Karen Read Trial

[Jeff]

Is anyone following this that can give me a cliff notes so far?
I followed the first trial. That eventually became a mistrial?
At first I thought she was guilty as sin, but the more that first trial went on, the more it looks like a massive coverup by the po-po and friends of the victim.

[Del.]

I'm looking forward to the Idaho murder trial to put that killer on death row.

[CNCAppsJames]

I'm looking forward to the Idaho murder trial to put that killer on death row.

Last I looked, that case had issues...

[JParis]

The Canton MA police and the Middlesex DA and the State Police investigators are ALL comprised.

The Lead Investigator, Michael Proctor was fired for actions stemming from his investigation.

The Canton Police departments own internal report cited multiple problems within the departments investigation,  though they say there was no "corruption"..

The DA's office is so messed up they had to bring in a "Special Prosecutor" to head up the retrail.

The Judge in the first trial erred in giving the jury their instructions.  They were never told they could convicted on a single charge.  So, they found her not guilty on "Murder" and deadlocked on the rest.

The case, the investigation and the entire episode are a complete mess.

[CNCAppsJames]

The trial I was a juror for... a pedo case... the prosecution screwed up on some stuff so we had vote not guilty on one of the lesser charges. Pissed us off... had we voted guilty on all the charges, he would have had grounds for appeal. He was guilty AF... deserved a slow trip through the wood chipper....feet first.

[JParis]

Round 2 isn't going any better for the prosecution..

Hos long must this trial continue?

Over the last few days, the prosecution's star witness, Jen McCabe, has been demolished, despite the best efforts of the second-generation hack judge, Beverly Prescott Cannone, to stop the bleeding.

If this trial were a phone call, it would be a butt dial – something that should never have been made. You know, like the seven butt dials that Jen McCabe made to the murder victim, John O'Keefe, right before or immediately after he became a murder victim.

Seven butt dials! And those are just in addition to all the butt dials made less 2 hours later by the two McAlbert cops back and forth on the cell phones they both decided to destroy just before they were ordered by the court not to destroy them.

Oddly, the "butt dials" from Jen to John O'Keefe were discovered only on O'Keefe's phone. Somehow they'd disappeared from McCabe's phone before she turned it over to the police. Hmmmmm....

If this trial were a prize fight, and there was a real ref in the ring, it would already be over. And then somebody would be passing the hat to take up a collection for cab fare to send Jen McCabe back home, along with her magical butt-dialing, call-deleting cell phone.

This whole trial is nefarious, to use one of the words of the day first introduced into the record by Jen McCabe herself, who returned to the courthouse Friday wearing her little cross for the first time since Tuesday.

Too late, Jen.

Nefarious made its first appearance when defense attorney Alan Jackson asked Jen about yet another previously undisclosed phone call she made to her sister, Coco at 5:07 a.m., an hour before John O'Keefe's body was found outside 34 Fairview Street that snowy morning.

Jackson asked Jen why in her grand jury testimony she'd never bothered to mention the phone call to the death house.

"There's nothing nefarious," she harrumphed. "I remembered who I called. I didn't go back and look at phone records."

Alan Jackson looked perplexed about her abrupt dropping of the other n-word.

"I didn't say it was nefarious," he said. "Why would you use the word 'nefarious'?"

"Because," she said, "there's nothing about me calling my sister that is nefarious and I feel like you're insinuating that it might be and it's not."

Jackson saw his opportunity and he took it.

"Do you use that word because it sounds nefarious?"

"No," she said, "I just used the word 'cause I think that's the way you're trying to portray it."

"Do you use the word because you think that's how it's coming across – nefarious?"

"Uh, no, not that at all."

The moral of the story: When you're denying that your statements are nefarious, you're sounding more than somewhat nefarious. You're losing.

It sounds as nefarious as saying, when confronted with holes in her earlier testimony, Jen answers, as she did several times yesterday:

"To be honest, I had completely forgotten."

Maybe she also forgot her own name when the FBI first approached her and asked her to identify herself. Her first answer to the G-men was "I'm Nicole."

