Karen Read Murder Retrial: Medical, crash experts dispute prosecutor claims about O’Keefe’s injuries

The jury in Karen Read’s retrial could get the case by the end of this week after the defense’s last witness took the stand Tuesday.

Read, 45, of Mansfield, is accused of striking John O’Keefe, her Boston police officer boyfriend, 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 say O’Keefe, 46, was beaten, bitten by a dog, then left outside a home in Canton in a conspiracy orchestrated by the police that included planting evidence against Read.

Andrew Rentschler, a crash reconstructionist from ARCCA originally hired for the federal investigation of the Read murder case, testified Tuesday that evidence does not corroborate the theory that she struck John O’Keefe with her Lexus.

“It really was impossible to get a skull fracture by hitting the tail light and not sustain any other significant fractures,” Rentschler explained.

Dr. Elizabeth Laposata, a professor at Brown University & former chief medical examiner in Rhode Island, testified the same. According to Laposata, O’Keefe died from a massive skull fracture which would leave traces in the yard of 34 Fairview Road.

“If you fell back on grass, you would tend to see, you might see grass in the wound, or you would tend to see an irregular kind of crisscross pattern of the flattened grass,” Laposata said.

Dr. Loposata said the wounds on O’Keefe’s arm were consistent with an animal attack. Judge Beverly Cannone prohibited the defense from asking if it could have been a dog.

Loposata also testified that hypothermia did not contribute to O’Keefe’s death despite. The medical examiner’s report said O’Keefe died from hypothermia and blunt impact injuries to the head.

“The body did not have any hypothermia,” Laposata said.

The medical examiner who performed O’Keefe’s autopsy, Irini Scordi-Bello, testified earlier that she could not determine the cause of O’Keefe’s death to a reasonable degree of medical certainty but that hypothermia was a contributing factor.

Rentschler will return to the stand on Wednesday.

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