This week, a Massachusetts jury found Karen Read not guilty in the 2022 death of her Boston police officer boyfriend, John O’Keefe. Read was acquitted of manslaughter and second-degree murder charges, but convicted of operating a vehicle under the influence. She was sentenced to one year of probation.
Deeply emotional, Read embraced her attorneys after the verdict was announced in Dedham, Massachusetts. Flashing the American Sign Language sign for “I love you,” she was ensconced in the cheers of hundreds of supporters waiting outside the courthouse. Many Read supporters have been waiting months for this verdict — some since the beginning of Read’s first trial just over a year ago. You could recognize a Read supporter by their signature pink T-shirts, customized baseball caps embroidered with #FKR and their magenta picket signs.
Many Read supporters have been waiting months for this verdict — some since the beginning of Read’s first trial just over a year ago.
That unwavering support is part of what has defined the yearslong legal saga of Karen Read, a single woman with a good job and a strong voice, up against a massive and organized institution. For months now, New Englanders have been able to use Read’s trial as a social barometer: “Are you for or against Karen Read?” The answer — yes or no — carries significant weight.
On Jan. 29, 2022, after a blizzard and a night of heavy drinking with friends, Read found O’Keefe’s body lying in his friend’s front yard before the sun even rose. He was dead, bloodied and severely bruised. Read was the primary suspect almost immediately. She was arrested and charged with leaving the scene of a fatal crash, manslaughter and, eventually, second-degree murder.
The state argued that a highly intoxicated Read dropped O’Keefe off at a fellow cop’s house, intentionally backed her Lexus SUV into him, and left him to die in the snow. Read’s lawyers contended that she was framed, the fall guy for an insidious, orchestrated cover-up. They argued that O’Keefe died after being beaten inside the house at the hands of the other police officers present, thrown outside and left for dead in the blizzard. The case went to trial for the first time in April 2024. It ended with a hung jury: a failure to acquit or convict Read, after jurors couldn’t come to a unanimous decision. The second trial made this case even more high-profile: The stakes were the same for Read — years behind bars — but it was also a second chance to prove her innocence.
Certain details of the case have gripped the public. Key witness Jen McCabe’s early-morning Google search for “hos long to die in cold [sic],” the mirrored video presented as evidence for the prosecution, and text messages from the case’s onetime lead investigator calling Read a “whack job c---.” The case was already salacious, made even more so by social media rumors of swinging, a murdered dog and, of course, theories of a widespread cover-up that embroiled multiple families and officers from local, Boston and state police departments. If all of this feels lifted straight from a true-crime novel, Dear Reader, I am here to tell you this is not the half of it.
The trial captured broader national interest after HBO released a behind-the-scenes docuseries called “A Body in the Snow: The Trial of Karen Read.” It certainly worked with me: I had heard about the Read trial, but I didn’t become fully invested until finishing the docuseries with my husband and his Massachusetts-based family. What is so compelling about the docuseries isn’t the way it depicts a complicated case, but the access it gives viewers to Read. She had already captured the attention of so many and the documentary illuminates why: Read was honest and real. In one scene, she reflects on how her facial expressions might be interpreted in court. She discusses how to best look neutral with her attorney, Alan Jackson of Werksman Jackson & Quinn LLP. Anecdotally and on social media, this moment didn’t sit well with many viewers. They saw it as calculated. I saw it as genuine.
Perhaps it was seeing Read’s flaws, her unwillingness to conform to society’s expectations of a woman as she sat on the stand and told her story.
Read is a sort of rough and hardened pretty that feels wholly unique to New England. She isn’t rich, but she has some money. She is white, but she has a localized accent. She is educated and successful — an adjunct professor at Bentley College with a senior job at Fidelity Investments — but she isn’t pretentious.
Look at Casey Anthony or Amanda Knox — the court of public opinion in this country loves to hate a women accused of murder regardless of the trial outcome. But this case is different. Per reports, Read was driving her boyfriend, albeit intoxicated, to a party in a nice suburban town. This, it would stand to reason for the largely white and female fan base calling to “free Karen Read” outside the courthouse, could be any one of us. What is stopping the police in my city or state from framing me — or you? Nothing.
The familiarity, the frightening possibility, the normalcy of this case is surely part of what has drawn the crowds and kept them there, day after day. Read’s trial has come to represent a triumph over abuse of power, law enforcement corruption and failures of the justice system.
Read is 45, single, and she lives alone in a pretty house. She is vulnerable in so many ways, and yet she isn’t. Despite the insurmountable situation she was faced with, she remained resolute.
And she won. Perhaps it’s the fantasy that staying strong in the face of power can actually work out that kept so many people coming back. Perhaps it was seeing Read’s flaws, her unwillingness to conform to society’s expectations of a woman as she sat on the stand and told her story. Or perhaps it’s the idea that in a country currently characterized by so much deception, the truth really is the greatest weapon you can wield.