DEDHAM, Mass. (Court TV) — She wasn’t present in the courtroom, but Karen Read figured prominently in arguments during a pretrial hearing for a different murder suspect in Massachusetts.
Brian Walshe appears in court for a motions hearing on Jan. 8, 2025. (Court TV)
Brian Walshe is charged with murdering his wife, Ana Walshe, and disposing of her body, which has never been found. Walshe has pleaded not guilty to the charges and is scheduled to stand trial in October.
At a motions hearing on Wednesday, Walshe’s attorneys focused less on the case and evidence against their client and instead directed their energy on getting documents related to the Karen Read case.
Read is accused of killing her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe after a night out drinking. At Read’s first trial, which ended in a mistrial in July 2024, her attorneys claimed she was the victim of a wide-ranging cover-up by investigators. Part of the evidence introduced at trial was evidence of vulgar and inappropriate text messages that the lead investigator, Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor, had sent to colleagues about Read. Proctor’s behavior has placed him under investigation; he is suspended without pay and faces a board hearing on Jan. 15 for violation of department policy.
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Proctor was a lead investigator after Ana disappeared, and Brian’s defense attorneys say they should have access to his records because of his poor behavior in the Read case. Larry Tipton, Walshe’s attorney, argued emphatically that Proctor’s behavior is indicative of bias not only against Read but against Walshe and other defendants. “I don’t think a trooper like Proctor,” Tipton said, “Basically makes disparaging and biased remarks against a defendant in one case and doesn’t have the same attitude in others.”
To that end, Tipton is asking for internal affairs reports and records related not only to Proctor, but his supervisor and others who worked on both Read and Walshe’s case, of which there were several. When pushed for further details about why those documents are relevant, Tipton repeatedly demurred.
“I’m trying to be careful because of attorney-client privilege, work product,” Tipton said. “There are a number of people who were questioned, who knew the alleged victim, who were involved with the victim — both intimately and as friends — and it appears that in every instance, except Brian Walshe, the police made a decision that all those people who should have been suspects and questioned in a certain way, and evidence was not collected against them to see where they were at critical times.”
Judge Diane Freniere hesitated to accept Tipton’s argument and asked the defense to return with a filing that provided more specific details about what Walshe’s team expects to find in the documents and how they are relevant to his defense. That filing is due on Feb. 11, ahead of a continuation of Tuesday’s hearing on Feb. 14.
On Feb. 14, Judge Freniere is also expected to hear arguments related to DNA testing that has yet to be done on key evidence in the case. Because of the nature of some of the samples, prosecutors have sent items to be tested to a lab in Virginia because the Massachusetts lab could not process them. But that lab told the defense that if they wanted an expert to observe testing, they would have to pay $20,200. Judge Freniere said the lab could do the testing, but the Commonwealth would have to foot the bill if the defense wanted to observe.
