Karen Read’s lucky charm may be a plow driver who saw nothing during multiple passes by the address where she is accused of leaving her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, to die on the ground in a blizzard in January 2022.
Brian “Lucky” Loughran testified Wednesday that he didn’t see a body on the lawn as he cleared snow on the street in the hours after prosecutors allege the victim stopped moving.
According to prosecution experts, O’Keefe’s last known activity came to a stop around 12:30 a.m., and his body allegedly did not move until first responders arrived around 6 a.m.
“I saw nothing,” Loughran told defense attorney David Yannetti, speaking of his first pass around 2:45 a.m.
He cleared that side of the block, turned around at the end and saw nothing again when he went back the other way.
He testified that he passed by 34 Fairview Road, the home of Brian Albert where John O’Keefe was found dead in the snow, in both directions multiple times between 2:40 a.m. and around 6 a.m.
Prosecutors allege Read hit her boyfriend outside and drove off, leaving him to die in blizzard conditions.
Loughran said he had good visibility despite the blizzard conditions due to multiple lights on the plow truck and a high seat.
When asked if he saw a body in the snow, he said he did not, but he added that he did see a Ford Edge SUV parked outside the address during a later pass around 3:30 a.m.
“Loughran’s adamance that there was nobody on the lawn after 2:30 a.m., one day after an active-duty officer was adamant that the taillight he saw before the [Massachusetts State Police] had it was not destroyed, are major blows to a prosecution case that already has had severe problems,” said Mark Bederow, a New York City defense attorney closely following the case.
Loughran said the Ford Edge stood out to him because he was from the area and knew the Albert family, and he said he had to maneuver around the vehicle as he cleared the road.
“For as long as I can remember, they have never parked a vehicle in front of their house,” Loughran testified. “They’ve always had enough ample parking in the driveway.”
Special prosecutor Hank Brennan asked Loughran during cross-examination about purported threats from an online blogger and inconsistencies in his timeline.
Loughran said he never felt threatened by the blogger and denied having a bad memory when Brennan confronted him with multiple statements that offered different times for when the driver passed by Fairview Road.
“Mr. Loughran was adamant that he was not intimidated or threatened in exchange for his testimony, which substantially favored Karen Read,” said Bederow, who represents Aidan Kearney, the blogger known as “Turtleboy.”
Loughran now follows the blog but said he had met with a private investigator working for the defense before Kearney ever contacted him, but he added that he barely paid attention to the posts beforehand.
“I did not know I was being required to testify a certain way,” he said. “I was also, at the time, dealing with the loss of my wife. I was not paying any attention to any social media.”
Overall, he came off as sincere and sympathetic, according to Grace Edwards, a Massachusetts trial attorney who is following the case.
“Lucky said, ‘I was doing my job and I did not want the attention, I did not welcome the attention,’” she told Fox News Digital. “I’m sure some people in the courtroom wanted to give him a hug after he said, ‘I wasn’t paying attention to social media because my wife had died.’”
Brennan played police dashcam video taken outside 34 Fairview Road that showed heavy snowfall and the distance between the house there and Cedarcrest Road, where a plow truck drove by multiple times in the background, in an attempt to illustrate for the jurors how far the nearest pass would have been from the lawn.
Loughran agreed that some of the passes were him in the plow dubbed “Frankentruck,” but he said he couldn’t be sure at other moments.
“Overall, great day for the defense,” Edwards said. “I didn’t think there was any big moment today, and Brennan didn’t even cross Ms. Kolokithas.”
After Loughran’s testimony, the defense called Karina Kolokithas, a friend of both O’Keefe and Read who saw them at the Waterfall Bar and Grille the night before his death.
“One important piece of evidence from Ms. Kolokithas was that she did not perceive Karen Read to be so intoxicated,” Edwards said.
Kolokithas, who said she only drank water that night, testified that she spent nearly an hour talking with the defendant and did not feel that she seemed too drunk to drive.
Kolokithas also testified that it seemed strange when Jennifer McCabe, a key witness in the case, pulled Read aside at the end of the night.
“Jen went over to Karen, kind of put her arm around her, and she’s like, ‘Karen, you’re coming with me. You’re coming with me,’” Kolokithas testified. “And Karen’s like, ‘What? Where are we going?’”
That, combined with surveillance video from the bar, illustrates part of the defense’s effort to sow reasonable doubt.
“The defense is trying to develop possibilities, and they were trying to get the possibility that something was going on with John O’Keefe and the other men,” Edwards said.
Kolokithas discussed another interaction that stood out to her that night: O’Keefe kissing Read on the forehead.
“I’d never seen something like that before; a boyfriend do [that] to a girlfriend in public,” she said. “Never saw that, so it just stood out to me. I was like, ‘Wow, that’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen.’”
That nugget could also boost the defense, Bederow said, after Read’s team introduced evidence that ATF Agent Brian Higgins, another man at the bar that night, was exchanging flirtatious text messages with their client behind her boyfriend’s back.
“Kolokithas’ description of John being affectionate with Karen right in front of Higgins minutes before Higgins seemingly was agitated towards John and had to be calmed down by Chris Albert, around the time Jen McCabe oddly told Karen she was leaving with her, was also helpful to the defense,” he said.
Surveillance video appeared to show Higgins and O’Keefe gesturing at one another from across the room shortly before the group left and headed to Brian Albert’s house at 34 Fairview Road.
There is no audio, and Kolokithas did not testify about an argument between the men. However, Chris Albert, Brian’s brother, can be seen pushing Higgins’ arms down during the exchange.
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