Prosecutor Failed to Connect Karen Read and ‘Turtleboy’ to Witness Intimidation Plot

The cases of Karen Read and pro-Read blogger Aidan “Turtleboy” Kearney could have been more linked than they already are if a prosecutor had won their case before a grand jury earlier this year.

Special prosecutor Kenneth Mello, a Fall River-based attorney handling several cases against Kearney, including witness intimidation charges related to the Read murder case, filed charges in a Norfolk Superior Court that he said which Read and Kearney had conspired to intimidate witnesses in his case. grand jury.

These charges were not approved after his presentation to the grand jury. Jurors returned an “unfounded bill” on the issue, meaning they did not find enough evidence to support the charges.

A Norfolk Superior Court clerk confirmed to the Herald that the case existed and that was the outcome, but said all documents involved were seized and could not be viewed by the public.

Mello had hinted along the way that he was trying to indict the new charges. In January, a search warrant filed in Kearney’s case was unsealed and revealed that Massachusetts State Police investigators had seized two iPhones from Read.

The warrant alleged that Read and his defense team provided Kearney with non-public documents and orchestrated his cover-up of the case and his alleged campaign of witness intimidation. He alleges that Read committed the crime of conspiracy to intimidate a witness.

Kearney’s attorney, Timothy Bradl, told the Herald at the time that it was a “crime-free investigation.”

“It appears to me that there is no evidence that Karen Read intended or had anything to do with the intimidation or interference of a witness, and that it was rather of a woman fighting for her life as the target of a murder charge,” he said at the time.

While Read’s defense attorney, David Yannetti, said he could not comment on the failed indictment, Bradl made a brief comment to the Herald about how Mello alluded to the alleged conspiracy between Read and Kearney.

“The timing of the release of the information that there has been an attempt to charge Mr Kearney and Ms Read is extremely disturbing,” he told the Herald on Thursday.

Read, 44, of Mansfield, faces charges including second-degree murder in the deaths of John O’Keefe, her boyfriend and a Boston police officer at the time of her death. Prosecutors say she hit him with her SUV after heavy drinking and another argument in their troubled relationship and left him to freeze and die in a Canton yard.

A first trial ended with a hung jury and a new trial is scheduled for January 27. His lawyers argued that in post-trial disclosures, the jury was unanimously prepared to acquit him of the murder charge and leave the scene of a trial. accident causing death, and were hanged only for manslaughter, but they did not know how to convey it at trial. They asked that both charges be dropped at the next trial. Trial Judge Beverly Cannone denied the motion, but they have since appealed to the state Supreme Judicial Court.

The O’Keefe family has filed a civil suit against her and she has requested that this matter await the conclusion of her criminal proceedings.

His case has become a lightning rod for true crime junkies in the Greater Boston area and across the country.

Perhaps no one more than Kearney, a Holden-based journalist who blogs independently on his own website, YouTube channel and various social media platforms under the banner “Turtleboy,” has done more to keep the he case to the fore – from an exclusive point of view and vehemently. pro-Read point of view.

He is the de facto leader of a highly visible group calling to “Free Karen Read,” which has taken and accepted defense claims of a massive law enforcement and prosecution cover-up.

But prosecutor Mello says Kearney, 42, has moved well beyond the boundaries of activism and into the realm of criminal witness intimidation. Kearney was charged with 16 counts last December: eight counts of witness intimidation, three counts of conspiracy to intimidate witnesses and five counts of picketing a witness.

Kearney has pleaded not guilty to the charges and he and his attorney have defended their actions on First Amendment grounds, with Kearney still not hesitant to speak for himself on the subject.