A judge sided with Aidan Kearney, a blogger known as “Turtleboy,” on Monday and denied an attempt by prosecutors to bring him back to jail.
Judge Michael Doolin’s decision came after a tense hearing last week when prosecutors argued a motion to revoke Kearney’s bail in his ongoing witness intimidation case in Norfolk County Superior Court.
“The words stated by the defendant, a journalist, on his YouTube live video of April 26, 2025, do not mandate revocation of his bail,” Doolin wrote.
The judge wrote that the comments do not violate the court’s order to have no contact, direct or indirect, with a witness and that the comments did not constitute a new criminal offense.
Kearney’s witness intimidation case is related to the ongoing Read murder case, which is at the start of the third week of a retrial. Under the pseudonym “Turtleboy,” Kearney has written hundreds of articles online in support of Read.
He was indicted on 16 counts, including witness intimidation and conspiracy, in December 2023 and spent two months in jail after having his bail revoked shortly after his indictment. Prosecutors say he harassed and threatened witnesses in the Read case.
Prosecutors recently attempted to revoke Kearney’s bail in response to comments he made about Massachusetts State Police Lt. Brian Tully, the former commander of the state police unit assigned to the Norfolk County district attorney’s office. Tully was involved in the Read case investigation.
Last week, Special Prosecutor Robert Cosgrove said in court that Kearney continued to defame witnesses in the Read case and that he “wished death in the most horrible fashion” on Tully.
“When somebody says to an audience, ‘Jesus told him Jesus wants revenge,’ how does that play?” Cosgrove said. “Mr. Kearney has no compunction about wishing death on Lt. Tully’s children and wife.”
But Timothy Bradl, a lawyer for Kearney, downplayed the comments as satire and said they were protected by the First Amendment.
“I am so sick of having to come before a court because of Norfolk County and talk about speech that Norfolk County doesn’t like,” he said. “This is intentional infliction of emotional distress on my client.”
Doolin told Kearney at the hearing that his actions relating to witnesses in the Karen Read trial left him “walking on kind of thin ice” and pointed specifically to Kearney’s use of the word “revenge” in a recent live stream.
The next hearing for Kearney’s case is scheduled for June 20.
