Karen Read once “admired” the Boston police friend she allegedly killed

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The woman accused of driving her luxury SUV into her boyfriend and cold-bloodedly leaving him lying on the ground before a snowstorm had briefly dated the Boston police officer in her twenties, but the two reunited after the pandemic.

Long before she was charged with the murder of John O’Keefe, Karen Read had a successful career as a financial analyst and adjunct professor at Bentley College. Now 44, she grew up in Blacksburg, Virginia, and Taunton, Massachusetts. She attended Coyle & Cassidy, a now-closed private Roman Catholic school, and earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in finance from Bentley, a private university in Waltham.

When she met O’Keefe again, he had moved to a suburb of Canton to care for his niece and nephew after their parents died. She told ABC News before the trial that she admired him for his dedication to his family, and she helped with the children and frequently stayed overnight with him.

But their relationship deteriorated. Niece and nephew testified about their verbal arguments. And what should have been a fun trip to Aruba that winter was marred by hostility, bad words and accusations of cheating.

Prosecutors suspected O’Keefe was looking for an escape before their last pub crawl together. And shortly after she allegedly drove into him with her SUV on the front yard of another officer’s home on Jan. 29, 2022, she left him a voicemail that was played to jurors saying, “John, I (expletive) hate you.”

Read, who claims she was framed by police, is supported by friends and family, including William Read, a former dean of Bentley who posted $50,000 bail for his daughter. He sits behind her in the courtroom every day and said they have faith in her innocence.

She has battled adversity before, undergoing multiple surgeries for Crohn’s disease before being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and her father told the Boston Globe, “Karen will never break and she will never lose her determination.”