Karen Read's second murder trial revives debate over who killed her Boston police officer boyfriend

DEDHAM, Mass. (AP) — Karen Read’s second murder trial began Tuesday with a prosecutor saying the defendant’s own words will bolster evidence that she killed her police officer boyfriend three years ago and a defense attorney calling the case “the definition of reasonable doubt.”

Read is accused of striking her boyfriend, John O’Keefe, with her SUV in 2022 and leaving him to die alone in the snow outside of a house party in Canton, a suburb about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Boston. She has been charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a vehicle under the influence and leaving the scene.

Prosecutors say Read intentionally backed into O’Keefe after she dropped him off at the home of a fellow Boston officer Brian Albert and returned hours later to find him dead. The defense says that she was a victim of a vast police conspiracy and that O’Keefe was fatally beaten by another law enforcement officer at the party.

A mistrial was declared last year after jurors said they were at an impasse and deliberating further would be futile. Speaking briefly to reporters Tuesday afternoon, Read said she is innocent and praised her legal team.

“I can’t be prouder, and I’m fortunate to have them,” Read said. “We’ve got the truth.”

The biggest difference in the current trial is the lead prosecutor, Hank Brennan. Brought in as a special prosecutor after the mistrial, the former defense attorney has represented a number of prominent clients, including notorious Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger.

In opening statements Tuesday, Brennan told jurors that “facts and data” will lead them to the truth, and that Read’s own statements will confirm it. The first witness he called was paramedic Timothy Nuttall, who testified that when he responded to the scene that morning, a frantic Read said, “I hit him. I hit him. I hit him.”

“She admitted what she had done that night,” said Brennan, who also played a clip from a television interview in which Read said, “I mean, I didn’t think I ‘hit him’ hit him, but could I have clipped him? Could I have tagged him in the knee and incapacitated him? He didn’t look mortally wounded, as far as I could see. Could I have done something that knocked him out, and in his drunkenness and in the cold, he didn’t come to again?”

But defense attorney Alan Jackson told jurors that Read never said “I hit him” and that prosecutors are trying to twist her other statements into a confession.

“That’s a person trying to make sense of an unexplainable circumstance, a natural concern of a bereaved significant other, a woman desperately trying to piece together what could have happened on this tragic night,” he said.

Cross-examining the paramedic, Jackson noted that Nuttall testified at the first trial that Read said “I hit him,” twice, not three times. But Nuttall insisted Tuesday that she said it three times.

Jackson said in his opening statement that the prosecution’s case was based on a “brazen and flawed assertion that is untethered to the facts and the evidence.”

“John O'Keefe did not die from being hit by a vehicle,” he said. "The facts will show that. The evidence will show that. The data will show that. The science will show that and the experts will tell you that.”

Many of the factors that made the first trial must-see television will feature in the second. Most of the same witnesses are back as are Read’s aggressive defense team and her supporters camped out near the courthouse. Read, who has been featured in several documentaries about her case, has become a minor celebrity.

On Tuesday, a few dozen of Read's supporters, many holding American flags, stood in front of the courthouse before moving a block away to comply with a court-ordered buffer zone. Those who were reuniting hugged, while others took time to bring newcomers up to speed on the case.

“I'm here for justice,” said Ashlyn Wade, a Read supporter from Canton. “The murderer going to jail and Karen being exonerated, that would be justice.”

The prosecution, however, stands to benefit from a pretrial ruling from Judge Beverly Cannone barring defense attorneys from mentioning potential third-party culprits in their opening statements. They can develop a case against two law enforcement officers but cannot implicate Albert’s nephew, Colin Albert, as they did in the first trial.

“I view it as a blow to the defense strategy but not a knockout punch,” Daniel Medwed, a law professor at Northeastern University, said of the ruling. “All the defense needs to do is create reasonable doubt about Karen (Read's) guilt, and that doesn’t require pointing to an alternative perpetrator as a matter of law.”

Jackson called the prosecution's case “the literal definition of reasonable doubt" in his opening statement and said the heavy burden of proof will not be met given that "every piece of this case was handled by a disgraced investigator with a motive to protect his friends”

“By the end of this trial, you’ll conclude that Karen Read is not guilty," he said. “She’s the victim of a botched and biased and corrupted investigation that was never about the truth, folks. It was about preserving loyalty.”

