Who is responsible for John O’Keefe’s death?
A year ago, Karen Read was acquitted of criminal charges connected with the death of O’Keefe, a Boston police officer who was her boyfriend. Now, the pre-trial phase of discovery in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by O’Keefe’s family — which seeks to hold her civilly liable — is underway.
Yet, at least for now, the question of any responsibility Read may have is getting lost in the furor over the civil lawsuit that she filed last month against the Massachusetts State Police and the Town of Canton Police Department.
Read’s lawsuit charges both law enforcement agencies with concealing “an embedded culture of bigotry, misogyny, systemic failures, and institutional rot.” Given the vulgar and disgusting text messages from former trooper Michael Proctor and former Canton cop Sean Goode that are cited in the complaint, the two agencies that employed them have a lot to answer for when it comes to professional standards and conduct.
But so far, those text messages, while vile, shed no new light on the circumstances leading to O’Keefe’s death, after he was found on the Canton lawn of a fellow Boston police officer on the morning of Jan. 29, 2022. Yet the narrative of massive institutional failure keeps Read in the role of victim, while relegating O’Keefe to the role of inconvenient detail.
“This falls under the old adage, the best defense is the best offense,” Dave Aronberg, a former state attorney of Palm Beach County, Fla., who is now in private practice, told me in a recent interview.
Aronberg, who has commented on various national media outlets about the Read saga, said Read’s defense team is employing a “PR offensive” that is “making this about the cops.” She is saying “some of the cops acted badly, which they did,” he said. “She wants to reclaim the narrative, to play on her choice of field and the most favorable terrain is to make this a trial about police misconduct rather than her own misconduct.”
So far, the court of public opinion is firmly on Read’s side. In a recent poll by the University of New Hampshire, 69 percent of those surveyed said they believed police “definitely or probably” concealed evidence in the case. Responses are largely bipartisan: 74 percent of Republicans, 68 percent of Democrats, and 66 percent of independents share this view.
However, legal analysts like Aronberg say that Proctor’s despicable words do not on their own discount evidence that ties O’Keefe’s death to Read’s actions. In the two criminal trials, one of which ended with a hung jury and a mistrial, the other in Read’s acquittal on all charges (except for operating a vehicle under the influence), prosecutors alleged that she killed him by backing into him with her car and leaving him to die in the cold. Her defense team claimed she was framed by police. During the trial, Proctor was made to read his misogynist text messages out loud. His testimony played a big role in undercutting the integrity of the police investigation and the credibility of the evidence against Read.
With that, Aronberg sees parallels to the famous case involving O.J. Simpson, who in 1994 was acquitted in the murders of his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, after his defense team highlighted the racial bias of the Los Angeles Police Department, and specifically of LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman. In 1997, a civil jury found Simpson liable for the wrongful deaths of Simpson and Goldman.
Criminal cases require proof “beyond a reasonable doubt,” while civil cases require “a preponderance of the evidence,” or “more probable than not” — a lower standard.
While the wrongful death lawsuit plays out, Proctor and his texts have unquestionably given Read a huge gift — the power to shift the focus from any accountability she may have for O’Keefe’s fate to victimhood.
In a June interview with Today, Read also said she was filing her lawsuit on O’Keefe’s behalf.
“John was the victim of this institutional corruption, and we’re the voice for John,” she said.
Read may be what she claims — the female outsider targeted by misogynist and racist cops to take the fall for others.
But through it all, she is still the star of the Karen Read show, with legions of fans and supporters. Meanwhile, O’Keefe, the 36-year-old police officer who was raising the two children of a sister who died, is now a bit player in the story of his own death. If Read is his voice, it’s hard to hear.
As for the loved ones O’Keefe left behind, in the Today show interview, Read said, “I don’t have anything to say to his family. I interacted with them for several years. John and I actually dated a long time ago when we were in our early 20s and I was caring and I believe generous with them, with my time. We did spend a lot of time together, and they experienced who I am, and they know who I am.”
She may have nothing to say to them, but through their lawsuit, the O’Keefe family has something to say to her.
The victim who deserves justice is O’Keefe.
Joan Vennochi is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at joan.vennochi@globe.com. Follow her @joan_vennochi.