BOSTON (AP) — Karen Read’s lawyers asked a judge on Monday to dismiss part of a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of her former Boston police officer boyfriend, whose killing she was acquitted of earlier this year after two highly publicized trials.
During a hearing before Plymouth County Superior Court Judge Daniel O’Shea, Read’s lawyers argued that John O’Keefe ’s parents, brother, and a niece he was raising after his sister and brother-in-law’s deaths don’t have standing to pursue emotional distress damages because they didn’t witness O’Keefe’s death or see his body until after he had been declared dead at the hospital.
“None of the alleged plaintiffs observed the alleged incident that is described in the complaint,” Read attorney Damon Seligson said. “They were not witnesses to the event — they came upon him many hours later.”
Lawyers for O’Keefe’s family, on the other hand, said Read caused them emotional distress by fabricating her own “conspiracy” about the events leading up to his 2022 death, launching “a public campaign of disinformation” and using crime bloggers to pit her massive following against them. Read’s case garnered considerable news and social media coverage, and crowds of supporters descended on the courthouse during the trial with “Free Karen Read” signs.
“These are real damages for real people who have suffered long enough,” Marc Diller, a lawyer representing the O’Keefe family, said in court.
In particular, the family’s lawyers point to statements Read allegedly made to O’Keefe’s 14-year-old niece upon returning to his house without him the morning before his body was found.
Diller said Read woke O’Keefe’s niece that morning and told her O’Keefe never came home. O’Keefe’s niece said during the trial that Read said, “‘Could I have done something? Could he have gotten hit by a plow?’” and later: “Maybe I hit him.”
O’Keefe became a parent to his sister’s and brother-in-law’s two children years before his death, after they died within two months of each other. Diller said Read was aware of that history and knew her actions would cause O’Keefe’s niece emotional distress that was “more than anguish and more than grief.”
“The defendant had a relationship with her, knew she was emotionally fragile, knew she was orphaned at age six,” he said. “She has always known their vulnerability and yet she creates a calculated and malicious campaign of disinformation designed to hide the truth.”
Read left the girl “alone, vulnerable, shocked and afraid,” Diller said.
Read was found not guilty of in June of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a fatal accident after more than three years and two trials over the death of O’Keefe, who was found on the lawn of a fellow officer’s home after a night of heavy drinking. Prosecutors said Read hit O’Keefe with her SUV, leaving him to die in a blizzard, and charged her with second-degree murder, manslaughter and leaving the scene of a deadly collision.
Her lawyers successfully defended her, painting a sinister picture of police misconduct and theorizing that O’Keefe was killed by colleagues, followed by a vast cover-up. She was convicted of drunken driving, however, for which she will face a year’s probation.
Civil wrongful death and emotional distress claims filed against Read were put on hold during her criminal trial, but proceedings finally began Monday. The O’Keefe family is also suing the two bars where the couple drank before he died.
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