Karen Read claims she ‘collapsed’ and ‘didn’t want to be alive’ after learning of cop beau’s death
Karen Read said in a new TV special airing Friday that she “collapsed” and did not “want to be alive” when she learned her Boston cop boyfriend John O’Keefe had died.
Read maintained she was delirious and confused at how O’Keefe ended up dead in a snowbank on Jan. 29, 2022, denying prosecutors’ claims that she deliberately ran over him with her SUV.
“I actually texted my father and I said, ‘I think John is dead,’” the financial analyst told “Dateline” for a two-hour special airing Friday at 9 p.m. ET.
“And he — he called me, and I said, ‘Dad, I — I — I don’t want to be alive.’ Like ‘I don’t want to live.’ And I didn’t know what the hell — what the hell happened. How did — how did the night end up like this?”
When she first saw her lover, she said, she “couldn’t see his face or his hair” but “knew it was him.”
“I knew it was something that didn’t belong on that lawn,” she told Dennis Murphy.
O’Keefe was eventually taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He was found with two black eyes, skull fractures, and cuts on his face and the back of his hands, as well as claw-like marks on one of his arms.
Read — who had been dating the police officer since 2020 — was arrested and charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence of alcohol and leaving the scene of personal injury and death.
During her trial this year, prosecutors accused Read of mowing O’Keefe down with her Lexus SUV when she dropped him off at a Canton, Mass., house party with his cop friends.
The pair had supposedly been out on a bar crawl earlier that evening, where Read allegedly had seven drinks in just 90 minutes.
Read’s lawyers, however, claimed that she was actually framed by law enforcement after O’Keefe got into a deadly fight with a fellow officer at the house party.
The proceedings ended in a mistrial on July 1 when the jury did not reach a verdict after deliberating for five days.
