No, Trooper Michael Proctor was not fired

A single line in a defense filing in the Brian Walshe murder case has Karen Read fanatics reeling: Was Trooper Michael Proctor, the case handler for both cases, fired from the Massachusetts State Police?

“There is a court record in the (Walshe) case that is not correct. Trooper Proctor remains on unpaid leave while awaiting the outcome of an internal affairs investigation,” MSP spokesman Timothy McGuirk told the Herald today.

The confusion stems from a filing by Walshe defense attorney Larry Tipton, who made a mistake in his summary of Proctor’s professional history. Proctor was placed on leave almost immediately when the Read trial ended in mistrial earlier this year because of what he admitted to be extremely unprofessional conduct that came to light while taking the stand in the case. He was later suspended without pay but not outright fired from the organization.

“The Proctor debacle resulted in Proctor first being suspended and then fired from the State Police, but only after defense attorneys uncovered the serious problems,” Tipton wrote in a filing.

As the Herald reported, the filing calls for the Walshe defense team to be provided with the contents of Proctor’s work phone and cloud account, which could provide some exculpatory evidence for Walshe. Norfolk County prosecutors filed notices earlier this year in this and other cases in which Proctor worked that the DA’s office had obtained an extract from Proctor’s phone and cloud account and that the materials could have implications for those cases .

Walshe, 49, is charged with the murder of his wife Ana Walshe, whom prosecutors say he killed and then dismembered on the first day of 2023 and then hid her body parts in dumpsters in the Boston area. After being charged with her murder, he was convicted in federal court in an unrelated international art fraud case, which he has appealed. He has been incarcerated at the Norfolk Correctional Facility since his initial arrest.

Read, 44, of Mansfield, is charged with second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter and leaving the scene of an accident that killed John O’Keefe, a 16-year Boston police officer and Read’s boyfriend of two years, early this morning of January 29, 2022.