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By Monica Sager
Live News Reporter
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Testimony in the high-profile murder trial of a Massachusetts woman who is accused of killing her cop boyfriend continues this week as closing arguments near.
Karen Read is accused of murdering John O'Keefe on Jan. 29, 2022 with her car after he was found dead in a fellow police officer's driveway on Fairview Road after a night out drinking.
Read's defense has argued that she is the victim of an elaborate cover-up, noting wounds and a potential fight O'Keefe had with other officers. The prosecutors, however, have pointed to her drunk driving and alleged conversations including one where she frantically cried that she might have killed O'Keefe.
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"She was framed. Her car never struck John O'Keefe," said defense attorney David Yannetti in his opening statement. "She did not cause his death. That means that somebody else did."
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A Norfolk grand jury had previously indicted Read in 2022 on charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence and leaving the scene of a personal injury and death.
She pleaded not guilty in Norfolk Superior Court and was ordered held on $100,000 bail. She posted bail and has been out on release since.
The timeline of John O'Keefe's death
Read and O'Keefe, 46, along with a group of friends went to the Water Bar and Grill in Canton on Jan. 28, 2022. After consuming several alcoholic beverages, according to prosecutors, Read drove O'Keefe to Boston police officer Brian Albert's home.
The couple, who began dating in 2019, had a strained relationship, according to court documents. There were cheating allegations on both sides, as shown through text messages and voicemails.
Around 1 a.m. on Jan. 29, Read allegedly left O'Keefe a voicemail that called him an "f---ing loser." Read allegedly told O'Keefe "John, I f---ing hate you."
A few hours later at 4:23 a.m., O'Keefe's niece called Jennifer McCabe, Albert's sister-in-law. She said Read was "distraught" because O'Keefe did not come home and wasn't answering his cellphone. It was starting to snow heavily.
Around 5 a.m., Read called another woman whose husband was friends with O'Keefe.
"What if he's dead? What if a plow hit him?" Read allegedly said, according to the prosecution. "I don't remember anything from last night, we drank so much I don't remember anything."
Read, McCabe and a third woman went looking for O'Keefe shortly after 5 a.m. Prosecutors said Read mentioned to the women that she had a crack in her tail light and wondered if she could have hit O'Keefe.
A surveillance camera at O'Keefe's house shows Read's SUV coming "extremely close" to O'Keefe's SUV in the driveway. Prosecutors said no taillight pieces were found at O'Keefe's house.
Around 6 a.m., Read sees O'Keefe lying in the snow outside of Albert's home. An emergency responder said Read was hysterical and inconsolable and kept repeating "I hit him."
Prosecutors said the medical examiner ruled O'Keefe's cause of death as hypothermia as well as blunt impact injuries to the head.
Defense lays out a much different scenario
Defense attorneys Alan Jackson and David Yannetti allege that O'Keefe was involved in a fight at Albert's home. They say O'Keefe was beaten and his body was later dumped outside.
There has been focus on wounds to O'Keefe's arms that could suggest Albert's dog attacked him during the fight.
"You will find that it was no accident that John O'Keefe was found dead," Yannetti said. "Because the Alberts were involved and because they had close connections to the investigators in this case, Karen Read was framed for a murder she did not commit."
Police found a broken cocktail glass and pieces of taillight at the scene. A forensic toxicologist estimated that Read's blood alcohol content would have been around .13 to .29 when she was driving O'Keefe around 12:45 a.m.
Prosecutors said in court filings they have DNA evidence recovered from the broken taillight that implicates Read.
Read's defense team argues one of the first responding officers gave "false and deceptive testimony."
The defense team said an FBI expert concluded the evidence does not support the theory that O'Keefe died after being hit by an SUV.
Massachusetts State Police said in March that they opened an internal investigation into a "potential violation of department policy" by Trooper Michael Proctor, who was the lead investigator in the case.
"We know who did it. We know. And we know who spearheaded this coverup. You all know," Read said when she spoke to the public for the first time. "I tried to save his life. I tried to save his life at 6 in the morning, I was covered in his blood. I was the only one trying to save his life."
Month of trial testimony
Opening statements and testimony started on April 29.
O'Keefe's former neighbor, Colin Albert, said he had no animosity against the police officer, describing him as a "nice guy, a good guy." Colin maintained that he never saw O'Keefe on Jan. 28, including when he was at his uncle Brian Albert's house at 34 Fairview Road. Prosecutors had previously pinged O'Keefe's cellphone to arriving at Colin's uncle's house at 12:24 a.m.
Read's defense lawyers alleged that Colin had violent tendencies, showing clips of a high school-aged Colin threatening to "f--- up" other teens. Albert confirmed the video but said he never has been in a fight.
