Karen Read sues witnesses she argues framed her for John O’Keefe’s murder

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Karen Read has sued witnesses from her murder case who she argues framed her for the killing of John O’Keefe and are “actually involved” in her Boston police officer boyfriend’s death.

Read and her defense team have filed a civil complaint in Bristol Superior Court against witnesses they point to as “third parties” for O’Keefe’s death and members of the Massachusetts State Police involved in the murder investigation.

The complaint comes months after a jury in Norfolk County acquitted Read of the Boston cop’s murder.

“For three and a half years,” the complaint states, “Plaintiff Karen Read was wrongly accused of homicide and subjected to suspicion, arrest, two prosecutions, and public condemnation, all resulting from the gross misconduct of the Massachusetts State Police – and those working in tandem with the MSP – to shield from liability the party or parties responsible for the death of Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe III.”

“Now, after being acquitted of all charges relating to Mr. O’Keefe’s death,” the complaint continues, “Ms. Read brings this action to recover for and address the actions of those actually involved in Mr. O’Keefe’s death and the law enforcement officers who abjectly failed to ensure that justice was sought and served in the aftermath of January 29, 2022.”

Read’s attorneys, Damon Seligson and Alan Jackson, reiterate an argument presented in Read’s two criminal trials: That other parties inside Brian and Nicole Albert’s home, at 34 Fairview Road in Canton, killed O’Keefe.

The complaint targets Brian and Nicole Albert, Matthew and Jennifer McCabe and Brian Higgins as being involved in killing O’Keefe.

Read, 45, was indicted in June 2022 on charges of second-degree murder, motor vehicle manslaughter and leaving the scene of a collision causing O’Keefe’s death.

She was tried twice, first in 2024, which ended in a mistrial, and then in a second trial, which ended this past June when a jury acquitted her on all the indicted charges. She was convicted of drunk driving.

“Karen Read did not kill her then-boyfriend, Mr. O’Keefe,” the freshly filed civil complaint states. “Rather, in the early morning hours of January 29th, Mr. O’Keefe was killed in Defendants Brian and Nicole Albert’s home … in an altercation during a late-night house party with other Defendants … after a night of heavy drinking.

“The House Defendants responsible for Mr. O’Keefe’s death – some of whom had professional experience with police investigations – concocted a plan immediately after the altercation to avoid culpability and to frame Karen Read,” the complaint continues.

The argument is also the same as the one covered in the wrongful death civil suit that the O’Keefe family has filed in Plymouth Superior Court against Read. Her defense attorneys pointed to the “third parties” in September.

Michael Proctor, the lead MSP investigator in O’Keefe’s murder, who has since been fired and lost an appeal to regain his job, MSP Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik and MSP Lt. Brian Tully are also being sued in the new civil complaint.

“From the beginning,” the complaint states, “investigators from the MSP allowed the House Defendants to direct the investigation away from themselves, and towards Ms. Read.”

 

Florida grandfather, born in refugee camp, nabbed by ICE after 70 years in U.S.

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Paul John Bojerski was born to Polish parents in a German refugee camp a year after World War II ended. His family legally emigrated to the United States in 1952 when he was five.

More than seven decades later, the 79-year-old Sanford grandfather – still a man without a country – found himself in legal limbo in the Alligator Alcatraz detention camp in the Everglades, picked up on a decades-old deportation order authorities had previously chosen not to enforce.

Bojerski’s case is complex and unusual – the most bizarre one his immigration attorney says he has handled in 30 years – but also part of the Trump administration’s widespread effort to deport millions of immigrants who it claims lack legal standing to be in the U.S, even those who lived here for decades with full knowledge of immigration officials.

The retired optician, taken into custody late last month, was recently moved to the Krome Detention Center in Miami and has a bond hearing on Nov. 18. His family worries his health is failing while he’s in custody and fears for his future.

“It’s devastating,” said his stepdaughter, Sandy Adams, 57.

Adams has moved in with her 82-year-old mother, who has been rocked by her husband’s incarceration. “It’s difficult to see her go through so much. She just sits by the phone, waiting for my Dad to call.”

ICE has offered no comments in response to questions from the Orlando Sentinel about Bojerski’s case.

Upon arriving in the U.S., Bojerski’s family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, which is where he grew up. But he did not become a citizen as a child for reasons that are not clear. Run-ins with the law led to a later deportation order, but it was not acted upon. His attempts to establish permanent residency also failed.

