Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe was found unresponsive in the front yard of another officer’s suburban home on a snowy morning two years ago. He was pronounced dead shortly after, and his girlfriend, Karen Read, was charged in his murder.
Read, 44, has claimed innocence and alleged a far-reaching conspiracy among law enforcement officers to frame her in the killing.
Her trial entered its sixth week Monday. The case is not expected to go to the jury until the last week of June.
Here’s what we know about the allegations.
Who are John O’Keefe and Karen Read?
O’Keefe, 46, had been an officer with the Boston Police Department for 16 years when he died Jan. 29, 2022. He’d been with Read — an equity analyst at Fidelity Investments — for two years.
According to Norfolk County Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally, troubles in the couple’s relationship appeared to intensify in the months before O’Keefe’s death, including during a New Year’s trip to Aruba.
In court, one of Read’s lawyers acknowledged that the couple had occasional disagreements, but said they were making long-term plans. On the night of Jan. 28, 2022, Read’s defense lawyer David Yannetti said, the couple seemed fine while out at a bar in a Boston suburb with other current and former law enforcement officers.
After leaving the bar, Read later told first responders, she argued with O’Keefe before dropping him off at an afterparty at the home of Brian Albert, a now-retired Boston sergeant who’d also been at the bar, Lally said.
Read’s lawyers have said that she went out looking for her boyfriend when she realized he had never come home from the party. Read, who had sought help from two other women in her search, spotted his body outside Albert’s house on the morning of Jan. 29, Lally said.One of the women then dialed 911.
O’Keefe was pronounced dead at 7:50 a.m. at a hospital, the prosecutor said. The medical examiner attributed his cause of death to blunt force trauma to the head and hypothermia.
What is the prosecution’s case?
Lally cited the couple’s troubled relationship and alleged that Read backed her Lexus SUV into O’Keefe outside Albert’s home, causing a skull fracture and brain bleed.
Read left him there to die, the prosecutor said.
Even though Read said she’d dropped O’Keefe off at Albert’s home, the assistant DA said that no one at the afterparty recalled seeing O’Keefe inside. They saw the SUV pull up to the house, the prosecutor said, then leave, and they assumed no one from the vehicle was joining them.
But vehicle data from Read’s SUV showed that at 12:45 a.m., while outside Albert’s home, the Lexus traveled backward for 60 feet at 24 mph, Lally said. The SUV’s tail light was broken, Lally said, and pieces of the light were later found outside Albert’s home.
Forensic testing showed that O’Keefe’s hair was found on the vehicle’s bumper and his DNA was found on the taillight, Lally said. Investigators also found the remnants of a cocktail that appears to have been spilled on the bumper, the prosecutor said. O’Keefe was captured on video leaving the bar with a cocktail in his hand, and bits of what the prosecutor described as a drinking glass were found in the SUV’s bumper.
Read was charged with second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter and other crimes.
What does the defense say?
Read’s lawyers have challenged some of the prosecution’s evidence and said that she was framed for a murder she didn’t commit. During the afterparty, the defense team alleged, O’Keefe appeared to have been ambushed, beaten, bitten by a dog — the Alberts had a German shepherd — and left outside.
“He was supposedly sprawled on that lawn, just feet from where these people were walking when they left the residence,” defense lawyer David Yannetti said in his opening statement. “Not one of these people saw John O’Keefe.”
The defense blamed authorities for failing to carry out a “real” investigation because of close connections to Albert and his family — his brother is also a police officer — and instead focusing on Read, whom Yannetti described as a “convenient outsider.” (Albert testified that O’Keefe never came to his house but he would have been “welcomed with open arms” if he had.)
The defense pointed to what Yannetti described as two “curious” phone calls between Albert and Brian Higgins, a friend and agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who had been at the bar and afterparty. The calls were made at 2:22 a.m. Jan. 29 after the party at Albert’s house, Yannetti said.
Under questioning from the defense, Albert testified that his initial phone call to Higgins — which lasted one second — was accidental. He said he did not respond to a returned call that lasted 22 seconds. Higgins testified that he had no recollection of answering the phone or calling anyone back.
Higgins testified that he and Read had become attracted to each other in the months before O’Keefe’s death and had exchanged flirtatious texts. When another defense lawyer, Alan Jackson, asked Higgins if he’d become frustrated when Read “ghosted” him in the days before the party and paid no attention to him at the bar, Higgins responded: “No, not at all.”
According to defense attorney Yannetti, Read’s broken taillight didn’t come from backing into O’Keefe, but from leaving her home in a panic after discovering in the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 29 that her boyfriend had never come home.
She backed into O’Keefe’s car, Yannetti said, in an event that wascaptured on security camera. He added that authorities did not find the broken pieces of taillight during an initial search of Albert’s yard. They only began finding them later in the day, after Read’s car had been seized, Yannetti said.
Who is Jennifer McCabe?
McCabe, Albert’s sister-in-law, had also been at the bar and afterparty, and she was one of two women who’d gone looking for O’Keefe with Read.
Under cross-examination, defense attorney Jackson asked McCabe why she appeared to have shifted her account of Read’s reaction to finding O’Keefe’s body.
McCabe initially told a grand jury that she heard Read wonder if she could have hit her boyfriend — “Did I hit him?” — Jackson said, citing her testimony. But at trial, McCabe described Read’s reaction as a statement — “I hit him” — that she said Read declared three times to a paramedic who’d asked what happened to O’Keefe.
“You’ve manufactured this story for this jury because you think it helps you out?” Jackson asked.
“Absolutely not,” she responded.
Jackson also questioned McCabe about what he said a forensic extraction of her cellphone showed. At 2:27 a.m. on Jan. 29, several hours before O’Keefe’s body was found, he said she asked Google how long it takes for someone to die of hypothermia.
Afterward, Jackson said, McCabe deleted the search.
McCabe denied searching for the phrase at that time. Around 2 a.m., she testified, she’d been searching for a basketball team her daughter had been invited to join. She said she didn’t ask Google about hypothermia until several hours later, after she and Read had discovered O’Keefe’s body and she said Read asked her to find the answer to that question.
“I never would have left John O’Keefe out in the cold to die because he was my friend that I loved,” she said, according to The Associated Press.
