Karen Read’s second trial in connection with the death of her boyfriend, Boston Police officer John O’Keefe, got underway in Dedham’s Norfolk Superior Court before Judge Beverly Cannone.
Here’s what happened on the first day of testimony Tuesday. The trial resumes Wednesday morning.
Who to know:
- Hank Brennan, special prosecutor for the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office
- Alan Jackson, defense attorney for Read
- Timothy Nuttall, witness and Canton firefighter
- Kerry Roberts, friend of Read and O’Keefe
3:46 p.m. – Cannone sends jurors home for the day
Cannone told Roberts she could step down after a brief sidebar with the lawyers. She will pick up her testimony on Wednesday morning.
Cannone cautioned the jury to avoid media coverage of the trial or discussing it with anyone.
3:30 p.m. – Roberts testifies about search for O’Keefe
After the call to police, Roberts drove to the home of another woman who was friends with O’Keefe, Jennifer McCabe.
When she arrived to McCabe’s home, Read pointed Roberts to her taillight, which Roberts said was missing a piece.
At the time, Roberts said she didn’t think anything of it and the trio drove to O’Keefe’s home in two cars to search for him.
When they arrived at O’Keefe’s home, the group of women went inside to search for him. They went in through the garage and Roberts began looking through the first floor of the home.
Roberts said she looked through five or six rooms downstairs while McCabe searched upstairs. Read was standing in O’Keefe’s room at the top of the stairs, not moving.
When they couldn’t find O’Keefe at his home, the trio set off for 34 Fairview Road with McCabe giving directions. Roberts said she and McCabe were looking out both windows as they drove.
Read was “very frantic.”
When they arrived, Read began screaming, “there he is” and started kicking the door to try and get out. Roberts said she was looking around but didn’t see anything.
Read ran right over to what appeared to be a mound of snow when she got out of the car, Roberts said.
3:26 p.m. – Roberts’ call to Canton Police played
On the morning of O’Keefe’s death, after getting the frantic call from Read, Roberts called Canton Police to see if O’Keefe had been picked up that night.
Roberts says in the call that she also called area hospitals, who told her O’Keefe hadn’t been checked in.
The dispatcher told Roberts they didn’t get any calls and no one was arrested overnight. Roberts told him it was unusual that O’Keefe didn’t return home.
3:20 p.m. – Roberts describes 5 a.m. phone call from Read
On the morning of O’Keefe’s death, Read called Roberts at 5 a.m.
Roberts, who testified she was half-asleep, said Read screamed, “Kerry, Kerry, Kerry, John’s dead” and hung up.
Read was so loud on the phone that it woke up Roberts’ husband.
3:05 p.m. – Roberts testifies about relationship with O’Keefe
Roberts, whose son is the same age as O’Keefe’s nephew, said she and O’Keefe went to high school together in Braintree but were not close.
The pair became close after O’Keefe’s sister and brother-in-law died and he became the guardian of his niece and nephew, Roberts said.
Roberts lived in the same neighborhood as O’Keefe and he was the emergency contact for her children at school.
“There was a lot of us that jumped in to help” O’Keefe raise the children, Roberts said. “The community came together” in the wake of O’Keefe’s sister and brother-in-law’s death, she said.
3 p.m. – Prosecution calls next witness
Brennan called Kerry Roberts — one of the two women with Read on the morning O’Keefe was found — to the stand after Nuttall’s testimony concluded.
Before Roberts took the stand, Brennan played a clip of Read’s interview with Investigation Discovery for the docuseries, “A Body in the Snow.”
In it, Read says, “I know I said ‘I hit him’” as part of a discussion of how her memory has been warped by her review of the evidence in the case.
2:55 p.m. – Nuttall says no one exited the home
On re-cross examination, Nuttall said he never saw anyone exit the home as first responders worked on O’Keefe.
That’s despite the “chaotic” scene that featured screaming, flashing lights and the sound of emergency response vehicles.
Jackson also attempted to undermine Nuttall’s version of events, saying his testimony didn’t line up with the videos both sides played during questioning.
Specifically, Nuttall’s statements about who was performing CPR on O’Keefe and when appeared to be inconsistent with the video, Jackson said.
2:40 p.m. – Read told others, ‘I hit him’
After a brief sidebar, Brennan asked Nuttall if he had heard Read say “I hit him” to anyone else at the scene.
Nuttall said he heard her say it “in the background” as he was treating O’Keefe.
“That was not our focus,” he said.
2:36 p.m. – Nuttall says Brennan never influenced testimony
As Brennan continued his questioning of Nuttall, he asked if he had ever told Nuttall to “stick to a story.”
Nuttall said he hadn’t, and that during their meetings, Brennan told him his testimony needed to be his best recollection of what happened.