So he remained in the U.S., checking in with immigration officials when required.

In July, Bojerski went to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office for what he thought would be his usual routine visit. There he was told that if he didn’t voluntarily leave the country, ICE would deport him.

He was instructed to return to the ICE office in Orlando Oct. 30 with travel arrangements. But he could not make such plans as he has no passport and no country to return to, his lawyer said.

So he and six other relatives gathered at a Bahama Breeze restaurant in Sanford in late October for one last meal together before he had to report to ICE.

“At dinner, we laughed, told old stories, and just caught up on life,” Adams said. “I think every single one of us was somber inside, but we would not allow my dad to see it or feel it. We needed him to see us strong to help him remain strong.”

Bojerski attended the Oct. 30 meeting, then came out and told his wife he was being taken into custody pending a deportation hearing.

“He had been in there a long time and finally came out and said they’re deporting me and I just lost it,” said Gayle Bojerski, his wife of 37 years. “This was so unexpected.”

Since his eight-hour bus ride to Alligator Alcatraz, Bojerski’s health has gone downhill, his family said.

Prior to his incarceration he was able to walk on his own without assistance, but he is now using a wheelchair, Adams said. He has had three back surgeries for which he’s under continued medical care and was scheduled for a spinal procedure on Thursday, which he missed because of the detention. He has also been unable to get his regular medications.

Friday morning, he called to say he has bruises from the guards, Adams said.

“He fell out of his wheelchair and they left him on the cell floor for hours.” she said.

He told his family the detainees rarely get hot meals, a complaint shared by others held at Alligator Alcatraz.

Still, while he was at Alligator Alcatraz, Bojerski called his wife and stepdaughter daily. Now that he’s in Krome, the calls are less frequent because of the long lines to use the phone, they said.

“His phone calls are what keeps me going…as long as I can hear from him I know he’s OK,” his wife said.

Families and immigrant advocates have confirmed the unsafe, “inhumane” and unhygienic conditions at Alligator Alcatraz, including worm-infested food, overflowing toilets and lack of access to medical care.

State officials have disputed those descriptions.

David Stoller, Bojerski’s Orlando attorney, has sought to challenge his detention. His family has also reached out to U.S. Rep. Corey Mills, a Republican who represents Sanford, but to no avail.

Paul John Bojerski was born Zbigniew Janusz Bojerski  – a name he swore he never used during his lifetime in the U.S. – in a displaced persons camp in Lubec, Germany in October 1946 to Polish nationals.  The family emigrated to New York in January 1952, and he was admitted as a  lawful permanent resident under the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, according to Immigration and Naturalization Service records.

From there the story of his residency grows tangled.

He was arrested as a young man in 1966 for larceny and then again in 1967 for receiving stolen goods.

While he was incarcerated, an immigration hearing officer in 1968 ruled that those convictions were considered acts of moral turpitude that violated the country’s immigration laws. He ordered Bojerski to be deported.

But when both Poland, which was under communist rule at the time, and West Germany refused to take him, he was released from prison and remained in the United States.

Bojerski’s efforts to have the deportation order tossed out failed. Still, in 1969, immigration authorities issued another order that allowed him to be released from custody and apply for employment authorization, Stoller said.

Bojerski was in trouble with the law again after that, convicted in 1972 of rape and sentenced to three years in prison. He was released in 1975 and placed on parole for one year.

According to his wife, the rape charge was related to an incident at a fraternity party, where several other students sexually abused a young woman. Bojerski said he didn’t participate but was arrested along with the others. She said the other men took plea deals but he didn’t because he believed he did nothing wrong.

“He has never trusted the system since then,” Gayle Bojerski said.

After completing college Bojerski became an optician, working for the same company for more than 30 years. He eventually moved to Florida where he met Gayle in 1982, when she bought a pair of eyeglasses from him at the Montgomery Wards in Orlando.

Detail of a photo album page of the 1988 honeymoon of Gayle and Paul John Bojerski in Niagara Falls, copied on Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025. (Courtesy of Gayle and Paul John Bojerski / Copied by Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/Orlando Sentinel)

Bojerski and Gayle married in 1988 and went to Niagara Falls in Canada on their honeymoon. Because he crossed the border then and again during a trip to Mexico, without questions from immigration officials, he and Stoller have argued that he had fulfilled the obligations of the old deportation order.

