Prosecutors dispute cellphone data claim by Read’s defense
Woman charged in death of officer last year
Prosecutors in the case against Karen A. Read, a Mansfield woman charged with murder for allegedly striking her boyfriend, Boston police officer John J. O’Keefe, with her SUV and leaving him for dead during a blizzard last year, are sharply disputing defense claims that cellphone data will clear their client of wrongdoing.
“To call this data unreliable is an understatement,” Norfolk Assistant District Attorney Adam C. Lally wrote in a 34-page memorandum, posted by Boston 25 News, opposing a defense motion to examine the cellphone of a witness in the case. Read’s lawyers filed that motion April 12.
“The [defense] motion merely assumes, through no evidentiary support, that ... a wideranging conspiracy exists” to frame Read and that evidence of such a plot will be “found within this phone and call detail records,” Lally wrote.
Read’s lawyers are scheduled to argue their motion for the phone data on Wednesday in Norfolk Superior Court. They could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Read is charged with seconddegree murder, motor vehicle manslaughter while driving impaired, and leaving the scene of an accident causing personal injury and death.
Around 6 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, Read discovered O’Keefe’s unconscious body in a snowbank amid whiteout conditions and freezing temperatures outside a Canton home. O’Keefe was later pronounced dead at Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton.
Shortly after midnight, Read had driven O’Keefe, a 16-yearveteran of the Boston police department, to the Canton home of another Boston police officer, Brian Albert, to attend an afterparty, court records show.
The group had been out drinking earlier that night, Lally wrote in the latest court filing, and evidence including video footage showed that Read consumed several drinks and likely had a blood alcohol level between 0.13 and 0.29, well above the 0.08 legal driving limit, when she dropped O’Keefe off.
According to prosecutors, Read made a three-point turn to reverse direction and rammed into O’Keefe in the road before driving back to O’Keefe’s home, where she often stayed.
Read’s lawyers have argued that evidence suggests O’Keefe was beaten to death inside the Fairview Road home during the after-party and that the assailants covered up the crime and framed Read.
At 2:27 a.m., after-party guest Jennifer McCabe, Albert’s sister-in-law, searched on her phone: “Ho[w] long to die in cold,” according to last month’s defense motion.
“There is simply no innocent explanation for McCabe’s search at that time,” Read’s defense team said in a statement. “This evidence unequivocally exonerates Karen because it establishes that individuals who were in the house at 34 Fairview that night were aware that John was dying in the snow before Karen even knew he was missing.”
Lally disputed that interpretation of events.
When Read, McCabe, and another woman discovered O’Keefe’s body around 6 a.m., Read “yelled at Ms. McCabe twice to Google, ‘How long do you have to be left outside to die from hypothermia?’, or something to that effect,” he wrote.
The 2:27 a.m. time stamp for that Google search is not accurate, Lally added. He said the search record was taken from a file known as a Write Ahead Log, which a separate database creates to “temporarily store” phone data before it’s “written into” the phone’s database.
Prosecutors said that Read had O’Keefe’s juvenile niece call McCabe at 4:53 a.m., about an hour before O’Keefe’s body was found. The niece gave the phone to Read who “sounded distraught” on the line, prosecutors said.
Read drove to McCabe’s house and told McCabe she last remembered seeing O’Keefe at the bar the night before.
“Ms. McCabe then informed the defendant that she observed the defendant and the victim leave the bar together,” Lally wrote. “Ms. McCabe also later informed the defendant she had seen them in Ms. Read’s vehicle in front of the home on Fairview.”
Read also told McCabe she and O’Keefe had “gotten into an argument” when she last saw him, Lally wrote.
When the two women and a third person later pulled up to the Fairview Road home, Read “immediately” said she could see his body by a cluster of trees near the residence, Lally wrote. The other two people could not.
Lally also cited forensic evidence and witness interviews that he said points to Read’s guilt.
O’Keefe’s body was found in the snow next to “a broken cocktail-style glass” and multiple drops of blood, Lally wrote.
A forensic specialist who examined Read’s SUV found “a dent with chipped paint in the trunk door, a broken tail light, and scratches on the bumper,” as well as “human hair” on the “rear passenger side quarter panel,” of the vehicle, plus “apparent glass” on the rear bumper.
O’Keefe’s medical records also “belie” the defense’s assertion that O’Keefe was “beaten severely” by party guests and left for dead, according to Lally.
In grand jury testimony, a medical examiner “described Mr. O’Keefe’s right arm injuries as scratches caused by a blunt object. The doctor noted that they appeared in a linear pattern,” Lally wrote. “The doctor detailed that she observed no signs of an altercation or fight from her examination of Mr. O’Keefe.”
Lally also referenced “strains” that he said were evident in O’Keefe and Read’s relationship based on voicemails and text messages between the pair.
Read is currently free on $100,000 bail.
Material from previous Globe stories was used in this report.