Latest news with #NorfolkCountyDistrictAttorney'sOffice
Yahoo
a day ago
- General
- Yahoo
Death of woman whose body was found in woods near Mass. home under investigation
Authorities are investigating the death of a woman whose body was found in a wooded area near a Milton home Sunday morning, the Norfolk County District Attorney's Office announced Monday. A passerby found the body of 21-year-old Adriana Suazo near 143 Central Ave. around 11:45 a.m., the district attorney's office said in a press release. Her body showed 'no obvious signs of trauma.' The Chief Medical Examiner's Office is aiding the district attorney's office and Milton police in their investigation into her death, the district attorney's office said. Anyone who was with Suazo in the last few weeks is urged to call the Norfolk County District Attorney's Office at 781-830-4990. No further information about her death has been released. Free goats! Over 150 farm animals up for adoption after large WMass surrender Worcester restaurant serving food from Ghana seized by state due to unpaid taxes Chicopee budget up 6% on personnel, police costs; mayor proposes $3M to defray taxes Mass. asks public how to replace MCAS grad requirement. How to respond Valley groups aim to walk people back from financial cliff with new program Read the original article on MassLive.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Mass. man struck and killed by Commuter Rail train remembered as ‘dear and humble'
A Cohasset man who was struck and killed by an MBTA Commuter Rail train earlier this month is being remembered for always putting his family before himself. On May 3, 78-year-old John Canney was driving a pickup truck over the Beechwood Street railroad crossing in Cohasset around 11:20 a.m. when the truck was hit by the train, the Norfolk County District Attorney's Office said previously. He was declared dead at the scene, and his truck was declared a total loss. John Frederick Canney was born in Davenport, Iowa, to John and Marjorie Canney, according to his obituary. The couple raised him in Needham, Massachusetts, and he went on to graduate from UMass Amherst with a degree in German Literature. After college, Canney was introduced to the finance world through a job working on Wall Street in New York City, according to his obituary. He went on to found a Boston-based municipal advisory group. Read more: Man killed in Cohasset MBTA train strike identified Canney was an avid reader and considered the Mathematics Dictionary light reading, according to his obituary. He was also member of the Cohasset Yacht Club and had a passion for sailing. 'Always the patient, steady, and capable captain, he loved sailing his Atlantic City Catboat, Annie S.,' his obituary reads. More recently, Canney rediscovered his love of painting, according to his obituary. He could often be found working on a thumbnail print. Canney was married to his wife, Barbara Canney, for 42 years, and he leaves her and his son, Garrett Canney, behind, according to his obituary. He is described as 'a devoted husband and father who always put his family before himself.' 'John was a dear and humble man of greatness, and the world is diminished by his loss,' his obituary reads. A memorial service for Canney is scheduled for Sunday, May 25, at 2 p.m. at St. Anthony of Padua Church in Cohasset, according to his obituary. A celebration of his life is set to follow immediately afterward at the Lightkeeper's Cottage in Cohasset. In lieu of flowers, Canney's family asks that people honor his memory by donating to a local non-profit of your choice, according to his obituary. Mega Millions numbers: Are you the lucky winner of Tuesday's $139 million jackpot? Closing hotel shelters has benefits but could leave families with no place to go The Password, Jhostynxon Garcia, cracks three-run homer in Triple-A debut Georgia woman gets decade in prison for smuggling 12 lbs. of meth to Mass. Mass. lawyer to plead guilty to embezzling millions from relatives, business associate Read the original article on MassLive.
