NEW BEDFORD, Mass. (Court TV) — Karen Read has filed an explosive new lawsuit targeting the Massachusetts State Police and the Town of Canton, alleging officers in both departments had a history of racism, bigotry and misogyny.
Karen Read appears in court ahead of a hearing in her civil trial on March 6, 2026. (Court TV)
Read was cleared of charges that she murdered her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, following two criminal trials. Prosecutors had said that Read hit O’Keefe with her Lexus SUV and left him to die in the snow outside of a friend’s house; Read maintained she had been framed by investigators and suggested that the people inside the home on the property where O’Keefe was found had killed him and worked together to frame her.
Read faces civil litigation filed by both the people who lived in the house and served as witnesses in her trial — referred to in litigation as the “house defendants” — and from the O’Keefe family, which continues to maintain that she was responsible for his death. Read has, in turn, filed her own lawsuit against the house defendants.
On Thursday, Read’s attorneys filed a new lawsuit against both the Massachusetts State Police and the Town of Canton, whose “negligent hiring, training and supervision of biased and corrupt police officers” allegedly “violated her constitutional rights and caused her immense harm.”
While the lawsuit doesn’t list any individuals as defendants, the complaint, reviewed by Court TV, focuses on the actions of Michael Proctor and Sean Goode. Proctor served as the lead investigator for Read’s case for the Massachusetts State Police; Goode was a sergeant in the Canton Police Department and was also involved in the Read investigation.
Read’s attorneys say that Proctor and Goode’s friendship dates back to high school, and describe the pair as “virulent bigots whose hatred for anyone and everyone different from themselves permeates every action. They are not officers who occasionally voiced an offensive remark. They are men whose written and recorded communications — sent to one another and to a circle of like-minded friends over the course of a decade — establish entrenched and unrepentant hatred for women, Black Americans, Asian Americans, Jews, Hispanics, Arabs and gay people.”
Michael Proctor (L) and Sean Goode (R) testified at Read’s criminal trials. (Patriot Ledger/Pool/Court TV)
At Read’s first criminal trial, Proctor admitted under oath to sending texts to colleagues referring to the defendant as a “whackjob” and a “nutbag” with “no a—.” Now, Read’s lawsuit says the messages Proctor and Goode were sending each other went far beyond her case.
In one message referring to a traffic accident, Proctor allegedly wrote, “Actually, take your time. I saw a n— was involved, so I wouldn’t rush if you’re working. Let them die.” In another conversation, he allegedly wrote, “America sucks…Hitler was really onto something, then the f—ing US had to step in and ruin it.”
Speaking about a new supervisor, Proctor allegedly said, “My new VP is a giant malignant (sp?) c—. I pray to the heavens that some f—ed-up insect from the Amazon crawls up her vagina, hatches eggs and the litter kills her by eating her from the inside out.”
Alleged messages and comments from Goode are equally offensive. “Anne Franks a lying c—,” he allegedly said on one occasion. Discussing the death of Sandra Birchmore, who was allegedly killed by Stoughton police officer Matthew Farwell, Goode allegedly described the victim as “borderline r—.”
While the lawsuit concedes that Proctor was fired from his position in the Massachusetts State Police after he testified in Read’s first trial, it accuses Canton’s police department of failing to act in Goode’s case. “CPD refuses to acknowledge its role in this debacle of an investigation or recognize the significant flaws in its hiring, training and supervising practices — illustrated by Goode’s continued role as a sergeant for the CPD until two days ago.” The lawsuit alleges that Goode was allowed to resign after the department learned of the pending litigation.
Neither the Massachusetts State Police nor the Town of Canton has filed a formal response to the lawsuit.