At the end of her testimony, though, Jen McCabe again forgot – about all the lies she'd already admitted to the jury that she'd told the FBI.

"I helped clear up some misconceptions," she bragged, "that they had been told."

Sure, Nicole, er Jen, sure you did.

So much reasonable doubt is piling up that you wonder if a lot of it isn't going over the jurors' heads, it's coming in so fast.

How about the group chats among the McAlberts? Consider Jen's husband Matt McCabe, obviously overcome with grief for his dead pal, whom he calls "the guy" in the chats, as in "Tell them the guy never went into the house."

Again, that would be the death house, 34 Fairview.

Then Matt McCabe muses to the family about whether Karen Read will cop to lesser charges that will make everything go away.

Before they all must testify. Under oath.

"If she pleads out," Matt says, "it will end. If she fights it it will be an episode."

Welcome to the episode. A very nefarious episode.

At another point, in the McAlbert group chat, Jen asks sister Coco: "Any update?"

To which Coco, the cop's wife, the owner of the death house at 34 Fairview, replies:

"Will get more info tomorrow. Don't want to text about it."

Don't want to text about it? That doesn't sound at all suspicious, does it?

Defense attorney Jackson kept asking McCabe about her earlier testimony to multiple state and federal grand juries. She would feign forgetfulness, ask Jackson for "the pa-pah." She would then appear to study the transcript and then look up.

"The pa-pah says I did it. I don't remem-bah it."

Jackson would hand her another transcript.

"I see what I – I read sorry I saw what I just read I don't remember my exact words of every testimony but I did read that yes."

We haven't even heard from Michael Proctor, the crooked state cop. Or Brian Albert, Coco's husband, the sinister Dark cone head ex-Boston cop. There's so much more coming from all these despicable drunkards. They don't seem to read much and they certainly never came across this quote from Mark Twain:

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."

Jen McCabe spent the months between the trials working on her tooth decay. But not nearly so much work with another much more profound flaw – truth decay.

Hos long until somebody stops this fight?

https://www.bostonherald.com/2025/05/02/howie-carr-nefarious-a-constant-refrain-in-karen-read-retrial/

[CNCAppsJames]

Trials are interesting organisms to say the least.

[JParis]

A Canton Police Department investigation will leave no stone unturned, except for maybe the rock that the 46 pieces of broken taillight are hidden under.

If you want to hide something real good, just stick it in one of the Canton PD's red Solo cups, after which they'll stash them all in a brown Stop & Shop bag and leave the sack in an unsecured refrigerator at the police station.

Fill in your own Barney Fife joke here. Today Barney Fife would be the police chief of Canton. He only had one bullet, but at least Barney never got drunk and left it in another department's cruiser.

Just when you think there's no worse possible law enforcement agency anywhere than the Mass State Police, along comes a witness for the Canton PD, a retired lieutenant named Paul Gallagher.

Consider him the CPD's designated fall guy.

In 2023, Gallagher, who on a good day has the IQ of a soft-boiled egg, made $322,389.05.

You don't make that kind of money as a cop by rocking the boat. You go along to get along. There's a great novel called "Pop. 1280" by Jim Thompson about a crooked Texas sheriff who could be Paul Gallagher's spiritual mentor.

Here's what the fictional sheriff said about making the big bucks.

"I had it made, and it looked like I could go on having it made... as long as I minded my own business and didn't arrest no one unless I just couldn't get out of it and they didn't amount to nothing."

You know, like Karen Read.

That's fiction from 1964. This was Paul Gallagher testifying Tuesday in the Karen Read murder trial, about how he handled the investigation of the murder of a Boston police officer at another Boston cop's house at 34 Fairview. Defense attorney Alan Jackson was cross-examining Gallagher about his reluctance to do anything.

Jackson: "The fact is you didn't seek a search warrant?"

Gallagher: "Correct."

Jackson: "The fact is you never searched the house?"

Gallagher: "That's correct."

Jackson: "The fact is you never searched the basement?"

Gallagher: "That's correct."

Jackson: "The fact is you never searched the garage?"

Gallagher: "That's correct."

