As Karen Read Returns to Trial, Here’s Everything You Need to Know

Karen Read’s Second Murder Trial

Karen Read’s second murder trial started Tuesday, April 1, with the first day of jury selection. “I think this is going to be twice what the first trial was, just in terms of magnitude and witnesses,” Read recently told Vanity Fair. “I think that this trial is going to be bigger and longer than the last one.”

Because of the media attention around the case, the Office of Jury Commissioner has summoned more than 1,000 people for duty. The selection process is expected to take several weeks.

The second trial will look much different from the first; Norfolk County district attorney Michael Morrissey has appointed Hank Brennan, the lawyer best known for defending Whitey Bulger in his federal trial, to lead the prosecution. Read, meanwhile, has expanded her defense team: In addition to Alan Jackson, David Yannetti, and Elizabeth Little, Read’s bench now includes New York lawyer Robert Alessi and Victoria George. George, an employment lawyer, was a juror in Read’s first trial who was dismissed from the voting pool before deliberations began. As she told VF in her only interview, “I waited for nearly a year after the mistrial, hoping the court system would work as intended to remedy some of the wrongs in this case.”

On Monday, March 31, Norfolk County Superior Court judge Beverly Cannone released a list of 150 witnesses whom the prosecution and defense could call during this trial. The list includes Morrissey himself; O’Keefe’s brother, Paul; Read’s father, William; and Aidan Kearney, the blogger known as Turtleboy, whose provocative coverage has entangled him in this legal saga. The most electric courtroom exchanges last year involved some of the witnesses who saw O’Keefe in the hours before his death, including Jennifer McCabe, Brian Albert, and Brian Higgins—as well as recently fired Massachusetts State Police trooper Michael Proctor, who was the lead investigator on the case and whom Read has accused of playing a role in framing her. (Proctor has denied this allegation.) All of these parties are again included on the witness list, as are Proctor’s sister, Courtney, and his wife, Elizabeth.

Another difference in this trial is that Colin Albert, Brian’s nephew who claims to have left his uncle’s house before O’Keefe’s arrival, cannot be named as a suspect in Read’s third-party defense; Cannone ruled the day before the trial began that Read’s lawyers could not point to Colin as potentially being involved in the death of O’Keefe. “There is no evidence that Colin Albert was at 34 Fairview when the defendant and Mr. O’Keefe arrived at the home,” Cannone ruled.

As Read previously told VF in a two-part feature, she has never entertained the idea of taking a plea deal: “I’m not backing down now. As scary as a potential conviction is, I will go to jail for something I didn’t do before I plea out. I will never give them that win.”

In a more recent conversation with VF, Read said, “I want my life back,” adding that after this trial, “I never want to see a courtroom again.”

Check back with Vanity Fair for continued coverage of the trial.

Karen Read’s Mistrial

A judge declared a mistrial on July 1 after a Massachusetts jury of six women and six men said that they were deadlocked in their deliberations in the murder trial of Karen Read. The decision arrived after nine weeks’ worth of testimony.

“Despite our commitment to the duty entrusted to us, we find ourselves deeply divided by fundamental differences in our opinions and state of mind,” the jury foreperson wrote in a note Monday. “The divergence in our views are not rooted in the lack of understanding or effort but deeply held convictions that each of us carries ultimately leading to a point where consensus is unattainable.”

Prosecutors said in a statement that they plan to retry the case. Read’s defense attorney Alan Jackson said outside the courthouse, “No matter how long it takes, no matter how long they keep trying, we will not stop fighting. We have no quit.”

What Is Karen Read’s Story?

Fifteen months after Alex Murdaugh was found guilty of murdering his wife and son, after a dramatic trial in which the disgraced lawyer took the stand in his own defense, another compelling murder defendant is making headlines: Karen Read. The case has captivated Massachusetts since early 2022, when Read was named the prime suspect in the mysterious death of her police officer boyfriend, John O’Keefe. But national and even global interest—along with a Netflix unscripted project, which Vanity Fair can confirm—has snowballed as Read’s second-degree-murder trial continues.

What is undisputed is that in the early morning of January 29, 2022, Read found O’Keefe unresponsive in a snowbank. He was pronounced dead hours later. The cause was later determined to be hypothermia and blunt trauma to the head.

According to prosecutors, Read backed into him with her Lexus SUV after a fight on January 28, following an evening of drinking, and left the scene. Read, now 44, faces charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence of alcohol, and leaving the scene of a personal injury or death.

The defense proposes something completely different: that Read is being framed by law enforcement officers—O’Keefe’s colleagues and best friends, who were among the last people to see him alive—and that his death was caused by a violent fight inside a former cop’s home. Last week, bombshell testimony from the lead investigator on the case drew gasps from jury members. Outside the courthouse, the six-week trial has inspired discourse so passionate that it has led to derivative criminal charges, a protesting ban, and what a friend of O’Keefe’s claims is a “circus” overshadowing the real victim. So what is it exactly about the Karen Read case that is hitting such a nerve?

