DEDHAM, Mass. — Jennifer McCabe, one of the last people to see John O’Keefe alive, returned to the stand Friday morning as Karen Read’s murder retrial enters its eighth day of witness testimony.
Read is accused of striking O’Keefe, her Boston police officer boyfriend, with her SUV and leaving him to die alone in a blizzard outside of a house party at the home of fellow officer Brian Albert following a night of drinking.
McCabe, a mother from Canton, was with Read when she found O’Keefe’s body in the snow outside of 34 Fairview Road in Canton on the morning of Jan. 29, 2022.
NOW ON THE STAND: Hannah Knowles, forensic scientist with the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab
PREVIOUSLY ON THE STAND: Jennifer McCabe
McCabe spent nearly a full day on the stand before Knowles was called for questioning shortly before 3 p.m.
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Special prosecutor Hank Brennan called McCabe to the stand on Tuesday, and cross-examination followed on Wednesday. The court wasn’t in session on Thursday. Friday will mark McCabe’s third day of testimony.
The defense says they still need about 90 minutes to two hours to finish their cross-examination of McCabe.
On Wednesday, Read’s attorney Alan Jackson challenged McCabe’s recollection of events and suggested she coordinated with other witnesses to make sure all their statements matched up — something she denied.
Read, McCabe said, was running around and screaming so much that police suggested she sit in a police cruiser. The three sat together praying, and McCabe remembered, Read wondered aloud who would take care of O’Keefe’s two adopted children. As O’Keefe’s body was moved to an ambulance, Read screamed for Roberts to go check on him and wondered if he “was dead.”
Then, McCabe testified that she was standing next to a police officer and a paramedic as Read told them “I hit him” three times — corroborating earlier testimony from paramedics.
But Jackson challenged McCabe, questioning why those comments couldn’t be found in earlier police reports or in the 227 pages of her grand jury testimony. Instead, Jackson said she told the grand jury that she recalled saying to a paramedic, “Did I hit him? Could I have hit him? Is he dead? Is he dead? Is he dead?”
“In point of fact, in your entire grand jury testimony, you never said my client said the words I hit him,” he said.
McCabe insisted she had told police what Read said — even if it wasn’t in the reports — and that it wasn’t in the grand jury testimony because she wasn’t asked specifically about it. As for the comments in her grand jury testimony, she said there were many conversations with paramedics and police at the scene.
“I hit him. I hit him. I hit him is just as fresh today as it was three years ago,” she said.
After Wednesday’s full day of heated testimony, Read was asked outside Norfolk Superior Court, “How did Jen McCabe do?”
“Another witness, another instance of perjury, or instances I should say,” Read answered. “It‘s just more of the same. Inconsistencies, every statement is different...This is very similar to what we saw a year ago.”
Read was then asked, “Why do you think she [McCabe] is so inconsistent?” She responded, “Because she’s lying.”
Read also denied the accusation that she instructed McCabe to Google how long it takes to die in the cold.
On Tuesday, McCabe described having fun with Read, O’Keefe and others at a local bar that night. Afterward, she went to the house party hosted by her sister and brother-in-law. She said she saw Read’s SUV outside but that Read and O’Keefe never came into the house.
McCabe said she was awakened the next morning by a call from O’Keefe’s niece. Read then got on the phone screaming, she said.
“She was hysterical. It was very hard to follow what she was saying,” she said. “It was loud enough and long enough that my husband shot up in bed thinking one of my kids had come in the room screaming.”
Read initially said she had left O’Keefe at the bar, but when McCabe said she had seen the SUV at her sister’s house, Read said she didn’t remember being there and repeatedly asked, “Did I hit him? Could I have hit him?”
The two women and another friend searched O’Keefe’s home and then went to McCabe’s sister’s house. As they approached the house, McCabe said Read screamed, “There he is! Let me out!”
Digital forensics specialist Ian Whiffin testified Monday that location data on O’Keefe’s phone was consistent with the device being near a flagpole on the lawn of the home from 12:32 a.m. onward, there was no activity after that and the temperature of the phone’s battery dropped from 72 degrees (22 degrees Celsius) at 12:37 a.m. to 37 degrees (2.8 degrees Celsius) at 6:14 a.m.
Such data could suggest O’Keefe remained outside. But under cross-examination Tuesday, Whiffin testified that he observed a much more dramatic drop in temperature when he performed an experiment by placing a phone in a freezer.
He also acknowledged that the phone could have been anywhere within a larger radius than he previously described but said that data was not as accurate.
“According to your report, the phone of John O’Keefe could be in the house, correct?” defense attorney Robert Alessi asked.
“Based on the low-accuracy information, yes,” he said.
Whiffin, a former law enforcement officer who went on to work in mobile forensics in the private sector, also testified further about an internet search made by Jennifer McCabe, who was with Read the morning she found O’Keefe in the snow.
McCabe made a much-discussed web search about how long it takes to die in the cold. Read’s lawyers have said the search happened hours before O’Keefe was discovered, which could implicate her rather than Read. McCabe has said she made the search later at Read’s insistence after they found O’Keefe.
Whiffin said Monday that the web search was not made at 2:27 a.m., before O’Keefe’s body was found, like the defense has alleged. On Tuesday, he acknowledged that another company’s analysis showed the search happened at the earlier time.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Read’s double-jeopardy appeal Monday, effectively clearing the way for her trial to continue.
Read’s defense had argued that putting her on trial again for two of the charges is an unlawful case of double jeopardy. They told the Supreme Court that the jury at her first trial reached a unanimous but unannounced verdict acquitting her, so a second trial on those charges should be barred as double jeopardy.
The court didn’t ask the prosecution to respond to the appeal, a sign the justices did not think there was a difficult legal issue at stake.
Prosecutors allege Read intentionally backed into O’Keefe after she dropped him off at a house party and returned hours later to find him dead. The defense has claimed that she was a victim of a vast police conspiracy and that O’Keefe was fatally beaten by another law enforcement officer at the party.
A mistrial was declared last year after jurors said they were at an impasse and deliberating further would be futile.
Read has pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence, and leaving the scene of a crash resulting in death.
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Reporting from the Associated Press was included in this article.
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