He made that case when he applied for permanent residency but immigration officials did not buy it. His request was denied, and in 2010 the government issued a new supervision order.

He has been following that order ever since, without issue, until July when the ICE told him he was to be kicked out of the country where he’s lived for over seven decades.

Whenever Bojerski calls, his family is his first priority, Adams said.

“Each call he asks about all of us first and keeps telling us he is OK.”

Gayle Bojerski said she is not opposed to the government’s deportation efforts as long as they focus on the most violent immigrants – drug dealers and other “bad people.”

But they shouldn’t deport the farmers who put food on our tables, she said, or people like her husband, despite his old criminal record.

“He’s always done everything they asked him to do,” she said.

Federal judges block Texas from using its new US House map in the 2026 midterms

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By JOHN HANNA, Associated Press

Texas cannot use a new congressional map drawn by Republicans in hopes of securing the party additional U.S. House seats, a panel of three federal judges ruled Tuesday.

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The ruling was a blow to President Donald Trump’s efforts to have GOP lawmakers in multiple states redraw their maps to help the party preserve its slim House majority in the potentially difficult 2026 midterm elections.

“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics. To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map,” the ruling states.

Texas this summer was the first state to meet Trump’s demands in what has become an expanding national battle over redistricting. Republicans drew the state’s new map to give the GOP five additional seats, and Missouri and North Carolina followed with new maps adding an additional Republican seat each. To counter those moves, California voters approved a ballot initiative to give Democrats an additional five seats there.

The 2-1 decision followed a nearly two-week trial in El Paso, Texas. Texas’ expected appeal would be directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, under a federal law dealing with redistricting lawsuits.

A coalition of civil rights groups representing Black and Hispanic voters argued the map reduced the influence of minority voters, making it a racial gerrymander that violates the federal Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution.

They sought an order blocking Texas from using the map while their case proceeded, which would force the state to use the map drawn by the GOP-controlled Legislature in 2021 for next year’s elections.

The panel of judges granted the critics’ request, signaling that they think those critics have a substantial chance of winning their case at trial. Judges appointed by Trump and Democratic President Barack Obama formed the majority. An appointee of Republican President Ronald Reagan dissented.

Republicans in Texas said repeatedly during the Legislature’s debates this summer, and after, that they were redrawing districts solely to help Republicans win more seats. The U.S. Supreme Court gave states the go-ahead to pursue partisan gerrymandering by ruling in 2019 that it’s a political issue beyond the reach of the federal courts.

Republicans hold 25 of Texas’ 38 congressional seats, with Democrats holding two of their 13 seats in districts that Trump carried in 2024. Had the new map been in place last year, Trump would have carried 30 congressional districts by 10 percentage points or more, making it likely that the GOP would have won that many seats as well.

Democrats across the U.S. have described the redistricting in Texas and other states as a power grab by Trump designed to prevent a congressional check on him, regardless of voter anger. Republicans are keen to avoid a repeat of the 2018 midterms, when they lost the majority and the Democratic-controlled House twice impeached Trump.

The new map decreased from 16 to 14 the number of congressional districts where minorities comprise a majority of voting-age citizens.

In doing so, they eliminated what had been five of nine “coalition” districts, where no racial or ethnic minority has a majority but together minorities outnumber non-Hispanic whites in the voting-age population. Five of six Democratic lawmakers drawn into districts with other incumbents are Black or Hispanic.

Yet Republicans argued that the map is better for minority voters. While five “coalition” districts are eliminated, there’s a new, eighth Hispanic-majority district, and two new Black-majority districts.

Critics consider each of those new districts a sham, arguing that the majority is so slim that white voters, who tend to turn out in larger numbers, will control election results.

Kevin Frazier: You can’t save the American Dream by freezing it in time

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“They gave your job to AI. They picked profit over people. That’s not going to happen when I’m in office. We’re going to tax companies that automate away your livelihood. We’re going to halt excessive use of AI. We’re going to make sure the American Dream isn’t outsourced to AI labs. Anyone who isn’t with us, anyone who is telling you that AI is the future, is ignoring the here and now — they’re making a choice to trade your livelihood for the so-called future. That’s a trade I’ll never make. There’s no negotiating away the value of a good job and strong communities.”