A photo from Feb. 26, 2022 of Colin and two friends at a Boston bar, Fenway Johnnies, shows Colin's hand "cut up." Colin explained he had injured it while slipping on a steep, icy driveway.
"Seriously?" Jackson asked, prompting an objection from the prosecutors.
Teri Kun, a forensic scientist with the University of California Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory Forensic Unit testified that swabs taken from a shirt in the murder investigation did not show signs of canine DNA.
Defense attorney Alan Jackson pointed out that the lab did not receive the item of clothing for testing, only swabs. Kun admitted she had "no idea how the agency collected the swabs."
"We have been inquiring about the nature of these injuries and their significance in John O'Keefe's death, Jackson said.
McCabe recalled the frantic moments when she and Read found out O'Keefe was dead in her testimony.
"I thought she was honestly, like, just talking crazy," McCabe said. "And then she said, 'Oh my god, I left him there.' Like, she was extremely irrational. She told me again that they had gotten into a fight. ... She was just kind of all over the place, just screaming. She was very hard to understand. So my brain started going, 'OK, well, if she left him there, where could he be? Who could he be with?'"
McCabe had texted O'Keefe around 5 a.m. saying "karen is worried we need to find u" and "please answer so i know ur ok."
According to McCabe, Read "stated that she hit him" when a paramedic asked what happened.
She also noted she had seen a dark SUV matching Read's pull up outside of the Fairview Road house but didn't think much of it when Read and O'Keefe didn't come inside.
"So I have a question, Ms. McCabe. Where was the body?" Jackson asked.
The Canton paramedic who treated O'Keefe the day he died testified he heard a woman saying "I hit him. I hit him." Read's defense team argued the man's testimony has changed over time.
McCabe claimed Read asked her to Google how long it would take someone to die in the cold. Defense attorneys argue the search actually took place prior to finding O'Keefe's body.
Jurors heard the 911 calls from the day O'Keefe's body was found. The recording reported that Read could not find O'Keefe. A recording from an hour later said they found him unresponsive on Fairview Road in Canton.
McCabe also denies erasing her call log before handing her cellphone over to the police. Read's attorneys allege this is part of the coverup.
Another witness, Brian Higgins, is denying destroying his cellphone. Higgins, who is an agent for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, was reportedly at the Fairview Road home the night O'Keefe was found dead.
Jackson asked Higgins about removing the SIM card from his cellphone, driving to a military base, and trashing the device and SIM card in separate dumpsters during the investigation into O'Keefe's death.
"That is not correct," Higgins said.
Higgins, however, did confirm he sought advice on phone data extraction from a fellow ATF agent who works in the FBI's regional computer forensics lab. He said he threw the phone away and did not destroy it.
"I had every right to do that," Higgins maintained.
Who is Karen Read?
Read was a Bentley University finance lecturer in Massachusetts. The school announced in 2022 that she would not be teaching and her Financial Markets and Investment course would be taught be the chair of the finance department instead.
"By now you may have seen or heard the news involving a member of our community and the death of a Boston police officer," said Donna Maria Blancero, Provost & Vice President for Academic Affairs, in a statement at the time. "Karen Read is an adjunct lecturer at Bentley. The university cannot comment on an active investigation, but we are aware of the evolving situation and following it closely."
Blancero had announced that her "thoughts go out to Officer O'Keefe's family and loved ones."
On LinkedIn, Read still lists herself as a part of Bentley's faculty. Read had graduated from Bentley's Elkin B. McCallum Graduate School of Business in 2004 and she has a BS in Finance from the college as well. She wrote that she graduated from an accelerated studies program for her undergraduate in three years. Read also listed she was a "Presidential Scholar" in both 1999 and 2000.
Read's LinkedIn also shows her currently working at Fidelity Investments for equity research within the tech sector. Previously, she was a financial analyst at Sensata Technolgies, client account manager at Brown Brothers Harriman, and a trading room assistant at Hughey Center for Financial Services.
Who was John O'Keefe?
The Boston Police Department remembered O'Keefe as a "kind person, dedicated to his family," in a Facebook post in 2022.
Message from Superintendent-in-Chief Gregory Long Regarding Arrest Made in Connection to the Death of Officer John O’KeefeThe Boston Police Department continues to grieve over the tragic loss of...
He grew up in Braintree and graduated from Northeastern University. O'Keefe also earned a master's degree in criminal justice from UMass Lowell.
O'Keefe was a 16-year veteran of the Boston Police Department.
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He lived in Canton, where he was raising his niece and nephew since his sister and brother-in-law's death.
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