Prosecution rests case in Karen Read retrial over death of John O'Keefe
Karen Read pleaded not guilty to murder charges in the death of Boston police officer John O’Keefe and is facing a retrial after a jury was unable to reach a verdict last year.
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After prosecutors rested their case Thursday, Karen Read told reporters outside the courthouse that she expects her lawyers to take 1 1/2 to two weeks to present their defense and revealed the first witness she expects to call as Matt DiSogra, from the North Carolina-based accident reconstruction firm Delta V.
Prosecutors sought to discredit DiSogra's analysis last week with testimony from Shanon Burgess, from another firm called Aperture. He said he used different methodology to get a more accurate picture of the clock differential between Read's Lexus SUV and John O'Keefe's iPhone.
But the defense called his credibility into question on cross-examination after revealing "errors" in his resume that overstated his credentials.
Read is accused of hitting O'Keefe, her boyfriend and a Boston police officer, and leaving him to die in a blizzard on Jan. 29, 2022.
Her defense denies the allegation as well as the claim that her vehicle struck O'Keefe to begin with -- and they are expected to lean on DiSogra's testimony to convince jurors that O'Keefe used his phone after Read left 34 Fairview Road, where he was found unresponsive hours later.
Burgess, however, called his timeline "misleading" and "based on inaccurate adjustments."
When asked if she plans to testify in her own defense, she repeated her pervious answer, "TBD."
Karen Read, who is accused of killing her boyfriend Boston police Officer John O'Keefe, in 2022, during her murder trial at Norfolk Superior Court, Tuesday, May 27, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (Matt Stone/The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)
Special prosecutor Hank Brennan took a subtle swipe at Karen Read's defense team in court Thursday when he asked a crash reconstruction expert if he ever used the encrypted Signal app to touch base with the prosecution.
"When you were asked questions about communications, when you would have communications with the Norfolk County District Attorney's office, did you ever use encrypted apps to secretly hide your communications apps like Signal?"
"No, I don't have any of those," Welcher said.
Defense attorney Robert Alessi objected -- and Judge Beverly Cannone sustained. But she allowed Brennan to rephrase the question.
"When you were communicating with members of the Norfolk County District Attorney's Office, did you ever use encrypted apps like Signal to communicate?” Brennan asked.
"No -- I mean, I don't even know what that is," Welcher replied.
During a hearing without jurors present in late April, a crash expert for the defense admitted he used the Signal app to communicate with Read's legal team and that he also shared talking points.
Dr. Daniel Wolfe testified during the first trial that damage to Read's SUV was inconsistent with what he would expect to see if it struck John O'Keefe, the Boston police officer Read is accused of killing in a drunken hit-and-run.
Wolfe is one of two experts from the ARCCA forensics firm.
Brennan's team previously tried to have them excluded from the retrial, and he has repeatedly accused the defense and ARCCA of slow-walking expert witness discovery disclosures.
With dozens of text messages between ARCCA and defense counsel unaccounted for, and missed discovery deadlines, Cannone said she understood the prosecution's complaints but ruled against them anyway.
Judge Beverly Cannone says the case is ahead of schedule and sends the jury home early.
Today was already planned to be a half-day.
Karen Read's defense is expected to begin her defense at 9 a.m. Friday.
Cannone asked Read defense lawyer Elizabeth Little to submit something she is expecting within the hour and tells the sides she'll see them tomorrow.
Special prosecutor Hank Brennan rested the commonwealth's case against Karen Read Thursday, following testimony from a crash reconstruction expert who believes John O'Keefe died after being struck by Read's 2021 Lexus SUV.
The move comes more than a month into Read's trial, which began with jury selection on April 1 and opening statements three weeks later.
Brennan's final witness was Dr. Judson Welcher, a crash reconstruction expert from the firm Aperture, whose findings aim at convincing jurors it was Read's SUV that fatally struck O'Keefe hours before he was found unresponsive under a pile of snow during a blizzard on Jan. 29, 2022.
The defense has argued that no impact ever happened and that someone or something else caused O'Keefe's injuries, which included a fractured skull and scrapes up one arm.
Welcher used wet paint on a Lexus taillight to illustrate how the vehicle could have scraped up O'Keefe's arm before he fell to the ground.
