Sam Amico
Defense attorneys for Massachusetts college professor Karen Read suggested that new evidence will reveal that she did not intend to kill her police officer boyfriend when she hit him with a car.
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Read has been charged with second-degree murder, motor vehicle manslaughter and leaving the scene of a collision in the January 2022 death of her off-duty Boston Police Officer boyfriend John O’Keefe outside a home in Canton, Mass.
She has pleaded not guilty and her lawyers say that new cell phone evidence will clear her of the charges.
“This evidence unequivocally exonerates Karen, because it establishes that individuals who were in the house… that night were aware that John was dying in the snow before Karen even knew he was missing,” defense attorney David Yanetti said in a release, calling it “bombshell exculpatory information.”
Karen Read and John O’Keefe
According to reports, Read, 43, and O’Keefe, 46, spent an evening with friends, drinking and bar-hopping. She was then dropped off at the home of his friend, another off-duty police officer.
Prosecutors said that as O’Keefe exited the vehicle, Read made a three-point turn, striking O’Keefe before driving off in a blizzard. She then went looking for O’Keefe after he failed to return to their place hours later — eventually discovering his body in a snowbank outside the home where she had dropped him off.
But in court documents obtained by People, Reed’s defense team claims he sustained blunt force injuries to both sides of his face, as well as the back of his head, not consistent with being hit by a car. Instead, the defense claimed, he may have been attacked by a dog.
“In addition to suffering numerous defensive wounds on his hands consistent with a brutal fight, O’Keefe also suffered a cluster of deep scratches and puncture wounds to his right upper arm and forearm,” the documents read. “These injuries to O’Keefe’s right arm are consistent with bite marks and/or claw marks from an animal, more specifically a dog.”
The Norfolk District Attorney’s Office responded in a statement to People that it received a copy of the motion from Read’s defense team, “and it is our expectation to have a detailed response to the court May 3 that refutes the assertions in that motion.”
