Decide blocks Sandra Birchmore homicide reference in Karen Learn’s second trial

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Having trouble? Click here. A Massachusetts choose has agreed to bar references to an unrelated, botched homicide investigation in Karen Learn’s second trial on homicide and different expenses within the 2022 dying of her Boston police officer boyfriend, John O'Keefe.

Police in Canton, a suburb about 20 miles south of Boston, inaccurately decided the Feb. 4, 2021 dying of Sandra Birchmore, 24, was a suicide earlier than federal investigators mentioned she had been strangled and charged a Stoughton officer together with her homicide.

The FBI arrested former Stoughton Police Officer Matthew Farwell , 38, in August in Birchmore's homicide.

KAREN READ DEFENSE FLOATS THEORY THAT ‘JEALOUS’ BRIAN HIGGINS FOUGHT JOHN O'KEEFE BEFORE DEATH

Karen Learn attends her second homicide trial in Norfolk Superior Courtroom Monday, Might 12, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe by way of AP, Pool)

He's accused of grooming her since she was a youngster, sustaining a sexual relationship for years after which killing her when she informed him she'd grow to be pregnant and staging the homicide to appear to be a suicide.

Canton Police have been additionally the primary to reply after O'Keefe was reported unresponsive outdoors one other Boston Police officer's home Jan. 29, 2022, throughout a blizzard.

Local police collected bloody snow proof in purple Solo cups and positioned them in a Cease and Store grocery bag. A Canton lieutenant used a leaf blower to maneuver snow from the place O'Keefe's physique had been discovered. Witnesses have been interviewed informally, off digicam and never on the police station.

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Prosecutor Hank Brennan questions Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik throughout the trial of Karen Learn in Norfolk Superior Courtroom Might 8, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (Charles Krupa, AP Pool)

O'Keefe was discovered lifeless on Brian Albert's entrance garden. Albert's brother is a Canton Police detective.

State police took over the investigation later that day. However their involvement wasn't with out controversy. The lead detective was fired earlier this 12 months after an inside investigation into unprofessional textual content messages revealed in courtroom throughout Learn's first trial, which ended in a mistrial .

Learn the motion :

STATE TROOPER POINTS TO POSSIBLE WEAPON IN JOHN O'KEEFE DEATH – AND IT'S NOT KAREN READ'S CAR

<source media="(min-width: 1024px) and (max-width: 1279px)" srcset="https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2025/05/931/523/karen-read-boston-ma-retrial-john-okeefe-day-12_17.jpg?ve=1&tl=1, https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2025/05/1862/1046/karen-read-boston-ma-retrial-john-okeefe-day-12_17.jpg?ve=1&tl=1 2x" height="523" width="931"> Protection lawyer Alan Jackson cross-examines Massachusetts State Police Sergeant Yuriy Bukhenik throughout the trial of Karen Learn in Norfolk Superior Courtroom Might 8, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (Charles Krupa, AP Pool)

"Gov. [Maura] Healey ought to have ordered the revamping of police coaching within the state after the debacle in Karen Learn 1.0," mentioned Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant and legal justice professor at Penn State Lehigh Valley. "All the pieces from response to the scene by patrol officers to securing the scene to figuring out proof, the correct assortment of proof, the correct containers for that proof and so forth."

The 2 instances prompted city residents to demand an audit into their very own police division, and the city board employed a agency referred to as 5 Stones Intelligence, or 5Si.

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Officer John O’Keefe (Boston Police Division)

The agency launched its findings in a 206-page report April 1, the identical day jury choice started in Learn's retrial.

It discovered no proof that Canton Police had conspired to border Learn, however the auditors recommended that each one dying instances be reviewed by supervisors sooner or later.

Within the report, 5Si really useful that Canton detectives endure "superior coaching" on crime scene investigations and that each one patrol automobiles be geared up with crime scene kits and proof assortment baggage. They referred to as for a rise within the police division's finances.

