The jury for Karen Read’s second murder trial found her not guilty on Wednesday in the death of her Boston cop boyfriend, who was found unresponsive outside a Massachusetts home amid a treacherous snowstorm back in 2022.
Read’s fate was intensely debated by the jury, which got the case back on June 20 but took several days to reach a verdict. At one moment on Wednesday, they even briefly claimed to have a verdict before backtracking, according to MassLive.
O’Keefe
AP Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe.
Read was cleared on the most serious charges, second-degree murder, manslaughter and leaving the scene of a deadly accident. She was convicted on one count of operating a vehicle while intoxicated and was sentenced to one year of probation.
Leaving Norfolk County Superior Court on Wednesday, Read raised an arm in celebration and waved to people who’d gathered outside the building.
Read’s boyfriend, John O’Keefe, spent the night of Jan. 28, 2022, drinking with her and friends at the Waterfall Bar and Grille before he asked her to drive him to the Canton home of retired police officer Brian Albert, who’d been hosting a party at the time.
Prosecutors claimed Read dropped O’Keefe off at the residence, then drunkenly and intentionally ran him down with her SUV after he tried to end their relationship. She then drove off, abandoning him to die in the near-blizzard like conditions, they alleged.
Read said she only realized something was amiss the next morning, after she noticed her vehicle had been damaged and that her boyfriend was nowhere to be found. She enlisted a few friends to help her search, one of whom told the Boston Globe that Read still appeared intoxicated and did not seem to remember what occurred the night before.
Eventually, they found O’Keefe, a cop in Boston for 16 years, unconscious and covered in blood-soaked snow beside a shattered cocktail glass just outside Albert’s home.
Read was later charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol and leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death. The defense, however, argued that Read was actually the victim of a law enforcement cover-up, and not the perpetrator of deadly domestic violence.
During her weeks-long retrial in Massachusetts, Read’s lawyers accused authorities of trying to frame her in a sweeping conspiracy, which included planting evidence against her. They also suggested that O’Keefe was violently beaten inside the house party and that he was bitten by a family dog before he was dumped outside in the snow.
Defense attorney David Yannetti renewed Read’s request for a finding of not guilty, arguing prosecutors failed to produce a witness who could say O’Keefe’s injuries were consistent with being hit by an SUV.
Dr. Elizabeth Laposata, a former medical examiner called by the defense, said O’Keefe’s injuries were consistent with blunt force trauma to the back of the head, but that his eye wounds were not consistent with being struck by the rear of Read’s vehicle. A crash expert similarly cast doubt from the stand, telling jurors the evidence is not consistent with the cop being hit by Read at the speed prosecutors suggested she was going.
Read, an equity analyst and adjunct professor of finance at Bentley University, did not take the stand during her first or second trial. Her first trial ended in a mistrial last year due to a hung jury.
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