To begin, it has all the elements of a thriller: a woman accused of murder, an unlikely weapon (a car is less common than poison), an alleged conspiracy involving a powerful law-enforcement family, and the courtroom dynamics of a John Grisham plot. But it’s real.

Among the plot twists: the defense called for Judge Beverly Cannone to recuse herself, alleging that she had ties to people involved in the case. (She denied the request.) Brian Higgins, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, testified about becoming attracted to Read and flirting with her in the weeks before O’Keefe’s death. The defense suggested that a friend of O’Keefe’s googled “ho[w] long to die in cold” at 2:25 a.m., long before O’Keefe’s body was found; the prosecution said Read asked her friend to google the phrase in the morning after O’Keefe’s body was found.

A zealous local blogger named “Turtleboy” allegedly spent over 40 hours directly communicating with Read over the span of 189 phone calls and has been fanning conspiracy-theory flames online. As a result, Turtleboy, a.k.a. Aidan Kearney, has been indicted on over 16 charges including counts of witness intimidation. (Kearney has denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty.)

The conspiracy theories have also gained momentum, says Court TV attorney-journalist and host Julie Grant, because “the defense team was speaking out about a cover-up prior to trial, while the prosecution stayed nearly silent. Prosecutors are held to a higher ethical standard than private attorneys…and have a duty not to make extrajudicial comments that are likely to heighten public condemnation of a defendant. I think that was largely how the cover-up allegations really started picking up steam.”

Passions have become so heightened outside the courthouse that Cannone banned protesting within 200 feet of the building and clothing or accessories relating to the case, like “Free Karen” T-shirts, inside. (Some supporters have worn pink outside the courthouse, believing it to be Read’s favorite color.)

“The story is the draw,” says Grant, who hosts Court TV’s Opening Statements with Julie Grant. “Trial watchers want to know if there truly is a cover-up in Canton, as the defense claims.” (In a statement to ABC News, the prosecution said, “There was no conspiracy or cover-up. Such claims have been systematically refuted by evidence submitted to Norfolk Superior Court.”)

As if there wasn’t enough to make the trial a hot-button issue, the lead investigator on the case, Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor, admitted in testimony last week to sending misogynistic text messages about Read. In a group text chain with eight of his high school friends, Proctor crassly commented on Read’s physical appearance; joked about searching her phone for “nudes”; referred to her as a “babe,” “nutbag,” and “a whack job”; and made a crude remark about a medical condition from which Read suffers. In a text message to his sister, Proctor said that he hoped Read killed herself.

Proctor called the texts “unprofessional and regrettable” and admitted, “my emotions got the best of me,” but argued that his remarks “have zero impact on the facts and the evidence and the integrity of this investigation.” Still, the lead investigator on the case was asked by the defense whether he dehumanized Read.

“I would say based off that language, yes,” Proctor replied.

Afterward, Governor Maura Healey issued a statement saying she was “disgusted” by Proctor’s behavior and that it put “the dignity and integrity” of all state police at risk. Proctor’s statements made national headlines, but more intimately, they also seemed to horrify some on the jury, which is made of mostly female members.

“One woman had her mouth open,” said NBC10 Boston’s Sue O’Connell, who was in the courtroom during Proctor’s testimony. “One woman looked back and looked at every single female juror she could look at to make eye contact…at one point they were just shaking their heads. One woman laughed.”

It isn’t just the misogyny that seems remarkable, though. At a moment when America is less confident in police than ever before, the idea of unmasking a law-enforcement cover-up is delectable to some skeptics. And testimony from Massachusetts State Police officers about their choices in the investigation might convince cynics that their law-enforcement suspicions are justified.

Massachusetts State Police Lieutenant Brian Tully testified that investigators did not search the home on the property where O’Keefe’s body was found, which belonged to retired police officer Brian Albert, because he did not believe O’Keefe had entered the home. (Proctor texted his friends that the homeowner would not get much blowback from O’Keefe’s death because he’s “a Boston cop.”) Blood evidence was gathered in red Solo cups inside a grocery-store bag. Just 17 hours into his investigation into O’Keefe’s death, Proctor texted his friends that Read had “zero chance” of getting off without punishment. “She’s f-cked,” he wrote.

Another officer, meanwhile, acknowledged that he failed to write down key information in his official report. Like the four words “This is my fault,” which were not in the report but which the officer claimed Read said. The defense has also alleged that, the night of his death, O’Keefe was injured by a dog the Albert family owned—a dog that the family rehomed the same month the defense says it began its investigation into O’Keefe’s injuries. Brian Albert testified that the dog “went to the bathroom and ran right back in,” the night of O’Keefe’s death.