Karen Read Retrial Recap, No. 2: The Jurors and Witnesses Break Their Silence and the MA State Police Vow to Clean Up Their Act

6/20/2025 3:30 PM

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In the normal course of things, when a jury trial is over, the verdict is recorded into the record and everyone goes back to their lives. The jurors go home, safe in the knowledge they can't get summoned again for another three years, at least. It's onto the next case on the docket for the court staff, and everything resets back to Square One. I mean of course, it's different for the defendant if they're convicted, especially if they're sent to jail. But for everyone else, once the judge thanks the jury and sends them on their merry way, the trial they just decided is done and dusted.

But from the very beginning, the Commonwealth v. Karen Read has been anything but the normal course of things. It's polarized an entire state. Inspired a thousand protests and counter protests. Brought the entire media world to a suburb that before this was only semi-famous as Bill Burr's ancestral homeland. It's changed the way a lot of Massholes look at local law enforcement. And, above all other things, that been an utterly ridiculous clown show:

So it's only natural to expect that the end of the retrial would only be the beginning. This thing has been so consequential, we'll be dining out on it for months if not years. This thing ought to be studied in law schools for generations. And half the actors with SAG cards are probably getting ready to audition for the inevitable True Crime series to come.

But that comes later. For now what we're getting is the postgame comments from the participants in the retrial. Beginning with fired, disgraced lead investigator Michael Proctor on 20/20 the other night. And the first of probably several jurors to come:

Source - Juror No. 11, Paula Prado, said she initially thought Karen Read was guilty of manslaughter, but as the trial progressed, things changed.
"As the weeks passed by, I just realized there were too many holes that we couldn't fill," Prado told reporters gathered outside of her home on Thursday night. "There's nothing that put her on scene in our opinion besides just drop John O'Keefe off." …
She says they couldn't prove that there was a collision and that she was responsible for O'Keefe's death.
"I am convinced, I'm one hundred percent convinced, yes. I really don't think she was responsible for his death," she said.

Source - Who was the most memorable witness in this trial?
For me, Mr. Yuri Bukhenik. Because I was seated in the first row, I could see him clenching his fists a few times—it was very tense. ARCCA was memorable for different reasons; they made a lot of the technical information finally make sense to me.
Did you believe the injuries to John O’Keefe’s arm were caused by a dog?
Yes—and I actually have my own theory about the dog’s role in his death. I don’t see those injuries coming from a taillight at all. Plus, the lack of more injuries on his body made it really hard to believe a collision occurred. …

What witness did you trust the most?
I trusted the forensic scientists from the Massachusetts State Police Lab, like Maureen Hartnett and Tess Chart. They worked with what they were given. I also believe Dr. Laposata and Isaac Wolf were extremely knowledgeable and stated their findings truthfully.
What witness did you trust the least?
Officer Kelly Dever—her behavior in court made me question whether it’s safe for someone who acts like that to be carrying a gun among civilians.

It's hard to overstate what a terrible look this is for the Commonwealth. Bukhenik was an unmitigated disaster for them:

The state crime lab people this juror trusted most out of all the witnesses presented didn't help the prosecution's case one infinitesimal bit. And Kelly Dever was so petulant, argumentative and snippy that she won 100% of my heart, but none of my trust:

… this case?
I think we all know what he meant when he said “do the right thing” now.
Kelly Dever claims that the implication of this was just to tell the truth, but does anyone get the impression that Dever is telling the truth here?
Watch the faces she makes in the second half of this video. They certainly don’t portray “truthfulness”.

TMZ - Juror No. 4, a man named Jason, joined us on "TMZ Live" Thursday and we asked him what the feeling was like on the jury … did they vote not guilty because of reasonable doubt, or due to a belief she was innocent? …
Jason tells us he doesn't think Karen even hit her then-boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe, with her car … as prosecutors claimed. He pointed out that jurors were shown video where Karen's taillight was working just fine after the alleged collision.

It's not easy to look at these witness testimonies and see them exactly through the same lens as the people sitting in the jury box. And when you find out they were thinking the same thing you were, it's oddly gratifying.

All this is bad for the Norfolk County DA's office, who spent the GPA of a developing nation to get a conviction on a three year old drunk driving case:

Howie Carr - Hos much are we out for Norfolk County DA Michael “Meatball” Morrissey’s obsession with framing Karen Read for a murder she obviously did not commit? …
Just for starters, there was the “special” persecutor, Mob mouthpiece Hank Brennan. He’s been listed on the books for $250,000, but surely he’s made way more than that by now.
Remember, Meatball has dozens of prosecutors on his regular state payroll. None of them could handle the job? Or did they not want to take on the task, because they knew how awful the case was?

