Statement by Trooper Bukhenik and review of forensic evidence

Sergeant Yuriy Bukhenik of the Massachusetts State Police shows items of clothing seized as evidence on Thursday on the witness stand. (Photo by Greg Derr/Pool)

In the sixth week of the trial against Karen Read, members of the Massachusetts State Police, the agency responsible for investigating the murder of Boston police officer John O’Keefe, finally testified.

Lt. Kevin O’Hara was the first police officer to testify in the murder trial in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham when he took the stand last Monday. As head of the Special Emergency Response Team, O’Hara’s role in the investigation was limited to directing the search of the front yard of 34 Fairview Road on the afternoon of Jan. 29, 2022, hours after O’Keefe’s body was found there.

But things really heated up on Wednesday when Sergeant Yuriy Bukhenik, one of the lead investigators in the case, took the stand. His work began at 6:44 a.m. that morning, he said, when he received a work call informing him that there was “a body in a snowbank” in front of the house on Fairview Road.

Bukhenik said he had to wait a while for the roads to clear in the morning snowstorm and eventually decided to take his personal four-by-four truck instead of his service sedan to drive to the homicide unit’s “case manager,” Trooper Michael Proctor, at the Canton Police Department, where he said he arrived around 9:15 a.m.

Proctor, the lead investigator in O’Keefe’s murder, has yet to take the stand and it is not certain whether prosecutors will call him this week, the seventh week of Read’s murder trial.

Read, 44, of Mansfield, is charged with second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and leaving the scene of an accident resulting in the death of O’Keefe, a 16-year-old Boston police officer who died at age 46. Prosecutors say she struck him with her SUV in the early morning hours of Jan. 29, 2022, after an argument and a night of drinking, leaving him to die in a snowstorm. Defense attorneys counter that one or more outsiders beat O’Keefe to death in the Fairview Road home and blamed Read for his murder.

In recent weeks, the trial has progressed more slowly. Last week, there were only two and a half days for testimony – the regular trial days were Monday and Wednesday, and on Thursday morning, the trial lasted only three hours. The week before, the trial was only held on one day.

Judge Beverly Cannone has reprimanded attorneys for delays in presenting evidence and repetitive testimony that she said wasted the jury’s time. On Thursday, she said the lengthy trial would likely be handed over to jurors in the last week of this month.

Bukhenik and Proctor’s investigation

Because Chief Investigator Proctor has not yet participated in the trial based on his investigation, attorneys questioned Bukhenik – Proctor’s supervisor in the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office’s MSP Detective Unit – for details about how Read was charged with the murder of her boyfriend.

The investigators’ first stop that day was the home of Jennifer and Matthew McCabe, where Bukhenik said he interviewed each of them individually and also interviewed Brian Albert, the Boston Police sergeant at the time who owned the home where O’Keefe was found.

They then viewed O’Keefe’s body at Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton. According to Bukhenik’s testimony, O’Keefe’s clothes were scattered on the floor, stained and torn, and caked with “traces of vomit.”

Bukhenik said he observed “bruising” on O’Keefe’s eyelids, “a cut on his nostril” and on one eyelid, and “abrasions” on O’Keefe’s “upper forearm and lower bicep area,” with the wounds “concentrated” several inches on either side of the elbow.

Next, they visited Read’s parents’ home in Dighton, Bukhenik said, where they questioned Read.

Bukhenik said the interview covered the previous 24 hours. Read said she and O’Keefe had argued the morning before about what O’Keefe’s niece and nephew — whom he had custody of — had for breakfast. The couple then drank at two bars in Canton, where Bukhenik said video evidence showed Read drinking at least nine drinks total before dropping O’Keefe off at 34 Fairview Road, turning around three times and driving away.

“I informed Ms. Read that her phone would be seized as evidence and that her vehicle would also be seized,” Bukhenik said.

forensic science

Bukhenik testified that he directed detectives and other members of his office to drive past 34 Fairview Road in the days following January 29, 2022, because, he said, “certain items had naturally emerged from the melting process.”

These items were shown in photographs: parts of a taillight – in addition to the “six or seven” pieces O’Hara’s team found in the initial search – a black drinking straw of the type served in cocktails in bars, and a Boston police cap with the emblem of the American flag “that had been crushed by snow.” Bukhenik showed the cap in the courtroom.

This evidence was then processed by scientists from the MSP crime lab, some of whom testified last week: Maureen Hartnett, Ashley Vallier and Christina Hanley.

Hartnett swabbed the frozen “reddish-brown spots” that Canton police officers collected in red SOLO cups from beneath O’Keefe’s body after the samples thawed to test for blood.

She also examined Read’s 2021 Lexus LX570 in the secure area of ​​the police station. She said the vehicle was “in overall good condition” but with damage to the rear passenger area – a dent in the rear door, scratches on the bumper and damage to the tail light.

Vallier said she conducted a “physical comparative analysis” of the evidence, including the clothing O’Keefe died in. There she found “obvious debris” as well as plastic, glass and a straw. She also conducted a “mechanical comparative analysis” of the various parts of the taillight. The photographic evidence shown in court began with the individual shards of the taillight and then moved on to reassembling the pieces like a forensic puzzle.

Hanley testified that he tested the composition of the “visible glass” on the bumper of Read’s vehicle, but none of it matched the cocktail glass.