A cellphone data analyst and a close friend of the victim testified this week in the high-profile retrial of Karen Read, the Massachusetts woman charged with killing her boyfriend, a Boston police officer, in January 2022.
The judge in the case declared a mistrial last July when jurors could not agree on a verdict. The retrial is unfolding in the same courthouse in Dedham, south of Boston.
Prosecutors say that Ms. Read, 45, intentionally backed her car into Officer John O’Keefe and killed him after a night out drinking with friends. Defense lawyers argued in the first trial that after Ms. Read dropped Officer O’Keefe off at a party late that night in suburban Canton, Mass., at the home of another Boston police officer, he was beaten and left for dead in the front yard during a raging blizzard.
Ms. Read has pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence of alcohol, and leaving the scene of an accident causing death.
The defense contends that she is the victim of a corrupt and incompetent investigation by law enforcement officials who conspired to frame her for the murder.
Cellphone data is disputed
A digital forensics expert, Ian Whiffin, testified this week about his analysis of data from the Officer O’Keefe’s cellphone, which was found beneath his body. Based on the data, Mr. Whiffin said, he believes that the phone was in the yard of the home where the party was held from 12:30 a.m. on Jan. 29, when Ms. Read dropped off Officer O’Keefe there, until 6 a.m. that morning, when his body was discovered in the snow.
That testimony suggests that the officer did not go inside the house that night, supporting the prosecution’s argument that Ms. Read hit and killed him with her car.
But lawyers for Ms. Read challenged Mr. Whiffin’s analysis of the phone data, questioning whether it was really possible to determine with certainty whether the phone was on the lawn or a short distance away, inside the house.
Mr. Whiffin also addressed the timing of a hotly contested Google search in the early hours of Jan. 29, by a friend of Officer O’Keefe and Ms. Read who attended the party, asking “ho[w] long to die in cold.” He said the online search was not conducted at 2:27 a.m., as a time stamp indicates, but later that morning, around when Officer O’Keefe’s body was discovered.
Defense lawyers have maintained that the Google search happened at 2:27 a.m., when the friend opened the search window, and that it showed that the people at the party had conspired to abandon the injured police officer. Officer O’Keefe’s cause of death was head trauma and hypothermia.
Who is Jennifer McCabe?
Jurors this week heard several days of testimony from Jennifer McCabe, a friend of Officer O’Keefe and Ms. Read’s who was at the bar with them that night. Ms. McCabe also attended the house party that followed and was present at 6 a.m. on Jan. 29, when Ms. Read returned to the home and discovered the body on the lawn.
In her testimony, Ms. McCabe described receiving a hysterical phone call from Ms. Read around 5 a.m. saying that Officer O’Keefe had never come home the previous night. She recounted Ms. Read asking, “Did I hit him?”
She drove Ms. Read back to the home in Canton where the party had been held, she said, and Ms. Read continued to question whether she could have hit Officer O’Keefe after dropping him off. Ms. Read also showed Ms. McCabe and another friend a crack in the taillight of her black Lexus S.U.V., Ms. McCabe testified.
Defense lawyers pressed Ms. McCabe on precisely what Ms. Read said that morning, and whether she had asked, “Did I hit him?” or said, “I hit him.”
Ms. McCabe said in court this week that her memory of Ms. Read saying “I hit him, I hit him” that morning remains “as fresh today” as it was three years ago.
The couple’s relationship was fraying
In testimony last week, a state police trooper read text messages exchanged by Ms. Read and Officer O’Keefe the day before he died that revealed growing tension in their relationship.
“Things haven’t been great between us for a while,” Officer O’Keefe wrote to Ms. Read. She replied, “So you’re not into it anymore. That’s fine, but I don’t want to keep trying and have you keep treating me like this.”
A local paramedic who responded to the scene after Officer O’Keefe’s body was discovered testified that a distraught Ms. Read had expressed despair about arguing with her boyfriend in their last interaction.
Ms. Read did not testify in her first trial, but her own descriptions of the night her boyfriend died may be a factor in the retrial. Prosecutors have said they plan to introduce statements she made in magazine articles and documentaries after the mistrial last summer.
