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Friday’s bombshell final pre-trial hearing in the Karen Read murder trial saw little agreement between the prosecution and defense on motions before the court, except about blogger Aidan “Turtleboy” Kearney, who both sides were seeking to eliminate mention of from court proceedings.
With both sides agreeing that Kearney’s alleged witness intimidation should not be discussed at the trail as it had nothing to do with current accusations against Karen Read, Judge Beverley Cannone derailed their plan to avoid mentioning him with concerns of her own on the subject.
Judge Cannone was concerned that banning witnesses from invoking Kearney’s name or alleged harassment would limit those witnesses from organically telling their stories while on the witness stand. The Judge ultimately ruled that she would not admonish witnesses from mentioning the blogger but agreed that neither prosecution nor defense attorneys would actively seek to mention him during questioning.
In other news from the hearing, Judge Cannone was visibly upset at Read’s defense team as they failed to file their own motion to introduce a third-party defense at the trial. When questioned by the Judge as to why they did not file, Read’s attorney indicated that they had planned to piggyback their argument to include the third-party defense on the prosecution’s motion to ban said defense.
When asked to detail their third-party defense, Read’s lawyers initially refused the request by the Judge but ultimately detailed that they were planning to introduce evidence that Brian Albert, Colin Albert and Brian Higgins murdered O’Keefe and engaged in a cover-up of his murder with allies within the police department.
Higgins was mentioned as the man that Read was romantically involved with outside of her relationship with O’Keefe, who became enraged at seeing O’Keefe and Read at a bar the night O’Keefe died. In the new allegations from the defense, Higgins then lured O’Keefe to Brian Albert’s house where he was murdered by Higgins, Brian Albert, and Collin Albert.
While Judge Cannone did immediately rule on the third-party defense, that defense suffered a blow as prosecutors sought to introduce a recording of Read stating to police during a booking that Brian and Collin Albert smashed O’Keefe’s head into her taillight which caused the damage to her car and O’Keefe’s death.
Read made the statement to police in 2022 when she was rebooked as the charges against her were upgraded from a lower court to Massachusetts superior court. Her statement was played for the Judge during Friday’s hearing with Judge Cannone again reserving to rule on the motion to admit the footage at a later date.
If admitted, the footage would contradict the defense’s current theory that the damage to Read’s taillight happened while the car was in police custody and was done as part of a vast conspiracy by Kinney and the Albert family to frame Read for O’Keefe’s murder.
Judge Cannone is expected to rule on the motions next week, with jury selection in the trail set to begin on Tuesday, April 16, 2024.
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