Canton police officer Kevin Albert receives paid leave

Karen Read faces the press, surrounded by her lawyers and supporters, after her mistrial last week. (Chris Christo/Boston Herald)

Kevin Albert, the Canton police officer and brother of the man central to the stranger-assault defense theory in the Karen Read murder case, has been on leave since mid-June.

Canton Select Board Chairman Michael Loughran dropped the bombshell Tuesday night during the first meeting since Norfolk County Judge Beverly Cannone declared a mistrial in the Read case on July 1.

“Chief (Helena) Rafferty has placed Kevin Albert on paid administrative leave,” Loughran said, “while an outside, independent investigation is conducted into his actions in a case he investigated with (Trooper) Michael Proctor approximately two years ago.”

Kevin Albert is the brother of retired Boston Police Sergeant Brian Albert, who owned the house at 34 Fairview Road where John O’Keefe’s bloodied body was found covered in snow on the morning of January 29, 2022. O’Keefe was also a Boston police officer.

Loughran told the Select Board and residents that Kevin Albert has been on leave since June 13 and will remain absent pending the results of the investigation, but he gave no indication of when that might be.

Rafferty placed Albert on leave a day after Proctor, the police officer suspended without pay and lead investigator, testified that he and the Canton police officer were drinking buddies who went out drinking together several months after O’Keefe’s death.

The friendship did not influence the investigation, Proctor insisted.

Read, 44, of Mansfield, is suspected of killing her boyfriend of two years and a Boston police officer of 16 years. She drove her Lexus SUV into him at high speed, leaving him to die in the cold during a severe snowstorm.

O’Keefe died at the age of 46.

Read is charged with first-degree murder, manslaughter while under the influence of alcohol and driving while causing death.

Proctor also acknowledged that he and Kevin Albert worked together on an unsolved case and communicated about coordinating aspects of the O’Keefe case, even though Canton police recused themselves from the investigation due to the Albert brothers’ connection to the case.

Kevin Albert did not testify during the nine-week trial, in which 74 witnesses testified.

Read’s defense attorneys have said the federal investigation into the case that led to the murder charge against their client included phone conversations that they say paint a clear picture of a conspiracy to defame their client.

Defense attorney David Yannetti testified in a pretrial hearing in March that the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office – which is currently conducting a grand jury investigation into Read’s case – discovered that phone conversations took place between key members of the defense team’s conspiracy theory immediately after O’Keefe’s murder.

The defendants allegedly included Kevin Albert, then-Canton Police Chief, Kenneth Berkowitz, Brian Albert and ATF agent Brian Higgins, the latter two of whom play a central role in the defense’s theory that the perpetrator was involved.

“My goodness… with all the allegations of witness intimidation being thrown around by this prosecutor,” Yannetti said at that hearing, “why isn’t Kevin Albert being investigated?”

The Associated Press contributed to this report