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The high-profile second trial of Karen Read is underway.
On Tuesday, April 22, 2025, opening statements were presented by both prosecutors and defense attorneys in the case of 45-year-old Read, which has been extensively reported by NBC Boston affiliate WBTS-CD. There is continuous live coverage from Norfolk Superior Court, more than three years following the incident where Read’s boyfriend, Boston officer John O’Keefe, 46, was found left to die in the snow outside a fellow officer’s house in the Boston suburb of Canton.
Claims of a potential police cover-up turned the case into headline news across New England and beyond, gaining further attention through several television specials, notably the NBC Dateline two-hour episode “The Night of the Nor’easter.”
The debate over Read’s responsibility in the deadly hit-and-run became a public spectacle as the first murder trial unfolded, resulting in a hung jury by July 2024.
Karen Read’s retrial continues now.
Who is Karen Read?
Karen Read is a financial analyst from Mansfield, Massachusetts, according to CBS News. In February 2022, she pleaded not guilty to charges of negligent motor vehicle homicide, manslaughter, and leaving the scene of the accident following the January 29, 2022 hit-and-run death of O’Keefe.
The most severe of the charges was later upgraded to second-degree murder. Again, Read pleaded not guilty.
At the time of the victim’s death, Read and O’Keefe — a 16-year veteran with the Boston Police Department, according to NBC News — had been dating for two years.
What happened to John O’Keefe?
On the evening before O’Keefe’s death, the couple joined other members of law enforcement and friends for a night of barhopping and reported heavy drinking. Read claimed she dropped her boyfriend off at the home of now-retired Boston police sergeant Brian Albert sometime between midnight and 12:30 a.m., NBC News reported.
Read told Dateline she “didn’t know what the hell happened” to cause O’Keefe’s death.
In the early, dark morning hours, as heavy snow continued to batter Canton and the Boston area, Read enlisted friends to help find O’Keefe when she realized — hours after leaving him — her taillight had been broken. Overnight, the snowstorm dumped upward of 21 inches of snow as temperatures fell to the low teens.
At around 6:00 a.m., Read and company returned to the Albert residence to find O’Keefe clinging to life in a snowdrift in the yard. When first responders arrived at the scene, the victim was in cardiac arrest with a body temperature of 80.1 degrees, according to CBS News. Witnesses at the scene testified that Read allegedly repeated to firefighters, “I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.”
O’Keefe was transported to a hospital and pronounced dead at 7:50 a.m., as reported by NBC News. His official cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head and hypothermia.
Albert and other afterparty guests denied O’Keefe ever made it inside the home, and no one outside Read has been charged in connection with the man’s death.
Why was Karen Read charged with murder?
Prosecutors said data from Read’s Lexus SUV revealed that at 12:45 p.m., the vehicle reversed for a distance of 60 feet, reaching speeds of 24 m.p.h. This, according to Norfolk County A.D.A. Adam Lally during the first trial, is when Read knowingly struck the victim, as suggested by pieces of the taillight found at the scene, NBC News reported.
Lally claimed O’Keefe’s hair and DNA were also found on the Lexus’s bumper and taillight, respectively. Lally said remnants of a cocktail glass — like one O’Keefe was seen holding when leaving the bar hours earlier — were also allegedly found on the vehicle, per NBC News.
To bolster their case, prosecuting attorneys pointed to a tumultuous relationship between Read and O’Keefe. They leaned heavily on voice messages Read reportedly left O’Keefe at around 1:00 a.m. — after Read claimed to drop O’Keefe off at the Albert residence — including, “You are a f–king loser, f–k yourself,” and “John, I f–king hate you,” according to CBS News.
The prosecution also provided “romantic texts” between Read and ATF Agent Brian Higgins, a friend of the couple’s, who was at the Albert residence around the time O’Keefe lay dying near the road, as stated in court documents reviewed by Oxygen.
Karen Read’s defense suggests a third-party is the culprit
With Boston hard-hitter David Yannetti and L.A. attorney Alan Jackson at the helm, Read’s defense cited several reasons why Read should not be found guilty of the charges. One alternate theory alleged that anyone at the party — including Albert and Higgins — could have been responsible for hitting O’Keefe and leaving him to die in the cold.
They also accused some authorities of investigating with bias. For example, lead investigator, Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor, was suspended from the case following “unprofessional and regrettable” statements he made about Read during the initial investigation, per WBTS-CD. They included texts to his childhood friends in which he called Karen Read a “c–t” and stated, “Hopefully she kills herself.”
Another key piece in the defense was a Google search conducted by party guest Jennifer McCabe that read, “Hos [sic] long to die in cold,” which became central in the first murder trial. However, discrepancies in the timing of the inquiry were debated, according to the New York Times.
Defense attorneys have argued that party goers beat O’Keefe to death and left him outside to die as part of an inside-man conspiracy, adding Karen Read was framed, a theory to which the defendant’s many supporters subscribe as part of their “Free Karen Read” movement.
Why did the first trial of Karen Read end in a hung jury?
Judge Beverly Cannone, presiding in both murder trials, had no choice but to declare a mistrial on July 1, 2024, once the jury found themselves “starkly divided” over the evidence, according to CBS News. By then, court proceedings stretched 29 days, and parties heard from 74 witnesses.
Less than a year later, Read’s retrial is underway.
Once again, she has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, and leaving the scene of a collision resulting in death, according to CNN. Crowd control has been prepped to monitor groups congregating outside the courthouse in what continues to be a divisive case.
On day one, Tuesday, April 22, 2025, new special lead prosecutor Hank Brennan — who once represented infamous gangster James “Whitey” Bulger, according to The Associated Press — pointed to O’Keefe’s devotion to the young niece and nephew he adopted following the passings of his sister and brother-in-law.
“They had a good life,” Brennan said Tuesday in his opening statements. “Enter Karen Read.”
As part of the defense’s opening arguments, attorney Alan Jackson continued to cry corruption, per The Associated Press.
“She’s the victim of a botched and biased and corrupted investigation that was never about the truth, folks,” said Jackson. “It was about preserving loyalty.”
Witnesses are expected to be called for testimony throughout the day.
