Karen Read was overcome with emotion as she recounted the trauma she experienced following her acquittal in the well-publicized case concerning the murder of her police officer boyfriend in Boston.
During an appearance on the Rotten Mango podcast, hosted by Stephanie Soo, the 45-year-old opened up about how the tumultuous event has profoundly affected her life.
Despite being cleared of charges related to John O’Keefe’s death in January 2022, Read admitted that she has struggled to find closure since the dramatic verdict.
This nearly two-and-a-half-hour podcast episode, which aired on January 12, marks Read’s first detailed interview since her legal victory last June.
‘Every single moment, I was consumed by the fear of losing my freedom, and that anxiety doesn’t vanish just because a jury declares you not guilty,’ Read shared candidly.
Although she feels some sense of relief, she noted that her life today is vastly different from what it was five years ago.
‘I do feel I’ve had this delayed to the persecution,’ said Read. ‘Not a delayed reaction to the acquittal. I’m finally reacting to this horrible thing that happened to me, and I had to swallow it and and and and roll with it.’
Read was accused of backing her SUV into her former boyfriend and then driving off, leaving him to die on the snowy front lawn of Brian Albert, a fellow Boston police officer, on January 29, 2022, while being intoxicated.
Karen Read, 45, grew emotional as she sat down for her first extensive interview since her acquittal in June 2025 over the murder of her cop boyfriend John O’Keefe
Read told the Rotten Mango podcast she has been left traumatized by the ordeal
Despite Read telling Soo she is ‘out of tears about the tragedy of January 29th,’ after mourning for years, she noted life is hard without O’Keefe.
‘John was in my life so much so thickly, and then he wasn’t anymore – it was the only relationship I’ve had, and I’ve had many, I mean I’m 45, and I’ve been dating since I was a teenager that ended with such finality,’ said Read.
‘I can’t call him when I’m out in Boston at 1am when the bar closes, like I did when I was in my twenties. I can’t miss him in a few weeks and say just thinking of you, or can I drop by and see you?’
She added that she has never been forced to deal with the finality of death with someone she was so close to.
She also complained she has no money, noting that she used her final asset, her house, to pay for most of the trial.
Read now lives with her parents and added that she plans to leave Massachusetts because she doesn’t feel safe.
She explained her plans to write a book with her lawyer Alan Jackson: ‘I want this to be a story about corruption.’
Read had been accused of drunkenly ramming her SUV into her boyfriend, former Boston police officer John O’Keefe, and leaving him to die in blizzard conditions on January 29, 2022
‘I want to have some impact on the state where I’ve lived most of my life and where my family’s from and where we battled this,’ she said.
‘I want to make an impact on what people think about politics, about the government, about the dangers of a one-party political system, which is what Massachusetts is.’
She added that one-party systems are dangerous and were the reason she ended up in the ordeal, and believes the book will help women in a similar position to hers.
Read and her legal team are gearing up for a civil trial – a $50,000 wrongful death lawsuit filed by O’Keefe’s family against her and two local bars.
She has long maintained her innocence and insisted that she was framed by his cop friends.
She alleged in court that she was framed by the Boston Police Department.
But multiple jurors said the ‘sloppy investigation’ into O’Keefe’s death left them with too much reasonable doubt.
Although the panel found Read not guilty because of police blunders, some jurors added that they didn’t believe her claims.
Prosecutors portrayed Read as a scorned lover who chose to leave O’Keefe dying in the snow, after striking him with her SUV
The jury ultimately returned a not guilty verdict on the charges of murder and leaving the scene, resulting in death, on Wednesday.
However, Read was found guilty of operating under the influence and was sentenced to probation.
Read had already faced the charges at a trial in 2024. But after five days of deliberations, Judge Beverly Cannone declared a mistrial as the jurors remained split on whether she intentionally killed her boyfriend.