One of the key witnesses will be former State Trooper Michael Proctor. He 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. Jackson called him a “cancer” that infected every step of the investigation and characterized him as both the key to the state's case and its Achilles' heel.

The state's second witness Tuesday was Kerry Roberts, a friend of O'Keefe's who testified that Read called her at 5 a.m. the day after the house party, screamed “Kerry! Kerry! Kerry! John’s dead!” and hung up. Roberts then went to O'Keefe's house with Read to search for him and then to the Albert home.

Roberts said she couldn't see anything when they pulled up but that Read said, “there he is," and jumped out of the car.

“She ran right over to the mound of snow," Roberts said. “Once she got to it, you could tell it was a mound of snow the length of a body.”

Associated Press writers Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire, and Patrick Whittle in Portland, Maine, contributed to this report.

Karen Read chats with reporters while returning to court following the lunch break with her defense attorney Robert Alessi at her trial at Norfolk Superior Court, Tuesday, April 22, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Kerry Roberts, who was with Karen Read when the body of Read's police officer boyfriend John O’Keefe was discovered is questioned by Special Prosecutor Hank Brennan at Read's second murder trial on Tuesday, April 22, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (Stuart Cahill/The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)

Karen Read returns to court following the lunch break with her defense attorney Robert Alessi at her trial at Norfolk Superior Court, Tuesday, April 22, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Attorney Alan Jackson gives his opening statement at Karen Read's second murder trial at Norfolk Superior Court on Tuesday, April 22, 2025 in Dedham, Mass. (Stuart Cahill /The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)

Supporters of Karen Read gather outside a buffer zone and watch Read's trial at Norfolk Superior Court, Tuesday, April 22, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Supporters of Karen Read gather outside a buffer zone and watch Read's trial at Norfolk Superior Court, Tuesday, April 22, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Special prosecutor Hank Brennan gives his opening argument at Karen Read's second murder trial at Norfolk Superior Court on Tuesday, April 22, 2025 in Dedham, Mass. (Stuart Cahill /The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)

Karen Read listens during opening arguments at Norfolk Superior Court on Tuesday, April 22, 2025 in Dedham, Mass. (Stuart Cahill /The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)

Supporters of Karen Read gather outside Norfolk Superior Court prior to Read's trial, Tuesday, April 22, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Judge Beverly Cannone listens in Norfolk Superior Court during Karen Read's trial on Tuesday, April 22, 2025 in Dedham, Mass. (Stuart Cahill /The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)

Karen Read and her defense team appear in Norfolk Superior Court on Tuesday, April 22, 2025 in Dedham, Mass. (Stuart Cahill /The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)

Prosecutor Hank Brennan arrives for the trial of Karen Read at Norfolk Superior Court, Tuesday, April 22, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Supporters of Karen Read gather on the steps at Norfolk Superior Court prior to Read's trial, Tuesday, April 22, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Karen Read arrives with her defense team for her trial at Norfolk Superior Court, Tuesday, April 22, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Karen Read arrives with her defense team for her trial at Norfolk Superior Court, Tuesday, April 22, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Supporters of Karen Read gather on the steps at Norfolk Superior Court prior to Read's trial, Tuesday, April 22, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Karen Read arrives with her defense team for her trial at Norfolk Superior Court, Tuesday, April 22, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

The defense in Karen Read's second murder case repeatedly sparred Friday with a key witness who was with Read the morning she found her Boston police officer boyfriend dead in the snow, hoping to undermine her testimony.

Defense attorney Alan Jackson tried to suggest that past inconsistencies showed Jennifer McCabe’s testimony couldn’t be trusted. He also suggested that she and several other witnesses coordinated their version of events around the death of John O'Keefe.

Prosecutors say Read, 45, backed her SUV into O’Keefe after dropping him off at a party hosted by a fellow officer in January 2022 and left him to die in the snow. Defense attorneys say she was a victim of a conspiracy involving the police and have suggested he was killed by someone inside the home.

A mistrial was declared last year after jurors said they were at an impasse. Read's second trial on charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter and leaving the scene, began April 22 and has thus far looked similar to the first.

On Friday, Jackson tried to convince the jury that McCabe's testimony has shifted over time or she left out key details about the events before and after O'Keefe's death.

