Ken Berkowitz, the retired police chief from Canton, Massachusetts, who was the police chief of Canton the night John O’Keefe was allegedly murdered by Karen Read, died on Saturday, following a reported battle with cancer.
Berkowitz had little to do with the case from most accounts, retiring in June of 2022, oversaw the department during the read investigation. While he received praise for handling the murder investigation as best as a small-town department could do during a blizzard that hampered the investigation for weeks as snow melted.
At the same time, Berkowitz was criticized by those defending Read as incompetent. Under his watch, police used red plastic Solo cups as improvised evidence collection containers and stored those cups in plastic grocery bags in violation of the department’s policies and blamed their usage on the extreme weather officers faced at the time.
The controversial decision to allow his officers to use improvised evidence collection materials came up at the trial of Karen Read and may have been partly to blame for the jury’s inability to reach a verdict, resulting in a mistrial. Read is set to be retried later this year.
Upon hearing of his death, blogger and self-described “Journalism Jesus,” Aidan “Turtleboy” Kearney issued the following statement via Twitter/X: “Disgraced former Canton Police Chief Ken Berkowitz reportedly died yesterday after a battle with cancer. I hope for the sake of his eternal soul that he left a note, because he died knowing full well that his friends murdered John O’Keefe. Berkowitz was listed on the defense witness list, but was not forced to testify at the trial, despite being close friends with Brian Higgins (who was the first person he called after finding out about John O’Keefe’s death), finding tail light from a moving vehicle, and asking a reporter to remove a factual tweet about John’s body being found on Brian Albert’s front lawn.”
Later, after describing himself as the “de facto leader” of the so-called Free Karen Read movement, Kearney addressed those who were looking to protest at Berkowitz’s funeral on Thursday.
In a statement issued on Twitter/X, he wrote: “Ken Berkowitz was the Chief of Police when both John Okeefe and Sandra Birchmore were murdered in Canton. Under his leadership both murders were covered up. He now will have to explain himself to a higher power than the FBI. With that said, it is completely inappropriate to protest at anyone’s funeral. Don’t even think about doing that or you are no better than the McAlberts.”
We will continue to monitor the situation in Canton and provide updates as they happen.
