John O’Keefe’s mother gave emotional testimony when she took the stand during Day 2 of witness testimony in the Karen Read Murder Retrial on Wednesday as she spoke publicly for the first time since her son’s death in January 2022.
Peggy O’Keefe did not testify in Karen Read’s first trial and has never given any interviews. She was one of four people who took the stand for the prosecution today.
Peggy O’Keefe lost her daughter, Kristen, to a brain tumor in 2013, and Kristen’s husband, Stephen Furbush, died of a heart attack shortly thereafter. The pain of losing another child at a young age was devastating, she said.
“She had two children. And then two months after she passed, her husband passed from a heart attack. And then you all know about John,” Peggy O’Keefe said through tears.
She cried on the witness stand while relaying the story of seeing her son in the hospital after he was found lifeless in the snow.
“He was bruised up. His eyes were closed. Just not a good scene,” she said.
O’Keefe described how Read spoke to her over the phone at Good Samaritan Hospital, where O’Keefe was pronounced deceased.
“As I’m walking down, I hear Karen Read yell, ‘Peg, is he dead? Is he dead, Peg?’ Mrs. O’Keefe said. ”I asked her what happened, and she said ‘I. We went to a party. I left him there.’ I said, ‘You just left him there.’ She said ‘Yes’"
Kerry Roberts continued her testimony from Tuesday by describing clearing snow from John O’Keefe as he lay unresponsive outside 34 Fairview Road.
She says that before O’Keefe was found, Read asked her to look at her taillight.
“Karen pointed out and said, ‘Look, my taillight.’ And she said, ‘Do you think I hit him? And I said, ‘No, I don’t think you hit him,‘" Roberts recounted.
Defense attorney Alan Jackson asked Roberts about her previous testimony to a grand jury where she claimed to hear Karen Read ask Jennifer McCabe to Google “How long to die in cold?”
“The reason that you said that false statement was because someone told you to say it,” Jackson pried.
“I misunderstood Mr. Lally’s question,” Roberts replied.
Nicholas Guarino, a state trooper who analyzed Read’s cellphone and Daniel Whitley, a Canton firefighter who took Read to the hospital for a psychological evaluation after O’Keefe was found also took the stand.
Guarino testified about his analysis of O’Keefe and Read’s phones, stating that he conducted extractions of several phones during the Read investigation.
Whitley is expected to take the stand again on Thursday.
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