McCabe, he said, never mentioned that she called her sister just before O'Keefe was found in the snow — something she denied. The two also sparred over what she told former State Trooper Michael Proctor, the lead investigator on the case, about a broken taillight on Read's vehicle. Jackson said she told Proctor that it was cracked, while McCabe testified that she "believed I said it was broken and cracked and it was missing pieces.”

After Jackson challenged McCabe about the route she took to the house, McCabe sounded exasperated.

“I was in shock,” she told the court. “So a lot of things from that day are foggy. Certain things, certain details I may have forgotten.”

Jackson responded that “all of your testimony over the last several days is based on that memory that you just described to these jurors, correct?

McCabe then shot back that “there are certain things I’ll never forget.”

Jackson accused McCabe and other witnesses of coordinating their versions of events in the hours and days after O'Keefe died. He brought up a group chat that included McCabe and several others in which they talked about the case and acknowledged listening to a police interview of another witness, Kerry Roberts, who was also with Read and McCabe that morning.

“In the text that we just saw, you were colluding with other witnesses, percipient witnesses in this case through those text messages, were you not?” Jackson asked, prompting McCabe to deny it.

He pressed further, suggesting she listened to Roberts' interview to help shape her own version of events, which McCabe again denied.

The two also sparred over a Google search — “hos (sic) long to die in cold” — by McCabe related to concerns that O"Keefe was suffering from hyperthermia. She pushed back on a suggestion it was done much earlier in the morning of O'Keefe's death. She also insisted it was done at Read's request soon after they arrived on the scene, despite no other witnesses recounting that.

“I stand by that 110%,” she said, when Jackson challenged her account.

Jackson also questioned McCabe's actions once she arrived on the scene, arguing that she should have done more to help O'Keefe. He suggested that she knew the homeowner, Brian Albert, a friend who had been a Boston police officer, could have provided blankets and was trained to provide life-saving treatment.

“You could have walked 25 feet to the front door, walked in the house and screamed for Brian Albert to help you in those precious minutes,” Jackson asked.

McCabe said her focus was exclusively on O'Keefe at the time.

“That would have taken me away from helping John, getting Kerry blankets, giving him compressions,” she said.

During her second day of testimony Wednesday, McCabe recalled a chaotic scene when they reached the house where O'Keefe, 46, was later found lying in the snow. She called 911 to report a body while Read and another friend Roberts tried to warm O'Keefe up and perform CPR.

Read, she said, was running around and screaming so much that police suggested she sit in a police cruiser. The three sat together praying, and McCabe remember Read wondering aloud who would take care of O'Keefe's two adopted children. As O'Keefe's body was moved to an ambulance, Read screamed for Roberts to go check on him and wondered if he was dead.

Then, McCabe testified that she was standing next to a police officer and a paramedic as Read told them “I hit him” three times — corroborating earlier testimony from paramedics.

But Jackson challenged McCabe, questioning why those comments couldn't be found in earlier police reports or in the 227 pages of her grand jury testimony. Instead, Jackson said she told the grand jury that she recalled Read saying to a paramedic, “Did I hit him? Could I have hit him? Is he dead? Is he dead? Is he dead?”

“In point of fact, in your entire grand jury testimony, you never said my client said the words I hit him.” he said.

McCabe insisted she had told police what Read said — even if it wasn't in the reports — and that it wasn't in the grand jury testimony because she wasn't asked specifically about it. As for the comments in her grand jury testimony, she said there were many conversations with paramedics and police at the scene.

“'I hit him. I hit him. I hit him,' is just as fresh today as it was three years ago,” she said.

Judge Beverly Cannone, presiding in Norfolk Superior Court for the Karen Read trial in Dedham, Mass., Friday, May 2, 2025. (Mark Jarret Chavous/The Enterprise via AP, Pool)

Paul O'Keefe, brother of the decedent John O'Keefe, sits with his family during Karen Read's trial at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., Friday, May 2, 2025. (Mark Jarret Chavous/The Enterprise via AP, Pool)

Karen Read talks with her attorneys during her trial at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., Friday, May 2, 2025. (Mark Jarret Chavous/The Enterprise via AP, Pool)

Karen Read listens during her trial at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., Friday, May 2, 2025. (Mark Jarret Chavous/The Enterprise via AP, Pool)

Peggy O'Keefe, mother of John O'Keefe, looks on during Karen Read's trial at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., Friday, May 2, 2025. (Mark Jarret Chavous/The Enterprise via AP, Pool)

