Massachusetts Woman Releases Explicit Text Messages in Lawsuit Against State Police, Canton PD

Ryan J. Farrick — June 5, 2026

Police car with lights on pulled over at night in the city; image by Kenny Eliason, via Unsplash.com.

In court documents, Read accused the Massachusetts State Police and Canton Police Department of tolerating “a culture of bias and corruption” that led to her being charged in the death of her boyfriend, John O’Keefe.

A Massachusetts woman acquitted in the death of a Boston cop has filed a lawsuit against the Massachusetts State Police Department and the Canton Police Department.

According to NBC-Boston, the lawsuit was filed on behalf of plaintiff Karen Read.

In court documents, Read accused the Massachusetts State Police and Canton Police Department of tolerating “a culture of bias and corruption” that led to her being charged in the death of her boyfriend, John O’Keefe. At the time of his death, O’Keefe was an officer in the Boston Police Department. Prosecutors accused Read of backing into O’Keefe with her SUV before driving away and leaving him to die in the snow.

Read’s lawsuit claims that, after being charged with O’Keefe’s death, the two departments made a bad-faith effort to conceal “am embedded culture of bigotry, misogyny, systemic failures, and institutional rot at the very core of both organizations.” Attorneys for Read also claim that several officials involved in the investigation—including former State Trooper Michael Proctor and former Canton Police Sgt. Sean Goode—ignored and, at times, actively sought to suppress evidence that could have corroborated Read’s account.

“This case is about two institutions—the Massachusetts State Police and the Canton Police Department—and a culture of bias and corruption that they built, tolerated, and hid from the public for years,” attorneys for Read said in a statement. “Michael Proctor and Sean Goode did not slip through the cracks; they are emblematic of the failure to responsibly exercise the trust and faith the public puts in these institutions.”

Blue and red police lights; image by Scott Rodgerson, via Unsplash.com.

An attorney for Proctor told NBC-Boston that any attempt to focus on “anything other than Ms. Read’s own conduct” is both telling and predictable, emphasizing that the evidence suggests she killed O’Keefe with her SUV.

“It is a matter of undisputed fact that anything Mr. Proctor did or said in his personal life, years before Officer O’Keefe was killed, had no bearing whatsoever on the investigation of Karen Read,” attorney Matt Hamel said.

The lawsuit, however, cites thousands of text messages allegedly exchanged between the officers and other members of their departments. Proctor and Goode both appear to have routinely used a wide range of slurs to describe everyone from women to people of colors. They also made comments describing potential sexual assaults upon their romantic partners.

“Four car accident. Get on it,” Proctor wrote in one text message. “Actually, take your time. I saw a [slur] was involved. So I wouldn’t rush, if you’re working. Let them die.”

Proctor was fired in March 2025 and had his law enforcement certification suspended after a three-member trial board found that he had violated multiple departmental policies when he sent insulting messages about Read, shared evidence about her case with people outside law enforcement, and exhibited significant personal animus against her in the course of unrelated duties and communications.

Goode also allegedly sent a series of sexist and antisemitic text messages, describing Boston Mayor Michelle Wu as a “little c-nt” and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft as a “terrible c-nty Jew.”

“They are not officers who occasionally voiced an offensive remark,” the lawsuit alleges. “They are men whose written and recorded communications—sent to one another and to a circle of like-minded friends over the course of a decade—establish entrenched and unrepentant hatred for women, Black Americans, Asian Americans, Jews, Hispanics, Arabs, and gay people.”

Proctor and Goode’s “unfitness for any position of public trust was not subtle,” the lawsuit says, and their involvement in the investigation into O’Keefe’s death “invariably and irredeemably contaminated it in every respect.”

Attorneys for Read say that the Massachusetts State Police had been made aware of Proctor’s “prejudices and biases” by failed to take any meaningful disciplinary action against him.

The lawsuit claims that Canton Police Department officials “reviewed Goode’s vile messages last year and never terminated him. Rather, Canton allowed Goode to keep his rank until he chose to resign two days ago, on the eve of this lawsuit. That is the culture of these two institutions.”