‘Turtleboy’ case lawyers snap at one another
Aidan Kearney is accused of making illegal jailhouse calls
A special prosecutor and the defense attorney for blogger Aidan “Turtleboy” Kearney battled out motions against one another in a Friday hearing, showing the central figures aren’t needed to keep the drama coming in the ever-expanding Karen Read murder case saga.
The heat between Norfolk Special Prosecutor Kenneth Mello and Kearney defense attorney Tim Bradl began Wednesday afternoon when Mello dropped a motion seeking to sanction Bradl and have the court fine him $10,000.
The prosecutor alleged that Bradl had concocted a scheme that allowed Kearney to continue the intimidation campaign he has been indicted for against state witnesses in the murder case of Read from his jail cell by use of unmonitored phone calls with people who are not supposed to have such a privilege.
Bradl fired back Friday ahead of the hearing with his own motion to strike Mello’s from the record, sanction Mello to the tune of $20,000 and force him to write a public, written apology for Jennifer Altman.
She’s one of the women
Mello said Kearney talked to on privileged lines against jailhouse rules, and who Bradl said has suffered her own harassment after her phone number was published in Mello’s motion. He also asked for a hearing to disqualify Mello from the case.
The immediate results were mixed, with Norfolk Superior Judge Debra Squires-Lee taking the arguments under advisement and ordering only smaller steps. She ordered that Bradl inform the Norfolk House of Correction, where his client is jailed, that he is the only attorney on record before the end of the day.
She also ordered that Mello’s motion be sealed and that he submit a new copy with phone numbers redacted for the public record. She also set a deadline for Mello’s response to Bradl’s sanction motion for Feb. 9.
Kearney, 42, of Holden, blogs and releases YouTube videos under the name “Turtleboy” and has taken a particular interest in the case of Read, a Mansfield woman who is indicted in Norfolk Superior Court on second-degree murder in the death of her boyfriend of two years, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, on Jan. 29, 2022.
Kearney’s coverage is extremely pro-Read and has surpassed the Read defense’s own third-party culprit defense to implicate even more people in a conspiracy of cover-up.
Kearney was indicted last month, charging him with witness intimidation related to the case. Mello alleges that Kearney has directed his many followers, who are called “Turtleriders,” to harass and intimidate state witnesses by revealing their personal information in his coverage and outraging readers enough to use that information to nefarious ends.
“It gives me no pleasure to be here. In my 40 years of practice I have never sought sanctions against another lawyer,” Mello said at the start of the hearing Friday before Judge Debra Squires-Lee.
However, he said, he found the idea of Bradl setting up two non-lawyers as people Kearney could speak to on privileged lines “so egregious” that he took this step.
He sought court orders to restrict Kearney’s unmonitored, privileged phone calls to his attorney of record, Bradl, and his children exclusively. He also requested that the court impose a “master” to monitor even those privileged phone calls because, he argued, Bradl could use his call time to put third-parties on the line to continue a harassment campaign.
Mello had trouble sticking his point to SquiresLee in how this was a court matter and not a jail matter, and she reminded him several times to stick to what she could do and not to belabor his points that she said she already understood.
For his part, Bradl said that the call he placed adding Jennifer Altman — who he admitted he errantly called an attorney in his voicemail to the jail — and Courtney Healey to the privileged list with the call he placed to jail administration was “an honest mistake,” that it is his practice to put in the people and phone numbers as soon as possible and that he didn’t know “the finer points” of jailhouse policy on who could be added.
He said he added the numbers, which he wrote in an affidavit, also included a team investigator and an attorney Kearney speaks with regarding First Amendment issues, in good faith, that the voicemails he left “are proof that there was no intent to deceive anyone,” and that the jail was accommodating and allowed the list.
“At some point later the jail reversed their position and did not allow
Mark (the investigator) or Courtney or Jennifer to have such (privileged) calls,” Bradl wrote in his affidavit. “I did not knowingly misrepresent anyone and it was made clear that I was asking for investigator and paralegal numbers to be included. It is baseless, false, unprofessional, and defamatory that Commonwealth counsel characterized the above as a conspiracy to circumvent jail rules. I would never do that for a case or client.”
He further added that the “motion has personally harmed me and triggered negative press coverage without any basis in fact. I believe it has affected my client’s right to a fair trial.”
In court, he bristled under Mello’s arguments, stating that he was “shocked” by Mello’s characterizations of his actions and that “counsel is making speculative, insane statements about me, Mr. Kearney and everyone else.” But he went further, saying that Mello’s publication of his phone number and the numbers for Altman and Healey was tantamount to what he had charged Kearney with.
“Ms. Altman receives threatening text messages that absolutely scared the heck out her and terrorized her,” he said. He compared it to what his client is charged with, having shown the phone numbers of Read investigator State Police Trooper Michael Proctor on his YouTube channel.
“The charging documents indicate, your honor, that Mr. Proctor … received threatening messages, etc., etc.,” he said. “And here counsel has engaged in the exact same behavior with the exact same results.”