Prosecutors retrying Karen Read in the killing of her boyfriend are laying out a minute-by-minute accounting of what they say happened at the suburban home of a fellow law enforcement officer where John O’Keefe was found unresponsive on a snowy morning three years ago.
A witness who was with Read when she found her police officer boyfriend in the snow spent days on the witness stand this week in a courtroom outside Boston, often under intense questioning from a defense lawyer who sought to emphasize what he described as inconsistencies in her testimony.
The events cited by special prosecutor Hank Brennan were not recorded on a home security camera or seen by an eyewitness. But the prosecution has said that shortly after midnight on Jan. 29, 2022, data captured on O’Keefe’s iPhone shows that he never entered the home of Brian Albert, a now-retired Boston police sergeant whom Read’s attorneys have said may have played a role in the death.
The prosecution has alleged that after a night of drinking — and an argument — Read dropped O’Keefe at Albert’s home for a gathering. Instead of leaving, Read backed her Lexus SUV into O’Keefe and left him for dead outside in Canton, south of Boston, Brennan alleged in his opening statement.Read, who is charged with second-degree murder, motor vehicle manslaughter while driving under the influence and leaving the scene of a collision causing death, maintains her innocence and said she was framed by Albert and others who sought to cover up O’Keefe’s death.
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Read’s widely publicized first trial ended with a hung jury last summer. The proceedings exposed allegations of police misconduct and prompted state officials to take the unusual step of firing the case’s lead investigator, Michael Proctor, between trials.
Proctor’s role in the second trial remains unclear. He has not been called to testify, though he has been listed as a possible witness for both the prosecution and defense.
Albert has not testified during the second trial, but during the initial proceedings, he said that O’Keefe never entered his home. If he had, Albert said, he would have been “welcomed with open arms.”
The details from O’Keefe’s phone included location, health and battery temperature data. Ian Whiffin, a forensic investigator who examined the data, said the most accurate information extracted from O’Keefe’s device showed that it likely remained outside Albert’s home all night.Location data showed that the device arrived at the house at 12:24 a.m., Whiffin said. Fourteen minutes later, the data showed it was near a flagpole in the front yard where O’Keefe was found unresponsive roughly six hours later.
Whiffin said the device’s battery temperature data showed a steady decline, dropping from 77 degrees shortly after midnight, when it was in Read’s SUV on the way to Albert’s home, to 50 degrees by 1:36 a.m.
“Based on the totality of the information we’ve described, my opinion is the device didn’t move far away from the flagpole,” Whiffin said.
This is at odds with the account of events by Read and her defense team. They’ve said she dropped O’Keefe off at Albert’s home and watched him go inside, where they’ve alleged he was likely beaten and bitten by a dog that belonged to Albert’s family at the time.
Defense attorney Robert Alessi pointed to other data analyzed by Whiffin to support that account. At 12:31 a.m. — seven minutes after O’Keefe’s device arrived at Albert’s home — health data showed the device moving 36 steps, or roughly 84 feet. Under questioning from Alessi, Whiffin said he had given the measurement less weight because it was based on low-accuracy data.
When asked if the data could have been diminished because the device was taken inside Albert’s home, Whiffin said yes.
The defense attorney also scrutinized the battery temperature data cited by Whiffin. As part of his analysis, the investigator conducted experiments on an iPhone similar to O’Keefe’s, placing it in a freezer and leaving it outside on a day when the temperature was 33 degrees.
In the first test, Alessi said, the temperature of the device’s battery plummeted 50 degrees in 15 minutes. In the second, he said, it fell 30 degrees in 13 minutes.
Those figures were far more dramatic than the drop recorded on O’Keefe’s phone, Alessi said, noting that even though the device was outside in a blizzard, it took an hour or more for the battery’s temperature to fall 27 degrees.
Whiffin acknowledged that he did not know the temperature on Jan. 29, 2022, and said he was unaware of what factors may have influenced the battery’s temperature, including whether the device was in O’Keefe’s pocket or if it was in a case.
Other key pieces of evidence that Brennan cited in his opening statement and is expected to lay out in detail in the coming weeks include vehicle data showing Read’s SUV reversing outside Albert’s home and DNA from O’Keefe that was found on the Lexus’ bumper.
After Whiffin’s testimony, defense attorney Alan Jackson spent hours grilling Jennifer McCabe, who had been at Albert’s home during the gathering and was with Read when she found O’Keefe near the flagpole shortly after 6 a.m. The defense has said Read panicked after she realized O’Keefe never returned from Albert’s house and, later that morning, began searching for him with McCabe and a third woman.
McCabe testified that nothing unusual happened at Albert’s home — people were listening to music and talking, she said — though her account has drawn scrutiny from the defense. Jackson pointed to text messages from McCabe to her sister, who is married to Brian Albert, and suggested that they may have coordinated their account of Jan. 29 with others in an effort to do “damage control” and cover up O’Keefe’s death. McCabe denied those allegations.
Jackson also questioned McCabe about comments she attributed to Read. After they arrived at Albert’s house and found O’Keefe, she said she heard Read repeatedly tell a first responder “I hit him.” And she testified that Read asked her to search Google for how long it takes to die in the cold.
Jackson pointed out that McCabe did not mention the incriminating statement when she testified before a grand jury or spoke to investigators in the aftermath of O’Keefe’s death.
Instead, Jackson said, she recounted a question Read posed to her over the phone before they began searching for O’Keefe — “Could I have hit him?” The defense also said an extraction of McCabe’s phone showed her Google search was done at 2:27 a.m., hours before O’Keefe was found.
Whiffin, who reviewed the extraction, testified that the search was done at 6:23 a.m., not 2:27 a.m. And McCabe testified that she was certain of what Read told the first responder.
“I went out to help her look for John and then we found one of my closest friends on the front lawn,” she said during an emotional exchange. “Every police officer I spoke to, I tried to answer their questions the best I could. It took me hours, and, in some cases, days to remember all the things that Ms. Read had said. I was in a state of shock.”
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