A defense attorney in Karen Read's second murder case on Friday grilled a top police investigator about delays in booking critical evidence connected to the death of Read's boyfriend, a Boston police officer.
Prosecutors say Read, 45, backed her SUV into John O'Keefe, 46, and left him to die on a snowy night in the front yard of another officer's home after she dropped him off at a party there in January 2022. Her lawyers say she was framed in a police conspiracy and someone inside the home that night must have killed him.
A mistrial was declared last year. Read's second trial on charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter and leaving the scene has so far appeared to follow similar contours to the first.
What happened to the evidence?
On Friday, Read's attorney Alan Jackson pressed one of the investigators, Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik, about how the evidence including pieces of Read's taillight were processed.
Jackson repeatedly suggested the evidence was collected at the scene by Michael Proctor, the disgraced state trooper who led the investigation. Bukhenik kept saying he wasn't sure who did what.
Proctor was suspended for sending sexist and lewd text about Read soon after the first trial and subsequently fired in March. The State Police Trial Board also found Proctor guilty of providing sensitive and confidential information about the case to people outside of law enforcement and consuming alcohol while on duty.
Bukhenik was disciplined but not fired for failing to reprimand Proctor for offensive text messages, some of which were read aloud on Friday.