The latest on the Karen Read murder case
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‘Emotional revenge’: Sgt. Bukhenik reads flirty texts between Karen Read and Brian Higgins
“To put a label on the whole thing, my opinion is that she’s trying to get revenge,” Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik testified Friday.
On the stand Friday:
4:30 p.m. update: Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik weighs in on whether Karen Read ‘ghosted’ Brian Higgins
While Karen Read’s texts with Brian Higgins made liberal use of phrases such as “you’re hot” and “hooking up,” Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik said he didn’t believe the January 2022 conversations were entirely flirtatious.
“My opinion is that it’s an angry girlfriend trying to set up a hookup to hurt John [O’Keefe],” Bukhenik said of Read’s intentions.
“To put a label on the whole thing, my opinion is that she’s trying to get revenge,” he added, referring to a prior incident in which Read accused her boyfriend of cheating on her during a trip to Aruba weeks before he died.
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Defense attorney Alan Jackson asked Bukhenik whether he thought Read sought physical revenge.
“Emotional revenge,” the trooper clarified. “She’s trying to hook up with Higgins and then hurt John by cheating on him.”
Bukhenik said he wasn’t sure whether O’Keefe had seen Read’s texts with Higgins before he died Jan. 29, 2022. Jackson noted Higgins’s use of the term “ghost” in his texts with Read, slang for abruptly cutting contact with no explanation. He asked Bukhenik whether he interpreted Higgins’s messages as a show of frustration at Read’s “abandonment of the conversation,” but Bukhenik said he did not see it that way.
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Noting the lack of messages between Read and Higgins from Jan. 23 to Jan. 28, 2022, Jackson asked, “Would you describe Ms. Read’s side of the conversation as having ‘ghosted’ Mr. Higgins?”
“One could read into that in that manner, yeah,” Bukhenik acknowledged.
Read’s lawyers allege Higgins’s flirtation with Read could have given him motive to harm O’Keefe. They’ve sought to implicate Higgins in their third-party culprit defense, suggesting he could be to blame for O’Keefe’s death.
Bukhenik confirmed investigators didn’t seek Higgins’s cellphone to download his calls and texts, though Higgins volunteered an extraction of his messages with Read and O’Keefe. The trooper said he also did not seek a phone belonging to Higgins’s friend Brian Albert, who owned the home where O’Keefe was found in the snow.
Bukhenik further testified he never heard about a 2:22 a.m. call on Jan. 29 between Higgins and Albert, nor was he aware of a call Higgins purportedly made at 1:35 a.m. that day.
When Higgins handed over his texts, Bukhenik said he warned Higgins that investigators already had Read’s and O’Keefe’s phones, telling him, “If there’s anything deleted or altered in any way, we will have proof of it. So please make sure that you understand the magnitude of this situation. We’re investigating a homicide; it needs to be accurate.”
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“And it was,” Bukhenik told jurors.
He said Higgins told investigators he wasn’t paying attention to the lawn outside 34 Fairview Road as he left an afterparty in the early hours of Jan. 29, when not much snow had fallen. According to Bukhenik, Higgins said he was more focused on the plow affixed to his vehicle “and was not paying attention to anything over the snowbank.”
“And of course you knew at the time, as a detective and an investigator, you knew at the time that with a dusting of snow, there is no snowbank, right?” Jackson pressed.
Bukhenik said he couldn’t speak to how much snow Higgins was able to plow, given the dusting on the ground.
“There might have been a small snowbank,” he added.
Answering a subsequent question from Jackson, he said Higgins’s snowbank explanation didn’t raise any suspicions that Higgins was being less than truthful.
Jackson later turned his attention to surveillance video from the Waterfall Bar & Grille in Canton, where Higgins, Albert, Read, O’Keefe, and others drank the evening of Jan. 28, 2022. He pointed to a clip where Albert and Higgins appeared to be physically engaged, and Bukhenik said the conduct looked like “roughhousing, just a couple of buddies messing around.”
Jackson showed another clip of Albert wrapping his arms around Higgins from behind, and Bukhenik said it looked similar to the Heimlich maneuver.
