Boston police officer John O’Keefe was found unconscious in the front yard of another police officer’s suburban home on a snowy morning two years ago. He was pronounced dead shortly thereafter and his girlfriend, Karen Read, was charged with murder.
Read, 44, maintains her innocence and claims there was a widespread conspiracy among police officers to frame her for the killing.
The case is now before the jury.
The defense concluded its arguments on Monday, the beginning of the ninth week of the trial, and the jury heard closing arguments from both sides on Tuesday.
Here’s what we know about the allegations:
Who are John O’Keefe and Karen Read?
O’Keefe, 46, was a police officer with the Boston Police Department for 16 years when he died on Jan. 29, 2022. He had worked for Read, an equity analyst at Fidelity Investments, for two years.
According to Norfolk County Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally, problems in the couple’s relationship appeared to escalate in the months before O’Keefe’s death, including during a New Year’s trip to Aruba.
In court, one of Read’s lawyers acknowledged that the couple had occasional disagreements but said they were making long-term plans. On the evening of Jan. 28, 2022, according to Read’s defense attorney, David Yannetti, the couple appeared to be doing well as they went out with other current and former police officers at a bar in suburban Boston.
After leaving the bar, Read later told rescuers, she argued with O’Keefe and then dropped him off at an after-party at the home of Brian Albert, a now-retired Boston sergeant who was also at the bar, Lally said.
Read’s lawyers have said she went to look for her boyfriend when she realized he never came home from the party. Read, who had sought help from two other women in their search, discovered his body outside Albert’s house on the morning of Jan. 29, Lally said. One of the women then called 911.
O’Keefe’s death was pronounced at 7:50 a.m. at the hospital, the prosecutor said. The medical examiner listed the cause of death as blunt force trauma to the head and hypothermia.
What is the prosecution’s argument?
Citing the couple’s rocky relationship, Lally claimed Read drove her Lexus SUV into Albert’s home in O’Keefe, causing a skull fracture and brain hemorrhage.
Read left him there to die, the prosecutor said.
Although Read said she dropped O’Keefe off at Albert’s home, the assistant district attorney said no one at the after-party remembered seeing O’Keefe inside. They saw the SUV stop in front of the house and then drive away, the prosecutor said, and they assumed no one from the vehicle joined them.
But vehicle data from Read’s SUV showed the Lexus backed 60 feet at 24 mph in front of Albert’s house at 12:45 a.m., Lally said. The SUV’s taillight was broken, Lally said, and pieces of the light were later found in front of Albert’s house.
Forensic tests showed that O’Keefe’s hair was found on the vehicle’s bumper and his DNA was found on the taillight, Lally said. Investigators also found the remains of a cocktail that appeared to have been spilled on the bumper, the prosecutor said. O’Keefe was filmed leaving the bar with a cocktail in his hand and parts of a drinking glass were found in the SUV’s bumper, the prosecutor described.
Read was charged with first-degree murder, negligent homicide and other crimes.
What does the defense say?
Read’s lawyers have challenged some of the prosecution’s evidence, saying she was framed for a murder she did not commit. During the after-party, the defense team claimed, O’Keefe was apparently ambushed, beaten, bitten by a dog – the Alberts had a German shepherd – and left outside.
“He was allegedly sprawled on the lawn just a few feet from where these people walked when they left the house,” defense attorney David Yannetti said in his opening statement. “None of these people saw John O’Keefe.”
The defense accused authorities of failing to conduct a “real” investigation because of close ties to Albert and his family – his brother is also a police officer – and instead focusing on Read, whom Yannetti called a “convenient outsider.” (Albert testified that O’Keefe never came to his home, but he would have been “welcomed with open arms” if he had.)
Defense attorneys argued that the lead investigator in the case, Michael Proctor of the Massachusetts State Police, was one of the main reasons for the bias in the investigation.
In his testimony Monday, Proctor admitted to speaking disparagingly about Read in text messages with other officers. In one instance, Proctor described Read using an offensive term for mentally disabled people and told other officers – including two supervisors – in a text thread that he found no nude photos of Read when he searched her phone.
Proctor called the comments “regrettable” and “unprofessional jokes” that did not call into question his ability to conduct an impartial investigation.
His testimony continued on Wednesday.
The defense also pointed to what Yannetti described as two “odd” phone calls between Albert and Brian Higgins, a friend and agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who had been at the bar and the after-party. The calls were made at 2:22 a.m. on Jan. 29 after the party at Albert’s home, Yannetti said.
Under questioning by the defense, Albert testified that his first call to Higgins – which lasted one second – was an accident. He said he did not respond to a call back that lasted 22 seconds. Higgins testified that he did not remember answering the phone or calling anyone back.
Higgins testified that he and Read were attracted to each other in the months before O’Keefe’s death and exchanged flirtatious text messages. When another defense attorney, Alan Jackson, asked Higgins if he was frustrated that Read had been “ghosting” him in the days before the party and not paying him any attention at the bar, Higgins replied, “No, not at all.”
According to defense attorney Yannetti, Read’s taillight failure did not occur when she backed into O’Keefe, but rather because she left her house in a panic after realizing her boyfriend had not come home in the early hours of Jan. 29.
She backed into O’Keefe’s car, Yannetti said, and that incident was captured on a security camera. He added that authorities did not find the broken pieces of the taillight during an initial search of Albert’s yard. They did not find them until later in the day, after Read’s car was impounded, Yannetti said.
Who is Jennifer McCabe?
McCabe, Albert’s sister-in-law, had also been at the bar and the after-party, and she was one of the two women who went with Read to search for O’Keefe.
Under cross-examination, defense attorney Jackson asked McCabe why she appeared to have changed her account of Read’s reaction to the discovery of O’Keefe’s body.
McCabe initially told a grand jury that she heard Read wonder if she might have hit her boyfriend — “Did I hit him?” — Jackson said, citing her testimony. But in court, McCabe described Read’s reaction as a statement — “I hit him” — that she said Read uttered three times to a paramedic who asked what happened to O’Keefe.
“You made up this story for the jury because you think it will help you?” Jackson asked.
“Absolutely not,” she replied.
Jackson also questioned McCabe about what he said a forensic examination of her cellphone revealed: On Jan. 29 at 2:27 a.m., several hours before O’Keefe’s body was found, she asked Google how long it takes for someone to die of hypothermia.
After that, Jackson said, McCabe canceled the search.
McCabe denied searching for the term at the time. At around 2 a.m., she testified, she was looking for a basketball team her daughter should join. She said she didn’t ask Google about hypothermia until several hours later, after she and Read discovered O’Keefe’s body and Read asked her to find the answer to that question.
“I would never have left John O’Keefe to die because he was my friend whom I loved,” she said, according to the Associated Press.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com.
