Defense attorneys for Karen Read, the Massachusetts woman accused of fatally striking her police officer boyfriend with an SUV last year, insisted Wednesday there’s evidence to suggest someone else committed the slaying—but argued prosecutors are holding key information back.
Read’s attorneys said evidence from a local animal control office and data from a cell phone will destroy prosecutors’ version of events and implicate friends of the slain Boston police officer, John O’Keefe, who they claim beat him to death and framed Read for their crime.
The motion for evidence is the latest twist in the dizzying case surrounding Read, which has been filled with bitter bickering between prosecutors and the defense while conspiracy theories run amok outside the courtroom.
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Authorities say O’Keefe was found dying in a snowbank on Jan. 29, 2022, next to the driveway of a colleague’s house he’d been drinking at the night before. Cops said O’Keefe’s body was found by Read the next morning—who was quickly named a suspect in his death, with cops accusing her of drunkenly striking him and leaving him to die as she backed out of the driveway.
Read was charged with second-degree murder, motor-vehicle manslaughter and for leaving the scene of a crash involving a death.
Defense attorney David Yannetti insisted Wednesday that prosecutors have “charged the wrong person,” saying authorities are hesitant to release further evidence because it “will drive a stake through the heart of this prosecution.”
Yannetti asked Judge Beverly Cannone to set a hard deadline for prosecutors to turn over the evidence they requested but she denied to do so just yet. Instead, she set a second hearing for May 25 relating to the motions.
“We cannot abide by excuses any longer,” Yannetti said while pleading to Cannone. “We need this court's help. We need you, your honor, respectfully, to hold the prosecution's feet to the fire.”
Yannetti laid out an extravagant alternate theory into how O’Keefe was killed. He started by claiming O’Keefe’s injuries weren’t consistent with someone who fought with his girlfriend before being fatally struck by an SUV, as prosecutors assert.
Defense attorneys presented photos of O’Keefe’s arm, which were filled with scratches and gashes that Yannetti claimed were consistent with an animal attack. Yanetti then addressed the blunt head trauma O’Keefe suffered—something cops and prosecutors allege came from being hit by Read’s SUV.
Yanetti countered that the head injuries likely came from a fight inside the home of fellow officer Brian Albert. He further suggested the “animal injuries” on O’Keefe’s arm likely came from that same fight, as Albert, another Boston cop, owned a “90-pound” German shepherd that would’ve aided his owner in a tussle.
“It looked like he could have gone 10 rounds with Mike Tyson,” Yanetti said of O’Keefe’s body, adding that he was found with two black eyes and lacerations by his eye and his nose.
The defense also challenged another piece of evidence central to the prosecution—that Read’s SUV had a shattered rear tail light where her SUV struck O’Keefe.
Yanetti said video from a library’s security camera that prosecutors turned over to the defense doesn’t show the crucial moment when Read drives by on her way home from Albert’s house. If it did, Yanetti says it would show that Read did not have a busted tail light yet—suggesting someone else manually busted it to frame her for O'Keefe's murder.
All together, the defense motioned to receive video surveillance from the Canton Public Library, the clothing O’Keefe wore the night he died, evidence from Read’s SUV, and DNA evidence from animal control that would show whether Albert’s German shepherd took part in a vicious attack on O’Keefe.
Yannetti described the missing evidence as “exculpatory, perhaps case ending.”
Prosecutors took issue with nearly every claim raised by Yanetti when responding. Assistant Norfolk District Attorney Adam C. Lall called the elaborate story—and the defense’s motion for more evidence—a “fishing expedition.”
“The showing from the defendant is simply insufficient to establish any relevance to your evidentiary value to these records,” Lall said. “This is the very epitome of a fishing expedition.”
Yanetti countered by poking fun at prosecutors’ characterization, saying: “I think we've established this is not just fishing. We got a fish on the hook. We just need the court to help us reel it in.”
Read, 43, remained stoic throughout Wednesday’s hearing, but never spoke. She could face a life-sentence if convicted on the second-degree murder charge.
Yanetti asked the court to move quickly in ordering evidence be handed over, saying Read is struggling to afford her growing legal and medical costs since the murder allegation caused her to lose her job last year.
Complicating Read’s defense has been a series of statements made the morning she discovered O’Keefe in the snow bank—repeatedly asking, “Could I have hit him? Did I hit him?”
Cops say she still had alcohol in her system when her blood was drawn the morning O’Keefe was found. Experts estimated her blood-alcohol level would’ve been “well above” the 0.08 legal driving limit when she’s accused of striking O’Keefe before driving home in “white out” blizzard conditions.
Ever since, the case surrounding Read has been full of twists and turns.
A shocking update came last month, when defense attorneys revealed in a motion that Albert’s sister-in-law, Jennifer McCabe, made a Google search just hours before O’Keefe was found, “Ho[w] long to die in cold.”
Read’s attorneys pointed to the eerie search as proof that prosecutors are missing what truly happened the night of O’Keefe’s death.
“There is simply no innocent explanation for McCabe’s search at that time,” the defense said in a statement. “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 follow-up hearing is scheduled for May 25, where Cannone is expected to approve or deny the defense’s motions for additional evidence.
