Lawyer says Read claims are ‘reckless’
Denies witness worried detective
A lawyer for a Canton police detective on Monday denied his client was worried about a witness in the Karen Read murder case “flipping” on his brother when he went before a federal grand jury reviewing the investigation.
In a legal filing, Peter D. Pasciucco, a lawyer for Detective Kevin Albert, rejected claims made by Read’s lawyers last week in norfolk Superior Court, where Read has pleaded not guilty to allegedly backing her SUV into her boyfriend, boston police officer John o’Keefe, and leaving him for dead in Canton in a blizzard in January 2022. Her trial is scheduled to begin April 16.
“The defendant’s allegations against Kevin Albert are reckless and disparaging,” he said.
Prosecutors allege Read struck o’Keefe after a night of bar-hopping and returned to the scene around 6 a.m. with two other women and allegedly said “i hit him. i hit him. i hit him,” after discovering o’Keefe’s body outside a Canton home.
But Read’s lawyers maintain that o’Keefe had joined a gathering at the home, owned by Albert’s brother, boston police officer brian Albert, and that o’Keefe was fatally beaten inside before his body was planted in the front yard area.
Read attorney David Yannetti said during a court hearing last week that after brian Albert received a federal grand jury subpoena last April, his brother contacted bureau of Alcohol, tobacco, firearms and Explosives agent brian Higgins, who was also at the gathering.
Yannetti, who was seeking to have a judge order Kevin Albert to turn over phone communications he has had with witnesses in the case, cited sealed records that federal prosecutors have provided to lawyers on both sides in the Read matter. the records have not been made public.
“Kevin Albert said to Higgins, and i quote, ‘look, you went off the grid and brian [Albert] doesn’t understand. You haven’t called him. You haven’t checked in on him since these subpoenas go out. Everyone got a subpoena but you.’ those were Kevin Albert’s words to brian Higgins. And your Honor, there’s only one way to interpret that: brian Albert was panicked that brian Higgins had flipped on him.”
Not so, Pasciucco wrote in Monday’s filing.
Higgins is “not a target of a federal investigation and certainly did not participate in any conspiracy or coverup in the death of John o’Keefe, either,” he wrote.
the claim that Kevin Albert “tried to intimidate and/or influence Higgins’s federal grand jury testimony” is “untrue and contrived,” Pasciucco wrote.
“Not only does Kevin Albert emphatically deny that bogus contention but Higgins never claimed he was intimidated or influenced by Kevin Albert, nor has the office of the United States Attorney made any suggestion that he was,” Pasciucco wrote.
Federal prosecutors haven’t commented publicly on their review of law enforcement’s handling of the case, a highly unusual step in a state prosecution.
Pasciucco also criticized Read and her lawyers for claiming that o’Keefe was killed inside the Albert home.
“The defendant, by and through her attorneys, has been attempting to further a thirdparty culprit defense for 26 months now but still cannot identify a culprit,” Pasciucco wrote. “they are willing to denigrate innocent individuals in court pleadings and during oral arguments to further explore this theory . ... it is based on conclusory statements, imagination and nothing else.”
Read’s lawyers have said a witness inside the Canton home searched online shortly before 2:30 a.m., “hos [sic] long to die in cold,” a time stamp disputed by prosecutors, who maintain the witness conducted the search shortly after 6 a.m. at Read’s request when they found o’Keefe’s body.
In court last week, Yannetti cited federal grand jury records that he said indicate Higgins initially testified that he did not make any phone calls early on Jan. 29 when he returned home from Albert’s home.
But phone records revealed that Albert called Higgins at 2:22 a.m. and that Higgins called him back 17 seconds later.
Higgins initially said the call was a “butt dial” but later admitted to calling Albert back deliberately, Yannetti said. that call lasted for 22 seconds.
Lawyers for Higgins and brian Albert said in court last week that their clients aren’t targets of the federal investigation.
“The facts as recited in the defendant’s motion, the Commonwealth would submit, are largely inaccurate,” said Assistant District Attorney Adam lally during last week’s hearing. “... [it is] essentially unsubstantiated conjecture, which is directly contradicted by the testimony and the evidence contained within the federal materials.”
In a separate filing Monday, lally registered the government’s opposition to a defense motion for notes that state authorities took during meetings with multiple witnesses, two weeks before one of those witnesses testified before the federal grand jury in May.
Lally also opposed a defense request for notes of a conference call between state prosecutors and witnesses last July. Read’s lawyers have said the call dealt with “the fact that [the witnesses] had been subpoenaed to testify” before the federal grand jury.
“Any exculpatory information known to the Commonwealth will be, as it has been, disclosed to the defendant,” lally wrote. “to the extent the defendant seeks the prosecutor’s or [victim witness] advocate notes, such notes, exclusive of statements or exculpatory information, constitute work product not covered under the Massachusetts Rules of Criminal Procedure.”
Judge beverly J. Cannone is weighing a defense motion to dismiss the indictment against Read. it’s not clear when she will issue a ruling.