Karen Read, the Massachusetts woman accused of drunkenly hitting and killing her Boston police officer boyfriend, John O’Keefe, returned to court Tuesday, April 22, as her second murder trial got underway.
Read previously stood trial last year on second-degree murder and manslaughter charges, with the case gaining significant viral attention in true crime circles on TikTok. The jury, however, was unable to reach a unanimous decision and a judge declared a mistrial.
Read is again charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol, and leaving the scene of an accident causing death. She has pleaded not guilty and maintained her innocence throughout the case.
O’Keefe died in January 2022 after he and Read spent a night out drinking with friends. Prosecutors have claimed that Read and O’Keefe spent the night arguing, and when Read dropped O’Keefe off at a friend’s house, she intentionally hit O’Keefe with her car and left him in the snow.
During opening statements, new prosecutor Hank Brennan said O’Keefe was “left at the corner of that yard, left to die with no help.” Brennan went on to say that, during the trial, the jury would see evidence relating to the deterioration of O’Keefe and Read’s relationship, including statements from witnesses saying O’Keefe had told Read he wanted to break up.
Brennan also highlighted the broken taillight on Read’s car, pieces of which were found near O’Keefe’s body. And he noted that the jury would hear from a paramedic who arrived on the scene after Read found O’Keefe’s body the following morning. The paramedic, according to Brennan, recalled Read saying at the time, “I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.”
Read’s defense lawyer, Alan Jackson, called the case “the very definition of reasonable doubt.” Regarding Read’s alleged comments that morning, he said his client had asked the question, “Did I hit him?” And as for the broken taillight, Jackson claimed that Read said it had been damaged earlier that day, and the fragments found at the scene were planted by police officers engaged in a cover-up.
Read’s lawyers have long maintained that someone else killed O’Keefe during the party, where many of the other attendees were fellow police officers. Jackson claimed in his opening statement that O’Keefe’s injuries were not consistent with car crashes, nor was there medical evidence to establish hypothermia as a factor in his death. He suggested that O’Keefe was injured somewhere else, and then moved into the snow.
Jackson also returned to one of the defense’s main foils: Former Massachusetts State Trooper Michael Proctor, who served as lead investigator on the case, but damaged the state’s case after it came out that he had sent vulgar and misogynistic texts about Read to friends. (Proctor was relieved of his duties last July and fired in March.) In his opening statement, Jackson mentioned those texts, while also claiming that Proctor handled evidence without “reasonable oversight” and that he “intentionally lied and fabricated evidence.”
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