Canton Coverup Part 498: Commonwealth Crash Reconstruction Expert Andrew Klane Is Former Supervisor Of Trooper Paul’s Unit, Badly Evaluated Several Crash Reconstructions

 

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The Commonwealth has hired two experts from a Bridgewater based accident reconstruction company called Aperture, presumably to combat the devastating testimony from the ARCCA experts who will tell the jury that John O’Keefe’s injuries could not have come from a motor vehicle collision. One of these “experts” is Andrew Klane, a retired State Police Lieutenant, who was assigned to the Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Section (CARS) for 25 years, and became Section Commander in 2009.

This is the unit that Trooper Joseph Paul works for, so presumably Klane taught Trooper Paul everything he knows about crash reconstruction.

Aperture is also the employer of Judson Welch and Shannon Burgess, who are both Commonwealth experts for the second trial.

Burgess is a business associate of Commonwealth witness Jessica Hyde, and famously did not understand the difference between bits and bytes when opining that the chip off from Karen Read’s Lexus tech stream data was not done sufficiently.

The choice of a former State Police Lieutenant who oversaw the unit Joseph Paul works for is even more suspect when given the fact that there are 59 experts in crash reconstruction listed on Aperture’s website. If you click on any of their names, like this guy, you will see that almost all of these crash reconstruction experts have advanced degrees in biomechanics and engineering. Klane’s highest degree, much like Trooper Paul, is an associates degree in criminal justice.

He did not start working for Aperture until DURING the first Karen Read murder trial.

This is Helen Cadden from Mattapoisett.

She was an 87 year old grandmother from Mattapoisett who was struck and killed in 2007 by another elderly woman while in a crosswalk on Route 6.

This is Helen’s son Peter.

Peter worked for Texas Instruments and was skeptical of a State Police accident reconstruction conclusion that his mother was to blame for the accident. It just so happened that the driver, Evelyn Pursley, was a well connected woman in town, being named “Mattapoisett Woman of the Year“. In fact, Pursley attended a parade later in the day after being cleared of wrongdoing by the small town police chief:

Later that day, Clapp saw Pursley riding in a vehicle full of VFW dignitaries in Mattapoisett’s 150th anniversary parade. His life partner, Michele Bernier, a former town selectman, said she mentioned to Police Chief Mary Lyons that Pursley’s appearance in the parade was odd. Bernier said Lyons responded that Pursley had wanted to stay home, but she had convinced her to honor her commitment. Bernier quotes Lyons as saying: “I told her it was just an accident.” Lyons declined comment, referring all questions to the DA’s office.

Sound familiar?

State Police investigators led by Andrew Klane determined that Pursley didn’t have enough time to react before striking Helen Cadden, but her son Peter wasn’t buying it.

It took State Police more than 2 months for Klane to visit the crash site and review the accident. Much like crash reconstructionists were not seen outside 34 Fairview Road until September 2024 – more than 2.5 years after John O’Keefe was killed.

Klane’s 10 page report used physics equations calculating pedestrian throwing distance, perception reaction time, and time/distance analysis, and concluded that Helen Cadden was at fault. The report said Cadden was walking four feet per second, which meant she would have been in the crosswalk for 2.35 seconds before being hit. He assumed that Pursley’s car was traveling 25 mph, and concluded that 2.35 seconds was not enough time for her to stop, because she would need 100 feet to stop, and only had 86.

But Peter Cadden is a pretty smart guy with a background in mechanical engineering and he wasn’t buying it. Like Karen Read, Cadden had to begin to do his own investigation, speaking with witnesses who all told him that his mother was not at fault whatsoever.

The first thing that struck him as odd was his mother’s walking speed of four feet per second, which is extremely fast for an 87 year old woman who had undergone foot surgery and a bunionectomy, and whose medical records note that she sometimes had to crawl on her hands and knees to maneuver the stairs of her third-floor apartment. This was the estimated speed Klane arbitrarily came up with in his calculation.

Peter Cadden wanted to test this out, so he laid out a tape measure and began testing and walking speeds of his family. His wife walked two feet per second, and she used to have to slow down to allow Helen to walk with her. Nothing in Klane’s report indicated that he factored in Helen’s age or medical condition into his calculation, which is standard practice according to officials who accredit accident reconstruction experts.

Peter Cadden’s attorney Steve Clapp filed a civil lawsuit, and hired an independent accident reconstructionist, much like the FBI did with ARCCA. They measured skid marks at the accident scene, indicating the point of impact was in the crossing lane 12 feet from the curb. Klane’s report listed the point of impact at 9.4 feet – much less into the crosswalk and less visible. He apparently just made that number up, as his report does not explain how he calculated 9.4 feet. Klane’s report also said the width of the traffic lanes was 11 feet, but Peter Cadden measured it himself and it was actually 14 feet.

In a nutshell, the conclusions reached by Klane were completely wrong because he made up the 87 year old woman’s walking speed and the location of the point of impact. It put Helen Cadden in the lane for 6 seconds, placing Pursley’s car 219 feet up the road, well over the 100 feet Klane opined that she would’ve needed to see Helen and stop.