Prosecutor Hank Brennan stands in conference before Karen Read's trial at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., Friday, May 2, 2025. (Mark Jarret Chavous/The Enterprise via AP, Pool)

Defense attorney Robert Aleesi listens to the witness testimony of Jen McCabe during Karen Read's trial at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., Friday, May 2, 2025. (Mark Jarret Chavous/The Enterprise via AP, Pool)

William and Janet Read, parents of Karen Read attend her trial at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., Friday, May 2, 2025. (Mark Jarret Chavous/The Enterprise via AP, Pool)

Witness Jen McCabe takes the stand at Norfolk Superior Court during the Karen Read trial in Dedham, Mass., Friday, May 2, 2025. (Mark Jarret Chavous/The Enterprise via AP, Pool)

Alan Jackson, defense attorney for Karen Read, questions witness Jen McCabe during Read's trial at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., Friday, May 2, 2025. (Mark Jarret Chavous/The Enterprise via AP, Pool)

Karen Read confers with attorney David Yannetti during her trial at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., Friday, May 2, 2025. (Mark Jarret Chavous/The Enterprise via AP, Pool)

Defense attorney Robert Alessi cross-examines Ian Whiffin, a digital intelligence expert with Celebrite during Karen Read's murder retrial at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., on Tuesday, April 29, 2025. (Libby O'Neill/The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)

Karen Read listens to testimony during her murder retrial at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., on Tuesday, April 29, 2025. (Libby O'Neill/The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)

Karen Read speaks to her defense attorney Alan Jackson during her murder retrial at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., on Tuesday, April 29, 2025. (Libby O'Neill/The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)

Ian Whiffin, a digital intelligence expert with Celebrite, testifies under cross-examination by the defense during Karen Read's murder retrial at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., on Tuesday, April 29, 2025. (Libby O'Neill/The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)

Defense attorney Robert Alessi cross-examines Ian Whiffin during Karen Read's murder retrial at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., on Tuesday, April 29, 2025. (Libby O'Neill/The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)

Karen Read listens to testimony during her murder retrial at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., on Tuesday, April 29, 2025. (Libby O'Neill/The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)

Karen Read listens to testimony during her trial, Thursday, April 24, 2025, at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, Pool)

Mass. State Police detective Nicholas Guarino reviews cellular phone logs while testifying during the Karen Read trial at Norfolk Superior Court, Thursday, April 24, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, Pool)

Karen Read, center, speaks with defense team during her trial, Friday, April 25, 2025, at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass. (Josh Reynolds /New York Post via AP, Pool)

Dr. Garrey Faller reviews the medical record of defendant Karen Read as he testified during her trial, Friday, April 25, 2025, at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass. (Josh Reynolds/New York Post via AP, Pool)

John O'Keefe's mother Peggy recounts hearing about her sons death during the Karen Read trial in Norfolk Superior Court at Dedham, Mass., on Wednesday, April 23, 2025 (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)

Ian Wiffin, a digital intelligence expert, with Celebrite, testifies under direct examination by special prosecutor Hank Brennan during Karen Read's murder retrial in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., Monday April 28, 2025. (Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via AP, Pool)

Special prosecutor Hank Brennan questions Ian Wiffin, a digital intelligence expert with Celebrite, during Karen Read's murder trial in Norfolk Superior Court, in front of Judge Beverly J. Cannone, in Dedham, Mass.,Monday April 28, 2025. (Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via AP, Pool)

An image of Karen Read's SUV with a damaged taillight which was put into evidence is shown during the Karen Read trial in Norfolk Superior Court at Dedham, Mass., on Wednesday, April 23, 2025 (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)

A video from a "Ring" camera at John O'Keefe's home, Karen Read is seen arriving in her SUV to look for O'Keefe with Kerry Roberts and Jennifer McCabe is shown during Read's trial in Norfolk Superior Court at Dedham, Mass., on Wednesday, April 23, 2025 (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)

Judge Beverly J. Cannone greets jurors as the murder retrial of Karen Read continues, in Norfolk Superior Court, Dedham, Mass., Monday April 28, 2025. (Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via AP, Pool)

Karen Read listens to the testimony of Cellebrite digital intelligence expert Ian Wiffin, during her murder retrial, in Norfolk Superior Court, in front of Judge Beverly J. Cannone, in Dedham, Mass., Monday April 28, 2025. (Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via AP, Pool)