The latest on the Karen Read murder case
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Karen Read murder trial: Bukhenik says Proctor investigated case ‘with integrity’
“The investigation was done with honor, integrity, and all the evidence pointed in one direction and one direction only,” State Police Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik said Thursday.
On the stand Thursday:
4:15 p.m. update: Michael Proctor investigated John O’Keefe’s death ‘with integrity,’ Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik says
Forced to navigate the tricky question of Michael Proctor’s role in Karen Read’s case, Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik defended the former trooper’s investigation as one of “integrity.”
As defense attorney Alan Jackson stepped up for cross-examination, he questioned Bukhenik about the division of labor and chain of command during State Police homicide investigations.
“This is a very serious line of work. A lot depends on it,” Bukhenik testified. “We speak for those that can no longer speak for themselves, so we do our best to conduct every investigation with integrity, honor, and get to the truth.”
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“If you don’t properly supervise your subordinates in an investigation, failing to properly supervise them could increase the chances that mistakes are made. Isn’t that right?” Jackson asked.
“Yes, that is one possibility,” Bukhenik acknowledged.
“It also increases chances that there could be inherent biases that are seeping into the case that you want to make sure doesn’t happen. Correct?” Jackson pressed.
“I believe that human beings all have biases, but during the investigation, those biases do not affect — especially in this case, they did not affect any outcome of the investigation,” Bukhenik replied.
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Earlier Thursday, jurors heard State Police previously disciplined Bukhenik after finding that he “failed to properly supervise and/or counsel” former Trooper Michael Proctor regarding Proctor’s vulgar texts about Read.
However, Bukhenik repeatedly defended the State Police investigation throughout his cross-examination.
“This investigation was conducted professionally, with integrity, and all the evidence collected, all the statements collected, pointed in one direction,” he testified. “There was no bias influence on the evidence, on the information that was collected or which direction the investigation pointed naturally.”
Jackson confirmed Proctor was the case officer assigned for the investigation into John O’Keefe’s death, grilling Bukhenik about his reluctance to describe Proctor’s role as that of a lead investigator.
“All I’m saying is the term that I use is the ‘case officer,’” Bukhenik testified. “We’re simply case managers; there’s no leading investigation in any direction.”
“Let me just ask you this: Do you believe that Michael Proctor, his involvement in this case taints the investigation? Tainted the investigation?” Jackson asked.
“No,” Bukhenik replied. “The investigation was done with honor, integrity, and all the evidence pointed in one direction and one direction only.”
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“Honor and integrity by Michael Proctor?” Jackson prompted.
“The investigation was conducted with honor and integrity, and all the evidence pointed in one direction and one direction only,” Bukhenik repeated.
As Jackson pressed him, Bukhenik added: “The investigation was handled with integrity by Michael Proctor.”
He also testified that while Proctor played a more significant role in the investigation than other troopers, he did not believe Proctor played a “major” role, given the size of the team working on the case. Jackson later pointed to records indicating Proctor’s contributions to various parts of the case.
“Even as his supervisor, you don’t know everything that Michael Proctor was doing?” he asked at one point.
“No,” Bukhenik replied. “It’s impossible to know everything somebody was doing.”
However, he said Proctor kept his supervisors “abreast” each step in the investigative process, from search warrants to evidence collection, interviews, and court dates.
Answering a later question from Jackson, Bukhenik also confirmed he contacted the medical examiner’s office on Jan. 29, 2022.
“And did you state to them that there was a possibility that the decedent, John O’Keefe, was struck in the face with a cocktail glass?” Jackson asked.
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Bukhenik said while he didn’t recall his exact words, Jackson’s assessment sounded accurate. Fielding a follow-up question, he confirmed the initial investigation led him to believe there was at least a possibility O’Keefe had been wounded in a physical altercation.
Jackson then asked Bukhenik what steps he took to determine whether anyone inside 34 Fairview Road — where O’Keefe was found unresponsive in the snow — could have been involved in a physical altercation. He noted Bukhenik didn’t enter the home on the 29th, nor did he secure the yard as a crime scene, search or photograph inside the home, or set up a crime scene log to track people coming and going.
