DEDHAM, Mass. — Members of an extended Canton family the Karen Read defense team has suggested colluded to frame their client were listening in on formal police interviews and commenting on them, according to text messages newly unveiled in the retrial.

“Kerry (Roberts) talked to cops and kept (it) simple,” Jennifer McCabe texted her sister, Nicole “Coco” Albert, just before 8 a.m on Jan. 29, 2022, roughly two hours after McCabe, Roberts and Read found John O’Keefe lying dead or dying on the front lawn of 34 Fairview Road in Canton.

It was just one example of a chain of texts presented during McCabe’s third day on the stand in Read’s second murder trial. The cross examination blew past the two-hour estimate defense attorney Alan Jackson gave Judge Beverly Cannone on Wednesday, the previous day of trial.

It ended with a tense exchange in which Jackson, through pointed questioning most of which McCabe would have to agree to, criticized McCabe for not going inside the home of her sister Nicole and brother-in-law Brian Albert, a police officer and trained first responder, for help for O’Keefe who was dead or dying on the front lawn.

“As a matter of fact a man’s life was in grave danger, you knew that?” Jackson asked and McCabe, who herself had called 911 from the scene at around 6:03 a.m., affirmed. “… You knew you needed to get immediate medical attention, emergency medical attention to him as quickly as you possibly could, is that right?”

He asked if there was anyone who might have lived on that road “who might have had life-saving techniques trained into them, first responder … ?”

“Yes, my brother-in-law Brian Albert,” she said.

“But you didn’t go into the house, did you?” Jackson asked.

“No, I did not,” McCabe said.

This line of questioning was what was left in jurors’ minds as they adjourned for their lunch break.

But the day was chock-full of things to consider, from the text messages and a scientist’s testimony that put Read’s blood alcohol content at possibly three times the legal limit when she allegedly struck and killed O’Keefe, a Boston police officer and her boyfriend of roughly two years.

Read’s blood alcohol content was between 0.14% and 0.28% at around 12:45 a.m, according to the testimony of Hannah Knowles, a forensic scientist with the Massachusetts State Police crime lab. That’s well in excess of the 0.08% legal driving limit.

Knowles did not test Read directly but instead relied on a blood serum test done at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Brockton where Read was taken for a psychological evaluation. Her blood was tested after 9 a.m., nearly nine hours after she allegedly struck and killed O’Keefe.

Dr. Garrey Faller, who ran the lab at that hospital, testified last week that his lab did a serum test that put her blood alcohol content at 93 mg/dL. Knowles performed the retrograde conversion to figure the BAC at the time of the alleged strike.

In a brief cross examination before court was adjourned for the day, defense attorney David Yannetti did not challenge Knowles or her lab, but did question the initial test.

“You cannot personally vouch for the testing at Good Samaritan, correct?” Yannetti asked.

“Correct,” Knowles said. “My calculations are only as good as the information I am provided.”

Read herself seized on that line while speaking with the media following the court day.

“I think it’s garbage in, garbage out and depends on their assumption of when I last consumed alcohol,” she said.

Most of Friday was dedicated to Jackson’s cross examination of McCabe, and particularly to the idea that McCabe colluded with her large extended family — and associated friends — to frame Read.

McCabe and her sister texted the evening of O’Keefe’s death that included Nicole texting, “We’ll get more info (tomorrow), don’t want to text about it.”

Later that afternoon, McCabe texted a group chat that included her husband Matt McCabe and Nicole and Brian Albert in a series that showed members were aware of and even listening in to formal police interviews.

“She is telling him EVERYTHING!!” McCabe wrote at one point of Roberts, who she had become fast friends with after finding O’Keefe in the snow together. The “him” in this case is lead case investigator Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor, who has since been fired from the force primarily for his behavior in this case.

In redirect, prosecutor Hank Brennan went through texts between Roberts and McCabe that showed shock over the day’s trauma.

“I talked to Peggy (O’Keefe, John’s mother). I am devastated for them,” McCabe texted at one point. “I have that awful feeling in my gut like I’m about to puke.”

Roberts was feeling similarly: “This is awful, Jen. I’m in shock.”

Brennan said he wants to submit “All of McCabe’s text messages” into evidence. Jackson said he objects. Cannone said they’ll deal with the issue later.

The “butt dials” that got big play in last year’s trial got a soft introduction this year, but this time involving calls from McCabe to O’Keefe around the time he was allegedly struck.

McCabe’s last answered call to O’Keefe was at 12:18 the morning of his death as she tried to direct him to park and come into the house. Then there are seven unanswered calls, which Jackson said would require 14 interactions with her phone — one each to place and then end the call. McCabe said she wasn’t aware of placing them and they must have been made “inadvertently” in her pocket.

Finally, McCabe’s search for “Hos (how) long to die in cold” was addressed yet again.

Whether she made the search at 2:27 a.m. as the defense says — indicating previous knowledge of O’Keefe’s fate and thus conspiracy — or at 6:23 a.m. at Read’s prompting, as she says, will come down to whether the jury believes her and the prosecution’s expert or the defense expert.

Because it’s all digital forensics at this point.

“So it’s your word, and your word only, Ms. McCabe, that my client demanded a Google search?” Jackson asked.

“Yes,” she nodded and looked at the jury. “Yes.”

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