2:30 p.m. – Brennan questions Nuttall about video shown by defense
On redirect, Brennan asked Nuttall if the moment he heard Read say “I hit him” was included in the dash cam video played by Jackson during cross-examination.
Nuttall said it wasn’t, and Brennan played the video from the moment paramedics arrived.
2:13 p.m. – Jackson questions Nuttall about meeting with lead investigator
Jackson asked Nuttall if he remembered telling former Trooper Michael Proctor that he saw Read “praying” over O’Keefe’s body.
Nuttall said he did not recall saying anything like that, and appeared confused when Jackson asked.
“I have no recollection of saying that anybody prayed over anybody in this case,” he said after reviewing a copy of Proctor’s report.
During the first trial, Nuttall testified his memory of conversations with Proctor was “faulty.” On Tuesday, he confirmed that was still true.
Nuttall denied ever saying that Read prayed over O’Keefe.
“That’s really not something that I ever would have said,” he said.
2 p.m. – Nuttall resumes testimony after lunch
Nuttall returned to the stand after a lunch break, and Jackson began a line of questioning about whether the first responders discussed the incident after returning to the fire station.
“Do you remember discussing your observations and what happened at the scene?” Jackson asked.
Nuttall said he had not. Instead, the group discussed what equipment they used on the call and whether any of it needed to be replaced.
1:05 p.m. – Jackson grills Nuttall about O’Keefe’s injuries
Nuttall said in addition to the lacerations on his arm, O’Keefe had a hematoma — a golf-ball-sized swollen wound — above his right eye.
That injury is often the result of blunt force trauma, such as being hit, Nuttall said.
Jackson asked Nuttall if O’Keefe’s injuries could be consistent with a fight. Brennan objected and Nuttall said he couldn’t answer the question.
But Jackson said Nuttall answered the very same question at the first trial.
Cannone called a sidebar and adjourned the trial for lunch afterward.
12:57 p.m. – Nuttall testifies about O’Keefe’s clothing
During the first trial, and during his testimony before a grand jury, Nuttall said he remembered O’Keefe wearing a puffy winter coat on the morning he was found.
At Jackson’s prompting, Nuttall admitted he was “completely wrong” about the clothing.
In fact, O’Keefe was wearing a short-sleeve T-shirt and a thin hoodie, Jackson told Nuttall.
12:49 p.m. – Jackson begins cross-examination of Nuttall
Nuttall said he had three conversations with prosecutors before he testified, including one on Monday night.
During a meeting with prosecutors three weeks ago, Nuttall went over his testimony during the first trial. In his testimony at Read’s first trial, Nuttall testified he heard Read say “I hit him” twice, not the three times he said he heard it during his testimony Tuesday.
Jackson asked Nuttall about a second meeting with Brennan and State Police Detective Lt. Brian Tully, the former head of the State Police Detective Unit assigned to the district attorney’s office.
During the meeting, the group went over the “I hit him” statement again.
Jackson grilled Nuttall about the difference between his testimony in the first and second trials.
Canton Fire Department paramedic Timothy Nuttall testifies during Karen Read’s second murder trial at Norfolk Superior Court on Tuesday, April 22, 2025 in Dedham, Mass. (Stuart Cahill/The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)BH
12:32 p.m. – Prosecution plays dashcam footage
Brennan played footage taken from a dash camera in a police cruiser on the morning of O’Keefe’s death.
Read can be seen running and screaming in the footage as Nuttall and another firefighter began working on O’Keefe.
The audio in the footage cut out around the moment when Nuttall said he heard Read say she hit O’Keefe.
12:25 p.m. – Nuttall explains ‘I hit him’ statement
Nuttall said as he knelt near O’Keefe’s head, he looked up to see Read with blood on her face.
As he provided ventilation to O’Keefe, Read told Nuttall, “I hit him,” “I hit him,” “I hit him.”
“I remember it very distinctly,” Nuttall said.
The morning O’Keefe was found stood out more than most calls Nuttall had been on, he said, because of the setting and the unknown nature of the call.
Nuttall noted that he was not a police officer or an investigator, and his only focus on the morning he found O’Keefe was to try and save his life.
12:15 p.m. – Canton firefighter testifies about finding O’Keefe
Nuttall said snow was coming down heavily when he arrived to 34 Fairview Road on the morning of Jan. 29, 2022.
Nuttall heard screaming and followed the noise, where he discovered Read and two other women: Jennifer McCabe and Kerry Roberts. He rushed over to O’Keefe, who was lying on his back where the front lawn met the sidewalk.
Nuttall tried to find a pulse, but O’Keefe wasn’t breathing. O’Keefe was cold to the touch, he said.
