Breaking his silence about the Karen Read case, former State Police investigator Michael Proctor said in an interview that he “wouldn’t change anything” about his handling of the probe into John O’Keefe’s death and that people “need to know the truth.”
In an interview with ABC 20/20 that aired Wednesday, just hours after Read was acquitted of all major charges, Proctor spoke with ABC News Chief National Correspondent Matt Gutman about offensive text messages he sent to friends and colleagues about Read, his firing from the State Police, and his handling of the investigation.
“People need to know what has been going on,” Proctor said in the interview. “They need to know the truth. They’re only hearing one side.”
On Wednesday, a jury cleared Read of three serious charges: second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence, and leaving the scene of a crash resulting in death. The jury found her guilty only of a lesser charge of drunken driving.
She will serve one year of probation as a first-time offender.
Prosecutors alleged that Read backed her SUV into O’Keefe, a Boston police officer, and left him to die in the snow. But her lawyers said Read was framed and that Proctor was biased against her from the start of the investigation.
Proctor took the stand in the first trial and was forced to read aloud a series of crude and misogynistic text messages about Read.
The State Police later fired Proctor, who was not called to testify in the second trial. Proctor’s wife defended him in March, saying Read’s lawyers were “unabashedly creating false narratives and distracting the public and potential jurors from clear-cut evidence."
Here are five key takeaways from Proctor’s interview.
Proctor discussed his “regrettable” text messages
When asked about his texts about Read, including “She’s a whack job [expletive]” and “Yeah, she’s a babe. Weird Fall River accent though,” Proctor told Gutman he “can 100 percent understand why” people might question his integrity in other investigations.
However, Proctor said he was writing the texts to his “good buddies” and connected emotionally with the case. Proctor said “negative” feelings developed towards Read “as the case went on.”
“When you have, you know, a fellow police officer around my age, two kids of his own. It generates an emotion,” Proctor said. “And I expressed those emotions in a negative way, which I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have even been texting my friends anything.”
Proctor described the messages as “regrettable,” but “in all the content of the messages, what you don’t see is a conspiracy,” he said.
“I see someone who was caught up in the moment of investigating, you know, a fellow police officer and just saying inappropriate things,” Proctor said. “They are what they are. They don’t define me as a person.”
In another text to his sister, Proctor wrote of Read, “Hopefully she kills herself.” He called the phrase a “figure of speech.”
“It was made in jest,” Proctor said. “It’s a figure of speech ... It wasn’t literally ‘I hope she kills herself.’”
Proctor became emotional discussing his firing
Proctor said he “couldn’t even talk” when he heard he was dishonorably discharged from the State Police.
“I just remember dropping to my knees and laying on my lawn, like crying,” Proctor said. “I was in complete hysterics.”
He said he “broke down” when he returned his formal dress uniform.
“You go through a six-month academy, and you’re very proud to put that uniform on,” Proctor said with tears in his eyes. “Yeah, that was a tough ...” before trailing off.
Proctor would not change “anything” in his handling of the investigation
Proctor told Gutman that due to the attention on the case and the “crazy, crazy so-called conspiracy,” he has since considered whether he should have looked at other cars and other parts of the case, but stated firmly that he would not go back and change his investigation.
“There’s some witnesses maybe we could have interviewed a little sooner, but overall, myself and every detective in that office worked this case like we always do, so I wouldn’t change anything.”
“Nothing?” Gutman asked.
“No,” Proctor said again.
Gutman asked Proctor if it changes ”the nature of the investigation when you know the deceased is a cop?”
“No,” Proctor said, taking a breath and shaking his head. “Nor should it. There’s a little more emotion involved.”
Proctor said investigators met as a unit and discussed finding “taillight pieces at the scene, the one shoe [of O’Keefe’s] at the hospital, [Read’s] statements, ‘Did I hit him,’ ‘Could I have hit him.’” At that point, they were “very confident” that they knew “what had transpired.”
“Karen Read backed her Lexus vehicle into John O’Keefe,” Proctor said of their conclusion.
The defense accused Proctor of tampering with Read’s SUV and planting evidence at the scene, which Proctor denied.
“I’m laughing because it’s such a ridiculous accusation,” Proctor said. “It’s something I would never do, I’ve never done, and there’s no evidence of it.”
Proctor said evidence was discovered over multiple days on the lawn where O’Keefe’s body was found because of the weather fluctuating from 30 to 60 degrees and melting snow.
He said there’s “no evidence” of a cover-up and “it didn’t happen.” When asked by Gutman, Proctor agreed that there is a history of police and law enforcement corruption in Boston, but “not in this case.”
“It didn’t happen here,” Proctor said. “They believe that the State Police, multiple units within the State Police, the Canton Police Department, about a dozen civilians, are all in on this conspiracy to frame a woman we don’t know?
“And over the last two-and-a-half, three years, not one person has said, ‘Wait a minute, I’m not going down for this. Here’s what really happened.’” Proctor said.
Proctor’s connection with the community “wasn’t a concern,” he said
Proctor said he had heard of Brian Albert, a now-retired Boston police officer who owned the house on Fairview Road, but never met him until he interviewed him. Proctor said he did know Albert’s brother Chris and his wife Julie.
“Yes, through a distant relationship with my sister,” Proctor said.
Proctor said he did not know Jennifer McCabe, Albert’s sister-in-law, who was at the afterparty and later joined Read in her search for O’Keefe, or her family.
“Never met the McCabes before prior to this investigation,” he said.
“Did you ever think at any point that you should recuse yourself from this case?” Gutman asked
“No, absolutely not,” Proctor said. “It wasn’t a concern of mine. It wasn’t a concern of DA Michael Morrissey. It wasn’t a concern of my supervisors. I didn’t know these people. There were loose connections with Julie and Chris.”
Proctor calls Read supporters the “loud minority”
Proctor said that supporters of Read are “just the loud minority.”
“The silent majority, we’ve had an overwhelming amount of support. They’re just not out there tweeting,” Proctor said.
Ava Berger can be reached at ava.berger@globe.com. Follow her @Ava_Berger_.