Karen Read sued the Massachusetts State Police and the town of Canton on Thursday, alleging that misconduct and negligence by investigators led to her prosecution in the 2022 death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe. Read appeared on NBC's "TODAY" the following morning to explain why she filed the complaint, and made clear she considers the acquittal only a partial victory.
"This was always our plan, that I had to save my own life first," Read told "TODAY" on Friday. "I have to continue fighting for justice. The acquittal is deserved, but the wrongs have not been completely righted."
The lawsuit targets two law enforcement agencies that Read's legal team says harbor what the complaint calls "an embedded culture of bigotry, misogyny, systemic failures, and institutional rot." The complaint cites texts, records, and other communications alleging that former state trooper Michael Proctor and former Canton Police Sgt. Sean Goode made derogatory remarks and were unfit to investigate O'Keefe's death.
O'Keefe, 46, was found dead outside the Canton home of now-retired police sergeant Brian Albert on the morning of January 29, 2022. The medical examiner determined the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head, with hypothermia listed as a contributing factor.
Prosecutors from the Norfolk County District Attorney's Office alleged Read reversed her Lexus SUV into O'Keefe while dropping him off for a gathering at Albert's home and left him for dead. They presented vehicle data and expert testimony that they said proved their case.
Read's defense team told a different story. During the first trial, her attorneys argued that Albert and others most likely killed O'Keefe during a fight and framed Read for his death. That trial ended with a hung jury.
At the second trial, Read's attorneys were barred from identifying Albert and others as suspects. A jury acquitted Read of second-degree murder, motor vehicle manslaughter while driving under the influence, and leaving the scene of a collision resulting in death. She was convicted of a single charge: operating under the influence of liquor.
The case, spanning two widely publicized murder trials, became a national flashpoint over police accountability and investigative integrity. And the fallout is far from over.
Central to Read's lawsuit are the text messages of Michael Proctor, the former state trooper who led the investigation into O'Keefe's death. During both trials, Read's lawyers presented messages showing Proctor making derogatory comments about Read and sharing investigative details with non-law enforcement personnel, including a relative who was close to the Alberts.
Proctor testified at the first trial. He acknowledged saying "unprofessional" things about Read but denied leading a biased investigation. He was dishonorably discharged after those proceedings and was not called to testify during the second trial.
Massachusetts State Police Superintendent Col. Geoffrey Noble refused to hold back about the messages cited in Read's new lawsuit:
"These racist, sexist and abhorrent comments absolutely do not reflect the values of the Massachusetts State Police and are not tolerated within our ranks."
Noble described the texts as "entirely inconsistent with any basic standard of decency and certainly with the expectations of a Massachusetts State Trooper." That is a striking admission from the top of the agency now being sued, an acknowledgment that the conduct was real, even as the institution disputes broader liability.
When the people tasked with investigating a man's death are sending messages so foul that their own superintendent calls them "abhorrent," the public has a right to ask what else went wrong. It is the kind of institutional failure that echoes cases elsewhere in American law enforcement, where misconduct allegations have forced leadership changes and eroded public trust.
The town of Canton pushed back against the lawsuit's characterization of its police department. Officials rejected what they called "broad stroke characterizations" about its officers and said the town had made "significant strides" toward implementing findings from an audit that was critical of how Canton officers handled Read's case.
Canton officials acknowledged the messages were "abhorrent, deeply offensive, hateful, and do not reflect the values of the Canton Police Department or its members." But the town added a notable caveat: "However, the Town did not and still does not possess the messages themselves."
That distinction matters. Canton says it launched an internal affairs investigation after learning of the messages in October 2025, placed Goode on administrative leave, and hired an outside investigator. Officials said the review was complicated by a court-issued protective order and the need to examine thousands of messages and voice notes.
Goode refused to participate in an internal affairs interview, the town said, prompting termination proceedings. He resigned before a hearing required under Massachusetts civil service law could take place. That sequence, administrative leave, refusal to cooperate, resignation before a hearing, is a familiar pattern in police misconduct cases. It allows the officer to leave without a formal finding, and it leaves the public without a full accounting.
The town insisted that "claims that the Town knowingly ignored misconduct or failed to take these allegations seriously are inconsistent with the actions taken." Whether a jury agrees is another matter entirely.
Read's attorney Alan Jackson told "TODAY" co-anchor Craig Melvin that the lawsuit aims to "bring to the light the institutional biases, the institutional corruption that permeates the Massachusetts law enforcement system."
"What Karen wants, you cannot write on a check, which is exposure. Exposure of the corruption that is the DNA of the Massachusetts State Police and the Canton Police Department, which is evidenced by these two individuals and their text messages."
Jackson pointed to the comfort level the officers apparently felt in sending such messages. "They were in a position where they could, they felt comfortable within their own family, the family of law enforcement, to send these vile text messages," he said. That framing, that the texts were not aberrations but symptoms of a deeper culture, is the core of the lawsuit's theory.
"The law speaks in dollars, but that's not what the ultimate goal is here," Jackson added. Whether or not the suit ultimately succeeds in court, Read's team is clearly betting that the discovery process will force more internal communications into public view. In an era when law enforcement agencies across the country face growing scrutiny over internal misconduct, that strategy carries real weight.
Read's Thursday complaint is not the only legal action swirling around this case. After her acquittal, Read filed a separate lawsuit accusing Albert and others of covering up O'Keefe's death. In April, attorneys for Albert and the others countered with a defamation suit against Read.
Read described O'Keefe on "TODAY" as "very easy going and kind of shy," and pushed back against any suggestion that the legal fight has moved beyond his memory. "He's not lost; he's the reason we are doing this," she said.
She also said she "wants this to be over", a sentiment that rings true for anyone who has watched this case grind through years of trials, investigations, and public spectacle. But the legal machinery is only accelerating. The accountability questions raised by misconduct allegations inside the justice system do not resolve themselves quietly, and Read's case may prove no exception.
The Thursday complaint raises as many questions as it answers. What specific damages or relief does Read seek? What court was the lawsuit filed in? What do the full texts say beyond the fragments already aired at trial? And what will the discovery process uncover that two criminal trials did not?
The procedural status of both the new lawsuit and the defamation countersuit filed by Albert's attorneys remains unclear. So does the scope of whatever court-issued protective order limited Canton's internal review.
Read was acquitted less than a year after her first trial ended with a hung jury. She was convicted of operating under the influence. Those are the settled legal facts. Everything else, who killed John O'Keefe, whether investigators deliberately steered the case toward Read, whether Canton's police department harbored the rot described in the complaint, remains contested.
The American legal system is built on the premise that law enforcement officers will investigate honestly and that prosecutors will follow the evidence. When the lead investigator gets dishonorably discharged, a police sergeant resigns rather than face questioning, and the state police superintendent himself calls the conduct "abhorrent," that premise has plainly broken down. Cases like this, and others involving officials who abuse the trust placed in them, remind Americans why institutional accountability is not optional.
Karen Read says she had to save her own life before she could fight for anything else. Now that fight moves to civil court. The public deserves to see every text, every record, and every communication that shaped this investigation, because if the people who enforce the law cannot be held to it, the law means nothing at all.