Helen’s son wrote an op-ed in the local newspaper a year later with this quote:

“If the police spent half as much time enforcing the crosswalk law as they did exonerating the ‘prominent’ elderly driver, we would all be safer.”

Sound familiar? Like, maybe if the State Police spent half as much time investigating the murder of John O’Keefe as they did exonerating prominent family members in Canton threatened by rubber duckies, we’d all be safer.

Peter Cadden went to the Plymouth County DA’s Office with the results of his investigation. He hired his own accident reconstructionist named Wilson Dobson, who reviews 50-60 police reconstructions a year. Dobson concluded that Klane had made errors in regards to Helen’s walking speed, lane measurement, and the distance from the curb to the point of impact:

He said he often finds errors in calculations, but rarely in measurements. In the end, he came to a damning conclusion.  The reconstructionist hired by Peter Cadden found errors and omissions that raised concerns about the integrity of the process.“As a result of these errors and omissions, the State Police reconstructionist came to the wrong conclusion,” he wrote. “When viewed in light of the proper values for walking speed and distance covered, it becomes impossible to conclude this accident was unavoidable due to the actions of Ms. Cadden, or that the driver had no responsibility. The errors and omissions that occurred in the investigation of this case raise serious concerns regarding the integrity of the process.”

But ultimately no one in power cared. The State Police backed their crash reconstruction expert, and the DA’s Office supported the detectives under their employ. Finally Peter Cadden got a meeting with Klane:

Cadden then contacted and set up a meeting with him and Klane. When he laid out his case, Peter said he was met with defensiveness. Pressed about the walking speed, Klane claimed that even if Helen were walking at half the speed, it wouldn’t have changed his conclusion. “It was like he had no understanding of the physics,” Cadden said. When he pressured Klane on other aspects of his report and said he believed the case should be prosecuted, Cadden says Klane told him: “I know what it takes to win these cases.”

Andrew Klane has “no understanding of physics,” and told a victim’s mother that he “knows what it takes to win these cases.” That’s the kind of guy he is, and that’s exactly why out of 59 crash reconstruction experts at Aperture, the former State Police reconstructionist who trained Trooper Paul was the one chosen by Hank Brennan to opine on the death of John O’Keefe.

Spoiler alert – he’s gonna testify that John was hit by a car. He’s just gonna make shit up like he did with Helen Cadden in order to protect the powerful and well connected families and do the bidding of the State Police and DA’s Office.

Wasn’t the only time something like this has happened with Klane though. According to a WCVB report in 2013 about why State Police crash reconstruction experts can’t be trusted, a Wrentham woman was also lied to by Klane:

Neither does Rose-Marie Walsh, who isn’t buying the conclusions made by Klane in the accident that killed her ex-husband Jeffrey Cardin in Wrentham in 2006. Motor vehicle homicide charges were not filed against the teenage driver who hit Cardin and then fled the scene. In his report, Klane concluded Cardin was “lying” in the road and the crash was “unforeseeable.”

“We’ve had a professional look over the car damage and the car did not run over a person. The damage was a side impact damage,” said Walsh.

Walsh and Cadden told Team 5 they haven’t been able to convince law enforcement they made any mistakes. They’ve also gone to prosecutors and have gotten nowhere. Right now the only way anyone can challenge the accuracy of this unit’s reports is by spending thousands of dollars on experts in court.

Oh look, a professional looked over the damage to the car and determined it didn’t run over a human being like Klane said it did.

Sound familiar?

This guy is being brought on because Spanky Brennan thinks that a jury is more likely to believe a former cop than they are two guys with PhDs who expected to get paid and reimbursed for their time. It was obvious with Jeffrey Cardin’s death that the State Police made mistakes too, but they can’t ever admit that they’re wrong so the bosses just went along with it.

Sound familiar?

Finally there was the case of Commonwealth vs. Cruz, in which a defendant indicted for manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle (sound familiar) while drunk, filed a motion to exclude crash reconstruction testimony from troopers who were overseen by Andrew Klane. The motion was allowed due to the State Police’s unreliable methodology.

Sound familiar?

Kevin Reddington summed it up best:

Kevin Reddington, a Brockton attorney who handles accident reconstruction cases, said the motive for not changing reports is probably fear of punishment, rather than malicious intent. “Unless there’s some sort of relationship—it’s probably just an overwhelmed guy who mixed up his numbers,” he said. “What happens is they take an adversarial approach. They don’t want to end up in front of a jury, where he’s going to have his head handed to him.”

In other words, State Police accident reconstruction experts are incapable of admitting they’re wrong because they don’t wanna seem unsure of themselves in front of a jury. They want convictions. Andrew Klane isn’t just some unbiased reconstruction experts. He’s a retired member of the Massachusetts State Police, and he’s been brought on to protect the good name of his former employer.

This isn’t justice. This is a sham.