Judge denies motion to interview witnesses in Boston cop John O’Keefe’s death
A judge denied a defense attorney’s request to interview two key witnesses in a Boston police officer’s killing.
Karen Read, 42, is accused of killing her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe[1], after Norfolk County prosecutors allege she hit him with her SUV and left him for dead during a snowstorm outside of a Canton home in January 2022.
One of the witnesses owned the home the Boston cop’s dead body was found outside and the other googled: “Ho[w] long to die in cold,” the Boston Globe[2] reported.
Investigators said Read drove intoxicated when the incident occurred. She pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder, motor vehicle manslaughter while driving impaired and leaving the scene of an accident causing personal injury and death.
John O’Keefe, a Boston police officer of 16 years, was found dead outside a home in Canton during a snowstorm on Saturday, Jan. 29, 2022. (Boston Police Department).
In Norfolk Superior Court Wednesday, Read’s attorneys motioned for the cellphone records of Brian Albert, another Boston police officer, and owner of the Canton home O’Keefe’s dead body was found outside, according to the Globe[4].
Defense attorneys are also searching for phone records of Albert’s sister-in-law Jennifer McCabe who was at the Canton home the night before O’Keefe’s body was found.
The defense team accused prosecutors of concealing the evidence for more than a year and a suspicious Google search made by McCabe.
“There is simply no innocent explanation for McCabe’s search at that time,” Read’s defense team wrote in a statement. “This evidence unequivocally exonerates Karen, because it establishes that individuals who were in the house at 34 Fairview that night were aware that John was dying in the snow before Karen even knew he was missing.”
Norfolk prosecutors strongly pushed back on the claim in a 34-page court filing that accuses the defense team of attempting to establish a “wide-ranging conspiracy” without any evidence.
“There is nothing to demonstrate that the items sought are either evidentiary or relevant, or that this is anything but a fishing expedition,” wrote Adam Lally, Norfolk assistant district attorney, in a memo seeking to squash a motion seeking cell phone evidence.
Read’s attorneys called for an evidentiary hearing which would allow them to interview both McCabe and Albert. Norfolk Superior Court Judge Beverly J. Cannone denied the defense’s request and placed the attorneys’ arguments under advisement, the Globe reported.
Read’s next court date was scheduled for July 25, she is currently free on a $100,000 bond.
O’Keefe, who was a Boston police officer, was off-duty and out with Read at the Waterfall Bar in Canton past midnight on Jan. 29, 2022, prosecutors wrote in court documents. Read dropped O’Keefe off at a party at the Canton home of Albert. Prosecutors accused Read of hitting O’Keefe with her vehicle while making a three-point turn leaving the Canton residence.
Early the following morning, after growing worried that O’Keefe had not returned home, prosecutors said Read and two friends found him in the snow outside the Canton house, bruised, cut and bleeding.
During an April court hearing[6], Read’s lawyers — David R. Yannetti of Boston and Alan Jackson of Los Angeles — presented phone records from McCabe they characterized as being suspicious
At 2:27 a.m., hours before Read would find her boyfriend’s body buried in snow, McCabe searched “ho[w] long to die in cold” into her phone. Forensic data analysts discovered that McCabe later deleted the search from her phone’s history, according to the defense attorneys.
Lally wrote in the court memo that the Google search referenced by defense attorneys is not accurate and that the search did not actually happen at that time. Lally explained that the data extracted from McGabe’s cell phone is inaccurate and unreliable.
In the same batch of data that defense lawyers relied on for their arguments, it shows that O’Keefe supposedly took hundreds of steps in the hours after he was pronounced dead at the Good Samaritan Hospital, Lally wrote.
“To call this data unreliable is an understatement,” he wrote.
References
- ^ Boston police officer John O’Keefe (www.masslive.com)
- ^ Boston Globe (www.bostonglobe.com)
- ^ Prosecutors ‘grasping at straws’ in case against dead Boston cop’s girlfriend, defense says (www.masslive.com)
- ^ the Globe (www.bostonglobe.com)
- ^ Lawyers clash over phone records in case of police officer John O’Keefe’s killing (www.masslive.com)
- ^ April court hearing (www.masslive.com)