Karen Read offers theory on what really happened to her cop boyfriend John O’Keefe
Karen Read, the woman accused of mowing down her Boston cop boyfriend, has speculated he was actually killed in an “out of control” saga with friends — as she revealed she keeps a “go bag” in case she’s suddenly arrested again.
Read, 44, offered up the theory in a Vanity Fair interview published Tuesday as she doubled down on her long-made claims that she is being framed over John O’Keefe’s January 2022 death.
The alleged killer, who is just months out from a second trial after her first one ended with a hung jury, has been accused of ramming O’Keefe with her Lexus SUV and leaving him for dead in a snowstorm after dropping him at a Canton, Mass., house party with his cop friends.
“I believe whatever happened to John was a setup to teach him a lesson or tune him up, and it got out of control. No one would choose to kill someone in their own home and then set it up so sloppily,” Read told the magazine.
Read and her defense lawyers have long claimed — in interviews and at her dramatic two-month trial — that O’Keefe was killed inside the home and later dragged outside.
O’Keefe 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, when his body was discovered the following morning in the snowbank.
His autopsy determined he died of hypothermia and blunt force trauma.
In the aftermath, Read — who had been dating the police officer since 2020 — was charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence of alcohol and leaving the scene of personal injury and death.
She claims, though, that investigators only zeroed in on her because she saved them from having to probe law enforcement officers as suspects.
“I told my parents, if I did anything in any way, I’ll pay my dues … that’s how this should work. I want to know the truth — good, bad, ugly,” Read said in the new interview as she continued to profess her innocence.
Read said she also now keeps a Ziploc “go bag” ready in her home in case of a “sudden arrest,” according to the outlet.
“In it: Advil, melatonin, toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, drugstore lipstick, strip of paper with her lawyer’s phone number on it, and a bottle of Laura Mercier foundation, left over from her previous life,” the mag noted.
“I’m not backing down now,” she added of her second trial, which is slated to kick off in January.
“As scary as a potential conviction is, I will go to jail for something I didn’t do before I plea out. I will never give them that win.”
Elsewhere in the wide-ranging interview, Read acknowledged she has been living a nightmare ever since she was first fingered as a suspect and that her legal bills fighting the charges have already surpassed $5 million.
The interview comes after Read’s sensational two-month criminal trial ended in July when the judge declared a mistrial after jurors said they were deadlocked.
She is awaiting a Jan. 27 retrial on the three charges.
Her lawyers, though, filed a motion to the state’s highest court last week in an attempt to bolster earlier arguments that two of the counts — second-degree murder and leaving the scene — should be dismissed.
They argued that five jurors came forward after her mistrial to say that they were deadlocked only on a manslaughter count and had agreed that she wasn’t guilty on the other counts.
Meanwhile, prosecutors have argued that there’s no basis for dismissing the charges because the jury said three times that it was deadlocked before a mistrial was declared.
“The defendant was not acquitted of any charge because the jury did not return, announce, and affirm any open and public verdicts of acquittal,” they wrote in the filing.
