BOSTON — Karen Read’s civil complaint against defendants who she argues killed John O’Keefe and then conspired to frame her for his murder has been transferred to federal court, with the judge who sentenced Whitey Bulger assigned to the case.

According to records, Read’s civil complaint has been removed from Bristol Superior Court and transferred to the U.S. District Court in Boston, following a request from the attorney for the Alberts, McCabes and Brian Higgins.

Attorney Jim Tuxbury, representing the so-called “house defendants,” filed the request in Bristol Superior on Tuesday, a week after Read and her defense team sued witnesses they point to as “third parties” for O’Keefe’s death and members of the Massachusetts State Police involved in the murder investigation.

The docket in Bristol Superior shows that the case was quickly transferred to federal court, with U.S. District Court Chief Judge Denise J. Casper assigned to oversee it, according to a record filed Wednesday.

Casper is known for sentencing notorious Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger in November 2013 to two consecutive life terms plus five years and $19.5 million in restitution. During the sentencing, Casper told Bulger, “The scope, the callousness, the depravity of your crimes, is almost unfathomable.”

Casper sentenced Bulger after a jury convicted the mobster of operating a criminal enterprise responsible for the murder of 11 people. Bulger was beaten to death on Oct. 30, 2018, after being transferred to a prison in West Virginia.

This is not the first time there has been a connection between the Read and Bulger cases.

Hank Brennan, a longtime defense attorney famous for representing Bulger, earned $566,000 for his work as special prosecutor in Read’s second murder trial, which ended with a jury acquitting the woman of O’Keefe’s death.

Tuxbury, representing Brian and Nicole Albert, Jennifer and Matthew McCabe and Brian Higgins requested that Read’s civil complaint against them be transferred to federal court, which the attorney said is the “proper” venue for the case.

Tuxbury based his motion, in particular, on Read’s allegation that the defendants “violated her federal civil rights by purportedly acting in concert to deprive her of her Fourth Amendment rights under the United States Constitution.”

“By way of background,” Tuxbury wrote, “the Superior Court Action arises from Plaintiff’s ongoing and malicious attempt to evade responsibility for the death of John O’Keefe by smearing and defaming witnesses who participated in the prosecution of her. The case is a vengeful abuse of the judicial process, and Removing Defendants will make arguments in that regard at the appropriate time.”

Read’s defense team is reiterating an argument presented in her two criminal trials: that other parties inside Brian and Nicole Albert’s home, at 34 Fairview Road in Canton, killed her Boston police officer boyfriend in the early morning of Jan. 29, 2022.

Read, 45, was indicted in June 2022 on charges of second-degree murder, motor vehicle manslaughter and leaving the scene of a collision causing O’Keefe’s death.

She was tried twice, first in 2024, which ended in a mistrial, and then in a second trial, which ended this past June when a jury acquitted her on all the indicted charges. She was convicted of drunken driving.

Prosecutors accused Read of backing up into O’Keefe, her Boston police officer boyfriend of two years, with her SUV, leaving him to freeze and die on the front yard of the Canton home then-owned by Brian Albert, a Boston Police colleague.

Read’s defense argues that O’Keefe was beaten to death inside the home, with parties then dragging his body outside to the front yard, making it appear he was hit by a vehicle during the blizzard that early morning in late January 2022.

“For three and a half years,” the civil complaint states, “Plaintiff Karen Read was wrongly accused of homicide and subjected to suspicion, arrest, two prosecutions, and public condemnation, all resulting from the gross misconduct of the Massachusetts State Police — and those working in tandem with the MSP — to shield from liability the party or parties responsible for the death of Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe III.”

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