Jackson also referred back to Bukhenik’s earlier testimony that he and Proctor interviewed homeowner Brian Albert and his sister-in-law and brother-in-law, Jennifer and Matthew McCabe, early in their investigation. All three witnesses were present inside 34 Fairview Road when Read dropped O’Keefe off outside the home and allegedly struck and injured him.
“These are the very people that would have a motive to lie if they were somehow involved, right?” Jackson asked.
Bukhenik said he could not answer the question. Jackson changed tack, confirming Bukhenik has had suspects lie to him over the course of his career in law enforcement.
“But you took these three individuals just at their word, based on those first three interviews, correct?” he asked.
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“No,” Bukhenik replied. “Not correct.”
He also testified he didn’t find it odd that Brian Albert was present at the McCabes’ house when State Police first interviewed Jennifer McCabe.
Later in his questioning, Jackson asked whether Bukhenik wrote a report documenting troopers’ Feb. 3, 2022, search for evidence outside 34 Fairview Road. Bukhenik said someone authored a report about the search, though he wasn’t sure who. He likewise said he didn’t have a memory of authoring a report about his conduct or activity during subsequent searches on Feb. 4. and Feb. 10.
“It could have happened,” Bukhenik acknowledged. “I just don’t have a memory.”
“The reality, sergeant, is that no report was written about any of these searches until Nov. 4, 2023, correct?” Jackson asked.
“That could be possible, yes,” Bukhenik confirmed.
So, Jackson continued, “the documentation did not exist until … 17, 18 months later?”
“That is not true,” Bukhenik replied. “Each bag that the evidence went into was documented [with] the time, location, who recovered it, where it was recovered, and brief description of the items that were recovered from the scene.”
He confirmed the Canton Police Department contacted him on Feb. 4, 2022, because then-Police Chief Kenneth Berkowitz spotted “a potential piece of evidence” as he drove past 34 Fairview Road.
“Did you question Chief Berkowitz about how he could possibly see a piece of red plastic from his car?” Jackson asked.
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Bukhenik said he didn’t. Responding to a follow-up question, he said he also didn’t question why Berkowitz was driving past 34 Fairview Road in the first place.
“Did you question Chief Berkowitz about whether or not he was aware that there was a conflict of interest between Canton PD and this investigation?” Jackson shot back.
“No, I didn’t question him,” Bukhenik answered. “No.”
He clarified that the Canton Police Department recused itself from conducting interviews in the investigation to prevent any perceived conflict of interest. Brian Albert’s brother, Kevin Albert, is a Canton police detective.
Judge Beverly Cannone sent jurors home for the day shortly before 4 p.m. Bukhenik will return to the stand Friday morning.
1:30 p.m. update: Karen Read’s taillight was missing a large piece of plastic when troopers first laid eyes on it, Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik testifies
As he arrived to interview Karen Read at her parents’ home in Dighton just hours after John O’Keefe died, Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik said he noticed a large piece of red plastic missing from one of the taillights on Read’s SUV.
In fact, Bukhenik testified he was “100%” certain he’d seen a piece of the taillight missing as he stood about 10 to 12 feet away from the snow-covered vehicle. When Bukhenik and then-Trooper Michael Proctor later asked Read about the damage to her taillight, “She stated, ‘I don’t know how I did it last night,’” Bukhenik recalled Thursday.
To hear prosecutors tell it, Read shattered her taillight backing into O’Keefe, her boyfriend of two years, as she dropped him off at 34 Fairview Road in Canton. Yet defense attorneys have suggested Read actually damaged her taillight backing into O’Keefe’s car as she pulled out of his driveway to look for him early on Jan. 29, 2022.
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Read’s lawyers have further accused Proctor of lying and fabricating evidence to frame her. However, Bukhenik testified that while Proctor came within three feet of Read’s SUV as it sat parked in Dighton, he did not touch it.
‘I was suspecting that he was hit out of his shoes’
Bukhenik walked jurors through his initial involvement in the case Thursday, explaining he received a call at about 6:44 a.m. on the 29th informing him that a man had been found in a snowbank. He said he alerted Proctor, the trooper on call at the time, and asked him to follow up.
The pair soon launched an investigation, meeting up at the Canton Police Department around 9:15 a.m. According to Bukhenik, the troopers received O’Keefe’s cellphone and viewed a broken cocktail glass and a brown paper bag with Solo cups containing purported blood samples collected at 34 Fairview Road.
