The Wildest MA Homicide Case Ever May Hinge on Two Cops' Claims They Butt Dialed Each Other in the Middle of the Night, One While Having Sex With His Wife

(Cued up to the 2:00 mark.)

It's not without some trepidation I get into the second-degree murder case that everyone in Massachusetts is talking about for a second time:

For several reasons. First, speaking personally, I'm no true crime junkie by any means. I'm just wired to keep my brain occupied with subjects that are fun and inconsequential, not grim and of the utmost importance. Even when I worked for the MA Trial Court, I'd have attorneys come up to me during recess and ask me how I thought the trial was going. And invariably I'd have to politely break it to them that I was only paying as much attention as I had to in order to do my job. But that I was mostly at my desk researching Patriots draft prospects or whatever. But assure them they're doing a bang-up job and tell them to keep up the great work. 

Second involves this particular case. Like I said, Massholes can't shut up about it. Everyone has an opinion. And it is of grave importance. A woman is on trial, accused of being responsible for the death of her partner, a Boston police officer. But navigating this story is like making it through an ancient temple in an Indiana Jones adventure. There's hidden danger everywhere. Every beam of light you pass through could release poison darts. Every paving stone you step on could let loose a giant boulder. And you'd better know your ancient Hebrew alphabet or risk losing your head to a circular saw. 

Seriously, you've got to watch your every step, even with the people orbiting in the Kuiper Belt of this legal drama. Use someone's posts on X as a source and you find yourself taking the word of someone accused of lying, being a stooge for the prosecution or the defense, witness intimidation, conflict of interest, or even revenge porn. So the landscape here is filled with what in storytelling is referred to as The Unreliable Narrator. And I very much owe it to the nice people who pay me a good salary to sit around typing inane drivel all day to not get us associated with any of that.

To give you some perspective of how divisive this case is, after I published that post I linked above, my phone blew up with a long series of texts from two different lawyer friends of mine. One of whom has both prosecuted and defended in literally hundreds of trials and knows a lot of the parties trying this one. He says the defense has no case and hasn't presented any credible evidence of the conspiracy they're alleging. The other is from out of state but has been following this closely and thinks the investigators are going to jail and the defendant is going to end up making millions in a lawsuit. Make of that what you will. It's just that kind of homicide investigation. 

Here's the brief, surface-level, Power Point-style synopsis I posted last week. Which in no way is meant to reflect the depth of these cross allegations. Feel free to skip all of it if you're already up to speed on the matter. I'm just copy & pasting here, so I won't be offended.

The Commonwealth is alleging:

--Officer [John] O'Keefe and his girlfriend Karen Read were out for drinks on a snowy night in Canton, bumped into his fellow BPD officer Brian Albert, and got invited to a party at Albert's house.

--Read dropped him off in front of the house, and as she was pulling out, backed into him and drove away.

--An unconscious O'Keefe lay there in the snowbank in front of the house, and eventually died of exposure, without anyone inside knowing he was there. 

--Read woke up early the next morning not knowing where O'Keefe was or what happened to him. So she returned to the scene with friends where they found his body. And 911 was called.

--One of the first responders said Read kept repeating, "I hit him, I hit him, I hit him." 

-Read's SUV had damage to the rear taillight, and pieces of the plastic were found at the scene. 

This is what Read's defenders are claiming:

--After Read dropped O'Keefe off and drove home, he went into the house. A fight broke out. The family dog attacked O'Keefe, mauling his arm. He was also beaten and near death.

--In a panic, the Alberts dragged O'Keefe's body out to the snowbank to stage the accident and hide their involvement in his death. Albert's sister-in-law then Googled how long it takes someone to die in the cold. 

--When Read returned the next day to search for her missing boyfriend, she backed out of the garage at her home and clipped another parked car, causing the damage to her taillight. And security camera footage confirms it.

--MA State Police detective Michael Proctor was put in charge of the investigation. Despite having a personal relationship with the Alberts. And intentionally worked to coverup their involvement and frame Read. Including, though not limited to, taking broken pieces of her taillight from her own driveway to the crime scene. Which is confirmed by the fact they were found on top of the snowbank, despite it snowing hard all night. 

