Jurors in Karen Read’s murder trial began deliberating on Tuesday, following a nearly two-month trial where the 44-year-old was accused of murder in connection with the death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe.
The 12-person jury heard two hours of closing arguments, starting with defense team. Alan Jackson, a lawyer for Read, began his statement by insisting that the jury had been lied to.
“Look the other way, look the other way — four words that sum up the commonwealth’s entire case,” Jackson said, . “Conflict of interest doesn’t matter, look the other way. Late night calls and Google searches … inverted videos and butt dials galore, just look the other way. That’s what they want. That’s what they are counting on. But the incontrovertible fact is you have been lied to in this courtroom.”
Jackson further argued that prosecutors had dragged Read “through the mud” and attacked her character.
Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally used his closing argument to focus on the timeline of the night of O’Keefe’s death, as well as texts from Michael Proctor, the Massachusetts State Police trooper who was the lead investigator in the case.
“Text messages from Trooper Proctor are unprofessional, they’re indefensible, they’re inexcusable. However, as distasteful as those messages are in their content, I submit they had no bearing whatsoever, or impact whatsoever, on the integrity of the entirety of the investigation that the Massachusetts State Police collectively — collectively — conducted into John O’Keefe’s death,” Lally said, .
Jurors spent about an hour after the closing arguments listening to instructions from Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Beverly Cannone before they began deciding Read’s fate.
Read told NBC Boston on June 24: “I’m ready to be done with this. It’s been a long haul, it’s been my third year. I’ve worked on this case every day since January 29th.”
Read was charged with second-degree murder and other charges after prosecutors alleged in court documents she hit O’Keefe with her vehicle outside of another police officer’s home in a suburb of Boston in January 2022, leaving him for dead in the snow.
Read has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges against her, and her defense attorneys have argued in court and in court documents that Read has been framed for O’Keefe’s murder, the result of a massive coverup between local and state police.
Authorities have denied any coverup in the case, but the intrigue and mystery surrounding the case has garnered national attention — and divided the small town of Canton, Massachusetts, since opening statements began on April 29.
Dozens of witnesses testified over the course of the two-month trial — here’s what they said, and where Read’s case stands.
Proctor reads texts to friends, colleagues from his personal cellphone
During questioning from prosecutor Adam Lally on June 10, Proctor read texts in court from a conversation with a group of friends he has known since childhood, .
In one conversation from the evening of Jan. 29, the day O’Keefe was found dead, Proctor texted his friends Read and O’Keefe “arrived at the house together, got into an argument, she was driving and left,” adding, “there’ll be some serious charges brought on the girl.” He told jurors he meant that there was already “compelling evidence” against Read.
A friend replied, “is she hot at least,” and Proctor responded that Read was a “whack-job,” before calling her a vulgar name for a woman.
NBC Boston reported Read’s attorney objected, and after Cannone asked if these were his words, Proctor said the word “c—” out loud.
Proctor continued: “she’s a babe. Weird Fall River accent though.”
He also texted a comment about Read’s rear, NBC Boston reported.
When Lally asked Proctor why he would text that, Proctor said they were “unprofessional and regrettable comments (that) are something I’m not proud of and I shouldn’t have wrote in private or any type of setting.”
As Proctor read the messages out loud, some jurors shook their heads and quietly gasped, .
In a separate thread, he texted state police colleague that he was going through his “r—- client’s phone,” .
“No nudes so far,” Proctor said in the message.
On the stand, Proctor said he made a “distasteful joke,” and that he was not looking for nude photos, but “location data text communications … more evidence contained within the phone.”
Read responded to Proctor’s texts outside of court.
“I’d like the state police to say something about the language they’ve heard,” she told NBC Boston.
Massachusetts State Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the texts to NBC Boston.
New details about key evidence: A broken taillight, a sneaker and a hair
During the week of June 4, crime scene analysts testified to jurors about several pieces of evidence, .
State police forensic scientists who examined Read’s vehicle described dents, scratches and a broken taillight they observed, as well as what appeared to be a hair near the broken taillight.
A state police officer who helped search for O’Keefe also testified that he found several pieces of a broken taillight, as well as O’Keefe’s sneaker, in the snow, NBC Boston reported.
Before Memorial Day, key witnesses Brian Higgins took the stand.
Higgins, a bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent, testified on May 24 that he and Read had in the weeks leading up to O’Keefe’s death.
Higgins also testified and explained why he — at first saying it was old and broken, then saying a separate “target of investigation” had called him in July 2022 on his personal cellphone number.
The defense pushed back, arguing that he destroyed his phone in September 2022, about 24 hours before a court order to keep the phone as evidence would go into effect.
Jennifer McCabe, a friend, testifies about cellphone searches related to dying ‘in the cold.’
Read’s attorney Alan Jackson questioned Jennifer McCabe, a friend of the couple, who testified that she was with Read and O’Keefe on the night of his death.
McCabe said she helped Read search for him in the morning following their night out, from the courtroom on May 22.
Jackson showed jurors cellphone data that suggested McCabe searched “Hos (sic) long to die in the cold” around 2:27 a.m. — about four hours before Read and McCabe found O’Keefe in the snow.
“You made that search at 2:27 am because you knew that John O’Keefe was outside on your sister’s lawn dying in the cold, didn’t you?” Jackson asked McCabe. “Did you delete that search because you knew you would be implicated in John O’Keefe’s death if that search was found on your phone?”