Persuasive, right? It’s some version of the stump speech we’re likely to hear in the lead up to the midterm elections that are just around the corner—in fact, they’re less than a year away.

It’s a message that will resonate with Americans who have bounced from one economic crisis to the next — wondering when, if ever, they’ll be able to earn a good wage, pay their rent, and buy groceries without counting pennies as they walk down each aisle.

It’s a message that’s also destined to leave Americans economically worse off in the long run.

Technology causes job displacement. It’s a tale as old as innovation. In the short run, this can lead to a spike in unemployment and, as a result, a demand for political action to ease economic insecurity. One tactic may be to stop the development and spread of the technology itself. The thinking goes that if today’s jobs are artificially protected from tomorrow’s technology, then more Americans can hang on to their current role and maintain some degree of stability.

Politically, such thinking might make sense — politicians are rewarded for thinking about the here and now under our current electoral system. Yet, economically, this approach lacks support. The surest way to help everyday folks achieve the American Dream in the Age of AI is not to wrap them and our economy in an AI bubble wrap. That’s actually a recipe for economic calamity.

The states and nations that survive and thrive through the disruptions brought on by AI will be the ones that focus on economic resiliency, not economic entrenchment. This tactic involves three key strategies: AI literacy, AI adoption, and economic dynamism.

On AI literacy, beware the party that effectively encourages you to ignore AI or even actively avoid it. Fundamental knowledge of whether and how to use AI tools will become as basic as Outlook proficiency in a few years. In the same way that most folks no longer include “Word” and “Excel” as core competencies on their resume, employers will soon come to expect that applicants and employees have familiarity with AI tools.

Policymakers should help you prepare for that world rather than try to dodge it. Any delayed introduction to AI will diminish the long-term competitiveness of U.S. workers. It’s no secret that ongoing exposure and education to new technology make it easier to pick up the next tool. The individuals who continually experiment with AI and learn its faults and strengths will have an easier time keeping up with the rapid advances in the field. On the other hand, when protectionist measures expire and workers with little AI training find themselves back on the market, they will have a much tougher time.

On AI adoption, beware the party that chastises companies for using AI and otherwise attempts to block certain professions from trialing new AI uses. There are many unproductive ways to use AI — uses that detract from a company’s bottom line, that hinder operational efficiencies, and that harm consumers.

Critically, however, there are uses that will result in new products, new services, and, most importantly, new jobs. Discovery of both the good and the bad will not happen by accident. If we’re going to uncover the jobs of the future, then we need businesses today to act as AI laboratories.

Finally, on economic dynamism, beware the party that treats it as its mission to freeze our economy in amber by constructing barriers to entry for AI-forward firms. At these early stages of AI, it’s easy to spot bad apples — firms that come up with the latest “AI” play that’s actually a poorly disguised scam.

This may be particularly likely in areas like education, mental health, and financial services. Short-term political thinking may lead candidates to urge whole bans on AI in certain industries. This may generate applause at a pep rally, but it’s also likely to quash entrepreneurial activity in those areas. Startups that could have developed the next great app that empowers more Americans in the classroom or supports them through hard times will pivot to other fields or simply not get off the ground. That’s not a dynamic economy; that’s an economy that rewards entrenched incumbents.

In sum, the future isn’t a trade-off between livelihoods and technology. That’s a false choice, born of short-term political thinking and economic anxiety. The real trade is between a nation that chooses to bury its head in the sand—and one that chooses to adapt and lead.

Instead of trying to halt the inevitable march of progress, our focus should be on preparing Americans for the future. That means championing AI literacy in our schools and workplaces, so that every citizen can become an active participant in this new economy. It means fostering AI adoption by giving businesses the freedom to experiment and discover the new products, services, and jobs that will drive our growth. And it means cultivating economic dynamism by removing the regulatory barriers that stifle innovation and protect powerful incumbents.

The true American Dream isn’t about clinging to the past; it’s about building a better future. The path to a strong, prosperous, and resilient nation in the age of AI isn’t through prohibition — it’s through preparation. Now’s the time to anticipate and refute those who want to score political points with short-term perspectives.

Kevin Frazier is an AI Innovation and Law Fellow at Texas Law and author of the Appleseed AI substack.He wrote this column The Fulcrum, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news platform covering efforts to fix our governing systems.

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