A newly unsealed search warrant reveals that Massachusetts State Police detectives confiscated two phones from murder suspect Karen Read in a sweep of her home.

The records in the case against pro-Read blogger Aidan “Turtleboy” Kearney reveal that investigators seized two iPhones from Read, one purple with a green case and one white with a clear case.

The warrant, dated Jan. 22, alleges that Read and her defense team provided Kearney with non-public materials and orchestrated his coverage of the case and his alleged witness intimidation campaign. It alleges that Read committed the crime of conspiracy to intimidate a witness.

The warrant allows only for the seizure of and for data extraction of the devices. Any analysis of that data will be subject to another search warrant.

Kearney’s defense attorney Timothy Bradl told the Herald in a statement, “The only crime here is the robbery of privacy.”

“It appears to be a single-spaced 30-page story about how the state police went to unbelievable lengths (taxpayer-funded trip to California!) to try to establish … drumroll … that Aidan Kearney and Karen read communicated with each other,” he continued. “It is an investigation without a crime. It appears to me that there is zero evidence that Karen Read intended or had anything to do with any witness intimidation or interference, and rather is a woman fighting for her life as a target of a murder charge.”

Read was indicted on charges including second-degree murder in the death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, at the end of January 2022. Prosecutors say Read, 43, of Mansfield, struck O’Keefe with her Lexus SUV while purportedly dropping him off at an after party at the then-home of fellow Boston cop Brian Albert, 34, in Canton.

Her defense attorneys have argued a third-party culpability defense, saying that Albert, his sister-in-law Jennifer McCabe and others at the party are ultimately responsible for O’Keefe’s death.

It’s a theory Kearney, 42, of Holden, ran with on his Turtleboy Daily News website and related social media accounts, but prosecutors in his own Norfolk Superior Court case say he went too far in his pro-Read defense advocacy. They say he both directly harassed and encouraged his followers, known as “Turtleriders,” to harass many state witnesses in the Read case.

A Norfolk grand jury indicted Kearney on 16 counts — eight counts of witness intimidation, three counts of conspiracy to intimidate witnesses, and five counts of picketing a witness — last December related to his coverage and advocacy on behalf of Read’s defense. He has pleaded not guilty and his work has continued even as he’s locked up in the Norfolk House of Correction.

The search warrant authored by Det. Lt. Brian Tully, the head of the MSP detectives unit at the Norfolk District Attorney’s office, alleges a conspiracy between Kearney and Read, as well as Read’s defense attorneys, in which they offered up details of their theories and evidence in the case that was not public exclusively to him and in turn directed his coverage.

Tully alleges that Read and Kearney communicated through the encrypted Signal messaging app. But Tully says the pair took it one step further and used an old college acquaintance of Read’s from Bentley University who now lived in California as an intermediary. In other words, they sent messages to this intermediary intended for each other and she would pass them along.

This intermediary said that the messages contained information about witnesses, including the home address of MSP Trooper Michael Proctor — who, along with his wife, Elizabeth, is an alleged target of Kearney’s witness intimidation campaign — pictures of state witnesses, autopsy photos, early access to defense motions, crime scene investigation photos and “feedback about Kearney’s blog posts, social media, and videos.”

Read’s defense attorneys declined to comment on the search warrant at this time.

Tully’s 31–page affidavit chronicles the alleged witness intimidation campaign Kearney waged in addition to his coverage, which is described as being a mouthpiece for defense strategies. An example is the July 22, 2023, rally of Turtleriders outside the home of Brian and Nicole Albert, also alleged targets of harassment, in which Kearney used a megaphone to call them murderers.

But the affidavit also alleges that Kearney wanted not only to intimidate witnesses, but had an overarching goal of contaminating the prospects of any potential trial. He did say in one of his “Canton Cover-Up” series of YouTube videos on the Read case that, “I said from the beginning, I don’t want this to go to trial.”

An example of this Tully cites in the affidavit is that billboards stating “Free Karen Read” were erected in the area. In another blog post, Kearney thanks those who donated and says that despite the coverage, more than half of the county had probably never heard of Karen Read before.

“That will change because of this 3-pronged billboard blitz,” he wrote in a blog post. “It’s really important for people in Norfolk County to know about this story because that is where the jury pool would be chosen from.”

The Read saga has been nothing short of dramatic since last spring when defense attorneys first floated their third-party defense theory. “Turtlerider” demonstrators have filled the gallery pews during hearings and have demonstrated outside the courthouse at every Read and Kearney hearing, causing court security to increase their presence.

Letters between the Norfolk DA’s office and the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office reveal something about the case is also under federal investigation.

The players other than the defendants have also gotten caught up. The defense motioned for Judge Beverly Cannone to recuse herself from the case, saying that she had some sort of relationship with an outside party they believe to be involved in a cover-up. That motion failed.

Then, just last week, the lawyers in the Kearney case lodged competing motions for sanctions against one another.