Members of the Massachusetts State Police, the agency responsible for the investigation of Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe’s homicide, finally took the stand in the sixth week of Karen Read’s trial.

Lt. Kevin O’Hara was the first trooper to testify in the murder trial in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham when he took the stand last Monday. As the commander of the Special Emergency Response Team, O’Hara’s role in the investigation was limited to managing the sweep of the front yard of 34 Fairview Road the afternoon of Jan. 29, 2022, hours after O’Keefe’s body was found there.

But things really started to heat up on Wednesday when Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik, one of the chief investigators in the case, took the stand. His role began that morning at 6:44 a.m., he said, when he received a work call reporting that “there was a body in (a) snowbank” outside the Fairview Road home.

Bukhenik said that he had to wait for a little while for the roads to clear in the morning snowstorm and finally opted to take his personal all-wheel-drive truck rather than his department sedan to make the drive to meet the homicide’s assigned “case officer,” Trooper Michael Proctor, at the Canton PD, where he said he arrived at around 9:15 a.m.

Proctor, the assigned chief investigator of O’Keefe’s homicide, has yet to take the stand and it’s not certain if the prosecution will call him this week, the seventh week of Read’s murder trial.

Read, 44, of Mansfield, faces charges of second-degree murder, motor vehicle manslaughter and leaving the scene of a collision causing the death of O’Keefe, a 16-year Boston Police officer when he died at age 46. Prosecutors say that she struck him with her SUV in the early hours of Jan. 29, 2022, following an argument and a night of heavy drinking and left him to die in a snowstorm. Defense attorneys counter that an outside person or people beat O’Keefe to death in the Fairview Road home and framed Read for his murder.

The trial had slowed its pace in recent weeks, with last week seeing only two and a half days of testimony — regular trial days on Monday and Wednesday and only three hours of trial on Thursday morning — and the trial only meeting for one day the week before.

Judge Beverly Cannone, who has admonished attorneys over evidence organization delays as well as repetitive testimony that she said has wasted the jury’s time, on Thursday said the lengthy trial was likely to be handed over to jurors in the last week of this month.

Bukhenik and Proctor’s investigation

In chief investigator Proctor’s absence so far in the trial based on his investigation, attorneys peppered Bukhenik — Proctor’s supervisor in the Norfolk DA’s MSP detective unit — for details on how Read was charged with her boyfriend’s murder.

The detectives’ first stop that day was the home of Jennifer and Matthew McCabe, where Bukhenik said he interviewed each of them separately and also interviewed Brian Albert, the then-Boston Police sergeant who owned the home where O’Keefe was found.

They next went to view O’Keefe’s body at Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton, where, Bukhenik testified, O’Keefe’s clothing, stained and ripped, was scattered on the floor and encrusted with “traces of vomit.”

Bukhenik said he observed “bruising” to O’Keefe’s eyelids, as well as “a cut to his nostril” and to one eyelid, and “abrasions” to O’Keefe’s “upper forearm and lower bicep area,” with the wounds “concentrated” a few inches on either side of the elbow.

They next visited Read’s parents’ home in Dighton, Bukhenik said, where they questioned Read.

Bukhenik said the interview covered the previous 24 hours, with Read saying she and O’Keefe had argued the previous morning over what O’Keefe’s niece and nephew — who he had custody of — ate for breakfast. The couple would then drink at two Canton bars, where Bukhenik said video evidence showed Read consumed at least nine drinks between the two of them, before she said she dropped O’Keefe off at 34 Fairview Road, made a three-point turn and left.

“I advised Ms. Read that her phone was going to be seized as evidence and that her vehicle was going to be seized as well,” Bukhenik said.

Forensics

Bukhenik testified that he had instructed the detective troopers and others in his office to drive by 34 Fairview Road in the days following the Jan. 29, 2022, because, he said, “certain items were revealed naturally through the melting process.”

Those items were shown in photographs: sections of taillight — which is in addition to the “six or seven” pieces O’Hara said his team found in its initial search — a black drinking straw like ones served in cocktails at bars, and a Boston Police hat with an American flag emblem, “which was compacted by the snow.” Bukhenik showed the hat in the courtroom.

That evidence was then processed by MSP crime lab scientists, a few of whom testified last week: Maureen Hartnett, Ashley Vallier and Christina Hanley.

Hartnett swabbed the frozen “red-brown stains” Canton Police officers collected in red SOLO cups from under O’Keefe’s body after the samples had thawed to test for blood.

She also performed a survey of Read’s 2021 Lexus LX570 inside the police station’s sallyport. She said the vehicle was “in overall good condition,” but with damage to the rear passenger-side area”: a dent in the rear door, scratches to the bumper and damage to the taillight.

Vallier said she performed “physical match” analysis of the evidence, including the clothing O’Keefe died in, where she noted “apparent dirt debris” as well as plastic, glass and a straw. She also performed “mechanical fit” for the various pieces of the taillight. Evidence photos shown in court started with the individual shards of taillight and progressed through reassembly of the pieces like a forensic jigsaw puzzle.

Hanley testified to testing the composition of “apparent glass” on the bumper of Read’s vehicle where at least some matched the busted cocktail glass found at the scene.