Whether or not Karen Reed is guilty of the murder of her boyfriend, John O’Keefe, we can all agree that the vulgar, sexist, filthy boasting and Donald Trump-esque locker room talk circulated in group texts by Officer Michael Proctor, the lead investigator on the case, has no place in the Massachusetts State Police.
But that is the case, and for now it still is. Proctor is under investigation for unspecified violations of police policy, but is fulfilling his duties. When asked by email for a response to Proctor’s embarrassing testimony, officials in Gov. Maura Healey’s administration did not respond. “Officer Proctor is a witness in an ongoing trial and therefore cannot comment at this time,” a State Police spokesperson said. A spokesperson for Public Safety Secretary Terrence Reidy also said it would be “inappropriate” for Reidy to comment, “given the ongoing criminal proceedings and active investigation.” [State Police] “An internal investigation is underway.” A spokesman for Mr Healy told me that Mr Reidy had not responded.
In his testimony at Reed’s trial, Proctor acknowledged that he had made “unprofessional and regrettable comments” but said they “in no way affected” the fairness of the investigation. He was wrong. Calling Reed a “beauty girl” and a “freak” and using the ultra-vulgar “c” word, joking about her intestinal illness, and saying that “no nude photos have been found so far” when searching her phone, all undermine the fairness of the investigation and the prosecution’s case. The defense, which has worked hard from the beginning to prove reasonable doubt with an elaborate conspiracy theory, was given a major boost by Proctor’s naive, insensitive and amateurish approach to investigating a murder.
Reed, 44, is charged with second-degree murder in the death of Boston Police Officer O’Keefe. Prosecutors say Reed intentionally backed his car into O’Keefe after dropping him off at a party at the Canton home of another Boston Police Officer, then left him to die in the snow. Reed said he was being trapped, and that O’Keefe was beaten at the party and possibly bitten by a dog before being left outside to die. The televised trial has been the talk of the town and has attracted national attention.
Reed’s defense team has focused on alleged investigative missteps by law enforcement officials and has argued a theory of widespread police corruption. The spotlight on Proctor also comes as the state police are trying to navigate a wide-ranging overtime fraud scandal and corruption charges that have implicated the former president of the state police union and a former lobbyist for the union.
There’s more at stake in Proctor’s case than just Reed’s. Proctor, who works for the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office, is also the assigned officer in the 2023 murder case involving Cohasset resident Brian Walsh, who is accused of killing his wife, Anna Walsh, and dismembering her body, according to NBC10 Boston. Defense attorneys in that case will undoubtedly be interested in Proctor’s documents related to that investigation.
Given that Proctor’s text messages reached the officer’s network of friends and even his wife, what does it say about the state police’s overall handling of murder investigations? “Generally, the cultural norm and expectation (and long-standing policy) regarding homicide investigations and homicide investigators is to not share any information about the investigation with anyone who does not have a ‘need to know, right to know,’ including other officers and detectives not assigned to the investigation (especially civilian friends),” criminologist and former Boston Police Officer Tom Nolan said in an email. Even when he was a lieutenant with the Boston Police Department, Nolan said he never asked for or expected any information about a homicide investigation to be shared.
Nolan also noted that the Boston Police Department “has an actual homicide unit staffed by actual detectives who work in teams,” while the state troopers assigned to the DA’s office “were basically drawn from the Highway Patrol.” “The impact of those differences really plays out in the Reid case,” he said. As another example, Nolan pointed to the Waltham triple murder case, about which Susan Zalkind wrote a book that chronicles the failure of investigators from the Middlesex DA’s office to follow up on leads in the 2011 murder of three men that may have been linked to the Boston Marathon bombings.
In the Reed case, Proctor’s blatant sexism and other offensive behavior became an embarrassing sideshow that weakened the prosecution’s case. Whatever the verdict, the question at the state level is whether Proctor’s actions will be dismissed as a matter of one bad actor communicating with another, or whether they will be seen as part of a systemic problem that requires an institution-wide transformation of culture, attitudes and policies. Drastic reforms have been promised in the aftermath of previous scandals, but somehow no governor has ever delivered on them.
Now it’s Healy’s turn to try out the job.
Joan Vennochi is a Globe columnist. Contact her at joan.vennochi@globe.com. Follow her: Joan Venotti.