McCabe testified she never made the search, nor deleted it.
“I never would have left John O’Keefe out in the cold to die because he was my friend that I loved,” she said on the stand.
What happened to John O’Keefe, according to prosecutors
On the night of Jan. 28, 2022, Read, O’Keefe, Boston police detective Brian Albert, his sister-in-law Jennifer McCabe and others were out drinking at bars in Canton, outside Boston, according to a criminal complaint obtained by TODAY.com.
The region was experiencing heavy snowfall and icy temperatures due to a winter storm, the complaint stated.
At a bar where the group was gathered was shutting down around 12 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, the members of the group decided to go to Albert’s home, according to the complaint. Read and O’Keefe left in Read’s black Lexus SUV, prosecutors said .
Multiple witnesses told authorities they recalled seeing a dark SUV pulling up to Albert’s home around 12:15 a.m., though no one from the car came inside, and it left around 12:45 a.m., prosecutors said.
By 4:53 a.m., Read and O’Keefe’s niece both tried contacting O’Keefe, but they were not able to reach him, according to a police report . (TODAY.com has not reviewed the same report.)
A friend picked up Read and McCabe to start looking for O’Keefe around 5 a.m., the complaint said.
The group found O’Keefe unresponsive in the snow outside Albert’s house around 6 a.m. and began performing CPR until medical personnel arrived on the scene, according to the criminal complaint.
O’Keefe was pronounced dead later that morning at Good Samaritan Hospital in Boston, according to the complaint.
In a search of the crime scene, Canton police officers found a broken drinking glass consistent with one O’Keefe had been seen holding earlier in the night and patches of blood, prosecutors said.
Around 6 p.m. on Jan. 29, Massachusetts State Police investigators also recovered three pieces of plastic consistent with the taillight on Read’s vehicle, prosecutors wrote in a court memo.
In a phone call, a spokesperson for the Norfolk County District Attorney’s office declined to comment on the case to TODAY.com, due to the ongoing trial.
What is Karen Read’s defense?
Read was charged with manslaughter, motor vehicle homicide and leaving the scene of a deadly crash on Feb. 1, 2022, according to the criminal complaint.
At the time, her attorney David Yannetti called the charges “a tremendous reach,” .
Four months later, on June 9, on charges of second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter and leaving the scene of personal injury and death, according the indictment filed in Norfolk Count Superior Court.
She has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges and was later released on $100,000 bond, according to NBC Boston.
In court, court filings and statements to the press, Read’s attorneys have argued that Read has been the victim of a massive coverup by the Canton Police Department.
The day after Read was first charged in February, O’Keefe’s injuries were not consistent with a vehicle collision.
He also alleged the lead state police trooper on the case, later identified as Proctor, had a conflict of interest when he did not disclose his relationship with key witnesses, NBC Boston reported.
In September 2022, Read’s defense team further argued that police framed Read, presenting evidence that showed O’Keefe was severely beaten, and that Albert had ties to both the Canton Police Department and Massachusetts State Police, .
In August of that year, Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey said state and local police were not involved in a coverup, adding that there was no evidence to support O’Keefe was ever in the home where the party took place, .
Morrissey called the idea that multiple police departments and the district attorney’s office would be involved in a “vast conspiracy” in the case “a desperate attempt to reassign guilt,” .
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts launched an investigation into Read’s arrest and prosecution last year.
Massachusetts State Police said in March it had opened an internal investigation into a “potential violation of department policy” against Proctor, . But state police have not said whether the investigation is related to a specific case.
Michael DiStefano, Proctor’s attorney, his client was cooperating with the investigation and did nothing wrong.
No one has been charged as a result of the federal investigation into the state’s prosecution of Read.
In April 2023, Read’s attorneys with evidence they said showed McCabe searched “ho(w) long to die in cold” hours before O’Keefe was found, as well as photos of the lead state police investigator with members of Albert’s family.
Prosecutors have disputed the timeline of McCabe’s search, saying she searched the query after O’Keefe’s body was found.
Read’s attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the case, though Norfolk Superior Court Judge Beverly Cannone denied the request in March, , leading to jury selection beginning in the trial on April 16.
Who is ‘Turtleboy?’
Aidan Kearney, a blogger who goes by “Turtleboy,” was one of Read’s supporters. described him as “a longtime presence in Massachusetts’ news scene.”
He began posting dozens of articles about Read’s case, selling “Free Karen Read” merchandise and raising money for Read’s legal defense fund over the course of the case.
Kearney was arrested on charges of witness intimidation and conspiracy on Oct. 11, 2023, .
The judge ruled for Kearney to have no contact with the people he is accused of intimidating, which include Proctor and witnesses who were at the home where O’Keefe’s body was found, NBC Boston reported.
Two months later, he was related to his involvement with Read’s case, the station reported.
His bail was revoked and he was sent to jail on Dec. 26, 2023 after he was charged with other witness intimidation counts, as well as assault and battery charges in connection with allegations that he pushed a woman he was dating, .
Kearney has pleaded not guilty to the charges and denied the accusations against him.
“I will not be intimidated, I will not be silenced and we will continue on our journey,” Kearney told supporters outside of Stoughton District Court in October, .
This article was originally published on
This article originally appeared on www.aol.com: www.aol.com https://www.aol.com/woman-trial-allegedly-killing-her-192844020.html