Karen Read, the Massachusetts woman acquitted of murdering her police officer boyfriend in June 2025, has filed a lawsuit against the Massachusetts State Police and Canton Police Department, alleging a “culture of bias and corruption” that she says led to her wrongful prosecution.
Read, 46, filed the civil suit on June 4, 2026, in Bristol County Superior Court, naming the two police departments and accusing them of misconduct, negligence, and civil conspiracy in the investigation into the death of Boston police officer John O’Keefe, who was found dead on January 29, 2022.
In an interview with ABC News, Read described her legal action as part of a broader “crusade” against systemic corruption. “I have to make some good come of the pain,” she said. “I’ve learned something about the underbelly of these institutions that I feel I have to do something with, I have to make something good come of this.”
The lawsuit centers on text messages allegedly exchanged between former Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor and former Canton Police Sergeant Sean Goode, both of whom played leading roles in Read’s investigation. According to the suit, the messages reveal a pattern of racist, sexist, antisemitic, and homophobic comments spanning thousands of texts.
One text message allegedly from Proctor read, “America sucks…Hitler was really on to something, then the [expletive] US had to step in and ruin it,” according to the lawsuit filed by Read’s attorneys. The messages also include vulgar descriptions of women and dehumanizing comments about Read herself.
Read’s legal team claims the texts demonstrate that Proctor and Goode harbored “deeply held biases” that compromised their objectivity. “It’s not just words, it’s his way of thinking, it’s how he looks at the world, it’s how he looks at people who are not like him, who are not white American men, that person in their core cannot logically objectively investigate someone,” Read told ABC News, referring to Proctor’s messages.
Proctor was terminated from the Massachusetts State Police following the revelation of the text messages. Sean Goode resigned from the Canton Police Department on May 29, 2026, before termination proceedings could be completed. The town of Canton said it placed Goode on administrative leave after learning of the messages in October 2025 and retained an independent investigator.
Massachusetts State Police Colonel Geoffrey Noble called the messages “disturbing” and stated they were “entirely inconsistent with any basic standard of decency” and “absolutely do not reflect the values of the Massachusetts State Police.” The town of Canton similarly condemned the texts as “abhorrent, deeply offensive, and hateful.”
Proctor’s attorney has pushed back against the allegations, stating that events in Proctor’s personal life were reviewed by a grand jury, the district attorney, and Massachusetts State Police before Read’s trial, and that “anything Mr. Proctor did or said in his personal life, years before Officer O’Keefe was killed, had no bearing whatsoever on the investigation of Karen Read.”
Read was tried twice in the death of O’Keefe, a 16-year veteran of the Boston Police Department who was found unresponsive outside a fellow officer’s home in Canton during a snowstorm. Prosecutors alleged she struck him with her SUV and left him to die. In her second trial, a jury found her not guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in June 2025, though she was convicted of operating under the influence.
According to Read’s lawsuit, her legal team uncovered approximately 13,000 messages displaying bias, which she argues demonstrates a systemic problem within both departments. “It means that there was a comfort level within the ranks of the Massachusetts State Police, within the ranks of the Canton police department that cannot stand. That’s what we want to take down,” said Alan Jackson, one of Read’s attorneys.
Sources
- ABC News — Karen Read’s statement that she is on a “crusade” to expose corruption, bigotry, and misogyny; interview content and text message excerpts from the lawsuit; Proctor’s attorney statement; police department responses
- NBC Boston — Lawsuit filing details, allegations of “culture of bias and corruption,” and the civil claims against the departments
- CBS Boston — Timeline of the Karen Read case, lawsuit filing date, and allegations of negligence and civil conspiracy
- Court TV — Details of the text messages revealed in the lawsuit and the investigation’s background
- WGBH News — Law enforcement expert commentary on the text messages and their significance
