DEDHAM, Mass. (Court TV) — A former Massachusetts State Police trooper whose inappropriate text messages made headlines during Karen Read’s trial said he would not testify at a hearing in a different murder case in which he served as the lead investigator.
Former MSP trooper Michael Proctor appears in court on Sept. 14, 2026. (Court TV)
Read, who stood trial twice and was eventually acquitted of charges that she killed her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, produced evidence at her first trial showing that Michael Proctor, the lead investigator in her case, had been sending inappropriate messages about her.
The fallout from the messages cost Proctor his job with the Massachusetts State Police and triggered disciplinary action against his supervisor. Proctor’s behavior has also jeopardized other cases where he served as the lead investigator, including the Commonwealth’s case against Myles King, who is charged with the 2021 murder of Marquis Simmons.
King’s attorney, Rosemary Scapicchio, filed a motion to dismiss the charges against her client, arguing that a search of Proctor’s phone revealed that he regularly engaged in racist conversations with friends. “Proctor had a hand in, and guided the entire investigation,” Scapicchio wrote in her motion to dismiss. “He did all this while holding the beliefs that black people should be ‘enslaved,’ that black people are ‘animals,’ and that they should be killed.”
Photographs allegedly found on Proctor’s phone — included with the motion — showed a Black child inside a cage. “These racist views infected the entire investigation,” the motion said. “This was not a search for the truth. It was a modern-day lynching, in which inflicting pain and securing the confinement of black and brown people…was not just accepted, but celebrated.”
Myles King sits in court on Sept. 14, 2026. (Court TV)
In court on Thursday, Proctor appeared with his attorney, who was immediately pulled into an extended sidebar with the prosecutors and Scapicchio. Eventually, Proctor joined the group at sidebar before returning to the back of the courtroom. When the sidebar ended, Judge Peter Krupp announced he had conducted a hearing at sidebar, in which Proctor said he would not testify.
“I do find that Trooper Proctor has a valid Fifth Amendment right, and if called to testify in a motion to dismiss, would exercise it, and I find that it would be properly exercised,” Krupp said.
Scapicchio was frustrated by the judge’s decision, saying that she had planned to spend most of the scheduled hearing on the motion to dismiss questioning the former trooper. “That just got blown up,” she said when Krupp asked her what her plans were for the hearing. “Now I have to reevaluate. I can’t do it on the fly when it involves my client’s life.”
Outside court after the hearing, Scapicchio told WBZ that she felt Proctor’s text messages should be enough for Krupp to dismiss the charges. “You can’t leave this type of explicit racism at the front door when you walk in to do your job; you can’t do it,” she said. “If you’re a racist, you’re a racist through and through, and he’s proved he’s a racist through and through. So, what are we doing here? Why isn’t that enough to dismiss a criminal case?”
At the hearing on the motion to dismiss, scheduled for Sept. 22, Scapicchio said she plans to question Adam Lally, who formerly served as the lead prosecutor in King’s case — and who prosecuted Read’s case — about his interactions with Proctor.
