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‘There’s more of a story to tell’: 7 takeaways from Karen Read’s first in-depth interview after acquittal
Read has mostly kept mum about the sensational murder case that rocked Greater Boston. Until now.
Karen Read got candid in a new true-crime podcast interview Monday, a wide-reaching conversation that ranged from Read’s post-acquittal life to rumors of a swingers scene in Canton (yes, really).
Sitting down with “Rotten Mango” for her first in-depth interview following her acquittal, Read said she still feels like a “fish out of water” after standing trial twice in the 2022 death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe.
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Prosecutors alleged Read backed her SUV into O’Keefe in a drunken rage following a night of bar-hopping, then left him to die on a snowy lawn in Canton. But after a 2024 mistrial and subsequent retrial, a jury found Read not guilty of all but a drunk driving misdemeanor.
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Aside from some brief remarks on Howie Carr’s radio show back in August, Read has largely kept mum about the sensational murder trials that rocked Greater Boston. Until now.
Life after acquittal
“I thought I would just bounce back, like on a spring. It hasn’t been that way,” Read told “Rotten Mango” host Stephanie Soo.
“I’m trying to understand why I haven’t felt more celebratory, and what I think is that I lived with some very singular emotions — fright, anger, and anxiety,” Read continued. “It was very intense every waking hour. Every hour, I thought about my freedom and if I could lose it. And those feelings just don’t disappear when a jury foreman says, ‘Not guilty.’”
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Read also said she feels as though she’s lost some of the endorphins and drive that fueled her during her yearslong legal saga.
In the days after the jury delivered its “not guilty” verdict, interview requests were pouring in from “Good Morning America,” People magazine, and “The Today Show,” Read recalled. Meanwhile, her defense attorneys — who had become like a second family to Read — were decamping from the hotel they’d made their home base.
“It just felt surreal,” she said. “I felt sad, like, ‘So I’m gonna go back to the hotel, pack up my things, and then where do I go?’”
These days, Read added, “I’m starting to feel my way around, defining what my life is going to be. It’s getting easier.”
‘Someone in that house killed John O’Keefe’
Hours after O’Keefe’s lifeless body turned up outside 34 Fairview Road on Jan. 29, 2022, investigators had Read pegged as the primary suspect. She was arrested days later, with defense attorney David Yannetti by her side at her initial arraignment.
“I was hoping desperately this [was] a case of, ‘They’ve got the wrong guy,’” Read recalled. Following the arraignment, she said Yannetti told her he’d received an anonymous tip from someone who thought the Alberts — the family who owned 34 Fairview Road — deserved further investigation.
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“I had not even thought about the Alberts, not one way or the other,” Read explained, adding, “I have been lucky that very early on, and at regular intervals since, I have been given gifts of information that helped buoy me.”
Read and O’Keefe had gone out drinking with friends and acquaintances the night he died, including several members of the Albert family. Brian Albert invited the group back to his home on Fairview Road as the bar outing wrapped up, and Read drove O’Keefe to the afterparty.
While prosecutors accused Read of mortally wounding O’Keefe with her SUV, she argued the photos of her boyfriend’s injuries tell another story.
“John O’Keefe entered the garage or the house at 34 Fairview and sooner, much sooner than later, met his demise,” she suggested. “Based on his injuries, it looks to me like he got into a fight and fell backwards. … So someone in that house killed John O’Keefe.”
Read was worried someone would try to kill or harm her
Read’s defense has long maintained she was framed in a law enforcement conspiracy to protect the well-connected Alberts. However, Read also told Soo she feared someone might try to kill her and stage it to look like a suicide, as a former Stoughton police detective allegedly did to 23-year-old Sandra Birchmore in a separate case out of Canton.
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“I live alone; I’m like a sitting duck. Will I be hanging from a doorknob in my house?” she remembered thinking. “And they could easily explain it as guilt, depression over what had happened, and, ‘She just gave up.’”
