Lawyers say new evidence will clear girlfriend of Boston police officer charged with his murder
Lawyers for a woman charged with hitting her Boston police officer boyfriend with her SUV and leaving him to die during a snowstorm say they have uncovered new evidence that will clear her name, while implicating two others in the death of Officer John J. O’Keefe, according to court documents filed Wednesday.
Karen A. Read discovered O’Keefe’s unconscious body in a snowbank amid whiteout conditions and freezing temperatures outside a Canton home at about 6 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022.
Read had dropped her boyfriend, a 16-year-veteran of the Boston force, off to join an after-party at the home of another Boston police officer, Brian Albert, at 34 Fairview Road shortly after midnight, court records show.
According to prosecutors, Read made a three-point turn to reverse direction, rammed into O’Keefe, and drove away.
Early the next morning when Read began frantically texting and calling O’Keefe to figure out why he hadn’t returned home, she told a friend she remembered little of the previous night — an evening of bar-hopping that shifted to an after-party which Read decided not to attend because she was having stomach issues.
The new evidence shows that hours before Read found O’Keefe’s body, someone else who had attended the after-party was making suspicious inquiries on Google, according to the newly filed defense motion.
At 2:27 a.m. Jennifer McCabe, sister-in-law to Albert, searched on her phone: “Ho[w] long to die in cold,” the motion said.
“There is simply no innocent explanation for McCabe’s search at that time,” Read’s defense team said in a press release. “This evidence unequivocally exonerates Karen, because it establishes that individuals who were in the house at 34 Fairview that night were aware that John was dying in the snow before Karen even knew he was missing.”
A forensic analysis of McCabe’s phone by defense experts also showed that the Google search was intentionally deleted, as were communications in the early morning hours of Jan. 29, 2022 among McCabe and Albert, and his wife, Read’s lawyers wrote.
Albert could not be reached for comment Wednesday night.
McCabe declined to comment when reached by telephone.
Read’s lawyers said prosecutors withheld the evidence for over a year. The legal team, led by David R. Yannetti, in Boston, and Alan Jackson, in Los Angeles, is now requesting access to Albert’s phone so they can analyze it.
“It’s unthinkable that the prosecution would have McCabe’s cellphone in their possession for more than a year, do a forensic analysis on that phone, and then fail to turn over this extraordinary exculpatory evidence. But that’s exactly what happened,” the lawyers’ statement said. “It makes you wonder what else the prosecution has failed to turn over to the defense. We will not rest until we have uncovered all the evidence, which will establish that the prosecution of Karen was a miscarriage of justice from the start.”
A spokesman for the Norfolk district attorney’s office said prosecutors will make a “formal and detailed response to the motion” in Norfolk Superior Court at the next hearing, May 3, or after.
“While prosecutors are ethically constrained in the statements that can be made outside the courtroom, the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office is in receipt of the motion filed today but it has not yet been determined that defense has interpreted the raw data correctly,” spokesman David Traub said. “The Norfolk District Attorney’s Office has asked defense repeatedly during the pendency of this matter to provide any actually exculpatory evidence to support their claims.”
Read, who worked as an equity analyst at a financial firm and an adjunct professor of finance at Bentley University in Waltham, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, manslaughter while under the influence of alcohol, and leaving the scene of personal injury and death.
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