BOSTON — The lead investigator into the death of Boston police Officer John O’Keefe has begun his appeal of his firing for his “sexist” behavior regarding then-murder suspect Karen Read.

Michael Proctor appeared Tuesday morning for a Massachusetts Civil Service Commission administrative hearing in Boston that works a lot like a trial. He and his attorneys sat on one side as the MSP attorneys sat on the other side.

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

Those descriptions are from Read’s first trial in 2024, when Proctor took the stand on June 10 and June 12, 2024. During his time on the stand, he read portions of text messages he shared with his friends, his sister and even to his colleagues and supervisors at the MSP detective unit stationed at the Norfolk District Attorney’s office, which was tasked with investigating homicides in the county.

In these text messages — which Proctor began by his own admission some 16 hours after O’Keefe’s body was found in the snow outside a Canton home on Jan. 29, 2022 — he disclosed privileged information on the case to his old high school buddies, who call him by the nicknames Chip and Bear, and made what Carley calls “disparaging” and “misogynistic” remarks about suspect Read.

That included calling Read such things as “babe” and a “wackjob,” and other words too explicit for publication, but which Carley said in his opening and played clips of Proctor reading in court. Proctor also made fun of a medical condition Read suffers and told his sister that he hopes Read “kills herself.”

Carley called MSP internal 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. Attorney investigation into the same. On Tuesday, he testified that he sustained eight of the 11 allegations against Proctor.

The allegations he did not sustain were that Proctor accepted gratuity for possible bias in the case, that Proctor searched for nude photographs of Read during his analysis of her phone, and that Proctor took overtime pay while not actually working. He also performed a separate investigation into whether Proctor’s possible bias affected the outcome of the investigation but concluded it did not.

What he did sustain was what Proctor was fired for ahead of Read’s second trial earlier this year: that Proctor gave non-law enforcement personnel privileged information on the case, that he made disparaging remarks about a suspect to colleagues, that he brought himself and the department into disrepute and that he drank while on duty and operated his cruiser after doing so.

Proctor’s attorney Daniel Moynihan in his own opening said that Proctor’s firing was not in proportion to previous agency disciplinary actions but only to appease politicians and critical members of the public and the media.

“Mike Proctor was a very good trooper, an exemplary trooper,” Moynihan said, “who was made to be a scapegoat for the Mass. State Police to cave into pressure.”

He also criticized the U.S. Attorney’s actions on civil liberties grounds, that fellow troopers were “shocked” that a federal agency could “surreptitiously” investigate a personal cell phone without permission.

He said Proctor has apologized for his behavior and that perhaps his actions do deserve some repercussions, but not termination.

“Nobody should unjustifiably be pushed away from their jobs simply to satisfy an agenda,” Moynihan said.

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