A deadly romance or a police plot? Closing arguments in the trial against Karen Read are imminent

DEDHAM, Massachusetts – Jurors in the lengthy murder trial of Karen Read must decide whether she was a callous friend who ran over her boyfriend, a Boston police officer, with her luxury SUV and drove away, or whether the police framed her to cover up a brutal beating by his colleagues.

After nearly two months of testimony and a media storm fueled by true crime bloggers, attorneys were scheduled to make their closing arguments Tuesday to a jury tasked with sifting through widely differing accounts of the death of Boston police officer John O’Keefe.

Prosecutors allege Read struck O’Keefe with her Lexus SUV in January 2022, leaving him unconscious in the snow after a night of drinking. He died at a hospital after being found unconscious hours later outside the home of another Boston police officer in Canton who had been hosting a party. The cause of death was hypothermia and blunt force trauma, a medical examiner testified.

Their lawyers argue that Read was framed, claiming that O’Keefe was dragged outside after being beaten in the basement of his colleague Brian Albert’s Canton home and bitten by Albert’s dog.

Read, a former adjunct professor at Bentley College, is charged with first-degree murder, manslaughter while under the influence of alcohol, and leaving the scene of a crime resulting in personal injury and death.

Three defense witnesses expressed doubts about the prosecution’s account on Monday.

Dr. Frank Sheridan, a retired medical examiner and former chief medical examiner for San Bernardino County in California, testified that O’Keefe would have had more bruising if he had been hit by the SUV. He also said scratch marks on O’Keefe’s arm could have been made by a dog and other injuries suggested an altercation.

Two witnesses from an independent forensic consulting firm also suggested that some of the evidence did not match the prosecution’s version of events. Describing their detailed reconstructions, the witnesses said they concluded that damage to Read’s SUV, including a broken taillight, did not match O’Keefe’s injuries.

“You can’t deny the science and the physics,” Andrew Rentschler of the firm ARCCA once said as he described an analysis of the severity of injuries associated with different speeds of a vehicle like Read’s. ARCCA was hired by the U.S. Department of Justice as part of a federal investigation into state law enforcement’s handling of the Read case.

The defense claims investigators focused on Read because she was a “convenient outsider” who spared them from considering other suspects, including Albert and other police officers who were at the party.

Testimony began on April 29, after several days of jury selection. Prosecutors spent most of the trial systematically presenting evidence from the crime scene. The defense called only a handful of witnesses but used the time to cross-examine prosecution witnesses and ask questions about the investigation, including alleged conflicts of interest and sloppy police work. The defense’s complaints were echoed by a chorus of supporters who often camp outside the courthouse.