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Karen Read plans to sue Alberts, McCabes, and State Police. Here’s what happened in court Monday.
As Read faces a wrongful death lawsuit, her attorney said she plans to pursue conspiracy and civil rights claims against witnesses from her murder case.
Karen Read made her highly anticipated return to court Monday with a bombshell announcement: She plans to bring legal action against several investigators and witnesses who were involved in her widely publicized murder trials.
Read, 45, appeared in a Plymouth courtroom to face a wrongful death lawsuit from the family of her former boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe. Monday’s hearing came just months after Read was acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges in O’Keefe’s Jan. 29, 2022, death.
Speaking on Read’s behalf, defense attorney Damon Seligson rattled off a list of parties against whom Read intends to pursue civil claims. They include the Massachusetts State Police and three State Police investigators who worked on Read’s case: Detective Lt. Brian Tully, Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik, and former Trooper Michael Proctor.
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Seligson also named Brian and Nicole Albert, Jennifer and Matthew McCabe, and Brian Higgins — civilian witnesses who went out drinking with Read and O’Keefe the night he died.
Read, 45, was tried twice for murder after prosecutors alleged she drunkenly backed her SUV into O’Keefe while dropping him off at the Alberts’ home in Canton for an afterparty. While her 2024 trial ended in a hung jury, jurors this spring found her not guilty of her most serious charges. In the end, she was convicted only of a drunk driving misdemeanor, for which she received a year of probation.
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Read has long maintained she was framed for killing O’Keefe, but the late police officer’s family has sided with prosecutors. Their lawsuit, filed shortly after the 2024 mistrial, alleges that Read fled the scene after she hit O’Keefe with her car, leaving her boyfriend of two years to die in a blizzard.
Plaintiffs in the wrongful death suit include O’Keefe’s brother, Paul, his parents, and his niece, who lived with O’Keefe after she and her brother lost their parents just months apart. The lawsuit also names as defendants C.F. McCarthy’s and the Waterfall Bar & Grille, the two Canton bars where Read and O’Keefe drank before he died.
Karen Read’s potential legal claims
In addition to their wrongful death claims, the O’Keefes are also claiming emotional distress, alleging Read “knowingly and deliberately changed her story and fabricated a conspiracy knowing the same to be false.” Throughout her criminal case, Read and her lawyers argued she was the victim of a vast law enforcement conspiracy, and that O’Keefe was actually mortally wounded inside the Alberts’ home.
The civilian witnesses Seligson named Monday — Higgins and the Alberts and McCabes — all attended the afterparty at 34 Fairview Road, where O’Keefe was found unresponsive in the snow hours later. According to Seligson, the witnesses could face allegations of civil conspiracy and civil rights violations. He said Read also plans to accuse the State Police parties of conspiracy, civil rights violations, and negligent training, supervision, and retention of troopers.
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Read’s team would allege that the people inside the house “diverted attention away from themselves, towards Ms. Read” and “collectively conspired to ensure that what happened in the house was not explored and investigated,” Seligson explained. He further suggested the town of Canton, through its police department, could be accused of negligent failure to secure the garage where Read’s SUV was held in police custody.
Seligson proposed that Read’s defense file their new claims as part of the same civil case to streamline the process. But the O’Keefes’ attorney, Marc Diller, said Seligson’s in-court announcement was the first he’d heard of Read’s plans to name 10 additional parties.
“Not how the court system likes this stuff to work, folks,” Plymouth Superior Court Judge Daniel O’Shea remarked.
Seligson explained Read’s proposal to combine the litigation was not intended to delay the process, but to conserve the court’s time and resources. If Read filed a separate action, “we would be pursuing down two separate pieces of behemoth litigation, when we can consolidate them at the same time,” he said.
Read’s civil trial may be a while
While the civil case is still in its early stages, it could ultimately result in Read testifying under oath about O’Keefe’s death for the first time. Unlike in the two criminal trials, the burden of proof for the civil case is the much lighter preponderance of evidence standard, meaning the O’Keefes can meet their burden if they can convince a jury it’s more likely than not that Read was responsible.
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If they succeed, Read could be on the hook for monetary damages.
Last month, Read asked a judge to toss part of the complaint, arguing that the family can’t “recover for negligent infliction of emotional distress based upon the occurrence of the alleged accident because they were not at the scene, nor did they witness the immediate consequences to [O’Keefe].”
Diller fired back in court Monday, accusing Read of mowing her boyfriend down and then returning to O’Keefe’s home to begin “plotting.” O’Keefe’s niece testified in May that Read woke her up in a panic early on the 29th and asked, “could I have done something?” and “could he have gotten hit by a plow?”
“All to a 14-year-old child woken up from sleep, who’s already lost two parents,” Diller remarked, adding that Read proceeded to leave the teen “alone, vulnerable, shocked, and afraid.”
He further accused Read of fabricating a conspiracy following O’Keefe’s death and of launching a public disinformation campaign with the help of Turtleboy blogger and staunch Read advocate Aidan Kearney.
“This is an exceptional case that requires exceptional discovery, that requires us to decide this matter by a jury, not by a motion to dismiss phase, your honor,” Diller argued.
O’Shea took the matter under advisement. He also said he envisions a long and complex legal process ahead, even encouraging the parties to attempt to reach a settlement without litigation, if possible.
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While the case could go to trial as early as next spring, O’Shea predicted a 2027 trial date was far more likely.
“My sense is that nobody is going to be ready to go to trial by the springtime,” he said.
Livestream via NBC10 Boston.
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