{"id":1411,"date":"2025-06-21T04:47:18","date_gmt":"2025-06-21T04:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1411\/"},"modified":"2025-06-21T04:47:18","modified_gmt":"2025-06-21T04:47:18","slug":"cost-shoddy-police-work-no-justice-for-victim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1411\/","title":{"rendered":"Cost, ‘shoddy’ police work, ‘no justice’ for victim"},"content":{"rendered":"

Juror #1, the foreman in the Karen Read retrial, told the Herald there was no \u201ca-ha moment\u201d in the grueling case that he said wasted the taxpayers\u2019 money on paper-thin evidence that failed to bring any comfort to the victim\u2019s family.<\/p>\n

The unforgivable fact that investigators didn\u2019t swarm the house at the murder scene on 34 Fairview Road in Canton during a nor\u2019easter in January of 2022 was \u201cshoddy work\u201d and a blatant \u201cred flag,\u201d the foreman added. That\u2019s why the only guilty finding<\/a> against Read was drunken driving.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that body was on my front steps, I know my house would have been stormed,\u201d the juror, who is Black and grew up in Boston\u2019s Jamaica Plain, said. \u201cThe texts from Trooper Proctor \u2014 \u2018bitch\u2019 and \u2018(expletive)\u2019 \u2014 also showed a serious bias, yet I had to put my personal opinion aside.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt all seemed like a lot of wishy-washy privilege,\u201d the foreman said. \u201cWe had to look at the evidence, and a lot of it didn\u2019t make sense. There was no meat! No a-ha moment. No one proved there was a collision \u2014 even with all that jargon. And all the jurors agreed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The juror, who asked that his name not be revealed, spoke with the Herald by telephone late Friday afternoon along with his wife. The couple has three children, and they have come painfully close tragedy before. The juror said he knew both Dzhokhar Tsarnaev<\/a>, who along with his terrorist brother Tamerlan, detonated two bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon in April of 2013, and bombing victim, 8-year-old Martin Richard<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That terror attack and ensuing crime wave claimed four lives and maimed and injured more than 264 others.<\/p>\n

The juror revealed that his wife was working at MIT the night campus cop Sean Collier was executed by the Tsarnaevs, who would soon engage in a deadly firefight with police in nearby Watertown that ultimately ended in Tamerlan\u2019s death and Dzhokhar\u2019s capture. His wife took a train home, avoiding any trouble. The juror said he works with at-risk youth in Dorchester and met both Dzhokhar and young Martin while working at a charter school in the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe said \u2018Of Course!\u2019 I was then picked for the Karen Read jury,\u201d the couple added together over the phone, sharing in the irony.<\/p>\n

The juror said he\u2019s still struggling with the whirlwind case and the times he\u2019d gaze over at victim John O\u2019Keefe\u2019s mother, Peggy, who would wipe away tears when images were shown of her son, a 46-year-old Boston Police officer, with his head split open. Still, he added the jury couldn\u2019t lock up Read, at 45 the officer\u2019s girlfriend, on the measly evidence presented.<\/p>\n

A juror\u2019s hesitation<\/p>\n

The foreman added that the jury\u2019s announcement of a verdict on Wednesday that was suddenly pulled back was over one male juror who got the jitters.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt lunch, I asked the juror, \u2018Are you OK?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Do you think I can take back my vote?\u2019 he asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cOther jurors got a little nervous,\u201d the foreman added, \u201cbut 20 minutes later he said \u2018OK.\u2019 Guilty of OUI.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was the only charge they all agreed on and the only clear evidence \u2014 \u201cwithout a doubt\u201d \u2014 of any infraction, the foreman added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe only went with what was put in front of us,\u201d he said of the panel, seven women and five men. \u201cI\u2019m still asking, \u2018where is the justice for John?’\u201d<\/p>\n

The juror told the Herald all the jurors quickly went their separate ways but have agreed to meet soon to try and make sense of an often incomprehensible case.<\/p>\n

The cost to taxpayers<\/p>\n

Another juror speaking out says she is disgusted by how much taxpayer money the Norfolk District Attorney poured into the prosecution.<\/p>\n

Walpole resident Paula Prado said she still feels \u201cdeeply\u201d for the former BPD officer\u2019s family.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not our fault that they didn\u2019t find who killed John O\u2019Keefe,\u201d Prado said in an interview with the Howie Carr Show<\/a> on Friday. \u201cThe commonwealth and the investigation, they couldn\u2019t prove that it was Karen Read. For us, we had enough reasonable doubt that it wasn\u2019t her, and we couldn\u2019t convict her of anything.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really hope the O\u2019Keefes can find who actually killed John O\u2019Keefe,\u201d she added, \u201cand the DA (Michael Morrissey) reopens the case, and things keep going from there. I will be following, I will be watching closely. It broke my heart to see that family in court that day.\u201d<\/p>\n

All that Morrissey has said since the jury delivered the verdict on Wednesday is a four-word statement, provided to WBZ: \u201cThe jury has spoken.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read, of Mansfield, had faced up to life in prison if convicted of second-degree murder, the top-level offense charged against her. She was also charged with manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence of liquor and leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors accused Read of backing up into O\u2019Keefe, her boyfriend of two years, with her SUV, leaving him to freeze and die on the front yard of a Canton home where the pair was supposed to continue a night out after the bars closed, in the early snowy morning of Jan. 29, 2022.<\/p>\n

