Karen Read acquitted of murder in death of police officer boyfriend: Updates
A Massachusetts jury returned a verdict in the Karen Read case, acquitting her of the most serious charges and finding her guilty of a lesser charge.
A Massachusetts jury found Karen Read not guilty of the most serious charges and guilty on a lesser charge related to the 2022 death of her Boston police officer boyfriend John O’Keefe, ending a weekslong trial that has drawn intense attention from true-crime fans across the country.
The jury convicted Read of operating a vehicle under of the influence (OUI) but not on charges of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a collision resulting in death. Read was sentenced to one year probation.
Prosecutors accused Read of backing into O’Keefe with her Lexus SUV in a drunken rage and leaving him to die in the snow after a night out drinking with friends in January 2022.
Her defense team claimed she was framed for the death by cops who beat O’Keefe, let a dog attack him, threw him in the snow and then purposefully botched the investigation.
As the verdict was announced, Read smiled and embraced her defense team. Outside, supporters could be heard cheering and chanting "Karen is free."
“I could not be standing here without these amazing supporters who have supported me and my team financially and more importantly emotionally for almost four years,” Read told the crowd.
“No one has fought harder for justice for John O’Keefe than I have, than I have and my team," she added.
Friends of O'Keefe called the jury's decision "a devastating miscarriage of justice," in a statement released to Paste BN.
"Today, our hearts are with John and the entire O’Keefe family. They have suffered through so much and deserved better from our justice system," Jennifer McCabe, Matthew McCabe, Chris Albert, Julie Albert, Colin Albert, Nicole Albert, Brian Albert, Kerry Roberts, and Curt Roberts said in a statement.
The verdict comes nearly a year after Read’s first trial ended in a hung jury.
Interest in the case has swept the country since then, spurring an array of true crime podcasts, movies and television shows.
How much did the special prosecutor in Karen Read’s case get paid?
The Norfolk County District Attorney’s office paid special prosecutor Hank Brennan more than $230,000 in taxpayer funds for Read’s retrial, according to public records.
Norfolk District Attorney Michael W. Morrissey appointed Brennan to the case in September 2024. Brennan previously served as the defense attorney for famous mobster James "Whitey" Bulger in his federal murder trial in Boston.
What was Karen Read accused of?
Read was charged with second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and leaving the scene of a collision resulting in a death.
The second-degree murder charge carried the longest possible prison sentence: life in prison with the possibility of parole after a minimum of 15 years.
When is Karen Read's sentencing? What is an OUI charge?
Moments after the jury acquitted Read of murder, she was sentenced to one year of probation for operating a vehicle under the influence. This is the standard sentence for that charge as a first-time offender.
Town at center of Read’s trial reacts to verdict
Canton, Massachusetts, the town at the heart of Karen Read’s trial, acknowledged the verdict Wednesday afternoon.
Canton Select Board Chair John McCourt thanked the jury and said the town “respects the legal process” in a statement posted to the town website.
“Today's outcome may bring a sense of relief to some and continue to raise questions for others,” he wrote. “We encourage members of the community to move forward together, treating one another with respect through civil, constructive dialogue.”
O’Keefe’s body was found lying outside a home on Fairview Road in Canton on Jan. 29, 2022.
Karen Read's legal issues are not over: She faces civil case
The split verdict means Read’s case in criminal court is finally over, according to Rither Alabre, a former New York City prosecutor and current partner in the Blank Rome law firm.
“The charges she got acquitted of are not part of her record so it’s like it never happened, she’s just like any person who got a DUI,” said Alabre. “I think that’s a win.”
But Read could still be held liable for O’Keefe’s death in civil court.
In August 2024, O'Keefe's estate filed a civil wrongful death lawsuit against Read and two Canton, Massachusetts, bars — C.F. McCarthy's and the Waterfall — that the couple visited the night of the death, according to The Patriot Ledger, part of the Paste BN Network.
The suit is seeking at least $50,000 in damages. It alleges Read's conduct was "extreme and outrageous, beyond the bounds of decency and was utterly intolerable" and that she "outrageously created a false narrative" in O'Keefe's death.
The case has not yet gone to trial — a judge in November 2024 halted Read's scheduled deposition in the case as the criminal case remained underway.
But Read's acquittal doesn’t necessarily mean she will be found not liable in civil court, according to Alabre and Jeffrey Abramson, a professor of government and law emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin.
That's because the civil suit must meet a lower burden of proof to fall against Read.
“In a criminal case, there is a much higher burden of proof, the prosecutor must prove beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Alabre. “But in a civil case, it's a preponderance of the evidence which is basically is she much more likely to have done it than not.”
Alabre pointed to the O.J. Simpson trial – in which the football star was found not guilty of murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman but was still ultimately held liable for their deaths in a civil case.
After a jury found Simpson liable, a judge awarded the families of the victims $33.5 million in damages.
