PLYMOUTH, Mass. (Court TV) — The Massachusetts State Police has agreed to pay Karen Read $100,000 to settle her lawsuit against the agency.
Karen Read attends her murder trial on Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (Libby O’Neill/The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)
Read, 46, stood trial twice on charges that she murdered her boyfriend, Boston police Officer John O’Keefe. After the first jury deadlocked, causing a mistrial, the second jury cleared Read of murder charges but found her guilty of driving under the influence. Prosecutors accused Read of hitting O’Keefe with her Lexus SUV and driving away, leaving him to die in the snow outside a friend’s home. Read and her defense team, meanwhile, accused investigators of conspiring to frame her and suggested that the people who owned the property where O’Keefe was found had killed him.
In June, Read filed a lawsuit naming both the Massachusetts State Police (MSP) and the town of Canton, where O’Keefe’s body was found, accusing both agencies of racism, bigotry and misogyny.
While MSP’s lead investigator in Read’s case, Michael Proctor, was not named as a defendant in her lawsuit, texts found on his phone formed the basis for many of the allegations. In texts with fellow officers, Proctor said things like, “America sucks…Hitler was really on to something then the f—ing U.S. had to step in and ruin it,” and made comments suggesting he believed minorities were “polluting the neighborhoods” in which he lived and worked.
“MSP terminated Michael Proctor in March 2025,” an agency attorney wrote in a filing detailing the settlement. “It unequivocally condemns the racist, sexist and abhorrent messages quoted in the complaint, which do not reflect the values of the Massachusetts State Police and are not tolerated within its ranks.”
MSP said that under the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act, which it described as a “limited waiver of the Commonwealth’s sovereign immunity,” Read was entitled to receive no more than $100,000. “There exists no real dispute between Read and MSP, as the criminal investigation into Read’s conduct, and her subsequent criminal prosecutions, have ended. There is no specific or particularized injury, constitutional or otherwise, alleged by Read which can be redressed by this Court,” the agency said. “Stated plainly: it is a waste of judicial resources to litigate the liability of MSP for Read’s alleged injuries where MSP consents to entry of judgment and Read can only recover – upon judgment in her favor – $100,000.”
Read’s attorneys accepted the settlement in a separate filing, but noted: “To be clear, Read does not understand MSP to suggest or argue in its motion – and does not agree or admit – that she only suffered $100,000 of damages or harm as a result of the acts of the various individuals and entities she has filed claims against in this case and others.”
The lawsuit against the town of Canton remains open, with no court dates scheduled.
Read is also a defendant in two other civil lawsuits. O’Keefe’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against her; she also faces a defamation lawsuit filed by people who were inside the property where O’Keefe died, after Read’s attorneys accused them of killing him and then conspiring to frame her. Read is also suing that group in federal court.