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“Could it be described as wrestling or grappling?” Jackson asked.
“I guess, yeah,” Bukhenik replied.
Jackson later asked whether another part of the surveillance video showed Higgins gesturing toward O’Keefe before leaving the bar.
“Given this perspective, he might have been,” Bukhenik said. “I don’t know who he was gesturing at.”
Jackson then turned his attention to Ring surveillance video from O’Keefe’s driveway, playing a clip of Read’s SUV backing out of the garage toward O’Keefe’s parked car at 5:07 a.m. on Jan. 29. One of O’Keefe’s tires appeared to jolt slightly as the right rear portion of Read’s SUV neared, and Jackson asked Bukhenik whether he believed the two vehicles made contact.
“There is a lot of movement in the shot,” Bukhenik acknowledged, though he said he couldn’t tell with 100% certainty whether O’Keefe’s tire moved.
Based on the video, he added, “there was no damage that occurred to either vehicle at that point in time.” Pressed by Jackson, however, Bukhenik admitted that “logically speaking, the two vehicles had to have to come into contact for the tire to move.”
“They had to have collided, correct?” Jackson asked.
“At a slow speed, yes,” Bukhenik replied.
Earlier in his cross-examination, he confirmed investigators with the Canton Police Department did not find taillight fragments during their initial search of the lawn outside 34 Fairview Road. Read’s broken right rear taillight is a key piece of evidence in prosecutors’ case against her.
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“As a matter of fact, you’re also aware that no taillight material was found until after that SUV was in Massachusetts State Police custody and sitting at the sallyport in Canton, correct?” Jackson asked.
“I believe the first taillight piece was found after it was in our custody,” Bukhenik acknowledged. “I don’t know the exact time.”
He also confirmed he was aware the Alberts owned a dog at the time of O’Keefe’s death, a German Shepherd named Chloe that the family later rehomed. Read’s lawyers have suggested wounds on O’Keefe’s right arm were from a dog attack inside 34 Fairview Road.
Bukhenik said he identified the dog, since renamed Cora, using veterinary records. However, he couldn’t point to records showing the dog’s purchase or rehoming from the Alberts’.
Jackson also asked Bukhenik if he was aware some reports in Read’s case hadn’t been recorded until hundreds of days after the events they were intended to memorialize. According to Jackson, the longest delay of any report in the investigation was 581 days.
Bukhenik said he wasn’t aware.
Judge Beverly Cannone sent jurors home for the day around 4 p.m. Bukhenik will be back on the stand Monday starting at 10 a.m.
1:15 p.m. update: ‘Very very complicated.’ Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik reads texts between Karen Read and Brian Higgins
Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik gave jurors a glimpse into the fault lines of Karen Read’s relationship with John O’Keefe Friday as he read through Read’s flirty texts with another man.
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In the weeks leading up to O’Keefe’s death on Jan. 29, 2022, Read and Brian Higgins texted about sharing a kiss and expressed mutual attraction as Read described her relationship with O’Keefe as “very very complicated.”
“None of us is married,” Read wrote in one message to Higgins.
“True,” Higgins replied. “So game on?”
“We can say whatever we want,” Read wrote back.
Higgins drank with Read and O’Keefe at the Waterfall Bar & Grille in Canton on Jan. 28, 2022, and also attended an afterparty at 34 Fairview Road, where O’Keefe was found unresponsive in the snow hours later. Read’s lawyers have sought to implicate Higgins in their third-party culprit defense, suggesting his flirtation with Read gave him motive to harm O’Keefe.
Earlier in his cross-examination, Bukhenik — one of the State Police investigators who worked on the case — defended troopers’ investigation into O’Keefe’s death. Defense attorney Alan Jackson asked Bukhenik whether he worked under the assumption or presumption early on in the investigation that O’Keefe had been struck by an SUV.
“The evidence was pointing that impact took place, because there was damage to the taillight [on Read’s SUV] — large chunks of it was missing — and we were locating pieces that were consistent with texture, color, and size fragments from that SUV on the lawn,” Bukhenik replied. “So I wasn’t assuming anything; the evidence was speaking to us.”
