22-05-2025
Judge dismisses some charges against blogger known as ‘Turtleboy'
Doolin also dismissed charges that Kearney had a police dispatcher run the plates of a Read witness when her vehicle was parked outside Proctor's home.
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Kearney still faces more than a dozen counts related to his alleged harassment of witnesses in the Read case. A trial date hasn't been set.
Read, 45, is
Her lawyers contend that she was framed and that O'Keefe entered the house, owned at the time by a fellow Boston police officer, where he was fatally beaten and possibly mauled by a German Shepherd before his body was planted on the front lawn.
Outside the confines of the trial, no one has done more to advance that theory in the public arena than Kearney, who has built a large following and helped draw national attention to the case.
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Some of the charges that remain pending against Kearney stem from a 'Rolling Road Rally' he held with dozens of supporters in July 2023, Doolin wrote.
The group went from house to house of several witnesses in the Read case that day, with Kearney allegedly using a bullhorn to accuse them of involvement in O'Keefe's murder.
Because four of the alleged victims were home when the raucous procession stopped outside, and 'therefore subject to Kearney's conduct and speech, the court concludes that the grand jury heard sufficient evidence' to indict him on charges of unlawful picketing to influence a witness in those instances, Doolin wrote.
But since Proctor wasn't home when the rally stopped outside his residence, Doolin said, 'the court concludes that the grand jury did not hear sufficient evidence to indict Kearney as pertaining to him.'
Doolin also tossed witness intimidation counts related to Bukhenik and Proctor, the latter of which prosecutors brought after Kearney, in one of his web videos, called Proctor's work phone, repeated the number on air, and left an 'ominous voicemail,' according to the ruling.
Proctor was later inundated with messages and calls, forcing him to change his number, records show.
The accusation that Kearney intimidated Bukhenik was brought after he allegedly 'hurled insults and epithets' at the trooper as he entered Norfolk Superior Court in September 2023, according to Doolin.
'While Kearney's conduct of sharing Proctor's phone number and the content of his voicemail messages are distasteful, and his statements to Bukhenik are insulting, it is not clear that his conduct in either regard was intended to impede, obstruct, delay, prevent, or interfere with the Read case,' Doolin wrote.
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He also dismissed three conspiracy counts related to the September 2023 plate-running incident, when Kearney allegedly asked an Avon police dispatcher to run the plates of witness Jennifer McCabe's vehicle when it was parked outside Proctor's home, as well as vehicles belonging to Proctor and his wife. Doolin wrote that Proctor was working at the time and McCabe had gone to the residence to see his spouse.
Doolin said prosecutors 'did not present sufficient evidence to support the notion that Kearney requested [the dispatcher] run the license plates for the purpose of intimidating' McCabe and the Proctors.
A trial date hasn't been set for the intimidation counts that remain pending against Kearney.
'In reading the ruling in my motion to dismiss (in which 6 charges were dropped against me), Judge Doolin refers to Michael Proctor as the 'lead investigator in the Read case,'' Kearney said Wednesday via X. '[Bukhenik] spent 3 days [on the stand in Read's trial] refusing to admit this.'
In reading the ruling in my motion to dismiss (in which 6 charges were dropped against me), Judge Doolin refers to Michael Proctor as the "lead investigator in the Read case." Bukkake spent 3 days refusing to admit this.
— Aidan Kearney (@DoctorTurtleboy)
Travis Andersen can be reached at
