The Karen Read case ended on June 18, 2025, when a Norfolk County jury acquitted Read of second-degree murder, manslaughter while driving under the influence, and leaving the scene of a fatal collision in the January 2022 death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe. Jurors convicted her on a single lesser count of operating under the influence, and Judge Beverly Cannone sentenced her to one year of probation. It was the second time she had stood trial. The first ended in a mistrial in July 2024 after jurors deadlocked, though several later said publicly they had already agreed she was not guilty of the most serious charges.
What Happened the Night John O’Keefe Died
On the evening of January 28, 2022, Read and O’Keefe went to the Waterfall Bar & Grille in Canton, Massachusetts, then headed toward a late-night gathering at a Fairview Road home owned by Brian Albert, a fellow Boston police officer. A blizzard was moving through the area, with heavy snow and temperatures well below freezing.
Read dropped O’Keefe off but did not go inside. No one at the party reported seeing him enter the house. Read returned to O’Keefe’s nearby home, and when he did not come back and stopped answering his phone, she grew alarmed. Shortly after 6:00 a.m. on January 29, she went back to Fairview Road with two acquaintances. They found O’Keefe on the front lawn, partially buried in snow and unresponsive. He was pronounced dead at a hospital, and the Massachusetts State Police opened a homicide investigation.
The Charges Against Karen Read
The Norfolk County District Attorney’s office brought three counts. The most serious was second-degree murder under Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 265, which carries a mandatory life sentence with parole eligibility set by the court.1General Court of Massachusetts. Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 265 – Section 2 The second was motor vehicle homicide while under the influence under Chapter 90, Section 24G, punishable by two and a half to fifteen years in state prison with at least one year served before any release.2General Court of Massachusetts. Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 90 – Section 24G The third was leaving the scene of a collision causing death under Chapter 90, Section 24.
The Prosecution’s Theory
Prosecutors argued Read struck O’Keefe with her Lexus SUV while backing up or performing a three-point turn outside the Albert home, then drove off and left him to die in the storm. They said she was intoxicated and that the rear of her vehicle hit him with enough force to be fatal.
The physical case rested on fragments of red and clear plastic recovered from the lawn that the state matched to a broken tail light on Read’s SUV, along with microscopic plastic pieces the state lab said were embedded in O’Keefe’s clothing. Data from the vehicle’s onboard systems showed the SUV traveling in reverse at a significant speed during the window prosecutors identified as the moment of impact. Medical examiners documented serious head trauma, bilateral black eyes, and abrasions on O’Keefe’s right arm, which prosecutors said were consistent with being struck by a vehicle. Frantic and angry texts and dozens of calls Read placed to O’Keefe during the hours he was missing helped anchor the timeline.
The Defense’s Alternative Theory
Read’s lawyers did not simply argue reasonable doubt. They told the jury O’Keefe was beaten inside the Albert home, attacked by a dog kept there, and that people connected to law enforcement staged the scene on the lawn to frame Read.
The arm injuries the state tied to a vehicle strike, the defense said, were consistent with a dog bite from the Albert family’s roughly 70-pound German Shepherd, which they described as aggressive with strangers. A defense crash reconstruction expert testified that the tail light damage on the SUV was inconsistent with striking a pedestrian and could have been produced by someone throwing a heavy glass at the light at high speed; crash dummy simulations, the expert said, did not reproduce the pattern found on Read’s vehicle.
The single piece of evidence that drew the most attention involved a Google search on the phone of Jennifer McCabe, Brian Albert’s sister-in-law, who had been at the house that night. Her phone contained the query “hos long to die in cold,” a misspelling of “how long to die in cold.” The defense’s digital forensics expert placed the search at 2:27 a.m., hours before O’Keefe’s body was officially found. Prosecution experts said the 2:27 a.m. timestamp reflected only when McCabe first opened the browser tab and that the search itself occurred around 6:20 a.m., after the group had already found him in the snow.
The Lead Investigator Was Fired
Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor led the investigation, and his conduct became one of the case’s defining problems for the prosecution. On the stand, Proctor acknowledged sending vulgar and disparaging text messages about Read to friends and colleagues, including comments about her appearance, her body, and her medical history. He also had personal connections to people who had been at the Fairview Road home the night O’Keefe died, ties he did not disclose at the outset of the investigation.
The State Police suspended him without pay in July 2024, after the first trial’s mistrial, and fired him in March 2025. The Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission later suspended his law enforcement certification and ordered him to surrender his badge, firearm, uniform, and other agency-issued equipment.3Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission. Proctor, Michael (Formerly of Massachusetts State Police) Proctor initially appealed his firing but abandoned the appeal in October 2025.
The First Trial Ended in a Mistrial
The first trial ran in Norfolk Superior Court in the spring and summer of 2024. Jurors deliberated roughly 27 hours over multiple days before telling Judge Cannone they were hopelessly deadlocked, and she declared a mistrial in early July 2024.
Several jurors then spoke publicly and said they had actually reached unanimous agreement that Read was not guilty of second-degree murder and not guilty of leaving the scene. The deadlock, they said, involved only the manslaughter count, and confusion about how to deliver a partial verdict led to the mistrial being declared on all three. Read’s attorneys moved to dismiss the murder and leaving-the-scene counts on double jeopardy grounds, arguing a retrial on charges the jury had already resolved would violate the Fifth Amendment. Judge Cannone denied the motions, the Massachusetts appellate courts declined to intervene, and the United States Supreme Court did not step in. Read was ordered to face all three charges again.
The Retrial and the Verdict
Jury selection for the second trial began on April 14, 2025, in Norfolk Superior Court. Much of the evidence was familiar, but the retrial carried the added weight of Proctor’s firing and the sustained public debate over whether the investigation had been compromised.
On June 18, 2025, the jury acquitted Read of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence, and leaving the scene of a collision causing death. She was convicted only of operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol. Judge Cannone sentenced her to one year of probation and enrollment in a 24D alcohol education program, the standard first-offense OUI disposition in Massachusetts. The conviction carried no jail time, and the verdict spared her a potential life sentence on the murder count and mandatory prison time on the manslaughter count.
What the Case Left Behind
The case produced legal fallout beyond Read herself. Aidan Kearney, a blogger known as “Turtleboy” who became one of Read’s most prominent public advocates, was charged with witness intimidation in 2023 and pleaded not guilty to two additional witness intimidation counts in July 2025, tied to an alleged incident outside a pizza shop owned by members of the Albert family during the retrial.
A federal investigation examined how the Norfolk County District Attorney’s office and the Massachusetts State Police handled the case. A state judge unsealed letters between the Norfolk DA’s office and federal authorities, but the full scope and outcome of the federal probe have not been made public.
Proctor’s firing and decertification, the juror confusion after the first trial, and the defense’s evidence-tampering allegations left open questions about how Massachusetts investigates deaths that touch its own law enforcement community.