After Welcher's testimony, Brennan played an additional clip from a televised interview with Read following her first trial, which ended with a deadlocked jury last year.
“So I thought, could I have run him over. Did he try to get me as I was leaving, and I didn’t know it?" Read told the interviewer.
"I mean I’ve always got the music blasting. It’s snowing. I got the wipers going. The heater’s blasting," she continued. "Did he, did he come and hit the back of my car, and I hit him in the knee and he’s drunk and passed out and asphyxiated or something?"
"And then when I hired David Yannetti, I asked him those questions. The night of Jan. 29. David, what if I ran his foot over? Or what if I clipped him in the knee and he passed out and or went to care for himself and threw up or passed out, and David said, ‘Yea, then you have some element of culpability.”
Digital forensics analyst Shanon Burgess is grilled by defense attorney Robert Alessi over errors in his CV and LinkedIn profile during the retrial of Karen Read in the Norfolk Superior Court, Monday, May 19, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via AP, Pool)
When Karen Read's lawyers called out digital forensics expert Shanon Burgess in court last week over "errors" in his resume that suggested he has a bachelor's degree when he doesn't, it was an "ambush" in the courtroom, according to court filings.
In a motion asking the judge to block the defense from introducing any other undisclosed information under the rules of the court special prosecutor Hank Brennan wrote his team had no chance to review or vet the documents before the defense brought them up.
"The effort of providing documents as a witness is being confronted with documents is improper, trial by ambush, a violation of Rule 14, and creates needless delay resulting in objections, unnecessary sidebars, and a waste of time for the jury," he wrote. "The Commonwealth seeks a ruling precluding the use of any materials that were not noticed by the defense other than materials in the witnesses' CV, referred to during presentation, or discussed during testimony."
Defense attorney Robert Alessi highlighted out inconsistencies in three versions of Burgess' resume and revealed he got the dates wrong on a timeline that was supposed to be accurate "to the second."
The timeline is crucial for prosecutors, who aim to use it to illustrate that John O'Keefe stopped using his phone around the same time Read reversed her car.
Burgess found that the variance of the internal clocks in Read's Lexus and O'Keefe's iPhone are between 21 and 29 seconds out of sync, contradicting a defense expert.
Attorney Robert Alessi cross examines witness Dr. Judson Welcher, an accident reconstruction expert, on the witness stand during the Karen Read murder trial at Norfolk Superior Court, Wednesday, May 28, 2025, in Dedham Mass. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)
Judge Beverly Cannone denied a request from Karen Read defense attorney Robert Alessi to question Dr. Judson Welcher, a crash reconstruction expert, about a state trooper who testified in the first trial and the findings of Dr. Irini Scordi-Bello, who conducted the autopsy of John O'Keefe.
Special prosecutor Hank Brennan opposed the motion.
Scordi-Bello testified previously that O'Keefe's fatal head injury was consistent with falling backward and hitting his head on the ground. She ruled his cause of death blunt force trauma to the head and hypothermia, but left the manner of death "undetermined." She did not rule it a homicide.
She also testified that she did not notice any injuries consistent with a motor vehicle accident on O'Keefe's legs, but later said most motor vehicle strikes on pedestrians involve the front end of the car.
Karen Read reacts during the prosecutor's questions to Accident Reconstructionist, Dr. Judson Welcher during her trial, Tuesday, May 27, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (Matt Stone/The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)
Karen Read returns to Thursday for day 23 of testimony in her retrial on murder charges in the death of her Boston police officer boyfriend, John O'Keefe, in January 2022.
Read's defense denies she ever struck him with her 2021 Lexus SUV as prosecutors allege, and is expected to continue cross-examination of a crash reconstruction Dr. Judson Welcher, who testified this week that injuries on O'Keefe's arm lined up with the vehicle's shattered taillight.
"[O’Keefe’s injuries are] consistent with being struck by a Lexus and also contacting a hard surface, such as frozen ground," Welcher testified.
Defense attorney Robert Alessi grilled him on whether he knew for sure how O'Keefe suffered his injuries and on changes he made to his expert report in the days before taking the witness stand.
Cross resumes Thursday morning after a brief evidentiary hearing.
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