In addition to Brennan, Meatball’s courtroom team included last year’s bust-out prosecutor, chain-smoking loser Adam Lally ($149,350 a year), and Elizabeth McLaughlin ($142,050).
Great use of our tax dollars, Meatball.
Then you have the “experts” from Aperture – Dr. Blue Man Group and the peckerwood from Alabama who’s been trying to get his bachelor’s degree for 17 years. Those two clowns cost Norfolk County another $400,000.
And remember, the feds had already given Meatball 3,000 pages of their investigations of the incompetent police investigations, including a study by the best accident reconstruction experts in the nation, ARCCA.
But ARCCA proved conclusively that John O’Keefe hadn’t been hit by a car, so Meatball threw out their report.

So DA Morrissey didn't use ARCCA's accident reconstruction reports, but the defense did. And since these jurors all confirm they trusted Read's side and not the DA's "experts," there's your Not Guilty verdict in a nutshell. They came away believing that John O'Keefe was never struck by Read's Lexus. That those horrific scars on his arm were from a dog attack. And that the taillight of her SUV was more intact before Michael Proctor took it into his possession as evidence than it later was by the time he was done with it.

You can can argue all you want that's just a conspiracy theory or their opinion. But theirs is the only opinion that matters. Quite literally, theirs is the only vote that counts.

But these jurors aren't the only ones waiving their right to remain silent. The people who were at 34 Fairview that night, some of whom owned the house and the only dog on the property - who mysteriously vanished before the sun came up that morning, never to be seen again - are also talking. And while the jurors beg to differ, they're insisting they're the wronged party in all this:

To review: Brian Albert didn't come out of his house because he's a Boston cop, not a Canton cop. He's a first responder, alright. But only within Boston city limits, not his front yard. Credit where it's due to this reply:

And as far as all the ruckus out front of his house, he slept through all that. Clement Clark Moore might have been woken up from a sound Christmas sleep by the prancing and pawing of each tiny hoof on his roof. But eight or nine emergency vehicles with their lights flashing and engines running didn't make such a clatter that he'd jump out of bed to see what was the matter. Nor did they draw the attention anyone else in the house. Not a creature was stirring inside 34 Fairview, not even Chloe the missing German Shepherd. That's the Albert's story, and they're sticking to it.

Finally, we get to another party who's chosen to break their silence, the MA State Police:

Boston Herald - With the spectacle of the Karen Read trial finally over, attention now turns to the fallout — especially within the Massachusetts State Police.
“The events of the last three years have challenged our Department to thoroughly review our actions and take concrete steps,” MSP Col. Geoffrey Noble wrote Thursday in a statement distributed by the agency.
Those steps, he wrote, are to “deliver advanced investigative training, ensure appropriate oversight, and enhance accountability.”
“Under my direction as Colonel, the State Police has, and will continue to, improve in these regards. Our focus remains on delivering excellent police services that reflect the value of professionalism and maintain public trust,” he wrote. …
The fallout from the flaws of the investigation was not just reflected in the verdict, but also in opinion by the public and observers.
A poll by a firm called Opinion Diagnostics found that 78% of 1,170 eligible jurors in Norfolk County believed Read to be innocent of manslaughter, either by belief in her innocence (54%) or through reasonable doubt (24%). And 68% of respondents said they believe the evidence does not show her liable for wrongful death.

To be fair to this Col. Noble, he wasn't with MSP when all these events unfolded. And Proctor has paid the professional price of losing a very sweet gig with a big salary and early retirement with a fat pension that is no longer waiting for him.

But to be unfair to the Colonel, those numbers don't lie. The public had no faith in his department's theory of the case. Three out of every four Massholes in Norfolk County believe the LEO agency runs either blew this investigation or where straight up framing an innocent woman in order to protect some well-connected cops.

So while these words are all well and good, well-intentioned and (pardon the pun) noble, they're just words. It's tough enough to gain the public's trust. It's a hell of a thing to earn it back once you've lost it to this extent. The people deserve better. And all the rank-and-file Staties who unlike Proctor are honest, do a good job, and put their lives on the line to protect that public every day certainly deserve better as well. Last, and by no means least, so does John O'Keefe.