witness down and there was damaging testimony regarding the handling of evidence. Overall, I felt the defense achieved more of their goals today." Karen Read's Google Timeline Derailed Again As 2Nd Expert Disputes Defense Claims Sgt. Bukhenik spent hours on the stand Friday, reading through flirty text messages between Read and Brian Higgins, an ATF agent and potential love interest whom she contacted behind O'Keefe's back. The Ukraine native, who immigrated to the U.S. when he was nine and joined the Marine Corps after 9/11, often sparred with Jackson about semantics, asking for a copy of Webster's Dictionary at one point, telling the court that English was his "third language." Frequent objections from the special prosecutor, Hank Brennan, also interrupted the proceedings as Judge Beverly Cannone repeatedly called the sides to the bench for off-camera discussions. At one point, Jackson replayed video shown earlier of Read backing out of O'Keefe's garage the morning he was found dead. The defense clip included a layover of a box with a zoomed-in view of O'Keefe's vehicle, which was parked outside. It appeared to bounce in place as Read neared it with her rear bumper – the same one later found with a broken taillight. "The prosecution looks like it's trying to hide the truth with all objections," said Linda Kenney Baden, a prominent East Coast defense attorney who is closely following the case on her "Justice Served" podcast. KAREN READ TRIAL: CANTON COP EXPLAINS USING LEAF BLOWER, RED SOLO CUPS, STOP & SHOP BAG FOR EVIDENCE Another damning moment, she said, was when Bukhenik admitted that no pieces of Read's broken taillight were recovered until after her vehicle - the alleged murder weapon – was parked inside the sallyport at Canton Police Headquarters. But she said it was Bukhenik's responses to Jackson that may have turned off jurors – calling the day a win for the defense. In the texts, Read, now 45, discussed her relationship struggles, repeatedly mentioning that she was not married and referred to herself as "single" despite, as Higgins wrote, having a "live in boyfriend." They discussed finding each other "hot," a kiss they shared outside O'Keefe's house, heavy drinking and danced around laying out their intentions for one another. Karen Read's Google Timeline Derailed Again As 2Nd Expert Disputes Defense Claims "Are you breaking up or staying together?" Higgins asked at one point, about Read and O'Keefe. "I don't know," Read replied. "He hooked up with another girl on vacation. I am very close to his niece. It's a very f----- up situation." Higgins repeatedly asked Read for clarity about her intentions, although they both said they found each other attractive and traded invites to one another's homes. "Ok, so he is cool with you dating other people?" Higgins asked in another exchange. "I doubt it," Read wrote. "If he is seeing someone else I wouldn't want to know either way. He probably feels the same. And you probably feel that way about whoever you hook up with. I think that's normal." Higgins was present at the Waterfall Bar and Grille with Read, O'Keefe and others before the whole group went to the nearby home of Brian Albert, a fellow Boston police officer who is also close friends with Higgins. Read has claimed she dropped O'Keefe off, saw him go inside and left. Prosecutors allege that she hit him with the rear end of the Lexus SUV and left him to die on the ground. Read had pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, manslaughter and fleeing the scene. Her defense denied that a collision happened at all and insists his fatal injuries were inflicted in some other way - possibly a "fight" with one or more people at the after-party. Read's first trial, in which she claimed she was being framed by a group of law enforcement with ties to Albert and his family, ended with a deadlocked jury and a mistrial. Special prosecutor Hank Brennan, a prominent Massachusetts defense attorney who previously represented Whitey Bulger, was brought in to take over the reins from Assistant Norfolk County District Attorney Adam Lally, who is still part of the prosecution team. While Read has said that whether she will testify in her own defense remains "to be determined," Brennan sought and obtained video interviews that Read had given to various TV outlets and documentarians and has been playing clips in court for the jury. Karen Read's Google Timeline Derailed Again As 2Nd Expert Disputes Defense Claims In the texts, Higgins told Read he wasn't interested in "drama" but continued the two-way flirting until she sent a chilling text to him around noon on Jan. 29, 2022. "John died," she wrote. Just hours earlier, while she was out drinking with O'Keefe about an hour before the end of his life, Higgins sent two texts to her that went unanswered around 11:30 p.m. on Jan. 28, 2022. Lawyers for both parties also agreed in court that at 12:20 a.m. the following morning, Higgins also texted O'Keefe. "You coming here???" Earlier, Jackson also grilled Bukhenik over how evidence was handled in the case. Bukhenik testified that no taillight fragments had been recovered until after Read's SUV was in state police custody. He couldn't say which officer had filled out an evidence bag under his name and didn't remember whom he had given the unsigned evidence to. Jackson asked him whether he was aware that more than a dozen reports in the case weren't written until more than 100 days after the events that they were supposed to "memorialize" had taken place. He said he was not. GET REAL-TIME UPDATES DIRECTLY ON THE True Crime Hub Police witnesses may be hurting the case due to missteps that shouldn't have happened had routine protocols been followed, according to Joseph Giacalone, a former NYPD cold case investigator and an adjunct crminal justice professor at Penn State Lehigh Valley. "A tie goes to the defense," he said of Friday's testimony. "The Massachusetts State Police have a major problem on their hands." The MSP fired former Trooper Michael Proctor, who was a lead investigator in the case, after his testimony during the first trial revealed unprofessional text messages he had sent regarding Read. He could testify when the defense presents its case later in the trial. Follow The Fox True Crime Team On X Local police also testified that they used red Solo cups and a grocery bag to collect evidence, removed snow with a leafblower and continued to be involved on the outskirts of the case despite a conflict of interest – one of their detectives is Brian Albert's brother. "The prosecution is going to go home this weekend and reevaluate things, because this week couldn't have been worse," said David Gelman, a former prosecutor and Philadelphia-area defense attorney who is following the case. He previously told Fox News Digital he was surprised the commonwealth even moved forward with a new trial after the first case fell apart. On the other hand, digital evidence has not supported defense claims. Two experts have testified that Albert's sister-in-law, Jennifer McCabe, made a key Google search about hypothermia shortly after Read and two other women found O'Keefe unresponsive in the snow – not hours earlier, before anyone should have known he was dead, as the defense has claimed. And reading the texts in court could be a "double-edged sword," said Paul Mauro, a former NYPD inspector. Did Higgins have a reason to get into an altercation with O'Keefe? Or do they paint Read as manipulative and untruthful?Original article source: Karen Read trial reveals flirty text messages with ATF agent behind boyfriend's back
