Karen Read , the Massachusetts woman who was accused of murdering her late boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe in 2022, is asking Massachusetts’ Supreme Court to dismiss her charges, the Associated Press reports. The news comes after Read’s case garnered national attention and ended with a mistrial after jurors couldn’t come to a decision. Read was charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol, and leaving the scene of personal injury and death.
She pleaded not guilty. O’Keefe’s body was discovered in the snow after Read dropped him off at a party on Jan. 29, 2022.
Surveillance footage showed she had several drinks while at the bar, and she admitted in a frantic early morning call to O’Keefe’s niece that she remembered very little about the previous night and that O’Keefe had not come home. After returning to the home where the party was to begin a search, Read and two other women found O’Keefe’s body and called first responders. According to testimony from officers, Read said, “I hit him” repeatedly while crying to EMT, but her defense argued that she asked the statement as a question, saying, “Did I hit him?” The prosecution painted Read as an alcoholic girlfriend who ran from the scene of the crime.
To the defense, she was a flawed girlfriend framed by members of the Boston Police Department. The result was a jury unable to come to a decision. On July 1, 2024, the 12-person j.