Karen Read has a newfound appreciation for the people who showed her support amid multiple high-profile murder trials.
“I still am in awe that [the support] even happened. It made me question my own empathy,” Read, 45, shared on the Tuesday, January 13, episode of Kelly Ripa‘s “Let’s Talk Off Camera” podcast. “I always considered myself somewhat of an empath, but now I realize I am not, because I have seen injustices play out and other problems in society and I wouldn’t be there ever.”
Read credited her own legal troubles for changing her outlook.
“Now I would like to think I would behave differently,” she noted. “[The support for me] really started picking up halfway into the trial — in the middle of 2023. It was something to look forward [to] in the middle of the anxiety and nerves.”
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At the time, Read was grateful for those speaking out for her. “People were, every day, throwing gifts or cards or money, it gave me something to look forward to and it helped me get through — without falling apart — the embarrassment of the whole thing,” she recalled.
She concluded: “It was incredibly humiliating and I had to do it twice. I knew there were people that didn’t care how the state was trying to humiliate me, they cared that I was wrongfully prosecuted.”
Read was originally arrested in 2022 for the second-degree murder of her then-boyfriend, John O’Keefe. She pleaded not guilty and was ultimately acquitted in June 2025 of all charges in connection to O’Keefe’s death and leaving the scene of an accident. Read was found guilty of operating a vehicle under the influence and sentenced to a one-year probation.
“I have nothing to hide. My life is in the balance, and it shouldn’t be,” she told Boston 25 News in February 2025. “The more information the public has, the more they understand what we already know.”
Read’s experience ultimately inspired scripted projects, including Lifetime’s Accused: The Karen Read Story. Katie Cassidy, who brought Read to life in the film, recently spoke to Us Weekly about taking on the role.
“I just tried to embody the character, and I do believe that there’s three sides to every story,” Cassidy, 39, shared before the movie’s premiere on Saturday, January 10. “There’s her side, there’s their side, and then there’s the truth, and the truth always comes out.”
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Cassidy recalled feeling “some amount of pressure” about playing a real person.
“But I also couldn’t let myself go there because then it would put me in my head,” Cassidy told Us. “There is a piece of me that goes into every character I play, of course, but I wanted to do [Karen] justice, and I think I did.”
It took some time for Cassidy to distance herself from the role.
“I feel like I’m still in the process of decompressing from it all,” she said. “It takes some time, definitely, physically and [with her] mannerisms … it stuck with me longer.”
Cassidy continued: “I know this might sound weird or morbid, but it’s, in a way, like grieving a death of a character. You have to let it go and then recenter yourself and decompress and come back down to earth and ground, and it’s a bit of a process.”
