In a court filing on Friday, Norfolk County prosecutors said they found “images of intimate body parts” and other sensitive information during a review of former Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor’s personal phone.
Prosecutors sought, and were granted, an order shielding the contents of the phone. Defense lawyers in cases investigated by Proctor will receive a copy of the extraction, but won’t be able to give copies to their clients.
On the phone, prosecutors say they found a ‘text-chat’ with ‘highly sensitive information.’ This included images of intimate body parts of people not participating in the chat, screenshots of Facebook posts by non-participants, images of non-participants, full phone numbers and/or personal email addresses of the text-chain participants, and the name of a sexual assault victim.
The filing does not offer any specific information beyond that.
It’s the clearest insight to date about what information was on Proctor’s phone beyond the demeaning text messages he sent about Karen Read during his investigation into the death of her boyfriend, John O’Keefe.
Proctor was in the middle of an appeal of the decision to fire him from the State Police over his conduct in the Read case when prosecutors revealed they found “materials that it reasonably believes to be discoverable” on his phone. That included texts and chats as well as video and audio files, according to prosecutors.
In any case, discoverable evidence must be shared between prosecutors and defense attorneys.
The extraction from Proctor’s personal phone also recovered emails and photos, prosecutors wrote in a court filing last week.
That is a sharp contrast to what Daniel Moynihan, Proctor’s lawyer, represented in a court filing this summer. In the filing, Moynihan said Proctor had obtained a new phone last year and installed software that automatically deleted its data every 30 days.
After prosecutors filed their notice on Oct. 16, the union representing State Police withdrew its support for Proctor’s appeal, leaving him without an attorney. Proctor withdrew his appeal last week.
Information from Proctor’s personal phone will be turned over in three pending murder cases, and the case of a woman charged with accessory to murder, after defense lawyers in those cases sought access to records from the phone.
The cases are those of Myles King, Shawn Johnson, Jovani Delossantos and Bianca Chionchio. All but Chionchio are charged with murder.
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