Karen Read says in interview that murder case left her in ‘purgatory’

Local news

“It’s not a life. I’m not in prison, but it’s not a life. I’m stressed every day. I’m waiting for the next step.”

By MICHAEL CASEY, Associated Press

September 6, 2024

BOSTON (AP) — The months-long murder case of Karen Read has left her in “purgatory” and “stressed out every day,” she said in an interview that aired Friday night.

Read, 44, is accused of ramming her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, with her SUV and leaving him for dead in a snowstorm in January 2022. Her two-month trial ended in July when jurors said they were hopelessly deadlocked and a judge declared a mistrial on the fifth day of deliberations.

“It’s not a life. I’m not in prison, but it’s not a life. I’m stressed every day. I’m waiting for the next step,” Read said in her interview on ABC’s “20/20” before her trial. “I feel like I’m in some kind of purgatory.”

Last month, Judge Beverly Cannone denied a defense motion to dismiss several charges, meaning the case can move forward to a new trial scheduled to begin Jan. 27, 2025.

Prosecutors said Read, a former adjunct professor at Bentley College, and O’Keefe, a 16-year Boston police officer, had been drinking heavily before she dropped him off at a party at the home of Brian Albert, a fellow Boston police officer. They said she hit him with her SUV before fleeing. An autopsy found O’Keefe died of hypothermia and blunt force trauma.

Read told ABC News she felt an “immense sense of dread” as she searched for O’Keefe. She admitted to having four drinks that night, some of which she didn’t finish, but that she felt able to drive.

“I was afraid he had been hit by a plow. That’s what immediately crossed my mind,” Read said. “That was the only explanation I could come up with for John disappearing into thin air.”

The defense presented Read as the victim, saying O’Keefe was actually killed in Albert’s house and then dragged out. It argued that investigators focused on Read because she was a “convenient stranger” who spared them from having to consider law enforcement officers as suspects.

After the mistrial, Read’s attorneys presented evidence that four jurors had said they were actually deadlocked only on a third count of involuntary manslaughter and that inside the jury room they had unanimously agreed that Read was innocent of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a fatal accident. One juror told them that “no one thought she hit him on purpose,” her attorneys argued.

The defense also said the judge abruptly announced a mistrial without first asking each juror to confirm their findings on each count. Read’s attorney, Marty Weinberg, had asked Cannone to consider calling the jurors back into court for further questioning.

But the judge said the jurors did not tell the court during their deliberations that they had reached a verdict on any of the charges.

“To the extent that no verdict was announced in open court here, the defendant’s retrial does not violate the principle of double jeopardy,” Cannone said in his decision.

Prosecutors had urged the judge to reject what they called an “unfounded but sensational post-trial claim” based on “hearsay, conjecture and a legally improper reliance on the content of the jury’s deliberations.”