Karen Read retrial kicks off: Prosecutor plays clip from Read interview, defense calls Proctor a 'cancer'

Flint McColgan, Boston Herald on Apr 22, 2025

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DEDHAM, Mass. — Nine months following a dramatic mistrial declared under the glare of the national spotlight, Karen Read is on trial again for the murder of her boyfriend, Boston police Officer John O’Keefe.

Read, 45, of Mansfield, faces charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence, and leaving the scene of an accident causing death.

Prosecutors say that Read backed her Lexus SUV into O’Keefe at up to 24 mph in the early morning hours of Jan. 29, 2022, leaving him to freeze and die on the front lawn of 34 Fairview Road in Canton.

The defense has countered that someone else, or multiple others, killed him inside the house and left his body on the lawn. They say that those killers, which could include homeowner Brian Albert, a fellow Boston cop who they say is well connected in the community, worked with local police and crooked prosecutors to create a sweeping frame job of Read.

Opening statements

The jury, composed of nine men and nine women, heard opening statements Tuesday morning that presented starkly different interpretations of what happened in the early morning hours of Jan. 29, 2022.

Special prosecutor Hank Brennan, who delivered his first, took a story approach to set the scene for jurors: “At 6:04 am on Jan. 29, 2022, the alarm bell sounded at the Canton Fire Department … Firefighter paramedic Timothy Nuttall knew what that meant.”

He described the paramedics and EMTs rushing into action to rush to 34 Fairview Road, and when they arrived, they “stepped out into bedlam”: Read screaming and the wind furious as a blizzard raged. A paramedic approached the body of O’Keefe, surrounded by three women, and found no signs of life.

Read approached, Brennan said, and the paramedic, searching for information that could help revive O’Keefe, was told “I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.”

From that pronouncement and the “unraveling” relationship that proceeded the vehicle strike to the wealth of “science and data” from O’Keefe’s cell phone to Waze data about location and the “black box” that was the infotainment system of Read’s Lexus, Brennan said, will prove Read killed her boyfriend.

“That black box information along with the cellphone data will show you everything you need to know about that night,” Brennan said.

Toward the end of his opening, Brennan played a clip from Read’s interview with Dateline in which she asked “could I have clipped him? … Did I do something?”

In contrast, defense attorney Alan Jackson said that Read “was the victim of a botched and biased investigation … this case is the very definition of reasonable doubt.”

“The evidence in this case will establish above everything else three things,” Jackson said. “There was no collision … there was no collision, there was no collision.”

What is important for jurors to realize is the relationships surrounding O’Keefe’s death. 34 Fairview Road was owned at the time by fellow Boston Police Officer Brian Albert, a member of a “powerful” local family whose connections are essential to understanding what the defense believes is a cover-up.

And the first and most essential relationship to understand, he said, was how the lead investigator in the case, Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor, fit into it. He was very close to the Albert family and did nothing to expand the case beyond considering Read as the culprit. He skipped all the expected investigation avenues and within the early hours texted a high school friend that the homeowner would not be suspected, because he’s a fellow cop.

“He said the quiet part out loud,” Jackson said. “His priority was to protect that blue wall. … To protect his friends who were at the Albert house last night.”

In short, Jackson said, this case is beset by “a cancer that can’t be cut out, a cancer that can’t be cured.

“And that cancer has a name: Michael Proctor,” Jackson continued. “There isn’t a part of this case … that he didn’t orchestrate.”

Case background

Read was tried last year but that case ended July 1 in mistrial after the jurors reported through three increasingly assertive notes that they had reached an impasse.

In a twist few saw coming, the defense shortly thereafter said that multiple jurors had come forward to say they were not actually at an impasse on two of the charges — including murder — but were ready to acquit. The jurors, according to defense arguments, were only hung on the manslaughter charge.

This alleged revelation launched a multipronged effort to have every charge but manslaughter dropped against Read in the retrial. The defense said that the disclosures were tantamount to a verdict and that to retry her on the other charges would be a violation of her constitutional protections from double jeopardy. But those efforts failed before trial Judge Beverly J. Cannone, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, the federal court in Boston, and the federal Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

The defense has since launched a petition to have the argument reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, but the court declined to delay the start of Read’s retrial to take it up.

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