Karen Read’s lawyer claims murder trial for death of cop boyfriend is an elaborate frame-up: ‘Pin it on the girl’
Karen Read’s defense lawyer told a Massachusetts jury that the murder trial for the death of her cop boyfriend is an elaborate setup to “pin it on the girl,” in order to protect the officer’s police buddies.
“Pick your patsy, pin it on the girl,” Read’s lawyer Alan Jackson told a jury in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., during closing arguments Tuesday.
Read, 44, has been on trial for two months on second-degree murder charges.
She is accused of backing over her lover, Boston police Officer John O’Keefe, with her Lexus SUV and leaving him to die outside during a snowstorm in Canton, Mass., on Jan. 29, 2022.
After the closing arguments, the judge gave the jury instructions and sent jurors off to begin deliberating around 1:30 p.m.
They continued until 4:30 p.m. before they were dismissed for the day, to return Tuesday morning.
As Read left the courthouse with her lawyers Tuesday as she awaited her fate, droves of supporters — many dressed in pink — cheered her on.
“Love you Karen,” one woman could be heard yelling.
In his closing arguments, Jackson told the panelists Read was really the victim of a sweeping conspiracy by local law enforcement to hide the fact that O’Keefe, 46, had gotten in a fight with some of his cop pals at his friend Brian Albert’s house after a night of drinking — ultimately leading to his death.
What to know about the Karen Read murder case
- Karen Read, 44, was charged with second-degree murder for allegedly mowing down her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, as she was dropping him off to meet friends in Canton, Mass., on Jan. 29, 2022.
- The night of O’Keefe’s death, the couple had been out on a bar crawl, with Read allegedly consuming seven drinks in just 90 minutes, according to reports.
- Prosecutors claim that after Read drunkenly ran over her boyfriend, she drove off and left O’Keefe to die outside as a snowstorm was set to sweep in.
- Read’s lawyers argued she was framed in a sweeping law enforcement cover-up and that O’Keefe actually died after getting into an altercation with his officer friends.
- The two-month trial that had 74 witnesses featured stunning revelations, including “unprofessional” messages by the lead detective, and crowds of fawning supporters who cheered Read outside court each day.
- On July 1, 2024, Judge Beverly Cannone declared a mistrial in the case, since the jury was not able to reach a unanimous verdict after five days of deliberations.
- Read faced up to life in prison if she had been convicted on the top count of murder.
“Look the other way,” Jackson said. “Four words that sum up the commonwealth’s entire case, that sum up the hopes of those who have tried to deceive you.”
“The incontrovertible fact is that you’ve been lied to in this courtroom,” Jackson said, before offering alternate explanations for how the night of O’Keefe’s death played out.
“They cannot, and haven’t even tried, to explain the lack of injuries on John’s body from the neck down,” the defense lawyer said. “Nothing to suggest that he was hit by a 7,000-pound SUV at over 25 miles per hour.”
Instead, Jackson claimed the evidence showed “John got into an altercation. He was punched [and] he tried to defend himself by putting his hands up … Every single injury is explained by that.”
Even though the Canton Police Department recused itself from the investigation into O’Keefe’s death, the probe was tainted from the start as lead investigator Massachusetts State Trooper Michael Proctor was set on protecting fellow law enforcement — and specifically the Albert family which he’d known for “decades,” Jackson claimed.
“Michael Proctor didn’t draw a thin blue line, he erected a tall blue wall,” Jackson said. “A wall that you can’t scale, a wall that Karen Read certainly couldn’t get over. A wall between us and them. A place you folk are not invited. We protect our own.”
Jackson reminded jurors of text messages that Proctor sent to others about Read saying she was a “wack job c–t” and wishing she’d kill herself. Jackson said those and other messages demonstrated Proctor was out to get Read.
But prosecutor Adam Lally, during his closing, said four witnesses testified at trial that Read told first responders at the scene of where O’Keefe’s body was found in the snow, “I hit him, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.”
“Those are the words that came from the defendant’s mouth,” Lally said. “This is all my fault, all my fault. I did this.”
But Jackson said prosecution witnesses had changed their stories and were unreliable. He claimed they wouldn’t have been able to hear Read in the aftermath at the scene where O’Keefe was found.
Lally countered that after Read, a former adjunct professor at Bentley College, fled the scene she then left O’Keefe a voicemail “seething in rage as she’s screaming, ‘John, I f–king hate you!”
“There is no conspiracy, no cover-up, no evidence of any of that beyond speculation,” the prosecutor told the jurors.
Lally attempted to pick apart Jackson’s explanation of events, saying that O’Keefe couldn’t have gotten into a fight with his cop friends inside Albert’s home because a slew of witnesses claimed he never set foot inside the place.
Lally also said it was absurd to think that Brian Albert, a veteran cop, would be so sloppy as to critically injure O’Keefe and then dump him in his own yard.
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“Twenty-eight years on the police force,” Lally said. “He’s going to beat John O’Keefe and leave him on his front lawn, really?”
Lally also said expert testimony demonstrated that nobody else’s DNA was on O’Keefe’s clothes or body, more proof that he didn’t get in a fight.
“The defendant drove her vehicle in reverse at 24 miles per hour for 62.5 feet, struck Mr. O’Keefe, causing those catastrophic head injuries and leaving him incapacitated,” Lally said.
“The facts and that evidence, I would submit, collectively demonstrate certain guilt in the indictment before you. I would ask you to find guilt.”
Lally recapped testimony that Read had seven drinks that night over the course of roughly an hour and a half before around 12:30 a.m., when she mowed him down outside Albert’s home at 34 Fairview Road.
And when she returned later that morning around 6 a.m., Read knew exactly where to find O’Keefe’s body despite the snowstorm that had blown in, Lally alleged.
With Post wires
