Karen Read sobbed in court as she was acquitted of murder over the death of her Boston police officer boyfriend in a retrial that captivated the nation.
Read, 45, was accused of drunkenly ramming her SUV into her boyfriend, former Boston police officer John O’Keefe, and leaving him to die in blizzard conditions on January 29, 2022.
A jury returned a not guilty verdict on the charges of murder and leaving the scene resulting in death on Wednesday. She was found guilty of Operating Under the Influence and sentenced to probation.
The former adjunct college professor, who wore a light blue suit, cried and hugged her lawyer Alan Jackson after the judge delivered the news.
She has long maintained her innocence and insisted that she was framed by his police officer friends who were inside the house where he was found dead.
Read previously faced the charges at a trial last year. But after five days of deliberations, Judge Beverly Cannone declared a mistrial as the jurors remained split on whether she intentionally killed her boyfriend.
She has garnered a cult following of supporters from the widespread social media coverage and hit HBO documentary of the case.
Read was greeted by a massive crowd of pink-clad fans shouting ‘Karen Read is free’ after she left the court an innocent woman.
Read thanked her lawyers and supporters in a brief press conference outside of the courthouse.
‘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,’ she said.
‘No one has fought harder for justice for John O’Keefe than I have. Than I have, and my team.’
Several witnesses in the case, including those who were in the house that fateful night, released a statement calling the verdict a ‘miscarriage of justice.’
The witnesses who signed the statement included Jennifer McCabe, who made the infamous ‘Hos long to die in cold’ search in the early morning hours of O’Keefe’s death, and Brian Albert, who owned the home where the party took place.
‘While we may have more to say in the future, today we mourn with John’s family and lament the cruel reality that this prosecution was infected by lies and conspiracy theories spread by Karen Read, her defense team, and some in the media. The result is a devastating miscarriage of justice,’ the statement said.
Read’s supporters told DailyMail.com they are ecstatic with the verdict and they are ready to help fight for justice for O’Keefe.
‘God, this is just. The American jury system prevailed, and the Commonwealth failed. The Commonwealth failed its people. The jury came back with a just verdict,’ said Rita Lombardi, who had been at court nearly every day.
‘This is history, and this is what ordinary people did: ordinary people raised their voices in positive and productive ways to speak truth to power.
‘My message to the people who did this to John is that you failed miserably. It’s just the beginning.’
The jury handed down its decision after deliberating for at least 22 hours since June 13.
Prosecutors described Read as a scorned lover who chose to leave O’Keefe dying in the snow after striking him with her SUV outside the house party.
Her defense said O’Keefe was beaten, bitten by a dog, then left outside a home in the Boston suburb of Canton in a conspiracy orchestrated by the police that included planting evidence.
They argued that investigators focused on Read because she was a ‘convenient outsider’ who saved them from having to consider law enforcement officers as suspects.
But prosecutors noted that O’Keefe and Read had been drinking with a group of friends at the Waterfall Bar and Grill in Canton – about 14 miles south of Boston, when they were invited to an afterparty.
Read has even admitted to having several alcoholic drinks beforehand, but said she decided to drop her boyfriend at the afterparty before she returned to his house.
The couple had been dating for two years at the time of O’Keefe’s death. He had been serving on the Boston Police Department for 16 years.
According to Read’s version of events, she woke up at 4am to find that O’Keefe never returned home, leading her to frantically drive out to try and find him.
After finding O’Keefe’s body outside the home, which party attendees claimed he never entered, first responders on the scene alleged that Read repeatedly told them she hit him while in a panicked state.
O’Keefe’s cause of death was ultimately listed as blunt force trauma and hypothermia after police say he was left outside in a blizzard.
At the center of Read’s defense has been claims that the investigation was inappropriately handled by dishonorably discharged State Trooper Michael Proctor, who sent vulgar text messages about Read.
He was fired over texts that included calling Read a ‘whack job’ and a ‘c***.’
In other messages, he joked about rummaging through her phone for nude photos during the investigation, and remarked that she had ‘no a**.’
In his closing arguments, defense attorney Alan Jackson once again hit out at Proctor, arguing that the prosecution could only feign a case because ‘their investigation was flawed from the start because their investigator was corrupted from the start by bias, personal loyalties.’
He also argued that experts agree ‘there was no collision,’ and concluded by saying ‘reasonable doubt abounds.’
But prosecutor Hank Brennan said the story of how O’Keefe died is ‘simple.’
‘Ms. Read was with Mr. O’Keefe and she got drunk. She drank. She was two to three times over the legal limit and they went to a party, an afterparty and they were fighting.
‘…She got drunk, she hit him, she left him to die. It’s that simple.’