Excuses? Gallagher has got a few. For one thing, he says, the State Police's crack crew of detectives from the Norfolk County district attorney's office handles murder probes in the White Trash Capital of Massachusetts.

This is the same MSP crew that in 2021 ruled the murder of a pregnant 23-year-old a suicide, after claiming they couldn't find 32,000 text messages between the woman and her boyfriend, yet another local cop and good pal of the crooked MSP crew.

That Stoughton cop, who was cleared by the Norfolk County DA's office, is now in federal custody, awaiting trial on murder charges.

But there was another reason why Gallagher's Canton sleuths passed on the murder probe. You see, the death house, 34 Fairview, was owned by Brian Albert, a Boston cop, whose brother is Canton PD Det. Kevin "Fat" Albert.

"We should recuse ourselves because our best detective was Kevin Albert."

Their "best" detective, Kevin "Fat" Albert, was disciplined last year after getting so drunk in a State Police cruiser that he lost his gun and his badge. His drinking buddy that day (and night) was Trooper Michael Proctor, who was just fired from the State Police for his disgraceful behavior in this same kangaroo-court trial.

Gallagher was giving every cop a good leaving alone. That's the way you do things in Canton, at least if you want to make $322,000 a year.

Heck, he knew Brian Albert, the slimy Boston cop. He knew the drunk cop, Kevin. The Canton selectman, who controlled the police budget, was Jailbird Chris Albert, who did six months for hit-and-run manslaughter himself.

Who is anybody in Canton to cast the first stone? Especially about boozing it up.

And Gallagher was even pals with another one of the drunk cops in the death house at 34 Fairview that evening, a fat slob named Brian Higgins who worked, in a manner of speaking for Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) mostly A, at least after hours.

Jackson asked Gallagher about Higgins:

"You consider him a good friend?"

Gallagher: "Yes I do."

And good friends don't bother other good friends, even if, or maybe especially if another cop is dead.

Jackson: "You didn't interview Brian Higgins?"

Gallagher: "I did not, no."

Jackson: "You wouldn't interview Brian Higgins because he is your personal friend? Is that correct."

Gallagher: "Correct."

Again, the $322,000-a-year peace officer is channeling the fictional sheriff from the 1964 novel.

"I probably ain't real smart – who wants a smart sheriff? – and I figure it's a lot nicer to turn your back on trouble than it is to look at it. I mean, what the heck, we got enough trouble of our own without butting in on other people's."

Isn't that the truth?

But when Gallagher stumbles across a dead body in the snow, he won't look the other way. He's a law-enforcement professional, after all.

He searches the scene with his trained eye for evidence of a crime. He uses the best forensic tools available – a leaf blower.

"I wasn't gonna miss anything with a leaf blower," Gallagher said.

He borrowed the leaf blower from the neighbor across the street – another cop.

In the snow, with his trusty leaf blower, Gallagher found a clear cocktail glass. But he somehow missed those 46 pieces of red taillight from the death SUV, which were found days and weeks later by the aforementioned Michael Proctor, now fired from the State Police for gross misconduct.

Jackson: "You did not see a single piece of bright red plastic taillight material?"

Gallagher: "No sir, not in that area?"

Jackson: "As a matter of fact, you didn't see 46 pieces of taillight material either clear or bright red?"

Gallagher: "No."

Like Barney Fife, Paul Gallagher retired with a full pension. How Canton is it?

https://www.bostonherald.com/2025/05/06/howie-carr-canton-police-going-solo-with-karen-read-evidence/

[Jeff]

https://www.bostonherald.com/2025/05/06/howie-carr-canton-police-going-solo-with-karen-read-evidence/

They also scooped up bloody snow into a red solo cup from what I remember.

[Jeff]

I've been watching some clips of the trial. The more I watch the more I am convinced she's innocent.
Holy shit the judge isn't even trying to hide her bias against the defense.
It's a complete shit show. It's like they know they fucked up, trying to hide it as best as possible and the only course of action is to try and pin it on Karen Read no matter what.

[JParis]

Every single "witness" the Prosecution puts on the stand ends up getting shredded one way or another.

