The latest on the Karen Read murder case
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Ex-Canton cop alleges Karen Read’s lawyers threatened her with perjury in combative back-and-forth
"They did not want me to tell the truth," Kelly Dever, now a Boston police officer, testified Monday, referring to the defense.
In one of the most electric moments of Karen Read’s retrial, a former Canton police officer alleged Read’s lawyers threatened her with a perjury charge if she did not testify she saw witness Brian Higgins and former Canton Police Chief Kenneth Berkowitz in the station’s garage with Read’s SUV.
Now employed with the Boston Police Department, Kelly Dever confirmed she was working as a patrol officer in Canton when Read’s boyfriend, John O’Keefe, was found unresponsive in the snow outside 34 Fairview Road. She said her sergeant asked her to fill in for the police department’s dispatch operations after a call came in about a “person in a snowbank.”
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Defense attorney Alan Jackson confirmed the first time Dever was interviewed in connection with Read’s case was in an August 2023 meeting with an unspecified law enforcement agency, apparently referring to the secretive federal probe of the state’s investigation. He asked Dever if she wanted to be at Norfolk Superior Court Monday.
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“I am put on the stand in a murder trial,” Dever replied coolly. “I don’t know why I’m here. I have no connection to this case.”
“You have no idea why you’re here?” Jackson pressed.
Dever testified that no one from the defense had talked to her since before Read’s first trial, “So I don’t have any idea why I’m here.” However, she denied feeling uncomfortable on the stand.
Later in her testimony, Dever confirmed she remained on dispatch duty until the end of her shift the afternoon of Jan. 29, 2022. Jackson asked whether she could recall observing “anything unusual” that stood out to her in the station’s sallyport garage while working dispatch.
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“I can’t make that statement on the stand, because I’ve been provided information released by the defense,” Dever replied. “It was a distorted memory. Therefore I can’t state it, because at this point it would be a lie. I cannot make that statement that you’re wanting me to make on the stand, because I’ve advised that that would be a lie.”
Jackson denied asking Dever to make a statement one way or another, repeating his question.
“Given factual information that makes it so I know I did not, no,” Dever said, offering a clipped response.
She testified that her August 2023 interview with law enforcement was a “willing” conversation and said she was ultimately provided factual information “that showed a statement of mine was a false memory.” Dever maintained she offered that initial statement in good faith and retracted it when presented with information that demonstrated it could not be accurate.
Dever also alleged the defense “threatened to charge me with perjury during our phone call prior to the first trial if I didn’t lie on the stand right now.”
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She added: “I am telling you, I did not see anything.”
Jackson pushed back, asking Dever whether she told the agents she saw Higgins and Berkowitz enter the sallyport together “for a wildly long time” while Read’s SUV was in the garage. Dever confirmed that was her initial recollection, though she told jurors she was later reminded she’d left the station before Read’s SUV arrived. A federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives agent, Higgins was present at 34 Fairview Road the night O’Keefe was mortally wounded and is one of the men Read’s lawyers have sought to implicate in their third-party culprit defense.
Dever also confirmed she had a conversation with Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox at some point, but “not about anything malicious.” According to Dever, the department was merely expressing its support for her “regardless of what I need to say on the stand.”
She denied Cox told her anything with the intent of guiding her testimony, adding, “He just wanted me to tell the truth up here.”
Under cross-examination by special prosecutor Hank Brennan, Dever described her role in Read’s case as minimal.
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“This was just a random shift for me, three-and-a-half years ago, at a desk, that I wasn’t asked to recollect for … about a year-and-a-half after the occurrences of that night,” she testified.
Brennan commented that Dever seemed a bit anxious, and Dever replied that she felt “confused” about why she was asked to testify, but not anxious. She reiterated her claim that defense attorneys wanted her to say she saw Higgins and Berkowitz in the sallyport with Read’s SUV but said she told them it wasn’t an accurate memory.
“They became very aggressive, raised their voices, and the one word that I can very definitely remember is they said that they would charge me with perjury,” Dever alleged. She said she felt “disappointment that legal counsel would go that route.”
Dever also denied anyone in either the Canton or Boston police departments had weighed in on what she should or shouldn’t say on the stand. She told jurors she felt some “discomfort” about the defense team’s purported attempts to “guide” her testimony, “but I don’t feel any need to fall into it because I’m here to speak the truth on the stand. That’s my livelihood.”
Back up for additional questioning, Jackson pointed out it falls to prosecutors, not defense attorneys, to charge people with crimes. He alleged no one ever threatened to charge Dever with perjury.
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Jackson mispronounced Dever’s last name during a later question about whether the defense read from a report about her August 2023 law enforcement interview during a previous phone call with her.
“Like you can’t remember my name, I don’t remember,” Dever fired back.
She denied speaking with anyone from the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office about her involvement in Read’s case, though she confirmed she had a personal friendship with prosecution witness Sarah Levinson, another guest present at 34 Fairview Road after midnight on Jan. 29, 2022.
Dever acknowledged seeing “clips” from prior court proceedings in Read’s case and said she wasn’t aware of witness sequestration orders in place during the retrial.
Answering a later question from Brennan, she also denied receiving any reward or “consideration” for correcting her memory of the Canton police sallyport. She further confirmed there was no way she could have seen Read’s SUV in the garage, as the vehicle did not arrive for more than an hour after she finished her shift.
The defense, she alleged, “did not want me to tell the truth.”
Brennan confirmed Dever wasn’t implicating Berkowitz and Higgins in any malfeasance — including evidence tampering or framing someone for a crime — when she initially spoke with federal agents.
“Is there anybody you’re protecting?” he asked.
“I have no one to protect,” Dever replied.
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Speaking to reporters as she left the courthouse Monday, Read disputed Dever’s claim that Read’s attorneys had threatened her, explaining the defense team only wanted Dever to “repeat what she told other law enforcement agencies under penalty of perjury.”
Asked if she was suggesting Dever could have been coaxed into changing her testimony, Read replied, “I didn’t suggest it; she did. She was called into the [Boston police] commissioner’s office, and her story completely changed; she recanted.”
Read said the defense subpoenaed Dever “to testify to what she told other authorities and just wanted her to be as honest with us as she was with them. And today she’s now telling us that was a lie.”
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