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Later in his testimony, however, Bukhenik added: “Based on [Read’s alleged] statement ‘I hit him,’ I assumed that Mr. O’Keefe was impacted with something.”
At one point, an evidently frustrated Jackson went back and forth with Bukhenik over the meaning of the term “theory.” He asked Bukhenik if he knew what “theory” means, and Bukhenik said English isn’t his first language and suggested Jackson pull out a dictionary to show him the definition.
Looking over a report indicating he recovered fragments of glass and red, black, and clear plastic during a Feb. 10, 2022, search outside 34 Fairview Road, Bukhenik testified the items were all found in the area where O’Keefe had lain in the snow. However, he acknowledged State Police did not document the exact location of each item that day with GPS coordinates or photographs.
Jackson later displayed a photo of an evidence envelope from the Feb. 10 search, and Bukhenik confirmed he wasn’t the one to mark it with the case information. While he maintained he bagged the evidence himself, Bukhenik said he didn’t recognize the handwriting on the envelope.
“If you bagged it yourself, why didn’t you fill out the evidence envelope?” Jackson asked.
“I bagged it and turned it over, and I told them exactly where it was and what time,” Bukhenik explained. “So someone else wrote the information.”
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While Bukhenik said he didn’t know who did so, “I know it was a trusted member of our unit and part of the investigative team. … I wouldn’t have turned it over to a random stranger.”
After viewing a chain of custody report and receipt for the State Police Crime Lab, Bukhenik said the log indicates the first time the lab received the items for processing was March 14, 2022.
Jackson questioned the chain of custody, asking, “Can you point to any documentation indicating where those items went, whose possession they were in, and what circumstance between … Feb. 10 and March 14? Can you point to any document?”
Bukhenik confirmed he couldn’t remember to whom he handed over the items but said the evidence was in the custody of the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office before it was submitted to the crime lab.
Jackson later displayed an evidence envelope indicating Bukhenik’s subordinate, former Trooper Michael Proctor, collected three pieces of clear plastic and five pieces of red plastic at 34 Fairview Road on Feb. 11. Noting the size of one of the fragments, Jackson asked, “You didn’t see this item on Feb. 10 when you were there, correct?”
“If I saw that item, I would have picked it up,” Bukhenik replied.
“Right,” Jackson shot back. “It wasn’t there, was it?”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Bukhenik clarified. “I said if I saw it, I would have picked it up.”
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“But you didn’t see it, did you?” Jackson prompted.
“I did not see it, obviously,” Bukhenik acknowledged.
As Jackson displayed photos of another evidence envelope dated Feb. 18, Bukhenik estimated two additional red plastic fragments contained within measured about 7 inches and 7.5 to 8 inches, respectively. He noted there was still some snow on the ground when he visited 34 Fairview Road on the 10th.
“We did not excavate anything,” he added. “We simply allowed the thawing and natural recession of the snow to reveal additional items.”
Jackson then turned his attention to Higgins, and Bukhenik confirmed the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives agent provided an extraction of his own text messages with Read and O’Keefe.
Asked if he would describe Higgins’s texts with Read as “flirtatious in nature,” Bukhenik admitted it’s been a while since he reviewed the messages in question.
“I’m not comfortable putting a label on something,” he testified, though he said the texts between Higgins and Read were friendly. Jackson had Bukhenik read the full text chain, beginning with Read’s initial messages to Higgins on Jan. 12, 2022.
As they texted a few days later, Higgins told Read she was “nutz” and she replied, “You stink.”
After Higgins called Read “trouble,” she wrote back, “You’re hot.”
“Are you serious or messing with me?” Higgins asked.
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“No I’m serious,” Read replied.
“Feeling is mutual,” Higgins responded. “Is that bad?”
In later messages, he told Read he liked her “from jump” and asked what Read liked about him.
“I just feel like you’re from my neighborhood,” she replied, adding, “And I think you’re hot.”
