“Sluts are dying in the cold,” writes Brian Higgins about the Aruba incident

Karen Read listens to testimony from witness Brian Higgins during her trial in Norfolk Superior Court on Friday. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, Pool)

The fourth week of Karen Read’s murder trial focused on examining phone conversations: a Google search for “pants that like to die in the cold” and nine days – and 56 pages – of flirtatious text messages between Read and a federal agent.

The density of witnesses has waned as the case has evolved from O’Keefe’s final night at two Canton bars and the subsequent snowy scene of rescue crews finding his body in the courtyard of the 34 Fairview Road building in Canton at approximately 6 a.m. on January 29, 2022, to fewer witnesses but deeper insight into the possible motive and alleged conspiracy.

The week began with the continued cross-examination of Jennifer McCabe, a key witness who had to testify for three consecutive days of the trial. She is the sister of Nicole Albert, who, with her husband Brian Albert, owned the house on Fairview Road where O’Keefe’s life ended.

Read, 44, of Mansfield, is charged with first-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and leaving the scene of an accident that resulted in the deaths of O’Keefe, a 16-year-old Boston police officer, and her boyfriend of about two years who died at age 46. Prosecutors say the two got into an argument after a night of drinking and she killed him by driving into him with her Lexus SUV and then leaving him in a snowstorm.

The search

The defense has its own theory of the case: that someone or people in that house beat O’Keefe to death and then framed Read for the murder. A search McCabe conducted on her phone is central to that theory.

The query in question is “How long do I want to die in the cold?” McCabe says this is a misspelling because she had difficulty typing the letter due to her freezing hands and because she suffers from multiple sclerosis.

McCabe testified Wednesday that she conducted the search at 6:24 a.m. at Read’s behest while the two women, along with Kerry Roberts – who also took the stand last week – surrounded O’Keefe’s body and paramedics did their work.

But defense attorney Alan Jackson presented a phone analysis showing the search occurred at 2:27 a.m., hours before O’Keefe’s body was found. He claims McCabe already knew O’Keefe was dead outside when she conducted the search and that she was part of the cover-up and had tried to cover up that first search of her home.

“I did not cancel that search,” McCabe said. “I did not do that search at 2:27 a.m. I would not have left John O’Keefe out in the cold to die because he is my friend, whom I love.”

She explained that after the party at 34 Fairview Road, she was lying in bed and opened her phone to watch the sports coverage of the game her daughter had played in the previous evening. She said she must have used the same browser window hours later to perform the search and that is why the analysis shows the time as 2:27 a.m.

Legal experts told the Herald during a review of the forensic evidence that the truth about how long the search will take will depend on expert testimony on phone analysis that is still pending. Both sides have forensic experts on their witness lists.

The Aruba incident

O’Keefe and Read were part of a roughly week-long New Year’s Eve trip to Aruba that dozens were invited to by Laura Sullivan. Sullivan testified Wednesday that she is a longtime close friend of O’Keefe’s. She plans the trip every year, she said, although this was the first for O’Keefe and Read.

It was also the first time that Laura’s sister, Marietta Sullivan, came along, she testified. And what she did or didn’t do caused quite a bit of controversy on the island.

Both sisters testified that Read accused O’Keefe of “making out” with Marietta Sullivan and made a big scene about it.

Marietta Sullivan said that when her sister asked her if she had slept with O’Keefe, she replied, “Absolutely not.” She said she considered him an “older brother.”

The flirtatious texts and the dissatisfaction

While Laura Sullivan testified that Read seemed remorseful for her outburst, text messages Read sent to ATF agent Brian Higgins show that she was still sore.

Higgins’ testimony supported the prosecution’s theory that there was an argument between Read and O’Keefe, which culminated in Read’s anger becoming so great that he killed O’Keefe that same evening.

“I just thought you were happy with your situation?” Higgins wrote to her one day.

“I was,” Read replied, “but things have gotten worse.”

Her main complaints concerned the care of her niece and nephew, whom O’Keefe had taken into his care after the death of their parents, and her allegations that he had cheated on her in Aruba.

Higgins is one of three people named by defense attorney David Yannetti in a pretrial hearing as possible O’Keefe killers. The other two are Brian Albert, whose sister-in-law is Jennifer McCabe, and Albert’s nephew Colin Albert. The defense argues that any combination or all three beat O’Keefe to death, possibly with Brian Albert’s dog Chloe in the background, and then framed Read.

The defense stated that Jennifer McCabe, her husband Matthew McCabe and a number of other members of the Albert family collaborated with local and state police in a cover-up.

For nine non-consecutive days before O’Keefe’s death, Read and Higgins engaged in a long and flirtatious text message exchange, with Read getting straight to the point at the beginning: “You’re hot,” she texted him on January 13, 2022.

Higgins read his answer and significant parts of the entire exchange in court: “The feelings are mutual. Is that bad?”