According to Read, those fears were reignited when she saw former Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor, the lead investigator, coming around the side of her house to arrest her a second time following her June 2022 indictment.
“For a split second, I thought Michael Proctor was there to hurt me,” she explained. “I had no idea. ‘Why is he here? Why is he in plain clothes? Why is he at my back door, which is almost in the woods?’”
Read isn’t embarrassed by Proctor’s crass texts
State Police later fired Proctor in light of his conduct during Read’s case, particularly the vulgar texts he sent family, friends, and coworkers about Read. In messages that surfaced as part of a federal probe into the state’s investigation, Proctor mocked Read’s appearance and medical conditions, joked about looking for nude photos on her cellphone, and said he hoped she would kill herself.
“What he said about me and my anatomy, it’s disgusting but it did not embarrass me,” Read said. “Michael Proctor does not have the ability to embarrass me.”
She added: “I cared more about his lies.”
The most ‘befuddling’ moment, according to Read
Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally prosecuted Read during her first trial, with Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey tapping special prosecutor Hank Brennan to lead the 2025 retrial. According to Read, the most “befuddling” moment of her second trial was Brennan’s decision to recommend a year of probation, rather than seek prison time for her drunk driving conviction.
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“I’m like, ‘Wait a minute, you’ve been trying to end my life. Can you at least be consistent and pretend you think I’m a bad person? Can you just finish the charade?’” Read recalled.
But when asked which prosecutor she would rather lunch with, Read chose Brennan.
“I feel that I make him very uncomfortable. We’ve had some stare-offs in the courtroom,” she said. “Lally, I don’t have pleasant thoughts about either one of them. I don’t think they’re honorable. I don’t think they have integrity. I don’t think they’re honest. I wouldn’t want to eat or watch either of them eat. But I think I’d have better stories to tell eating with Hank Brennan.”
She’s never watched the docuseries on her case
Despite giving Investigation Discovery staggering behind-the-scenes access for its docuseries “A Body in the Snow,” Read said she’s never watched the series in full and ended her working relationship with documentarian Terry Dunn Meurer “on a very bad note. Over money, of course.”
She explained she went into the docuseries believing that as long as she was still facing criminal charges, she could not profit from telling her story — a so-called “Son of Sam” law. However, Massachusetts’ highest court struck down a version of the law in 2002 due to free speech concerns.
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“The documentarian, I feel, went out of her way to excise us from enjoying not one dime of the proceeds,” Read said, explaining that she lost her fight for a piece of the proceeds.
“You used us. You know you did, and I wish just never to cross paths with you again,” Read said, addressing Dunn Meurer directly. “I will tell my story with more control.”
Likewise, Read said she’s not profiting from Lifetime’s recent screen adaptation, nor from an upcoming Prime Video limited series starring Elizabeth Banks.
“If this is getting the story out, get it out,” she said. “It’s compelling. It’s a moment in history. I don’t blame these people for making these movies. But I will say, I have gone through a lot of pain and lost a lot, and you’re telling my story to make money, and you’re not involving me.”
What’s next for Read?
Read is, however, working with literary agent Luke Janklow and producer Julie Yorn on a book and scripted adaptation, respectively. She said she and defense attorney Alan Jackson will co-author a retelling of the case.
“I want this to be a story about corruption,” Read added. “I want to have some impact on the state where I’ve lived most of my life, and where my family is from, and where we’ve battled this.”
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She and Jackson have also launched a YouTube channel, “The Read Files,” to provide a behind-the-scenes look at her ongoing legal battle. While Read’s criminal case is now closed, she’s still facing a wrongful death lawsuit from O’Keefe’s family and is suing several witnesses and investigators she says conspired to frame her.
Speaking to Soo, Read hinted that the civil cases could yield even more information about the puzzling events of Jan. 29, 2022.
“We were hamstrung, in our opinion, badly at trial,” she explained. “There’s more evidence, and there’s more of a story to tell. And it has to be done. We have to finish this.”
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