Crime
“You haven’t seen the last of me yet,” Jackson vowed Tuesday during an appearance on “The Greg Hill Show.”
After teasing further collaboration with Karen Read in a cryptic post on social media, high-powered attorney Alan Jackson has confirmed he will defend Read again in her ongoing wrongful death lawsuit.
“I’ve agreed to join Karen and her very capable defense team in the civil action,” Jackson said Tuesday during an appearance on WEEI’s “The Greg Hill Show.”
He was referring to a pending lawsuit filed by the family of Read’s former boyfriend, the late Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe. Read was acquitted in June of murder and manslaughter charges in O’Keefe’s January 2022 death, but the officer’s family maintains she is to blame.
“You haven’t seen the last of me yet,” Jackson vowed, adding that he’s bringing another member of Read’s criminal defense team, Elizabeth Little, with him. Both he and Little were among the attorneys who represented Read during her 2024 mistrial and this year’s retrial, which saw Read convicted only of a drunk driving misdemeanor.
“The band is not just staying together, getting back together, but we’re intending on writing a few new chapters,” Jackson said.
According to Hill, Read’s attorneys have sent subpoenas to the Massachusetts State Police and Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office in pursuit of information on witnesses who testified during her criminal trials and evidence from a secretive federal probe into the case.
Mirroring prosecutors’ claims, O’Keefe’s family alleges Read drunkenly backed her SUV into her boyfriend while dropping him off at a house party in Canton early on Jan. 29, 2022. They’ve also named in their lawsuit the two local bars where the couple drank the night O’Keefe died.
Read, meanwhile, has argued she was framed as part of a botched law enforcement investigation and that O’Keefe was actually injured after joining the afterparty inside 34 Fairview Road. Photos and videos showing members of the defense team investigating inside the home circulated on social media earlier this year, though the material was not shown to jurors during Read’s retrial.
“The pain point that the plaintiffs are going to have in their civil suit is, this is a very different lawsuit,” Jackson explained. “It’s not a criminal lawsuit, and it’s certainly not being governed by Judge Beverly Cannone, who kept out so much of that information [while presiding over Read’s criminal trials]. That’s why you’re seeing it on social media, rather than having seen it in the courtroom.”
He suggested the civil lawsuit would offer a platform for “a lot of that information to be aired out, and aired out completely.”
Asked whether Read is also contemplating a federal complaint in connection with her criminal case, Jackson demurred.
“That’s an interesting question, not one that I’m willing to talk about right now,” Jackson replied. “We have a lawsuit that’s in front of us.”
He continued: “I can say this: Karen has proved herself to be a fighter. She’s not going to sit back in a corner and get punched. … I doubt seriously she’s going to be a wallflower during the course of this new litigation.”
Elsewhere in his conversation with Hill, Jackson hammered at Cannone and former Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor, the disgraced ex-detective who led the investigation into O’Keefe’s death and rose to infamy over his vulgar texts about Read. Jackson also had sharp words for Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey, whom he accused of overprosecuting Read and wasting “millions and millions and millions” of taxpayer dollars as part of a “personal vendetta.”
“It’s a thiefdom; he runs that [office] like a lord in his manor,” Jackson said of Morrissey. “He doesn’t run it like a public official. He’s a disgrace. He’s an absolute disgrace.”
Looking ahead, Jackson said it’s “very, very unlikely” Read’s civil case will be livestreamed in the same manner as her criminal trials, which saw gavel-to-gavel coverage nationwide. He also offered actor Danny DeVito as a tongue-in-cheek suggestion for who should portray him in the upcoming screen adaptations of Read’s case.
In the meantime, Jackson has his sights set on Boston.
“Keep a bowl of chowder warm for me,” he joked. “I’m coming back.”
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