Did she, didn't she, I don't know. What I do know is the government couldn't provide its case in the 1st trial and they certainly are not proving it in this trial.

As I have said from the beginning, it strikes me that there is FAR more to this story than has yet been exposed. Too many things simply do not add up.

In the movie "Animal House," John Belushi's character Bluto had only gone to Faber College for seven years.

Turns out, Bluto was a world-class scholar compared to the prosecution's latest "expert" witness in the Karen Read murder trial in Dedham.

Meet Shanon Burgess, who although he's claimed on multiple occasions to have a bachelor's degree, doesn't have anything close to a BS, although he's currently full of it. BS, that is.

Under cross-examination Monday from defense attorney Robert Alessi, Burgess was grilled about his fabricated academic credentials.

"If I do the math correctly, sir," Alessi said Monday, "you have been pursuing a bachelor of science degree for 17 years. Correct?"

"Thass correct," Burgess said in his Alabama cracker accent.

Alessi: "And you have not obtained it as you sit here today?"

Burgess: "Thass correct."

Alessi: "And yet there are various documents that we've seen that state that you obtained the bachelor of science, correct?"

Burgess. "Again, with errors or misinterpretations."

Whose errors? Whose misinterpretations?

This preposterous peckerwood was brought in to try to clean up after some of the disastrous testimony of earlier prosecution witnesses. He's an "expert" on technical matters.

The problem is that the prosecution's different technical narratives are providing reasonable doubt as to their deranged attempts to railroad Karen Read. The problem, the prosecution claims, is "clock drift."

But once Shanon began stammering in his backwoods drawl, it became clear the prosecution's problem was "truth drift."

He works for a company called Aperture, which rhymes with departure, which will probably be Burgess' next career move with the company.

The only question is, Hos long until he's fired?

To a battle of wits, Shanon comes unarmed. As embarrassing as his sworn testimony about his college career was Monday, Burgess doubled down on re-direct. He was being questioned by Mob attorney Hank Brennan, now serving as "special prosecutor" for corrupt DA Meatball Morrissey.

Hank Brennan asked him why he had claimed on his most recent resumes that he was still seeking a bachelor's degree.

"Because I am currently pursuing a bachelor's degree," he repeated.

In this trial, he was filling the technical role played in the first trial by state trooper Joseph Paul. He was the guy who claimed, "The crime scene spoke to me."

Paul was painfully stupid. But now Shanon Burgess makes him look like Albert Einstein. And with his conehead, Paul cut a less ridiculous figure than the follically challenged redneck.

He purports to be an expert. But his only post-high school diploma is an associate's degree from world-renowned Wallace State Community College of Hanceville, AL, formerly known as the George Corley Wallace Trade School of Cullman County.

Bet it's a great school if you want to learn how to butcher hogs. Or, in Burgess' case, butcher "expert" testimony.

He confused "bytes" and "bits," which is something any expert would know, or so you would think.

He repeatedly said he extracted data from the cell phone of "Mrs. Read." That would be Karen Read's mother, because Karen is not married.

On cross-examination, he told Alessi how important it was to synchronize timelines on cell phones "down to the second."

Then Alessi pointed out that every date on his "expert" report was off by 24 hours. He had listed the wrong date, Jan. 30 instead of Jan. 29.

In other words, this hillbilly wasn't off by one or two seconds, he was off by a whole day – 86,400 seconds.

"Parlance!" he howled as his incompetence was shown.

Parlance? He knows what that word means, but when he was asked the previous day by Alessi if he knew the definition of the word, "mendacity," he drew a blank.

As a graduate of the George Corley Wallace Trade School of Cullman County, I'm guessing there are a lot of other words Shanon doesn't know the meaning of.

Speaking of mendacity, it is the contention of Shanon that he volunteered his new report, mid-trial, to Hank Brennan, totally unsolicited by Whitey Bulger's old lawyer.

So Alessi showed him the cover letter, which begins:

"Dear Mr. Brennan, pursuant to your request I have completed an additional analysis...."