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Yahoo
Opening Arguments for the Trial Everyone Is Talking About Begins Tuesday
Los Angeles defense attorney Alan Jackson is expected to give a fiery opening argument Tuesday morning in the case of Karen Read, the one-time Massachusetts finance analyst charged with backing her SUV while drunk into her Boston police officer boyfriend during a 2022 blizzard. Jackson, along with fellow L.A. defense attorney Elizabeth Little, have maintained that John O'Keefe, a well-respected Boston cop whose body was found in a snowbank after a night of partying with Read and other law enforcement officers in the early morning hours of Jan. 29, 2002, was brutalized inside the Canton, Mass. home of Brian Albert, a now retired Boston police officer, a charge he and others assembled at the home steadfastly deny. This is Read's second trial. The first ended with a hung jury - with one of those jurors, a Boston lawyer, now working for Read's defense. Victoria Brophey George, a Princeton-educated lawyer from Boston who was an alternate when fellow jurors led the judge to declare a mistrial, will now be sitting with Read's high-profile Angeleno attorneys and hard-hitting former Boston city prosecutor, David selection in the case ended on April 15, after three weeks of voir dire. Eighteen people were selected to serve in the case, and after closing arguments, 12 will be selected to deliberate while the others will remain on as alternates. Read, 45, has been working on her defense full-time since her arrest on second-degree murder and other charges within hours of her boyfriend's body being found. She is now millions of dollars in debt she says in an HBO documentary, and "fighting for her life." The prosecution also has a new lead attorney, one added to the team from the private sector: Hank Brennan, a criminal defense lawyer who famously defended notorious Boston Irish mobster James "Whitey" Bulger, who was captured in Santa Monica in June 2011 after more than a decade on the lam, and murdered by a coterie of his enemies at a federal prison seven years later. From the time Read was taken into custody, the case exposed a myriad of problems in the investigation at the hands of Massachusetts State Police troopers who are assigned to the Norfolk County District Attorney's Office, currently run by Michael Morrissey. The troopers assigned to that unit investigate homicides alongside their local police counterparts Norfolk County, which is comprised of 27 insular cities and towns that make up what is known locally as the south shore of Boston. But retired Massachusetts State Police Lieutenant Bob Long, who now runs a vaunted private investigations agency, defended the work of his former colleagues in the state police, pointing to the blizzard conditions and the emotions at play when a fellow cop "is left to die." "She admitted at the crime scene that she thinks she hit him," Long told Los Angeles. "They were working from that premise in blizzard conditions." This story is developing. Stay up to date with developments at
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Yahoo
With a jury now in place, the heart of Karen Read's retrial is set to begin
After three weeks of jury selection, a panel of nine men and nine women has been seated in the murder retrial of Karen Read. Read, whose trial in the death of her police officer boyfriend exposed allegations of law enforcement misconduct, returned to court in suburban Boston this month to be retried on charges of second-degree murder and other crimes. Read's widely publicized first trial ended with a hung jury last summer. The heart of the trial is set to begin Tuesday with opening statements. Here are key dates in the case. John O'Keefe, a 16-year veteran of the Boston Police Department, was found unresponsive in the yard of a now-retired Boston police sergeant, Brian Albert. O'Keefe, 46, was pronounced dead shortly afterward, and a medical examiner attributed his death to hypothermia and blunt-force trauma to the head. The night before, the couple had been drinking with other law enforcement officers in Canton, just south of Boston, before they drove to an afterparty at Albert's home. What followed was not captured on video, and no witnesses have claimed to have seen what led to O'Keefe's death. But lawyers for Read, an equity analyst who'd been together with O'Keefe for two years, later said she dropped him off at Albert's home and watched him go inside. Read's defense team said that hours later, after she discovered that her boyfriend never came home, she went out looking for him and, eventually, discovered his body in the snow outside Albert's home. In court, Albert denied that O'Keefe ever entered his home. And after Read was arrested on charges of second-degree murder, motor vehicular manslaughter while driving under the influence and leaving the scene of a collision causing death, prosecutors painted a different picture of what investigators believe happened. Fired investigator Michael Proctor to loom over retrial The family of Karen Read's boyfriend says she put them 'through hell,' but they're ready for second trial Messy investigation exposes problems with police work that public rarely sees, experts say Karen Read's defense in the first trial How to watch the Dateline episode "The Night of the Nor'easter" When Read's trial got underway last April, the Norfolk County District Attorney's Office described a