Troopergate suit targets individuals
Baker aides discussed McKeon fate
Past and present brass at the state police and members of the Worcester DA’s office are now being sued individually — as well as professionally — as part of the Troopergate scandal, court records show.
An amended civil suit was filed yesterday in federal court in Boston where trooper Ryan Sceviour, 29, is suing recently retired state police Col. Richard McKeon and others over being ordered to rewrite a police report about the arrest of a judge’s daughter.
State police Maj. Susan Anderson is also being sued “in her individual capacity,” the new complaint states, as is an unspecified number of co-defendants identified by attorney Leon Kesten as “officers of the Massachusetts State Police, members of the Worcester District Attorney’s Office, and others.”
All of the defendants — except for Anderson — are also being sued for defamation for knowingly making “false and defamatory statements to third parties about the plaintiff and relating to the plaintiff’s character,” Kesten states.
Sceviour’s lawsuit and the companion complaint of trooper Ali Rei, a drug recognition expert, are before U.S. District Court Judge George A. O’Toole Jr., who presided over the 2015 death-penalty trial of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Like Sceviour, Rei, 32, is suing her bosses and their co-defendants for conspiracy, intentional infliction of emotional distress and violating her constitutional rights.
Alli Bibaud, the 30-year-old daughter of Judge Timothy Bibaud, told Sceviour that her father was a judge, that she had performed sex acts to obtain heroin and suggested “she would offer sexual favors in return for leniency” after he found her at a car crash on Interstate 190 south in Worcester on Oct. 16.
Attorney General Maura Healey’s office is investigating, as is McKeon’s successor, Col. Kerry Gilpin. The state Ethics Commission has also launched a probe.
Meanwhile, emails obtained by the Herald yesterday through a public records request show Gov. Charlie Baker’s top aides were discussing McKeon’s retirement — and Baker’s public response to it — more than a day before the state police commander’s formal announcement on Nov. 10, and just hours after Baker vowed the allegations would be “properly vetted” by his office.
On Nov. 9, McKeon hurriedly left a State House event, repeatedly declining to address questions shortly after the noon ceremony wrapped.
Baker said after the event: “People want us to take these things seriously. You don’t take something seriously in 24 hours, OK?”
But about two hours later, Baker’s senior adviser, Tim Buckley, forwarded a draft statement to Lizzy Guyton, Baker’s chief of communications, and Kristen Lepore, the governor’s chief of staff, that called McKeon’s order to alter the report a “mistake” and wished McKeon well in retirement.
The three-paragraph statement remained largely intact when, more than 24 hours later, McKeon officially announced he was resigning. Baker aides said they prepared the statement because they were “aware that he was considering retirement” but that no decision was made until that Friday.