A retrial begins on Tuesday for Karen Read, the woman accused of killing her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, in 2022.
Read maintains her innocence, claiming she was framed by law enforcement, and will again face charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter, and motor vehicle homicide.
Read’s legal team argues that O’Keefe was killed by someone else at a house party in Canton, suggesting another law enforcement official present as a possible suspect.
They allege O’Keefe was struck and left to die in the snow, not by Read’s SUV as prosecutors contend, but by another individual.
The first trial ended in a mistrial last year after the jury reached an impasse. Following the trial, several jurors claimed the group had unanimously agreed on Read’s innocence on the most serious charges, including second-degree murder.
However, despite these claims and allegations of governmental misconduct, the judge denied the defense’s motions to dismiss the charges or the case entirely. Read now faces the same charges in this second trial.
Read, who worked as a financial analyst and Bentley College adjunct professor before she was charged, faces second-degree murder and other charges in the death of John O’Keefe, who was 46 when he died. The 16-year police veteran was found unresponsive outside the home of a fellow Boston police officer.
After a night out drinking, prosecutors say Read, who is 45, dropped off O’Keefe at the house party just after midnight. As she made a three-point turn, prosecutors say, she struck O’Keefe before driving away. She returned hours later to find him in a snowbank.
Like the first trial, prosecutors will try to persuade jurors that Read’s actions were intentional. They are expected to call witnesses who will describe how the couple’s relationship had begun to sour before O’Keefe’s death. Among them will be his brother, who testified during the first trial that the couple regularly argued over such matters as what Read fed O’Keefe’s children, and that he witnessed a 2021 fight the couple had in Cape Cod over how his brother treated her. The brother’s wife testified that Read told her the couple fought in Aruba after she caught O’Keefe kissing another woman.
The defense is expected to portray the investigation into O’Keefe’s death as shoddy and undermined by the close relationship investigators had with the police officers and other law enforcement agents who were at the house party.
Among the key witnesses they will call is former State Trooper Michael Proctor, who led the investigation but has since been fired after a disciplinary board found that he sent sexist and crude texts about Read to his family and colleagues. He also is on the prosecution’s witness list.
A key moment in the first trial was Proctor’s testimony, in which the defense suggested his texts about Read and the case showed he was biased, and had singled her out early in the investigation and ignored other potential suspects.
They also are expected to suggest Read was framed, saying O’Keefe was actually killed inside the home during a fight with another partygoer and then dragged outside. In the first trial, defense attorneys suggested that investigators focused on Read because she was a “convenient outsider” who saved them from having to consider law enforcement officers as suspects.
Ahead of the second trial, the two sides sparred over whether Read’s lawyers will be allowed to argue that someone else killed O’Keefe. Judge Beverly Cannone ruled Monday that attorneys can’t mention potential third-party culprits in their opening statements but will be allowed to develop evidence against Brian Albert, a retired police officer who owned the Canton home, and his friend, Brian Higgins. Lawyers can not implicate Albert’s nephew, Colin Albert, the judge said.