relationship in shambles and a drunken defendant so furious with her partner that she backed into him with her Lexus SUV and left him for dead. Adam Lally, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case, pointed to vehicle data that captured Read reversing her Lexus for 60 feet at 24 mph outside Albert's home and forensic testing that showed O'Keefe's hair found on the vehicle's bumper. Also found on the vehicle's bumper were the remnants of a drink — O'Keefe was seen leaving a bar that night with a cocktail in hand — and bits of a drinking glass, Lally said. Read's defense team was allowed to make a third-party culprit defense, permitting it to call witnesses and present evidence supporting an alternative theory of O'Keefe's death. According to that theory, O'Keefe was fatally beaten and bitten by a dog in Albert's home. Her legal team alleged that Read was framed by Albert and another person who'd been at the party — an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who'd traded flirtatious texts with Read before, the defense said, she ghosted him. (Albert testified that O'Keefe never entered his home but that he would have been welcomed with "open arms" if he had.) The defense also accused the lead investigator in the case, former Massachusetts State Trooper Michael Proctor, of manipulating evidence, failing to properly examine the case and leading a biased investigation. Among the evidence introduced were text messages that showed Proctor using derogatory language to describe Read to friends, family members and supervisors. At one point, Proctor said he hoped Read would take her own life. Proctor acknowledged making unprofessional comments about Read and sharing details of the investigation with his sister, who was close friends with Albert's sister-in-law, but he said he provided only 'newsworthy stuff,' and he denied that his conduct compromised the integrity of the investigation. After a nine-week trial and five days of deliberations, Norfolk County Superior Court Judge Beverly Cannone declared a mistrial when jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict. The Norfolk County district attorney vowed to retry the case and appointed Hank Brennan, a former prosecutor and longtime criminal defense lawyer who previously represented Boston gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger, to be lead prosecutor. The defense sought to have the crimes dismissed, alleging 'extraordinary governmental misconduct' and saying that retrying her for two of the charges, including murder, amounted to double jeopardy. The lawyers made the second claim after, they said, two jurors came forward after the trial and said the panel would have acquitted Read of those crimes. Judges in superior and federal court denied both claims. A trial board with the Massachusetts State Police fired Proctor after it determined he violated agency rules by sending derogatory texts about Read and shared confidential investigative details with non-law enforcement personnel. The panel also found that he drank alcohol on duty and drove his cruiser afterward. Proctor has not publicly commented on his termination. His family said they were 'truly disappointed' with the board's decision, which they said 'unfairly exploits and scapegoats one of their own, a trooper with a 12-year unblemished record.' 'Despite the Massachusetts State Police's dubious and relentless efforts to find more inculpatory evidence against Michael Proctor on his phones, computers and cruiser data, the messages on his personal phone — referring to the person who killed a fellow beloved Boston Police Officer — are all that they found,' the family said in a statement. 'The messages prove one thing, and that Michael is human — not corrupt, not incompetent in his role as a homicide detective, and certainly not unfit to continue to be a Massachusetts State Trooper,' the statement added. It isn't clear what role Proctor will play in the retrial, and legal experts told NBC News that his presence is likely to loom over the proceedings. Jury selection began in Read's retrial in a Norfolk County courtroom, with prosecutors and defense lawyers questioning hundreds of potential jurors. After three weeks of screening jurors, the panel was seated. The 18 jurors include six alternates. Opening statements are expected to start in the Massachusetts courtroom Tuesday. This article was originally published on
NBC News
22-04-2025
- NBC News
With a jury now in place, the heart of Karen Read's retrial is set to begin
After three weeks of jury selection, a panel of nine men and nine women has been seated in the murder retrial of Karen Read. Read, whose trial in the death of her police officer boyfriend exposed allegations of law enforcement misconduct, returned to court in suburban Boston this month to be retried on charges of second-degree murder and other crimes. Read's widely publicized first trial ended with a hung jury last summer. The heart of the trial is set to begin Tuesday with opening statements. Here are key dates in the case. Jan. 29, 2022: John O'Keefe is found dead John O'Keefe, a 16-year veteran of the Boston Police Department, was found unresponsive in the yard of a now-retired Boston police sergeant, Brian Albert. O'Keefe, 46, was pronounced dead shortly after and a medical examiner attributed his cause of death to hypothermia and blunt-force trauma to the head. The night before, the couple had been drinking with other law