Karen Read supporters rally in Massachusetts on Labor Day
Karen Read supporters rallied for her in Massachusetts on Sept. 2. She spoke to demonstrators on Monday and compared her supporters to Vietnam War protesters. (Credit: Hannah Lear /TMX)
The Massachusetts woman accused of fatally running over her police officer boyfriend in January 2022 is claiming she's been framed.
Karen Read, 44, sat down for her first media interview this week, speaking with ABC's "20/20" about what she characterized as a police conspiracy to blame her for the mysterious death of her boyfriend, John O’Keefe.
Read is accused of running over the 46-year-old officer with her SUV and leaving him to die in the cold outside a friend's house following a night of heavy drinking. O'Keefe was being dropped off to attend a party at the residence, owned by retired officer Brian Albert.
Karen Read listens as Judge Beverly J. Cannone greets the jury at the start of the third day of deliberations in her murder trial, in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Massachusetts. (Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via AP)
Read and two friends reportedly drove to Albert's house to look for O'Keefe and found his body in the early morning of the next day.
"I jumped out the passenger side, and I fell into the street. His eyes were shut, and he had spots of blood in different areas on his face, and he was still — not stiff, but still," Read told "20/20" about finding her boyfriend's body the day after. "It was cold. I felt cold, but I didn’t feel dangerously cold and it was just an odd feeling to know that ‘I’m OK. I’m not dying, but he’s here with me, and he’s dying, and I can’t warm him up.’"
The defense has made the eyebrow-raising assertion that O'Keefe was fatally injured in an altercation at the house party and left outside to frame her for the crime in a department-sweeping conspiracy.
Lawyers point to the placement of injuries on the victim's body — trauma to the head and hands — as evidence he was attacked and not hit by a large vehicle.
This undated photo released by the Boston Police Department shows officer John O'Keefe. (Boston Police Department via AP)
A piece of evidence at the heart of the case against Read is a broken tail light on the back of her Lexus SUV — shards of red plastic consistent with such a light were found on O'Keefe's body at the scene.
Other considerations include her blood alcohol content far above the legal limit and furious voicemails left on the victim's phone by Read accusing him of infidelity and expressing "hate" for him.
Read described to "20/20" the moment she met with O'Keefe's parents and realized they suspected her of the murder.
"They had pulled into the driveway before me. I was presuming she saw my cracked taillight and was thinking, ‘Did you hit my son?’" Read said. "When we were driving home, I said to my father, ‘I gotta get an attorney.’"
"Is it possible that you might have hit him unwittingly, in your admittedly very large SUV?" interviewer Matt Guttman asked.
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Karen Read supporters rally on the front steps of the Registry of Deeds building. ( (Photo by John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images))
"No," Read replied. "Not possible."
Read is charged with second-degree murder and vehicular manslaughter. She went to court in July, which ended in a mistrial. Prosecutors plan to retry her in January.
The bizarre and twisting trial has been made even more noteworthy by the response it has sparked in the public — the case has attracted large crowds of protesters on both sides.
"You’re brave," Read told a group of supporters following the mistrial, according to footage obtained by WCVB. "You would’ve protested the Vietnam War and ended it. And this is the modern equivalent to that, so thank you all."
Fox News Digital's Mollie Markowitz contributed to this report.
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