They also learned that Read “was questioning whether she had hit [O’Keefe],” Bukhenik recalled. However, he said he and Proctor were still in the fact-finding stage at that point.
“We’re not ruling people in as much as we’re ruling people out,” he explained. “So we need to get as much information as possible.”
After interviewing homeowner Brian Albert and his sister-in-law and brother-in-law, Jennifer and Matthew McCabe, Bukhenik and Proctor continued on to Good Samaritan Medical Center to view O’Keefe’s body.
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O’Keefe had blood pooled under his head, and both eyelids were swollen and discolored, Bukhenik recalled. He also noted a tiny cut near one of O’Keefe’s eyelids, a small laceration on the left side of his nose, an abrasion on his right knee, and a “series of cuts and bruises” on the exterior of his right arm.
As the troopers collected and bagged O’Keefe’s “soaking wet” clothing, Bukhenik said he noticed one of O’Keefe’s sneakers was missing.
“At that point, our theory had evolved to a vehicle strike, based on the injuries,” Bukhenik explained. “And I was suspecting that he was hit out of his shoes.”
He said he thought the missing sneaker might be somewhere in the area where O’Keefe was found, “or where he was initially struck by a vehicle.” He later learned the State Police Special Emergency Response Team (SERT) unearthed a matching sneaker outside 34 Fairview Road.
What did Read tell investigators?
Bukhenik and Proctor arrived in Dighton at about 3 p.m. on the 29th to speak with Read, who purportedly told them she was willing to answer their questions but “didn’t want to go into too many details.”
According to Bukhenik, Read recalled meeting up with O’Keefe at C.F. McCarthy’s the evening of the 28th. She drank vodka sodas; he had Bud Light. The couple eventually ended up at the nearby Waterfall Bar & Grille before setting out for an afterparty at 34 Fairview Road. Read told the investigators she made a three-point turn after dropping O’Keefe off at the home and didn’t see him go inside, Bukhenik testified.
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He said Read also told them O’Keefe had bumped his head two nights prior, though she didn’t see any injuries on him the evening of the 28th.
Bukhenik said he and Proctor seized Read’s cellphone and had her SUV towed from her parents’ home. He denied manipulating the phone in any way and said he didn’t recall seeing Proctor manipulate it, either. Similarly, Bukhenik said neither he nor Proctor touched the SUV as it was loaded onto a tow truck. Following an objection from the defense, Judge Beverly Cannone struck the last part of Bukhenik’s testimony.
Investigators unloaded Read’s SUV into the Canton Police Department’s sallyport garage at 5:35 p.m., and Bukhenik said he helped put up caution tape around the vehicle to prevent anyone from getting close. He denied touching Read’s SUV and said he never saw Proctor touch it, either.
Jurors viewed clips of Ring camera footage from O’Keefe’s driveway, and Bukhenik testified the video showed Read’s right taillight missing part of its red lens around 5:07 a.m. on the 29th — consistent with the damage he’d seen upon arriving in Dighton.
Bukhenik told jurors there was no Ring footage available from 12:36 a.m. that day, the same time Read’s phone purportedly connected to the Wi-Fi at O’Keefe’s house. He explained there was also no video of Read leaving O’Keefe’s house with Jennifer McCabe and Kerry Roberts later that morning, nor could he find video from when Read’s SUV left O’Keefe’s home for the last time.
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Melting snow revealed further clues, Bukhenik says
As the snow melted in the days following O’Keefe’s death, Bukhenik said he returned to 34 Fairview Road to search for more evidence. During a Feb. 3 search, he said troopers found and photographed several pieces of plastic and a black plastic drinking straw outside the home.
Bukhenik also explained he wanted to find a baseball cap O’Keefe wore the night he died, which hadn’t been in the pile of clothes Bukhenik and Proctor collected at the hospital.
“That could have been a lead. That could be a clue of where Mr. O’Keefe was last, prior to being discovered,” Bukhenik said, adding that troopers found the hat during their Feb. 3 search.
