DEDHAM, Mass. — A much-discussed Google search and John O’Keefe’s cellphone location data were in focus on Day 5 of witness testimony in Karen Read’s retrial on Monday morning.
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.
Week 2 of Karen Read’s second murder trial started with a half-day of testimony from Ian Whiffin, a product manager at the digital forensics firm Cellbrite. A voir dire of ARCCA crash reconstruction experts was set to follow.
Whiffin’s testimony started with Special Prosecutor Hank Brennan questioning him about Jennifer McCabe’s Google searches on the morning that O’Keefe’s body was found in the snow at 34 Fairview Road in Canton.
McCabe was with Read the morning they found O’Keefe in the snow.
"I went into the data, looked at the various different, databases, different files that were in use, tested it across many different devices to make sure that my understanding and analysis of it was correct," Whiffin said.
Most notably, Whiffin was grilled about what he uncovered on McCabe’s “Hos long to die in cold" search, which had a timestamp of 2:27 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, hours before O’Keefe was found dead.
Whiffin told the court that both a state trooper and private forensics examiner Richard Green, a witness for the defense, reached out to him about McCabe’s search.
During Read’s first trial, Green testified that the search occurred at 2:27 a.m., but the prosecution claims he misinterpreted the cellphone data and was wrong on science.
Whiffin said the web search was not made at 2:27 a.m., before O’Keefe’s body was found, like the defense has alleged.
“I was able to take test devices, recreate test data to find out exactly what this timestamp meant, and discovered that it was actually the time stamp that the tab within the browser was brought into focus, and has no relevance to when the actual web query had been made,” Whiffin explained.
McCabe has said she made the search later at Read’s insistence after they found O’Keefe.
Whiffin testified that he also examined the location and healthcare data, battery temperature, and pocket state of O’Keefe’s phone.
Whiffin told the court that he believes O’Keefe’s cellphone stayed in the area of the flagpole outside 34 Fairview Road from 12:32 a.m. onward, indicating that O’Keefe never entered Brian Albert’s home.
Brennan asked Whiffin, “Are all these dots and all these readings of the high frequency data that you compiled for that night, are they all consistent with Mr. O’Keefe’s phone being near the flagpole and not moving that night?”
Whiffin responded, “I think that’s a reasonable assumption.”
Whiffin testified that O’Keefe’s phone recorded no steps or flights climbed between 12:32 a.m. and 6:04 a.m.
He also told the court that the battery temperature of O’Keefe’s phone dropped from 72 degrees at 12:37 a.m. to 37 degrees at 6:14 a.m.
On Friday, all 18 jurors in Karen Read’s retrial toured the scene of John O’Keefe’s death and got an up-close look at the murder defendant’s Lexus SUV during a field trip to Canton on Friday morning.
0 of 26
Read’s SUV was towed to the scene, where crews positioned the vehicle near the flagpole.
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.
Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts.
Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW
©2025 Cox Media Group
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/cmg/7QOJU3BNCJERBNKJC5LWTBYFLU.png)