"What I would say is if Karen had been found guilty of the homicide-related charges, it would make the civil case a lot easier," Alabre said.
- Melina Khan
Prosecution dealt ‘bad hand’ by police investigation
Prosecutors trying to prove Read was guilty did everything that they could, according to David Ring, a high-profile trial lawyer following the case out of Dedham, Massachusetts. But shoddy police work undermined their efforts and gave rise to the idea that O’Keefe was killed by a conspiracy of fellow officers, he alleged.
“I have zero criticism for the prosecution. The problem is they were dealt a bad hand from the get-go. There was nothing they could do with that, and that all goes back to the police investigation,” said Ring.
“The big problem was that O’Keefe’s cause of death was too speculative. There just wasn't enough hard evidence, no eyewitnesses to what happened and the evidence is tainted,” said Ring, who filed a civil lawsuit on behalf of a Harvey Weinstein victim whose criminal case against the movie mogul resulted in a 16-year prison sentence.
Among issues with the investigation, according to Read’s lawyers, were irregularities with collecting and filing evidence.
The most significant missteps, according to Ring, had to do with the apparent preference investigators showed the people at the property where O’Keefe was found.
“The worst thing that the police did is something they didn’t do – and that is formally interview the people at the house, who were police officers. Investigators did nothing. They let them go. They didn’t search the house. They did them a favor because they’re police officers,” Ring said.
“In closing arguments, Karen Read’s lawyer hammered that home – if anyone else lived in that house aside from police officers, you could guarantee they would interview them. It feeds into the whole conspiracy theory,” he said.
What made the Karen Read trial such a big case?
The case out of suburban Boston became a trial that people around the nation followed with rapt attention. Why? It's likely due to the skilled tactics of Read’s defense, according to Jeffrey Abramson, a professor emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin.
“The genius of the defense was to take a case that started out as a small case about a tragic occurrence after a night of drinking and turn it into a referendum on police misconduct,” said Abramson, a former assistant district attorney out of Massachusetts. “That maneuver caught fire with a social movement and a movement on social media, and I have to think it worked.”
Abramson noted that Read’s attorneys played on heightened scrutiny of law enforcement in the wake of the 2020 police killing of George Floyd.
“After everything the country has been through about allegations of police misconduct,” he said, “they took something that maybe it’s homebase was ‘Black Lives Matter’ but it migrated into a totally different milieu and clientele of suburban Boston.”
The author noted that scrutiny of police was among the last thing jurors heard from Read’s lawyers in closing arguments.
“I think they took to heart defense attorney Alan Jackson’s closing argument, which is that they hit hard on the fact that the prosecutor was scared to call on the lead investigator Michael Proctor to testify because he had been fired for being so openly vulgar about Read,” said Abramson. “Jackson just kept saying how can you convict when they won’t let you hear from the disgraced police investigator.”
What does the Karen Read verdict mean?
By not convicting Read of second-degree murder, the jury appeared to find that Read did not intentionally kill O’Keefe out of anger, as prosecutors suggested.
Because she was convicted on the lesser charge of operating a motor vehicle while under the influence, Read will serve one year probation.
How did Karen Read's case unfold?
Through more than seven weeks of testimony, jurors heard from a myriad of witnesses and experts who testified about the events leading up to O’Keefe death, evidence found at the crime scene and irregularities in the investigation.
One of the biggest bombshells came near the beginning of the trial, when a friend of O’Keefe’s alleged that Read said, “I hit him, I hit him, I hit him,” shortly after finding his body beneath a pile of snow. Prosecutors paired the testimony with video clips of Read where she talked about being inebriated behind the wheel and questioned whether she could have “clipped” O’Keefe.
Forensic scientists presented jurors with analysis of phone and vehicle data showing Read’s SUV moving 87 feet in reverse at about the same time O’Keefe’s phone locked for the last time. They showed pictures of tiny red bits of plastic stuck in the fabric of O’Keefe’s sweatshirt, and pieces of Read’s taillight near where his body was found.
Text messages between Read and O’Keefe in the days and hours before his death revealed their privately fraying relationship, despite public shows of affection.
“Tell me if you're interested in someone else, can’t think of any other reason you are like this,” Read wrote at one point. O’Keefe replied: “Things haven't been great between us for a while. Ever consider that?”
Read’s defense team at every turn sought to sow doubt in the credibility of the prosecution’s witnesses and the integrity of the investigation into O’Keefe’s death. They alleged that the lead detective in O’Keefe’s case, former Massachusetts State Trooper Michael Proctor, was biased against Read, citing crude text messages he sent to friends, and questioned whether he planted the pieces of taillight at the crime scene.
One defense expert suggested that O’Keefe’s injuries were caused by a dog, backing up the defense’s theory that O’Keefe was beaten inside the home of a fellow cop, attacked by his dog and discarded outside during a blizzard.
(This story has been updated to add new information.)
Contributing: Jessica Trufant, The Patriot Ledger