Karen Learn case investigator Michael Proctor pleads for his State Police job again

The lead investigator into the dying of Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe has begun his enchantment of his firing for his “sexist” habits relating to then-murder suspect Karen Learn.

Michael Proctor appeared Tuesday morning for a Massachusetts Civil Service Fee administrative listening to in Boston that works loads like a trial.

“Distasteful, unprofessional, inappropriate, in poor taste, juvenile, sexist, disgusting, dehumanizing,” MSP lawyer Stephen Carley started along with his opening assertion. “These words are Michael Proctor’s own accounting of his conduct in this case.”

These descriptions are from Learn’s first trial in 2024, when Proctor took the stand on June 10 and June 12, 2024. Throughout his time on the stand, he learn parts of textual content messages he shared along with his associates, his sister and even to his colleagues and supervisors on the MSP detective unit stationed on the Norfolk District Lawyer’s workplace, which was tasked with investigating homicides within the county.

In these textual content messages — which Proctor started by his personal admission some 16 hours after O’Keefe’s physique was discovered within the snow outdoors a Canton residence on Jan. 29, 2022 — he disclosed privileged data on the case to his outdated highschool buddies, who name him by the nicknames Chip and Bear, and made what Carley referred to as “disparaging” and “misogynistic” remarks about Learn, O’Keefe’s girlfriend and the MSP’s suspect in his homicide.

These remarks included calling Learn things like a “babe” and a “wackjob,” and different phrases too express for publication, however which Carley mentioned in his opening and performed clips of Proctor studying in courtroom. Proctor additionally made enjoyable of a medical situation Learn suffers and instructed his sister that he hopes Learn “kills herself.”

He concluded by means of textual content message early on within the investigation that “We’re going to lock this wack job up.”

Carley referred to as MSP inner affairs investigator Detective Lieutenant Kevin Dwyer to the stand.

Dwyer was assigned the investigation into Proctor’s conduct after the Norfolk DA disclosed a U.S. Lawyer investigation into the identical. On Tuesday, he testified that he sustained eight of the 11 allegations towards Proctor.

The allegations he didn’t maintain have been that Proctor solicited and accepted a present for his service from a Commonwealth witness, that Proctor looked for nude images of Learn throughout his evaluation of her cellphone, and that Proctor took additional time pay whereas not really working. He additionally carried out a separate investigation into whether or not Proctor’s doable bias affected the result of the investigation however concluded it didn’t.

What he did maintain was what Proctor was fired for forward of Learn’s second trial earlier this yr: that Proctor gave non-law enforcement personnel privileged data on the case, that he made disparaging remarks a few suspect to colleagues, that he introduced himself and the division into disrepute and that he drank whereas on obligation and operated his cruiser after doing so.

MSP Col. Geoffrey Noble, who was tapped to move the company after the primary trial and is accountable for Proctor’s termination, has since referred to as Proctor’s firing a “righteous decision.”

Proctor’s lawyer Daniel Moynihan in his personal opening mentioned that Proctor’s firing was not in proportion to earlier company disciplinary actions however solely to appease politicians and important members of the general public and the media.