“There was no signs of life,” he said.
Because O’Keefe was cold to the touch, first responders attempted to resuscitate him. Nuttall said O’Keefe’s fingers were white and stiff, which can be signs of hypothermia and frostbite.
12 p.m. – Prosecution calls first witness
Nuttall, the first responder who said he heard Read say, “I hit him,” was called as the first witness for the prosecution.
His testimony began with him describing his background and experience.
On the morning of Jan. 29, 2022, Nuttall said he arrived to work early, just before 6 a.m. Not long after entering the building, Nuttall heard a dispatcher say an unresponsive man had been found in a snow bank.
11:30 a.m. – Medical examiner didn’t rule O’Keefe’s death a homicide
Jackson told the jury that the commonwealth’s medical examiner declined to rule O’Keefe’s death a homicide.
Instead, Dr. Irini Scordi-Bello left his manner of death undetermined, despite reviewing the police reconstruction of the crash they say killed O’Keefe.
“By the end of this trial you’ll conclude … there was no collision,” Jackson said. “This case is the very definition of reasonable doubt.”
After Jackson concluded, Cannone called a recess.
11:25 a.m. – Defense contests ‘I hit him’ statement
Read was “desperately trying to piece together” what happened when O’Keefe did not come home on the night of Jan. 29, 2022, Jackson said.
She was running through possibilities in her mind: could a plow have hit O’Keefe? Could she have?
But she never said, “I hit him,” Jackson said. The remark was not in any police reports from the night, and first emerged in an interview with an EMT the next day.
That interview was arranged by Canton Police detective Kevin Albert, whose brother, Brian, owned the home O’Keefe found outside of. The EMT was close friends with Brian Albert’s daughter, Jackson said.
The Alberts were close friends with now-fired Trooper Michael Proctor, the lead investigator into O’Keefe’s death, Jackson told the jury.
“That’s not just bias,” he said. “That is corruption and you’ll see how far it went.”
11:15 a.m. – Defense begins pointing the finger at prosecution witnesses
Jackson said Brian Higgins, a federal agent inside the home the night of O’Keefe’s death, went to the Canton Police station after leaving the home.
Higgins and Read had been flirting over text in the weeks before O’Keefe died, but Read cut off the flirtation.
There, Higgins made a phone call at 1:30 a.m., Jackson said. An hour after, Higgins received a call from the homeowner, Brian Albert, around 2:22 a.m.
When Albert and Higgins were asked about the calls, they explained them away as butt dials.
Both men got rid of their phones not long after O’Keefe’s death, Jackson noted.
When Albert’s sister-in-law, Jennifer McCabe, left the home, she googled, “hos long to die in cold” at 2:27 a.m., according to the defense. An extraction of McCabe’s phone showed the search was deleted.
That search came five minutes after the call from Albert to Higgins, and hours before O’Keefe’s body was found.
11:03 a.m. – O’Keefe’s injuries were not consistent with car accident, defense says
Jackson told jurors that O’Keefe’s injuries were inconsistent with a car crash. He had no bruising on his body.
The wounds on O’Keefe’s right arm were from an animal, such as a large dog, Jackson said.
A forensic expert will tell the jury that the injury to O’Keefe’s head was not from hitting his head on the ground, as prosecutors have suggested. Instead, Jackson said, the expert determined the injury was consistent with O’Keefe hitting his head on a raised or angled surface.
Attorney Alan Jackson gives his opening statement at Karen Read’s second murder trial at Norfolk Superior Court on Tuesday, April 22, 2025 in Dedham, Mass. (Stuart Cahill /The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)AP
10:59 a.m. – Defense lays out its narrative
Jackson laid out what happened on the night of O’Keefe’s death, explaining to jurors that members of the Albert family were at the Waterfall bar drinking before Read and O’Keefe arrived.
Brian Albert owned the home on Fairview Road that O’Keefe was found outside of.
As the bar was closing, the Alberts invited the couple back to the home. When they arrived, O’Keefe went inside the house, Jackson said.
“John O’Keefe went inside the Albert home that night,” he said, telling jurors eyewitnesses and digital forensics would confirm that.
Jackson told jurors a forensic expert determined O’Keefe did not die of hypothermia, as prosecutors suggest. That means he had to have been injured somewhere other than outside the home, he said.
10:50 a.m. – Investigation into O’Keefe’s death was ‘corrupted,’ defense says
Jackson said the prosecution’s entire case was the “definition of reasonable doubt.”
The Boston police officer who owned the home O’Keefe was found outside of, Brian Albert, never went outside on the morning of O’Keefe’s death, Jackson noted.
Albert ignored “blood curdling” screams, ladder trucks, ambulances, paramedics and police cruisers, Jackson said.