He said he directed troopers in his office to drive past 34 Fairview Road on their way to and from work to see if the melting snow would reveal any further clues. Bukhenik stopped by the home again on Feb. 4 to collect evidence after someone from the Canton Police Department called him to flag an additional discovery, he testified.
A subsequent search on Feb. 10 turned up more items in the same vicinity, though Bukhenik acknowledged the State Police Crime Scene Services Section did not come out to 34 Fairview Road to photograph that search.
“We had been to the scene so many times,” he explained. “It was the same general vicinity, and we just made a decision not to have Crime Scene [Services] come out to photograph these six pieces.”
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Bukhenik weighs in on Proctor’s ‘no nudes’ text
In one of the more memorable moments Thursday morning, special prosecutor Hank Brennan briefly questioned Bukhenik regarding one of Proctor’s vulgar texts about Read.
Sent to Proctor’s friends, family, and coworkers, the texts came to light during Read’s first trial and ultimately resulted in Proctor’s firing. The incident also cost Bukhenik five vacation days after State Police determined he failed to reprimand Proctor for the inappropriate messages.
Bukhenik confirmed he was on one of Proctor’s text chains but said he was working a traffic detail at Boston Logan International Airport on Aug. 17, 2022, when Proctor sent a message responding to a picture of defense attorney David Yannetti.
“Funny, I am going through his retarded client’s phone,” Proctor wrote. “No nudes so far. I hate that man. I truly hate him.”
Bukhenik said he saw the text message come in on his Apple Watch, glanced at it, and acknowledged it with a thumbs up emoji. He said he only reviewed the full text chain through documents provided to him during the State Police internal affairs investigation.
How many drinks was Read served?
Before Cannone called a lunch recess around 1:10 p.m., Bukhenik began to walk jurors through a timeline of Read and O’Keefe’s bar-hopping on Jan. 28, 2022.
He noted O’Keefe embraced Read when she arrived at C.F. McCarthy’s in Canton around 9 p.m. and said Read quickly procured her first alcoholic beverage, a tall cylindrical glass with a straw.
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Bukhenik tallied five drinks served to Read by about 10:34 p.m. and said she walked out of the bar en route to the Waterfall without putting her final drink down.
Livestream via NBC10 Boston.
Karen Read returns to Norfolk Superior Court Thursday as testimony in her murder retrial continues.
Jurors on Wednesday heard from a Massachusetts State Police trooper who logged some of the evidence found in the snow where Read’s boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, had lain mortally wounded. Trooper Connor Keefe showed jurors O’Keefe’s missing sneaker and several pieces of red and clear plastic taillight shards discovered on the snowy lawn outside 34 Fairview Road.
More on Karen Read:
Prosecutors allege Read, 45, backed her SUV into O’Keefe in a drunken rage while dropping him off at the home for an afterparty on Jan. 29, 2022. However, her lawyers say she was framed in a coverup intended to protect the family and friends of homeowner Brian Albert, a fellow Boston police officer. The defense has suggested other guests inside the home attacked O’Keefe and threw him out in a blizzard.
Among their evidence, Read’s lawyers have pointed to a Google search Albert’s sister-in-law, Jennifer McCabe, made for “hos long to die in cold.” They claim McCabe’s phone data indicates a 2:27 a.m. timestamp for the search, though prosecution digital forensics expert Jessica Hyde testified Wednesday that McCabe actually made the search hours later.
“What I can state to a scientific degree of certainty is that that search occurred at 6:24 a.m. and was the last search in the tab that had been opened at 2:27,” she opined.
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Hyde’s explanation backed up McCabe’s earlier testimony that she made the search at Read’s insistence after she, Read, and Kerry Roberts found O’Keefe unresponsive in the snow shortly after 6 a.m. on the 29th. Another digital forensics expert who testified last week, Cellebrite’s Ian Whiffin, offered the same opinion as Hyde.
Hyde also testified Wednesday that O’Keefe’s cellphone did not appear to have been stored in accordance with best digital forensics practices, which would dictate securing the device in a Faraday box or bag to block electromagnetic signals. When devices are not placed in Faraday enclosures, she explained, they run the risk of being remotely wiped and their data can “theoretically” be overwritten.
The ongoing trial is Read’s second, after jurors in her first murder trial returned deadlocked last summer and Judge Beverly Cannone declared a mistrial.
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