BOSTON — Karen Read again reiterated that she stood up for her Boston police officer boyfriend, John O’Keefe, throughout the investigation into his death and her two trials as she celebrated her murder and manslaughter acquittals in Boston on Wednesday night.
Read walked out of Dedham’s Norfolk Superior Court a free woman after more than three years. To celebrate the momentous legal victory, Read, her family, and her legal team visited Mastro’s Ocean Club in Boston’s Seaport.
Boston 25 News cameras captured Read as she walked into the high-end restaurant, just a few hours after jurors in her retrial acquitted her of the most serious charges she faced in the 2022 death of O’Keefe, only convicting her of drunken driving.
“I fought for John O’Keefe harder than anyone, harder than anyone,” Read said, echoing what she told a sea of her ecstatic supporters after leaving court.
Read’s family said they’ll be working to unwind over the next few weeks, now that her big day in court is in the rearview mirror.
“Right now we’re still numb,” Read’s father, Bill, said. “We’re numb, we’re happy, we’re celebrating, we’re getting together as a family in here, you know, another couple of weeks decompress.”
If Read didn’t kill O’Keefe, who did? Members of Read’s legal team said this high-profile story is far from over and that evidence suggests someone else killed O’Keefe.
“In one sense, this case brought justice in that they charged the wrong person, and they went after an innocent woman for 3-and-a-half years, and they failed because they charged the wrong person, but somebody’s still out there,” Read attorney David Yannetti said. “It’s a shame that this investigation was not done in the proper way, so they could have gotten to the truth.”
Read attorney Robert Alessi thanked the jurors who deliberated for more than 20 hours over four days.
“God bless those 12 people on the jury. Members of your community had courage and sat there day after day, weighed the evidence, and did their job,” Alessi said. “They’re the ones who are the heroes.”
Read was accused of striking John O’Keefe with her Lexus SUV and leaving him to die alone in a blizzard outside of a house party in Canton at the home of fellow officer Brian Albert on Jan. 29, 2022, following a night of drinking.
Read’s lawyers argued that O’Keefe was beaten, bitten by a dog, then left outside Albert’s home in a conspiracy orchestrated by the police that included planting evidence against Read.
Read faces a year of probation over the jury’s drunken driving conviction.
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