A judge is set to decide whether to release cell phone records that prove Karen Read ‘had done something terrible’ on he night her boyfriend died.
Prosecutor Hank Brennan petitioned in court Tuesday for the release records of the calls between Read and her parents in the hours after she allegedly struck Boston police officer John O’Keefe with her SUV on January 29, 2022.
Brennan said she called her parents Janet and William Read several times in the early hours of the morning, around the time she claimed she left O’Keefe at a party and drove home.
He was found hours later at 6am dead in the snow, and guests said he never went inside.
‘The inference that a 40-something-year-old woman is calling her parents at 1:30 in the morning after this tumultuous event, the inference is strong evidence that Ms. Read knew she had done something terrible,’ Brennan said.
‘She knew she had struck John O’Keefe, and she knew she had left him behind.’
Prosecutors with the Norfolk district attorney’s office claimed Read’s phone records will show she called her mother three times, at 1:14am, 4:38am, and 4:42am, and her father at 6:32am – none of which were answered.
In her defense at her first trial, Read claimed to have been driving at around at the time with two friends searching for O’Keefe after he never returned home.
She argued that she was the victim of a wide-ranging conspiracy including the Boston Police Department to frame her. The first trial ended in a hung jury, and she is set to go back on trial in January 2025.
Although Read is set to go back on trial in January, Tuesday’s hearing saw both prosecutors and her defense request to have the trial pushed back to April.
Read’s attorney Elizabeth Little countered the prosecution’s motion for her phone records, branding it a ‘fishing expedition’ and an invasion of her parents’ privacy, reports the Boston Globe.
She argued that prosecutors have not shown proof that the phone records contain evidence related to the case.
‘The Commonwealth is asking this court to sanction this gross invasion of her father’s privacy so the Commonwealth can sift through Mr. Read’s electronic data for information that is already in the possession of the Commonwealth,’ she said.
The judge did not rule on the motion at Tuesday’s hearing.
Brennan also requested the release of journalists’ notes and recordings of interviews Read gave to a Boston Magazine reporter last year for a story.
Prosecutors said they are in possession of two recordings of the interview, but they include roughly 150 redactions, and they are seeking unredacted versions.
It is claimed that these redactions include comments from Read that contradict statements she made to other outlets, and said there are other moments where Read makes a statement before a redaction then resumes with a different story.
In one example reported by the Globe, Read allegedly made an ‘admission of drinking a vodka tonic every 40 minutes’ at a bar with O’Keefe on the night of his death.
When the audio resumed, court records claimed she offered a ‘non-sequitur claiming to consume sips of water’ at a second bar, while she previously told 20/20: ‘I had had probably about four [drinks], and not four that I completed either. I didn’t drink maybe more than a few sips at’ the second bar.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Brennan said: ‘Clearly something happened during that redaction that changed the admission to drinking alcohol, which is part of this case, to something of water.’
The judge also did not make a ruling on a motion over the recordings on Tuesday. Read is next scheduled in court on December 12.
Read has maintained her innocence in the case and says she intends to fight to clear her name when she faces a second murder trial in January.
Although her jury was deadlocked, the family of John O’Keefe launched a wrongful death lawsuit against her.
Prosecutors allege that Read hit O’Keefe with her car following a drunken argument as she dropped him off at the home for an after party, and claim to have found pieces of her car’s tail light around his body.
She had spent the evening drinking with O’Keefe and a group of friends at the Waterfall Bar and Grill in Canton, around 14 miles south of Boston, and the group were invited to the home of his friend Brian Albert, who was a retired Boston police officer.
Read, who prosecutors say drank several alcoholic drinks beforehand, decided to drop O’Keefe at the afterparty before she went to his home – that he shared with his orphaned niece and nephew – to sleep at around 1am.
Court documents revealed that the couple had been bitterly arguing for weeks beforehand, and on the night O’Keefe died, Read left him a voicemail calling him a ‘f****** loser’, and ‘John, I f****** hate you.’
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.
As the party went on inside Albert’s home, Read said she woke up around 4am to find that he was not at home, and told O’Keefe’s niece that she was ‘distraught.’
Attendees at the party, including some law enforcement, claimed O’Keefe never arrived at the party or entered the home.
Read then searched for O’Keefe with a friend, and prosecutors allege that during the search she told her: ‘What if he’s dead? What if a plow hit him?… I don’t remember anything from last night, we drank so much I don’t remember anything.’
At 6am, Read found O’Keefe laying in the snow outside Albert’s home, and a first responder on the scene reportedly claimed Read repeatedly cried out, ‘I hit him, I hit him’, reports CBS News.
O’Keefe was rushed to hospital, where he was pronounced dead. An autopsy found that the cause of death was blunt impact injuries and hypothermia.
Read’s defense countered that she is the victim of an extensive conspiracy to frame her, and claimed the police officer may have actually been attacked by other officers and attendees at the party where he was found dead.
Throughout her trial, Read’s claims that she was framed also drew a legion of fans, who wore pink to show their support and were often staked out outside the courthouse.
The judge in her case even filed a ruling at the start of the trial banning supporters from coming within 200 feet of the courthouse.
Read’s courthouse behavior also sparked backlash as she was branded ‘America’s happiest murder defendant’, as she appeared to soak up the attention while winking at the cameras and snacking in court.