Karen Read’s second murder trial has started off much differently from her first. On Tuesday, the former equity analyst was back in the defendant’s seat in the same Dedham, Massachusetts, courtroom where she stood trial last year, once again facing charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter, and leaving the scene of an injury or accident. The allegations stem from the mysterious 2022 death of her Boston police officer boyfriend, John O’Keefe, who was found on the lawn of another Boston police officer, Brian Albert, in a blizzard. Because of the nontraditional defendant (a woman with advanced degrees), alleged manner of death (being killed by a car is less common than being poisoned), and claims (that Read is being framed in an elaborate law-enforcement cover-up), the trial snowballed into a global internet obsession by the time it ended in a hung jury last July.
According to the defense, five jurors have since come forward to say that during the first trial jurors voted unanimously to acquit Read of second-degree murder and of leaving the scene, but they did not understand that they could come to a partial verdict. Read has appealed the decision up to the Supreme Court, which still has not decided whether it will take the case, and denied her emergency request to pause the Norfolk County case.
Read’s legal team is larger this time around: Robert Alessi of New York sat alongside Read’s lawyers from the previous trial, Alan Jackson, David Yannetti, and Elizabeth Little. Victoria George, an alternate juror from the first trial who, as Vanity Fair reported, joined Read’s team after growing frustrated with special prosecutor Hank Brennan’s statements during pretrial hearings last month, sat in the gallery with a legal pad in hand. And Evan Wolk—a third-year Boston College Law School student and one of nine law clerks working for Read—was perched behind two computer screens in place of the defense’s previous A/V specialist. All 11 of Read’s additions are working pro bono, after the defendant sunk seven figures of savings and donations into paying for her first defense.
Read changed her strategy too: The meticulous, LA-based Jackson delivered the opening remarks, as opposed to the Massachusetts-based Yannetti, who delivered the defense’s opening statement in the first trial. Within the first 90 seconds, Jackson brought up the fact that Michael Proctor, the lead investigator on Read’s case, had been fired by the Massachusetts State Police last month. (Proctor plans to appeal the decision, according to his lawyer.)
Hank BrennanMediaNews Group/Boston Herald/Getty Images.
“Massachusetts State Police found…Michael Proctor guilty of bringing dishonor to the department,” Jackson told the pool of 18 jurors from the podium. “Not in some other case…in this case.” Among the reasons for his dismissal, said Jackson, “bias in favor of his friends” and “bias against my client.” He looked up at the jurors: “Do you have any idea how hard it is for a state trooper to be fired?”
After a beat, Jackson continued: “Well, the evidence is going to show that Michael Proctor earned it—every bit of it.”
Jackson brought up the damning text message that Proctor sent hours into the investigation—determining that Brian Albert, the Canton local on whose property O’Keefe was found, would not “catch any shit,” as Jackson put it, because “he’s a Boston cop too.” Said Jackson, “That quote defines the lack of integrity of the Commonwealth’s entire case, entire investigation, and this prosecution.” The entire investigation, he said, was “corrupted by bias, corrupted by incompetence, and corrupted by deceit.”
Moments beforehand, Brennan had delivered his own opening salvo. Like Read, the Commonwealth has also changed its legal lineup and strategy. Adam Lally, the Norfolk assistant district attorney who acted as lead prosecutor the first time around, had delivered his opening remarks in monotone. But Brennan—the former Whitey Bulger defense lawyer slated to earn up to $225,000 on the case, according to CBS News outlet WBZ—was confident and dynamic. He left the podium, and walked back and forth before jurors like the lawyer in a TV drama might, outlining the prosecution’s case.
“We are here today because John O’Keefe was killed by the actions and conduct of that defendant, Karen Read,” Brennan said, pointing to Read in her seat. There’s a degree of theater to trial lawyering, and Brennan brought a certain dramatic flare to the proceeding as he described the Commonwealth’s version of events: that after a night of heavy drinking and fighting, Read dropped O’Keefe off at 34 Fairview Road, and then reversed into him at a high speed.
“She put the Lexus in reverse, put her foot on the gas pedal, and began to press. Not 25%, not 50%…up to 75%,” he said, motioning as if his hand were the foot on the pedal. “The Lexus tires spun backward, she went backwards at least 70 feet. She clipped John O’Keefe. He fell backwards, hit his head, broke his skull.”