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<source media="(min-width: 768px) and (max-width: 1023px)" srcset="https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2025/03/672/378/johnokeefe_karenread_truecrimedoc_courtesyofkarenread.jpg?ve=1&tl=1, https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2025/03/1344/756/johnokeefe_karenread_truecrimedoc_courtesyofkarenread.jpg?ve=1&tl=1 2x" height="378" width="672"><source media="(min-width: 1024px) and (max-width: 1279px)" srcset="https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2025/03/931/523/johnokeefe_karenread_truecrimedoc_courtesyofkarenread.jpg?ve=1&tl=1, https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2025/03/1862/1046/johnokeefe_karenread_truecrimedoc_courtesyofkarenread.jpg?ve=1&tl=1 2x" height="523" width="931"> Karen Learn and John O'Keefe pose in an undated photograph. (Karen Learn)

There was additionally a federal investigation into the dealing with of O'Keefe's death . Learn stays the one individual charged.

She faces expenses of second-degree homicide, drunken driving manslaughter and fleeing a lethal accident for allegedly hanging O'Keefe together with her Lexus SUV throughout an argument and leaving him for lifeless round 12:30 a.m.

She and two buddies returned at 6 a.m. and located O'Keefe on the bottom, coated in snow that had intensified all through the day. An post-mortem discovered his explanation for dying was trauma to the pinnacle and hypothermia. The style was undetermined.

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Ex-Stoughton Police Officer Matthew Farwell, left, was charged in Sandra Birchmore's homicide. (AP/IMAGN)

Learn has denied hanging O'Keefe in any respect, pleaded not responsible and instructed she is being framed by native police and their allies.

She was first tried on the costs final 12 months, however jurors deadlocked, and Decide Beverly Cannone declared a mistrial.

To date within the retrial, at the least one proof bag seems to have been mislabeled, and one other had extra items of damaged taillight than anticipated. Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Yuri Bukhenik was additionally grilled a few lack of images for some proof and a delay of lots of of days for some stories within the investigation.

"If nothing else, they need to be taught documentation, documentation and documentation," Giacalone informed Fox Information Digital. "These aren’t small errors. These are errors that can price you instances, will trigger lawsuits within the state of Massachusetts and it simply makes everyone within the legal justice system look dangerous."

Karen Learn in a reserving photograph after her arrest within the dying of her Boston police officer boyfriend, John O'Keefe, in 2022. (Massachusetts State Police)

"If Massachusetts has this drawback, what about different states?" Giacalone mentioned. "Now's the time to nip them within the bud earlier than we discover out one other Karen Reed trial catastrophe."

Particular prosecutor Hank Brennan, a high-profile protection lawyer whose purchasers have included mobster Whitey Bulger, was introduced in to steer the second trial.

He requested Cannone final week to dam the protection from citing the Birchmore case as Learn's legal professionals look to color the investigation as unreliable and corrupt. She agreed, except the "door is opened" by prosecutors.

"They are not gonna open that door," mentioned Linda Kenney Baden, a high-profile protection lawyer who squared off in opposition to Learn lawyer Alan Jackson, a prosecutor throughout the first trial of report producer Phil Spector in 2007. Like Learn's, it resulted in a mistrial.

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Nonetheless, she mentioned, she believes there's loads of room for jurors to search out affordable doubt.

"They gotta show she hit him," she mentioned. "It is actually so simple as that. It is a drunk-driving hit-and-run."

Learn's SUV has a damaged taillight, and police witnesses described discovering matching items on Albert's entrance garden.

However the protection additionally performed surveillance video from O'Keefe's storage that seems to indicate her backing her SUV into his parked car shortly earlier than she discovered his stays together with two different girls, Kerry Roberts and Jennifer McCabe.

Nonetheless, the veteran trial lawyer praised Brennan's dealing with of the case and the way he is not noted key witnesses who might have tanked the prosecution within the first trial and gave the protection much less room to maneuver.

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"The best way Brennan has tried this case is that he isn't letting any of the dangerous stuff in, so each time Alan Jackson goes to the stuff that actually hurts them, he would not have a spot to go there," she mentioned.

For one, he left former Massachusetts State Tpr. Michael Proctor off the prosecution's witness record. Proctor despatched a sequence of impolite, lewd and unprofessional textual content messages about Learn and the investigation, which led to his firing.