enforcement officers in Canton, just south of Boston, before they drove to an afterparty at Albert's home. What followed was not captured on video and no witnesses have claimed to have seen what led to O'Keefe's death. But lawyers for Read, an equity analyst who'd been together with O'Keefe for two years, later said that she dropped him off at Albert's home and watched him go inside. Hours later, after discovering that her boyfriend never came home, Read's defense team said that she went out looking for him — and, eventually — discovered his body in the snow outside Albert's home. In court, Albert denied that O'Keefe ever entered his home. And after Read was arrested on charges of second-degree murder, motor vehicular manslaughter while driving under the influence and leaving the scene of a collision causing death, prosecutors painted a different picture of what investigators believe happened. April 2024: A widely watched first trial When Read's trial got underway last April, the Norfolk County District Attorney's Office described a relationship in shambles and a drunken defendant so furious with her partner that she backed into him with her Lexus SUV and left him for dead. Adam Lally, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case, pointed to vehicle data that captured Read reversing her Lexus for 60 feet at 24 mph outside Albert's home and forensic testing that showed O'Keefe's hair found on the vehicle's bumper. Also found the on vehicle's bumper were the remnants of a drink — O'Keefe was seen leaving a bar earlier that night with a cocktail in hand — and bits of a drinking glass, Lally said. Read's defense team was allowed to make a third-party culprit defense, permitting them to call witnesses and present evidence supporting an alternative theory of O'Keefe's death. According to that theory, O'Keefe was fatally beaten and bitten by a dog in Albert's home. Her legal team alleged that Read was framed by Albert and another person who'd been at the party — an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who'd traded flirtatious texts with Read before the defense said she ghosted him. (Albert testified that O'Keefe never entered his home but he would have been welcomed with "open arms" if he had.) The defense also accused the lead investigator in the case, former Massachusetts State Trooper Michael Proctor, of manipulating evidence, failing to properly examine the case and leading a biased investigation. Among the evidence introduced were text messages that showed Proctor using derogatory language to describe Read to friends, family and supervisors. At one point, Proctor said that he hoped Read would take her own life. Proctor acknowledged making unprofessional comments about Read and sharing details of the investigation with his sister, who was close friends with Albert's sister-in-law, but he said he only provided 'newsworthy stuff' and he denied that his conduct compromised the integrity of the investigation. July 1: A mistrial is declared After a nine-week trial and five days of deliberations, Norfolk County Superior Court Judge Beverly Cannone declared a mistrial when jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict. The Norfolk County District Attorney vowed to retry the case and appointed Hank Brennan, a former prosecutor and longtime criminal defense lawyer who previously represented Boston gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger, to be lead prosecutor. The defense sought to have the crimes dismissed, alleging 'extraordinary governmental misconduct' and saying that retrying her for two of the charges, including murder, amounted to double jeopardy. The lawyers made the second claim after they said two jurors came forward after the trial and said the panel would have acquitted Read of those crimes. Judges in superior and federal court denied both claims. March 19: Lead investigator Michael Proctor is fired A trial board with the Massachusetts State Police fir ed Proctor after determining he violated agency rules by sending derogatory texts about Read and sharing confidential investigative details with non-law enforcement personnel. The panel also found that he drank alcohol on duty and drove his cruiser afterward. Proctor has not publicly commented on his termination, but his family said they were 'truly disappointed' with the board's decision, which they said 'unfairly exploits and scapegoats one of their own, a trooper with a 12-year unblemished record.' 'Despite the Massachusetts State Police's dubious and relentless efforts to find more inculpatory evidence against Michael Proctor on his phones, computers and cruiser data, the messages on his personal phone — referring to the person who killed a fellow beloved Boston Police Officer — are all that they found,' the family said in a statement. 'The messages prove one thing, and that Michael is human — not corrupt, not incompetent in his role as a homicide detective, and certainly not unfit to continue to be a Massachusetts State Trooper,' the statement added. It isn't clear what role Proctor will play in the retrial and legal experts told NBC News that his presence will likely loom over the proceedings. April 1: The second trial gets underway Jury selection began in Read's retrial in a Norfolk County courtroom, with prosecutors and defense lawyers questioning hundreds of potential jurors. After three weeks of screening jurors, the panel was seated. The 18 jurors include six alternates.
