Boston radio talker Howie Carr landed the first interview with acquitted media star Karen Read – but Read’s No. 1 champion wasn’t allowed on the show.
Read was expected to do her first public interview on Thursday, following her second murder trial that ended about two months ago.
Carr posted an announcement on social media boasting that both Read and her attorney, Alan Jackson, would be on his radio show, which is syndicated across two dozen stations in New England.
Yet Carr conspicuously made no mention of the guy who carried water for Read during her entire battle to clear her name after she was charged with drunkenly killing her Boston-cop boyfriend with her car.
Turtleboy is Aidan Timothy Kearney, a journalist and conservative activist who’s the senior editor of the website and podcast TB Daily News.
Kearney gained notoriety for his coverage of the case regarding the death of John O’Keefe, a Boston cop, and Read’s ensuing prosecution.
For more than three years, Turtleboy singlehandedly exposed an elaborate police conspiracy to frame an innocent read, even organizing protests in support of Read and building a cult-like “Free Karen Read” movement, comprised of Boston-area skeptics of the deep state who felt Read was railroaded by the thin blue line.
They see the case through one lens – cops who knew O’Keefe protecting cops at any cost, no matter who gets ensnared along the way.
O’Keefe – and Read – both had friends in the police department of the town where he died, Canton.
Read’s friends felt she got railroaded by the cop fraternity trying to cover up an alleged fatal beating O’Keefe took by fellow cops after a dispute over Read’s romantic allegiances.
Once Read was charged with vehicular homicide outside the Canton home of another Boston cop who had close connections to the Canton Police Department, Carr and Turtleboy, who have been Read’s biggest media defenders, seemed to be blood brothers throughout the multi-yeared Read saga.
Turtleboy crusaded for years to get justice for Read and Carr had him on almost every day of the trial.
Then, when Read went to do her first interview, she went on with Carr – who never even mentioned it beforehand to Turtleboy, according to a now-deleted post on X.
To add insult to injury, Carr then rejected Turtleboy’s request to go on at the same time as Read, with a producer telling the blogger that a few days wasn’t sufficient enough time to arrange for multiple guests in studio.
Turtleboy’s fans are calling out Carr for securing the big scoop – the first post-trial interview with Karen Read – without including Kearney. Still others are casting blame on Read for her willingness to shun the man who saved her from rotting in a prison cell.
Turtleboy “brought a lot of light to the case and helped raise a lot of money for the defense fund,” TB fan U/artismum said on Reddit.
“Howie’s listener count rocketed when TB started appearing on his radio show,” U/artismum added. “I think Howie’s producers did TB dirty by not telling him.”
“I can’t shake the sense that she should have given the first interview to Turtle Boy,” said April Cover of Templeton. “He was the one who shouted the loudest, rallied the crowds, and did the time.”
The flip side of the argument comes from @cfjos on Twitter who says: “Karen Read gave her first interview to who she wanted to give it to. And it turned out to be Howie Carr. Unfortunately Aidan needs to accept that. He can be pissed at Howie but Karen really did that to him.”
So Read – not Carr – is being portrayed now as the baddie in this, the narrative being that she sandbagged her best public defender – TB – by making a condition of her exclusive with Carr the requirement that Turtleboy not be part of the interview.
Read is arguably so in love with what she sees when she looks in the mirror that she couldn’t bear to share the microphone – and attendant limelight – with the guy who probably did the most of anyone to keep her out of prison.
Jackson is also in love with his caricature so he undoubtedly conspired with Read and Carr to keep a competing media force – Turtleboy – out of the limelight as best he could.
What a tangled web we weave…
Big picture: Boston’s vaunted newspapers—the Boston Globe and Boston Herald—as well as the storied TV news stations aren’t even an afterthought in the conversation, signaling that the era of new media has left the legacy players in the dust.