Proctor never investigated Albert nor anyone else inside the home that night, Jackson told the jury.
“This case carries a malignancy … a cancer that can not be cut out. That cancer has a name; it’s Michael Proctor,” he said. “Michael Proctor is the very definition of the commonwealth’s case. And he’s also their Achilles heel.”
10:45 a.m. – Defense begins its opening statement
Jackson began his opening statement for Read’s defense, saying that the prosecution’s theory was “contrary to science.”
“There was no collision with John O’Keefe,” he said.
Jackson told jurors the whole case can be explained by one text message sent by now-fired trooper Michael Proctor. A friend asked Proctor, the lead investigator, if the homeowner would “catch any [expletive].”
Proctor replied simply, “nope, homeowner’s a Boston cop too.”
10:40 a.m. – Read admitted to the crime, prosecution says
Special prosecutor Hank Brennan told jurors that they will hear a series of statements made by Read in the wake of O’Keefe’s death that show her guilt.
He then played a clip from an interview Read did with Dateline, in which she said, O’Keefe “didn’t look mortally wounded.”
“The facts, the data and the evidence will bring you to the truth,” he concluded.
10:37 a.m. – Pieces of Read’s taillight ‘littered’ around O’Keefe’s body
Over the course of 10 days, as snow melted, investigators found “almost every piece” of Read’s broken taillight around O’Keefe’s body, Brennan said. They also found O’Keefe’s hat and a sneaker.
Brennant told jurors that O’Keefe’s DNA was found on Read’s taillight.
10:27 a.m. – Brennan describes the night of O’Keefe’s death
Read was drinking heavily on the night of O’Keefe’s death, Brennan said.
When Read and O’Keefe arrived at the Waterfall Bar in Canton, Read did a shot — her eighth drink in three hours, Brennan said.
When Read and O’Keefe left the bar, they got lost on the way to 34 Fairview Road. They arrived just before 12:30 a.m., and Read pulled her car to the far end of the home’s front lawn, near a flagpole.
At 12:32 a.m., O’Keefe got out of the car, looked at his phone, and shut the phone off for the last time. Data from Read’s Lexus shows the car moved away after O’Keefe got out, Brennan said.
That night, O’Keefe got almost 40 calls from Read. In one voicemail, she said, “John, I [expletive] hate you.”
10:18 a.m. – Prosecution introduces O’Keefe
Brennan spent part of his opening statement telling jurors about O’Keefe.
He was a family man, Brennan said, who stepped in to raise his niece and nephew after their parents died.
When O’Keefe and Read began dating, she helped with the kids. Their relationship became serious, but it began to unravel in January 2022, he said.
“You will see the tension,” he said. “You will see that when he would ignore her calls, they would become incessant.”
10:15 a.m. – ‘We are here today because John O’Keefe was killed’
Brennan said jurors will see facts, science and data that show Read accelerated her SUV in reverse, clipping O’Keefe and knocking him over, where he lay in the snow dying.
Special prosecutor Hank Brennan gives his opening argument at Karen Read’s second murder trial at Norfolk Superior Court on Tuesday, April 22, 2025 in Dedham, Mass. (Stuart Cahill /The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)AP
10:05 a.m. – Prosecution begins its opening statement
Brennan began his opening statement by describing what happened inside the Canton Fire Department on the morning of O’Keefe’s death.
When two paramedics arrived at 34 Fairview Road in blizzard conditions around 6 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, they “stepped out into bedlam,” Brennan said.
As firefighter Timothy Nuttall began performing CPR on O’Keefe, Read approached him. In that moment, Read said, “I hit him,” “I hit him,” “I hit him,” Brennan said.
“In that moment, the defendant admitted what she did.”
9:45 a.m. – Jury is sworn in
After Cannone asked three questions to jurors, the court clerk swore in the 18-person panel.
The clerk, Jim McDermott, then read the indictments against Read to the jurors.
9:23 a.m. – Judge addresses outstanding motions
Cannone addressed a number of outstanding motions before bringing in the jury Tuesday morning. She allowed a prosecution request prohibiting the defense from raising a third-party culprit defense in its opening, and denied a prosecution request to bring in independent readers for texts exchanged between Read and O’Keefe.
She later called the lawyers to sidebar to address whether the defense could mention a pair of accident reconstruction experts hired by the federal government in their opening statement.
8:30 a.m.
Read, 45, is charged with second-degree murder in the death of O’Keefe, who was found outside the home of a fellow Boston police officer in Canton on Jan. 29, 2022.
Norfolk County prosecutors say Read struck O’Keefe with her SUV while driving intoxicated. Read’s attorneys say her car never struck O’Keefe and that others are to blame for his death.
