Text messages exchanged between witnesses closest to the Karen Read murder case illustrate how they kept tabs on the initial investigation in the days following John O’Keefe’s death.

Matthew McCabe maintains he did not monitor investigators on Feb. 1, 2022, just three days after O’Keefe died, when he drove past 34 Fairview Road in Canton that afternoon, and he came across them by happenstance.

But a text message McCabe sent to his wife Jennifer, and Brian Albert and his wife Nicole shows otherwise, defense attorney David Yannetti argued during Day 14 of testimony in the Read murder trial.

“Troopers back out front, but in front of asian house. And looks like more has been dug up there or at least looks like it,” McCabe wrote in text sent at 1:34 p.m. that day.

McCabe explained to the defense and jury Friday that the family who lived next door to Brian and Nicole Albert were of Asian descent. He acknowledged he did not know the last name of the family he never met  or thought about reaching out.

Brian Albert responded to McCabe’s message, asking “Right now?” McCabe confirmed, yes.

“I was going to take a picture to show them troopers were outside their house,” McCabe told Yannetti during a cross examination.

Yannetti responded, “Right, you wanted to continue to monitor what was going on.”

“I was not monitoring what was going on,” McCabe said. “I just happened to drive by at that moment.”

Later that afternoon, McCabe and Albert exchanged messages about investigators “barely” interviewing Kerry Roberts, one of the three women who flagged down Canton Police Officer Steven Saraf around 6 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, outside Albert’s home, where O’Keefe’s body was found.

McCabe’s wife Jennifer McCabe and Roberts accompanied Read when the three discovered O’Keefe’s bloody body buried in the snow.

“Hope that they don’t think she’s making it up after the fact for some reason,” Brian Albert wrote in response to Matthew McCabe alerting the group of the interview. “But if they barely interview her, that’s on them.”

Albert is one of the three people who the defense has suggested could have been involved in beating John O’Keefe to death as part of a third-party killer theory.

Albert, a retired Boston Police sergeant, and his nephew Colin Albert, then a senior in high school who appeared with bruised and cut-up knuckles weeks later, have testified they did not see O’Keefe enter the home.

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 after a night out drinking the couple argued and she killed him by backing her Lexus SUV into him at high speed, leaving him to die in the cold during a major snowstorm.

McCabe also noted in the group chat with his wife and Brian and Nicole Albert how Roberts was being interviewed by State Police Trooper Michael Proctor, the principal investigator in the case.

The defense, in pre-trial hearings and in a cross examination of Colin Albert on Day 13 of testimony Thursday, said Proctor shares an extensive history with the Alberts and had even texted Julie Albert, Colin’s mother, to have her babysit his child at one point.

Defense attorney Alan Jackson presented Colin Albert a photo taken sometime within the past decade of him as the ring bearer in Courtney Proctor’s wedding, with her brother Michael in the same picture.

Colin Albert admitted that he was never interviewed by Canton police, and the first time he talked about the Read case with police came last summer at the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office.

Michael Proctor, who is under internal investigation, led the 10-minute interview, and Albert testified Proctor did not take his phone or ask to see it.

“What was the tone of that interview? Was it hostile and accusatory?” Jackson asked. “Not that I remember, no,” Albert said.

Jackson slammed investigators from Massachusetts State Police, saying they did not do their “due diligence” by failing to investigate witnesses at 34 Fairview Road until months, if not a year, after O’Keefe’s death.

“They did nothing to investigate whether there was someone in the house who tended to fight,” Jackson said, “who wanted to get into physical altercations … who was a fighter by nature, who threatened to fight, who threatened violence.”

Earlier on Feb. 1, 2022, McCabe instructed his wife and the Alberts not to tell the media that the guy never went in the house.

Witnesses had previously testified they never saw O’Keefe enter the home that night. But screenshots of McCabe’s message, which Yannetti presented to the jury, turned out to be a bombshell.

McCabe confirmed to Yannetti that “the guy” was O’Keefe.

“When you told the group to tell them the guy never went in the house,” Yannetti said. “That was you talking about how you all should get your stories straight, correct?”

“No,” McCabe said before he added “John never went in the house. It’s not a story. It’s a fact.”

Witness Matthew McCabe is questioned by prosecutor Adam Lally on Thursday during the Karen Read murder trial at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham. (Photo by Pat Greenhouse/Pool)