--The snowplow operator for that neighborhood said there was no one lying out front of that house in the hours immediately after Read supposedly backed into him. …

In addition Read's defenders allege the Alberts "rehoused" their dog out of state right after O'Keefe's death. That they filled in the swimming pool and sold the house. That their 18-year-old son left Bridgewater State University where he was a football player shortly thereafter. That one investigator misspelled the names of four witnesses - literally went 0-for-4 - to make it harder to check their stories or look up their background. Even incorporated a nonexistent snowplow company after the fact so they could claim some subcontractor actually handled that street, not the guy who actually said he was the one. And that Read's "I hit him!" was actually more of a "Did I hit him?"

Someone corrrected me to point out the misspelled names were actually an 0-for-6. And that the "Free Karen Read" people are also accusing the Alberts of tearing up a section of the sub-basement of the house and replacing it with fresh concrete. Then there are the allegations I mentioned in the post, that an FBI investigation has uncovered a friendship between Proctor and the Alberts that goes back years. And that they texted him to offer him a gift when all this is over, and he replied they should give it to his wife instead. 

Now with all that as preamble, here's where things get weird. The next phase of the case hinges on texts that the defense alleges were exchanged between Brian Albert and some other law enforcement officers:

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Source - Defense attorney David Yannetti said Wednesday that the U.S. Attorney’s office for Massachusetts — which is conducting a grand jury investigation into the Read case — found that phone calls were going on immediately following O’Keefe’s murder between principal members of the defense team’s theory of a conspiracy against Read.

Chief among them are Boston Police Sgt. Det. Brian Albert, who owned the home at 34 Fairview Road in Canton where O’Keefe’s body was found. Also alleged to be in the call pool were ATF Agent Brian Higgins; Canton Police Officer Kevin Albert, who is Brian Albert’s brother; and then-Canton Police Chief Kenneth Berkowitz. …

“My goodness … with all the allegations of witness intimidation thrown around by this DA’s office,” Yannetti said, “why is Kevin Albert not being investigated?”

He said that the Norfolk District Attorney’s office could have subpoenaed these records at any point and chose not to, whereas the feds did subpoena them so at least everyone now knows they exist.

“Thank God another law enforcement agency stepped in to do the job that the DA’s office would not,” he said.

Yannetti drew chuckles, as well, when he said the men had explained such a flurry of calls as merely “butt dials.” In an example, he said Higgins had described himself as being alone the night of one call of concern and was in bed with his phone on the table.

“I’ve never seen a case that has had so many butt dials,” Yannetti said. “His butt was in the bed, his phone was on the table. The two could not have met; there could not have been a butt dial.”

Now here's the money shot. From that same video above, cued up to the 5:35 mark, when the defense attorney alleges Brian Albert claimed in his Grand Jury testimony that he accientally butt dialed Higgins back a few minutes later at 2:22 AM, while having sex with his wife:

Obviously there are a few problem with these accounts. The first being that when you butt dial someone and they don't pick up, you'll later find your accidental call went to voicemail, which Higgins allegedly isn't claiming. And if Albert had accidentally answered while in the middle of having marital relations, one assumes Higgins would've been been awoken by the sounds of passionate lovemaking coming through his phone. Which he also reportedly isn't saying. Next, to believe any of this, you have to be willing to accept that two acquaintances happen to exchange butt dials within minutes of each other in the middle of the night that just happened to coincide with a homicide outside one of their homes that nobody knew about it. One who had his phone on a nightstand, and the other who was in the throes of a physical expression of love with his spouse. While a few minutes later, another person in the house just happened to be Google-searching how long it takes someone to die in the cold.

Speaking personally, as someone who's been married for 30 years, the hardest part for me to believe was that a married couple was having sex at 2:22 AM. But that's my cross to bear. Your results may vary. 

Again, and I cannot stress this enough, I do not know the cause of John O'Keefe's death. Nor does Barstool Sports or any of our fine sponsors have a position on this. All we know for certain is that it's a tragedy and Officer O'Keefe deserves to have the guilty party caught and brought to trial. "Let justice be done though the heavens fall." That and the fact we'll know a lot more about these incidents of alleged butt dialing sooner or later. Because the judge presiding over the case allowed the defendant's motion and those phone records are going to be made public.

Stay tuned. The truly crazy stuff has only just begun.