The baffling case of Karen Read

Nearly three weeks after O’Keefe’s death, the state’s lead investigator, Michael Proctor, allegedly located more fragments of a tail light at the crime scene and transported the evidence to the crime lab. Prosecutors say they found minute traces of O’Keefe’s DNA on those fragments, as well as tiny particles from the tail light on some of O’Keefe’s clothes. Yet the defense hammered home the enormous delay in locating what would have been an incredibly significant piece of evidence, as well as the unreliability of evidence suddenly unearthed by Proctor.

That’s because Proctor has multiple personal ties to both the victim and the witnesses. In texts he sent a day after the investigation began, he used a misogynistic slur to refer to Read, made it clear he thought Read’s guilt was obvious from the beginning, and even texted his sister that he hoped Read would kill herself. The defense alleges Proctor helped frame Read for the murder, deliberately damaging her tail light in order to claim the damage was caused when she hit O’Keefe with her car. In fact, a mysteriously altered video of Read’s car that purportedly showed the damage made it all the way to trial before the defense pointed out that the image was misleadingly altered — a “mirror” video with the tail light in question inverted from its actual position.

It doesn’t help any of these optics that Proctor’s sister texted him that Albert’s wife Julie wanted to send Proctor “a gift” after the investigation was over. Proctor protested on the stand that none of these texts impacted the integrity of the police investigation, but given Monday’s mistrial, some jurors may have disagreed with him. They evidently weren’t alone: State police announced that they had fired Proctor immediately after the mistrial based on “information about serious misconduct [that] emerged in testimony” — an extraordinarily rare move on their part.

Other facts of the case that on their surface might have supported the prosecution proved murkier on closer inspection. O’Keefe died of blunt-force trauma from a skull fracture and hypothermia, according to the medical examiner. He also had gashes on his arms that seemed unlikely to have been made from a car impact. The defense alleged these resulted from a dog attack on O’Keefe inside the house. O’Keefe also lacked many of the injuries you’d expect to see from a car impact, such as broken bones or significant bruises.

The prosecution’s witnesses are also controversial. In addition to Read's former friend McCabe, who had ties to both O’Keefe and the Alberts, the party attendees included several people that Read’s defense argued should have been investigated by police before taking the stand. Among them: Brian Higgins, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent who’d been sporadically flirting with Read in the lead-up to O’Keefe’s death, and Albert’s son Colin, who as a teenager had made violent threats against other teens.

Many of the witnesses who were at the party, including McCabe and the Alberts, exchanged a litany of phone calls to one another throughout the time O’Keefe supposedly lay on the lawn, per phone records. Several later testified that the calls were “butt dials,” placed randomly and by complete mistake. As circumstances go, it’s eyebrow-raising, to say the least.

Despite all the problems with the prosecution’s case, the strongest evidence for the defense is likewise fully debatable. One of the defense’s key witnesses was a veteran snowplow driver who made multiple trips past the Alberts’ house during the time O’Keefe was allegedly wounded in the snow, yet claimed he saw no body lying anywhere on the lawn. However, snow impedes visibility, even with a bright snowplow light, and eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.

Another piece of crucial evidence that many Read supporters consider a “smoking gun” for the defense has also been fully debunked by prosecution analysts. At issue: Two searches McCabe made on her cellphone at some point during the early morning hours surrounding O’Keefe’s death, including a misspelled query, “Hos long to die in cold.” The prosecution claims, and McCabe testified, that she made the searches around six in the morning when she and Read found O’Keefe lying in the snow. The official cellphone records for the search, however, show the timestamp for the search at 2:27 am.

The implication is that if McCabe searched for this then, she was part of a conspiracy to stage the scene and frame Read. But McCabe claims she merely opened that tab on her phone browser at 2:27 am, left it open, and searched the phrase hours later, after she and Read found him together. Multiple data analysts for the prosecution corroborated this interpretation of the cellphone data. Still, the defense scored a point in their favor by noting that their expert witness, who argued the search occurred at 2:27, arrived at his conclusion by using a method developed by one of the prosecution’s witnesses.

Other findings that leaned toward the defense included O’Keefe’s fitness tracker app, which showed him taking about 80 steps around the time Reed claimed she dropped him off. Yet here again, nothing about the timeline or O’Keefe’s activity is clear or corroborated by witnesses. The defense’s argument that O’Keefe was attacked inside the house, including by the family dog, is also speculative and unsupported by much evidence — which they claim is because the police never properly investigated. A medical expert testified on the stand in support of the dog bite theory, but forensic bite mark evidence is incredibly unreliable and has been more or less fully debunked, at least in cases involving humans.

So where does all of this leave us?

Ironically, outrage for the police’s conduct in this case has united Bostonians across political lines, with community activists joining the likes of local conservative pundit Howie Carr. Meanwhile, hundreds of Read supporters traveled from across the country to protest for her freedom outside the courthouse. They sometimes clashed with O’Keefe’s family and their supporters, who argue Read’s defense has turned a clear case of murder into a distorted media circus and fueled unfounded accusations of conspiracy.

The mistrial means that the narrative of the case has also expanded.

On the one hand, popular resistance to the idea that a successful, articulate white woman could commit such a brutal murder might be fueling a good deal of the support for Read — which speaks to lots of assumptions about how we view class, privilege, and who gets to be seen as a victim. We’re accustomed, after all, to seeing women like Read in the role of the victim, no matter that she is the one on trial here. When it comes to true crime, the media gives more attention and sympathy to attractive middle-class white women than it does to male victims, much less victims who are poor or people of color.

On the other hand, Boston police are famously corrupt, with a long history of bribery, fraud, and racial bias. The Read case is being compared to another possible homicide involving a horrifying allegation of police conspiracy in nearby Stoughton, but this isn't just a regional issue. American cities are frequently beset by actual, proven police corruption. Boston isn’t unique. What does feel unique is the amount of public attention and scrutiny being given to the role of potential corruption in such a high-profile trial. It all adds up to what may well be a hopelessly irreconcilable pursuit of truth.