Their texts also reference a kiss; Higgins testified in Read’s first trial that she “planted a kiss” on him after he visited O’Keefe’s house in January 2022 to watch a New England Patriots game.
“I just think you’re like me and I am attracted to you,” Read wrote at one point. “A lot.”
“Feeling is mutual,” Higgins replied. “I just never saw this coming”
Across their various text conversations, they discussed their drinking habits and personal lives, with Read mentioning her “very f***ed up situation” with O’Keefe. She alleged O’Keefe had “hooked up [with] another girl on vacation” over New Year’s and that she found him in their hotel lobby “all over” one of his friends.
“Did they bang?” Higgins asked.
“Does that matter?” Read replied.
Elsewhere, she expressed her frustration at the transition from living as a single woman to helping O’Keefe raise his young niece and nephew, who lived with their uncle after their parents died.
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“I never wanted kids,” she wrote, adding, “It’s just a very very complicated dynamic with the four of us. He isn’t cut out for what he’s doing. And the kids present constant issues.”
She described O’Keefe’s niece and nephew as “very spoiled.”
“And they’re not my family. My parents keep telling me I’d feel differently if they were mine. Or my own sister’s,” Read continued.
“What do you want ideally?” she asked Higgins at one point, and he said he wanted “the real deal.”
“Doesn’t exist,” she wrote back.
In another message, she mentioned O’Keefe had shown her Ring surveillance video of her walking Higgins out of O’Keefe’s house after the Patriots game.
“He’s like ‘Christ, are you guys hooking up??’” Read wrote.
“OMG, great,” Higgins replied. “I don’t need drama dude.”
Read reassured him, adding, “I know where the cameras are anyway, duh.”
Their text conversations had begun to peter out by Jan. 23. Five days later, as Read and O’Keefe entered the Waterfall, Higgins fired off a couple texts.
“Ummmmmm,” he wrote at 11:32 p.m. on the 28th. “Well.”
Read’s curt reply came just over 12 hours later: “John died.”
Livestream via NBC10 Boston.
Karen Read‘s lawyers will continue their cross-examination of Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik Friday following an action-packed full day of testimony.
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Defense attorney Alan Jackson had Bukhenik in the hot seat with pointed questions about whether former Trooper Michael Proctor “tainted the investigation” into the death of Read’s boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe.
Bukhenik testified he did not believe Proctor played a “major” role in the case and defended the State Police investigation, telling jurors it was “done with honor, integrity, and all the evidence pointed in one direction and one direction only.”
More on Karen Read:
Read, 45, is accused of ramming O’Keefe with her SUV in a drunken rage while dropping him off at a house party in Canton after midnight on Jan. 29, 2022. Her lawyers contend she was framed in a vast conspiracy intended to protect the family and friends of homeowner Brian Albert, another Boston police officer. The defense has accused Proctor of lying and fabricating evidence to pin O’Keefe’s death on Read.
Bukhenik testified Friday that he noticed a large piece of red plastic missing from one of the taillights on Read’s SUV when he and Proctor first arrived to interview Read at her parents’ home in Dighton on Jan. 29. He denied touching Read’s SUV as it sat in the Canton Police Department’s sallyport garage and said he never saw Proctor touch it, either. Bukhenik also testified Proctor did not touch the car earlier that day in Dighton.
State Police Lt. Kevin O’Hara testified earlier this week that members of the State Police Special Emergency Response Team (SERT) found several pieces of broken taillight and O’Keefe’s missing sneaker outside Albert’s home at 34 Fairview Road on Jan. 29. Bukhenik said he later returned to the scene on three separate occasions to collect additional evidence as the snow melted.
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According to Bukhenik, troopers found and photographed O’Keefe’s missing baseball cap, several pieces of plastic, and a black plastic drinking straw outside the home during a Feb. 3 search.
Jackson grilled Bukhenik about the documentation for those three searches, forcing the sergeant to acknowledge the possibility that no formal reports were written about the searches until late 2023. However, Bukhenik clarified that each evidence bag documented key details about items recovered from the scene.
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