Both men, the lawsuit claimed, are “inveterate bigots” who harbor a deep-seated hatred for women and minority groups, as evidence by years of their private text correspondence obtained under court orders.
The complaint included a number of messages, in which Proctor voiced sentiments such as, “that lady was an absolute [expletive] rag [expletive],” using a crude term for female anatomy and an anti-Black slur to describe a Boston police employee conducting a background check on him more than a decade ago, when he was seeking employment as a Boston officer.
The Boston Police Department did not hire Proctor, who was later hired by State Police in 2013, records show. State Police fired him in March 2025.
“These disturbing messages are entirely inconsistent with any basic standard of decency and certainly with the expectations of a Massachusetts State Trooper,” State Police Colonel Geoffrey D. Noble said in a statement Thursday. “These racist, sexist and abhorrent comments absolutely do not reflect the values of the Massachusetts State Police and are not tolerated within our ranks. They underscore and fully support my decision to terminate Michael Proctor.”
Goode also voiced similarly crude sentiments in many texts, Read’s suit said, including messages that derided Boston Mayor Michelle Wu as a “little [expletive],” claimed a young woman allegedly killed by a former Stoughton detective was “borderline retarded,” and said of one female suspect in 2015, “can’t wait to look this [expletive] up tonight at work,” using the same crude term for women’s anatomy.
Both Canton and State Police, the lawsuit stated, knew or should’ve known about the biases the two men held.
Yet the agencies “unleashed these two misogynist bigots on Ms. Read to work on the conflicted and corrupt ‘investigation’” into the death of her boyfriend, Boston police Officer John O’Keefe, the suit said.
Goode, who resigned from the Canton department this week after being placed on leave in October, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Proctor was terminated after being forced to read a number of crude and misogynistic messages he had sent about Read on the witness stand during her first criminal trial.
Read’s lawyers said in the suit that over the years on more than one occasion, “Proctor discussed ‘planting coke’ on people” and assaulting someone with a nightstick.
Proctor’s lawyer, Jason W. Crotty, said Thursday in a statement that Read is trying to hide her own culpability in O’Keefe’s death by filing the suit.
“The focus on anything other than Ms. Read’s own conduct on the night Officer O’Keefe was killed is as telling as it is predictable,” Crotty said. “Events in Mr. Proctor’s personal life have been reviewed, ad nauseum, by a grand jury, the District Attorney, and the Massachusetts State Police.”
Crotty said it’s “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. In point of fact, the evidence that Karen Read killed John O’Keefe by backing up and striking him with her 6,000-pound Lexus SUV, while highly intoxicated, is overwhelming.”
Norfolk County prosecutors had charged Read, 46, with second-degree murder and other crimes for allegedly backing her SUV into O’Keefe in a drunken rage early on Jan. 29, 2022, after dropping him off outside a Canton home following a night of bar-hopping.
Her lawyers said she was framed and that O’Keefe entered the property, owned at the time by a fellow Boston police officer, where he was fatally beaten and possibly mauled by a German Shepherd before his body was planted on the front lawn.
Read’s first criminal trial ended in a hung jury in July 2024, and jurors acquitted her last year at her retrial of murder, finding her guilty only of misdemeanor OUI, for which she received a year’s probation.
In a separate statement released Thursday, the town of Canton did not respond directly to Read’s allegations, saying municipal officials hadn’t yet been served with the suit.
“The Town of Canton has the utmost faith and confidence in the new leadership of Canton Police Department under Chief Michael Daniels, and we would refute any broad stroke characterizations about the brave and dedicated men and women who serve in the Department,” the statement said. “The Department has made significant strides forward over the past two years, including the acceptance and implementation of findings and recommendations in the outside audit report. The Department is poised to move further ahead as a modern public safety agency, which the citizens of Canton rightfully expect and deserve.”
The civil action Read filed Thursday is the latest in a series of pending state and federal lawsuits tied to the case.
They include a wrongful death suit filed against Read by O’Keefe’s family; a suit filed by several people against Read and a blogger who backed her for allegedly falsely implicating the plaintiffs in O’Keefe’s death; and a federal suit filed by Read against civilian witnesses and investigators for allegedly colluding to frame her.
In the suit filed Thursday, Read’s attorneys described the latest litigation against State Police and Canton as a “clarion call for reform and accountability.”
“This Complaint transcends Ms. Read’s personal and actionable grievance,” the filing said. “Cloaked with the emblem of authority, MSP and CPD, and their employees Proctor, Goode, and others, betrayed their sworn commitment to uphold the law. Their prejudices undermine our very democratic principles in wielding the great force of government over those who are vulnerable and powerless. … MSP and CPD are culpable and must confront the consequences of their institutional negligence.”
Material from previous Globe stories was used in this report.
Travis Andersen can be reached at [email protected].
