DEDHAM, Mass. (AP) — In the heat of early summer, a Massachusetts jury is deciding whether melting snow revealed evidence that proves a woman murdered her boyfriend, or exposed a cover-up built on connections and police corruption.
Karen Read is charged with second-degree murder in the January 2022 death of Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe. She’s accused of dropping him off at another officer’s house party after a night of drinking, and then ramming him with her SUV and leaving him to die in a blizzard. But her defense team argues she was framed, and that the evidence shows O’Keefe was beaten up by someone else inside the house, bitten by a dog and left outside.
It wouldn’t be the first time a rocky romantic relationship ended in death, and the partner is always a top suspect. But it also has become easier to question police tactics and integrity after many high-profile cases of misconduct nationwide. In their second day of deliberations Wednesday, jurors had to consider whether the sometimes tiny bits of evidence — pieces of a broken tail light, a single human hair — point to a woman’s guilt, or a sprawling conspiracy by law enforcement officers to plant evidence and protect their own, leaving a killer unpunished.
What first might have seemed to be an open-and-shut case has drawn outsized attention, fueled by true crime fanatics, conspiracy theorists and Read’s pink-shirted supporters.
Read, a former adjunct professor at Bentley College, is charged with second-degree murder, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, along with manslaughter while operating under the influence of alcohol, and leaving a scene of personal injury and death. The manslaughter charge carries a penalty of five to 20 years in prison, and the other charge has a maximum penalty of 10 years.
In his closing statements Tuesday, defense lawyer Alan Jackson described a cancer of lies that turned into a cover-up, telling jurors the case included a “magic hair,” conflicts of interest and “butt dials galore.”
Rather than Read deliberately reversing her SUV into O’Keefe, the defense argued that he was beaten up in the house of another Boston police officer and thrown outside in the snow.
“Just look the other way, that is what they want. That is what they are counting on,” he told the jury.
“The incontrovertible fact is that you have been lied to in this courtroom,” Jackson said. “You are the only thing standing between Karen Read and the tyranny of injustice.”
But Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally told jurors there was no conspiracy or cover-up. He asked them to follow the evidence — including pieces of Read’s broken taillight found at the scene and a hair from O’Keefe’s found on her car. He began his closing argument with the words four witnesses reported hearing Read say after O’Keefe was discovered on the snow:
“The defendant repeatedly said I hit him. I hit him. Oh my God. I hit him,” he said. “Those were the words that came from the defendant’s mouth on Jan. 29, 2021 as John O’Keefe lay dying on the front lawn of 34 Fairview Road, where the defendant had left him after striking him with her motor vehicle several hours before.”
Lally also painted a picture — through angry texts and voicemails — of a couple whose relationship was failing long before their last night of heavy drinking together. And he raised questions about Read’s behavior the next morning, noting that she never cried after O’Keefe’s unresponsive body was found.
He also scoffed at defense suggestions that O’Keefe may have been beaten up at Albert’s house party by Brian Higgins, a federal agent who had exchanged flirty texts with Read, and that Albert and others helped cover up the crime.
“The criminal mastermind and genius that Brian Albert is, 28 years on the Boston police department, he is then going to leave John O’Keefe body on his front lawn. Really? That’s the conspiracy?”
Jackson said investigators focused on Read because she was a “convenient outsider” who saved them from having to consider Albert and other law enforcement officers at the house party. He also pointed to connections between Albert and the state trooper who led the investigation.
“Michael Proctor didn’t draw a thin blue line, he erected a tall blue wall,” Jackson said. “A wall that you can’t scale, a wall that Karen Read certainly couldn’t get over. A wall between us and them. A place you folk are not invited. ‘We protect our own.’”
A block from the court in a Massachusetts suburb, dozens of Read supporters were glued to their phones awaiting a verdict. Their mood was jubilant, with supporters chanting, waving American flags and getting encouragement from passing motorists who honked their horns.
“She was unjustly charged and we are hoping she can go home today,” said Vicki Walkling, a supporter dressed in pink. “This case has enraptured everybody because it’s unfair. It could happen to any one of us. Any one of us could be framed for a murder we did not commit.”