But Prado and the jury didn\u2019t buy the argument. In her radio interview on Friday, she said the hefty price tag that went into prosecuting Read baffled her and fellow jurors.<\/p>\n

Prado specifically pointed out the $400,000 spent on Aperture, an accident reconstruction firm that the DA pulled two witnesses from. Both testified that Read\u2019s Lexus LX570 likely struck O\u2019Keefe at around 12:32 a.m. on the morning of his death.<\/p>\n

Special prosecutor Hank Brennan\u2019s paycheck of at least $250,000 for the retrial also caught Prado\u2019s eye.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time we got on the bus, especially in the beginning, we all think, \u2018How much money is the city, the state, putting on the police following us, the bus, and everything?\u2019\u201d Prado said. \u201cYeah, it bothers me a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read\u2019s defense countered that O\u2019Keefe made it inside the home on Fairview Road and was killed by others inside, including possibly then-homeowner Brian Albert, who was a fellow Boston Police officer. The defense argued the well-connected police family then worked with local and state police investigators to cover up the crime and frame Read.<\/p>\n

When asked whether Prado had formed a theory about O\u2019Keefe\u2019s death, she responded that she does, suggesting that Read \u201cmaybe clipped him\u201d with her SUV, based on data from Aperture.<\/p>\n

Dog-bite theory<\/p>\n

The scratches on O\u2019Keefe\u2019s arm, Prado said, did not appear to come from Read\u2019s broken taillight but rather from a dog, aligning with the defense\u2019s theory about the Albert\u2019s German Sheppard named \u201cChloe\u201d being involved in his death.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething happened inside the house,\u201d Prado said. \u201cWhat is it? I don\u2019t know. \u2026 I don\u2019t understand why the Alberts didn\u2019t come out, and why the dog didn\u2019t bark at all. \u2026 There were those holes we can\u2019t fill in.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Alberts and key prosecution witnesses, most of whom were not called to the stand in the retrial but testified in the first trial, said they did not see O\u2019Keefe enter the home that early morning.<\/p>\n

What about the FBI?<\/p>\n

Judge Beverly Cannone barred the prosecution and defense from directly referencing the federal probe into the investigation, which has since ended. Prado said she realized early on that the FBI had been involved, but it \u201cwasn\u2019t something that we took into consideration\u201d during deliberations.<\/p>\n

Prado said her thoughts about Brennan changed throughout the trial and that she \u201ccan\u2019t judge him as a lawyer because the case was awful, full of holes.\u201d She added that she felt Cannone, despite being \u201cvery nice,\u201d gave too much protection to the prosecution with numerous objections during key defense witnesses.<\/p>\n

Prado took a shot at Boston Police Officer Kelly Dever, who was a member of the Canton Police Department at the time of O\u2019Keefe\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

Defense attorney Alan Jackson questioned Dever on initially telling the feds that she saw ATF agent Brian Higgins and then-Canton Police Chief Kenneth Berkowitz enter the police department garage and spend a \u201cwildly long time\u201d with Read\u2019s SUV.<\/p>\n

This would give credence to the defense\u2019s theory that police meddled with the evidence, including the busted taillight whose pieces were later found at the crime scene. Dever later recanted the statement as a \u201cfalse memory\u201d after being shown a timeline of events that proved that it wasn\u2019t possible.<\/p>\n

Prado called Dever not believable at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was uncomfortable to watch her behavior because she is an officer after all, and she is among us, and she carries a gun,\u201d Prado said of Dever. \u201cShe was not reliable and scary, knowing that she\u2019s around holding a weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Juror defends attacks<\/p>\n

Since her first interview with independent journalist Jessica Machado on Thursday, Prado has been the subject of accusations from internet trolls. She addressed them during her interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are all saying, \u2018How come she is an attorney and she was picked for the jury? She\u2019s a liar!\u201d No, I am not an attorney in the US, I am an attorney in Brazil, never worked here, not licensed here,\u201d Prado said. \u201cAnd \u2018How come she loves true crime, but she didn\u2019t know about the case?\u2019 Because all of my interests was Brazilian cases from my country. My social media account is in Portuguese.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really didn\u2019t know about the case,\u201d she added. \u201cI thought Turtleboy (journalist Aidan Kearney) was an environmental problem, Karen Read was just a lady.\u201d<\/p>\n

The stay-at-home mother to four young children called the power given to her to decide Read\u2019s fate a \u201cgreat, huge responsibility\u201d that she was \u201chappy to be part of it and be able to serve justice.\u201d That, she said, waters down the haters.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am really happy that I am confident that Karen Read isn\u2019t going to jail, she\u2019s not going to pay for something she didn\u2019t do. This filled me with joy,\u201d Prado said, \u201cand filled me with anger the fact that we don\u2019t know what happened with John O\u2019Keefe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JohnJohn O\u2019Keefe family including his mother Peggy, second from left, still haven’t seen justice. (Nancy Lane\/Boston Herald)<\/p>\n

\"Boston<\/p>\n

Boston Herald file photo<\/p>\n

Boston Police Officer John O\u2019Keefe. (BDNews.com photo)<\/p>\n

Originally Published: June 20, 2025 at 7:42 PM EDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Juror #1, the foreman in the Karen Read retrial, told the Herald there was no \u201ca-ha moment\u201d in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[1906,1904,1903,1902,50,1905,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-1411","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-john-okeefe","10":"tag-karen-read","11":"tag-karen-read-juror","12":"tag-karen-read-verdict","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-paula-prado","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114719545395845132","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}