Alessi: "This wasn't done on your own initiative. You put it in writing that you did it at the request of Mr. Brennan. Which is it?"

Burgess: "Uh, so that was on mah own initiative. This is a, uh, a holdover, so a copy-and-paste from mah original ree-port."

Brennan has had this problem with witnesses in earlier trials. I've told you about how he used a drunk ex-FBI agent named Robert Fitzpatrick in the Whitey Bulger trial. That G-man lied himself into a six-count perjury indictment.

Obviously, Brennan is not real good at witness background checks.

Burgess' veracity problems didn't rise to the perjury level – he's just a fork-tongued cracker clown. But Brennan did try to dig him out from under his torrent of resume lies.

Brennan tried to point out all the successful Americans without college degrees – Oprah Winfrey (who does have one), Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, etc.

Of course, none of them ever felt the need to lie for decades about their academic credentials, nor do they hold themselves out as technical "experts."

Brennan asked Burgess about when one of his fraudulent resumes had been written.

"It would have been mebbe tin years ago."

He asked who had filled out the phony-baloney resume.

"I don't particularly remember filling it out but obviously I did."

Well, that must have certainly helped rehabilitate your witness with the jury, Hank.

And now Shanon Burgess slinks back in humiliation to his new home in Texas. Today in court he was wearing the same suit and tie he had on Monday. Obviously Hank hadn't given him a heads up on the multi-day beating everyone else knew was coming his way from Karen Read's defense team.

How can Burgess ever testify as an "expert" again, on anything?

In the movie "Animal House," when Bluto is on the ropes at Faber, he whines, "Seven years of college down the drain!"

When Burgess gets his Aperture departure, he'll have his own sad song to sing:

"Seventeen years of college down the drain!"

https://www.bostonherald.com/2025/05/20/howie-carr-high-degree-of-idiocy-in-karen-read-prosecution/

[Jeff]

Meet Shanon Burgess, who although he's claimed on multiple occasions to have a bachelor's degree, doesn't have anything close to a BS, although he's currently full of it. BS, that is.

He's been pursuing his bachelors degree for over 17 years.
The defense shredded him.

Did you see the shoe? The one that looks brand spanking new and with a white sole? The one in the picture surely looks like it has a black sole.

I see a bunch of people headed to prison unless somehow the jury has been compromised.

[Jeff]

I just found out that this is the same judge who presided over the first trial.

And one of the "witnesses" Jen McCabe, her brother is friends with the judge and calls her Auntie Bev.

She supposedly refused to recuse herself from the case.

[Jeff]

And this morning, the "honorable" judge kicked everyone out of the courtroom so she could talk to each juror individually before testimony resumes.

Methinks she's trying for a mistrial because she knows the prosecution is falling apart.

[JParis]

Now that the defense has rested and to prosecution chose to not call any rebuttal witnesses....

The second Karen Read murder trial has basically come down to an IQ test.

She didn't kill her boyfriend, BPD Officer John O'Keefe. She didn't hit him with her SUV, period. So if Karen Read didn't strike him, obviously, she couldn't have done it deliberately.

If there was no car accident, it was neither murder nor manslaughter. Not by Karen Read, anyway.

Not guilty.

The only way you can believe that Karen Read actually killed him is if you are either very stupid, very corrupt, or you haven't been paying attention.

Of course defense attorney Alan Jackson won't say that to the jury in his closing. But he doesn't need to. There are only two words that the jury needs to consider.

"Reasonable doubt."

That's not to say that the potbellied courthouse stooges of Norfolk County can't rig the case. They did it last year, after all. Just to cite one example, remember those verdict slips that had no box for the jurors to check off "Not Guilty?"

Rest assured that the hacks have been keeping close tabs on which jurors' facial expressions indicate that they aren't buying the persecution's kangaroo-court bait-and-switches.

Those jurors will be dismissed first thing in the morning. They're all going to be alternates, count on it. Just the luck of the draw, the bouncing balls, and thanks for your services, suckers....

Karen Read's lawyers could complain, but they know better. We're not in America, we're in Norfolk County.

Still, though, I think that this time, DA Meatball Morrissey's necktie party is not going to pan out for him.

Despite the claims of the preposterous Baghdad Bobs on TV (at least one of whom is pocketing a hack state pension of $156,281 a year), the persecution produced no real evidence.

Other than those 46 pieces of broken taillight – wink wink nudge nudge.

So what if the cop who "found" most of them was busted for soliciting gifts from some of his fellow local townies.

This is not to say that you can't frame somebody for murder in Massachusetts. It's been done before, in Chelsea, by the FBI. Four innocent guys railroaded, two sent to Death Row. Two died in prison after 30 years. One of them wasn't even in the state when the murder happened.

There was an even more recent murder frame-up in Norfolk County. The cops did it as a favor for Whitey Bulger, the serial killer who was represented at his own trial by Hank Brennan, the petulant fraud now trying to railroad Karen Read.

But now it seems even Hank Brennan, as rotten a human being as he is, knows that he's lost this one. You could see it Wednesday, with the last defense witness, Dr. Andrew Rentschler. Rentschler is a real scientist, originally hired by the FBI and offered as a witness to the prosecution, but they didn't want him.

They preferred to frame Karen Read. They needed a patsy, to protect their pals.

So DA Meatball Morrissey went out and hired his own "expert," a guy who's spent 17 years trying to get his bachelor's degree, and lying about already having it. Cost the taxpayers $400,000, on top of Brennan's $250,000.

Brennan had nothing to shake Dr. Rentschler's testimony, so he started asking him about an earlier visit he'd made to Massachusetts, and what he's had for lunch.

"I had a ham sandwich."

Brennan let that stunning fact sink in for a moment or two before zeroing in. This was his Perry Mason moment.

"When you sat at the table and ate did you just eat your ham sandwich or did more go on?"

Did more go on? You know, like a soft drink or coffee? Or maybe potato chips – regular or barbecue? Did you order the ham on white, whole wheat or rye?

"How long," Brennan continued, "were you at the table eating your ham sandwich?"

"How long's it take you to eat a ham sandwich?" the FBI witness replied. "Ten minutes?"

Brennan was having none of it.

"And after you finished your..." Pause. "... ham sandwich and you told us you stood and in the corner, you got a ride back to the airport."

Well, there it is. Book him Danu.

A few minutes later, Brennan announced that he'd changed his plans and wouldn't be calling any rebuttal witnesses. It was like Roberto Duran moaning, "No mas!" He was throwing in the towel.

Brennan couldn't even bring himself to handle the back-and-forth with the defense and the judges over the jury charges. Instead, he left it to his minion, Adam Lally, the chain-smoking sad sack prosecutor who handled the first miscarriage of justice last summer.

Lally makes $149,350 a year. He keeps his job the old-fashioned way. Since 2010, he's given cash to his boss Meatball Morrissey on 16 separate occasions, for a total of $1,750.

Lally's job was to stop any mentions of the vicious dog, Chloe/Cora. That now-missing German shepherd figured significantly in testimony about the "animal bites" on the victim's arm that Brennan claimed were made by those mysterious pieces of taillight.

Despite riding the pine all these weeks, Lally came off the bench in mid-season form. All dialogue guaranteed verbatim:

"I would remind the court that there is absolutely no evidence none uh not even a scintilla of evidence of a dog. There is no evidence of an absence of a dog. You have Ms. McCabe testifying that she didn't see it in the morning, which does not equate to there being an absence of a dog there."

May we quote you on that, Mr. Lally?

By the way, Mr. Lally, is this the same Jen McCabe who when asked her name by the FBI, replied "Nicole Albert?" And who then after fleeing the G-men, later lied to them about how many of her co-conspirators, er friends, that she had called after being surprised by the feds.

Very normal behavior by people who have nothing to hide, right?

But it's almost over now, this second attempted lynching of Karen Read.

Please God, don't let the hackerama fix the jury again. After she's acquitted, we can all enjoy a celebratory dinner.

Ham sandwiches all around!

https://www.bostonherald.com/2025/06/12/howie-carr-karen-read-jury-has-all-it-needs-reasonable-doubt/