I was not one of the folks avidly caught up in the details, breathlessly watching every moment of the trials, the pre-trials speculation, the post-trials drama. The documentaries on Netflix, on MAX. The 20/20's, the Datelines. The Boston Globe coverage, the Boston Herald, the Quincy Patriot Ledger. The adjacent hoopla (c.f., Turtleboy). But if you live in the Boston area, you'd have to have been in a coma the last few years NOT to know about the Karen Read trial(s).
For those who've been in a coma, or living outside of Boston, in 2022, after a night (a raging snowstorm night) of voracious drinking, the body of Karen Read's boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe was found in the snow outside of the home of friends. Did Karen Read run over John O'Keefe with her Lexus SUV? Accidentally? On purpose? Accidentally on purpose?
This was just the sort of story that fans of this sort of story love to sink their teeth into.
Big, rugged, handsome Boston Irish cop. Girlfriend - an attractive, successful financial services professional - he was maybe dumping. Girlfriend who was maybe dumping him.
There was a terribly tragic overlay to this saga. A decade before, John O'Keefe's sister had died of quick-hit brain cancer, leaving two kiddos, 3 and 6 years old, motherless. A couple of months later, the brother-in-law died of a heart attack, leaving those two kiddos orphans. John O'Keefe stepped up, moved into the only home the kiddos had known, and pretty much became mom and dad to them.
So however John O'Keefe died, how incredibly sad for these children, now navigating adolescence, and orphaned once again. Gut wrenching.
In 2024, Karen Read went to trial for John O'Keefe's murder. Hung jury. The defense presented an alternate theory of the case. Something about O'Keefe getting into a fight in the friends' house and/or attacked by a dog in the friends' house. Lots of testimony by people who'd been drunk out of their skulls on the night of. Plenty of instances of sloppy, amateur hour, small town (Canton Mass) police work, including evidence collected in red Solo cups. (Proceed to party...) Expert witnesses contradicting other expert witnesses. A state cop witness who'd been caught out sending also sorts of misogynist, anti-Karen Read texts to his buddies during his investigation.
I can't remember how the jury charge was structured, but after the trial, some members came forth and said that they had voted to acquit on the most serious charges, but got hung up on the lesser ones.
Nonetheless, the Norfolk County DA decided to give it another whirl, sticking with the murder charge. And this time, they didn't rely on the local prosecutors, but brought in some big gun outsider to act as a special assistant DA. Big gun = big bucks. I read that the Norfolk DA's office may be on the hook for a million bucks for the big gun.
Speaking of big bucks, Karen Read had a squad of crack defense attorneys for both Trial One and Trial Two. Some of the expense for those defense attorneys has been covered through donations to the cause by the thousands of Karen Read supporters who've sprung up. She's raiseed over $1M from her fans, and her fundraising tactics included private dinners with her attorneys. Read's fans come by the hundreds to stand outside the courthouse, wearing pink and sporting signs that read Free Karen Read. Or signs that show a Mass license plate that says FRAMED. I pity the local optician who's had FRAMED as her vanity plate for years. People assume she's part of the FKR movement. Sheesh.
I've seen some of the FKR-ers interviewed, and they're obsessed with the case, and with Read. Karen comes out of court and flashes them the American Sign Language sign for I love you, and the crowd goes wild. They come mainly from New England, but pretty much from all over the place. Seems crazy to me that, when there are so many righteous causes to get passionate about, you'd choose this case. But what do I know about American culture these days. Apparently not much.
Anyway, Trial Two ended last week with Read acquitted of the murder and manslaughter and leaving the scene charges, and found guilty of the misdemeanor charge of DUI, for which she's been sentenced to a year's probation.
After her acquital, Read came out of court claiming that “no one has fought harder for justice for John O'Keefe than I have." Which sounds an awful lot like OJ saying that he was going to spend the rest of his life trying to find the person who'd murdered Nicole Brown.
While the coverage in these parts has been pretty much non-stop, this story gotten a lot of play nationally.
I heard that Karen Read had been found not guilty through a text from my friend in Dallas.
And on the night of her acquittal, NBC News (national) led with the Karen Read story. Not the Israel-Iran War. Not the continued ICE raids. Not any real news. The Karen Read story. And within a day or so, a few of the national networks had 1-2 hour specials devoted to the case. Have I already said sheesh?
Me? I'm no Karen Read fan, but the state put on a pretty weak case, riddled with holes, suspicious behavior, and idiocy. Plus overcharging two times backfired. It's often a prosecution strategy to give the jury the opportunity to reject that highest level charge and settle on the lesser one. (This approach has been compared to picking a mid-priced bottle of wine.)
We'll never know what happened that snowy night - other than the fact that a passel of folks went out and got rip roaring drunk, and wanted to continue the good time by bringing the party back to someone's house - that someone being a fellow Boston cop - and John O'Keefe ended up dead. We'll never know whether Karen Read backed into him, knocked him down, and left him there to become a snow-covered corpse. Or whether he was lying there, passed out but alive, and got run over by a snow plow. Or whether there was a brawl in the house. Or whether the dog did it.
I wish it were entirely over, but there's a wrongful death lawsuit, filed by the O'Keefe family, that's coming up. The suit names Karen Read, and the bars where those involved got rip roaring drunk. And it's impossible not to feel bad for John O'Keefe's family. His parents have now outlived two of their children. Their grief is unfathomable. And John O'Keefe's sister's kids? How heartbreaking have their young lives been?
Anyway, I'll be happy now that us casual consumers of Karen Read news will no longer be bombarded with said news. And I will remain amazed until the day I die that there are so many people out there who've become obsessed with this terrible story - especially the ones who became such avid members of Read's fan club. Would that we could get people as interested in news that truly matters to them. Or should.
Can I say 'sheesh' again?
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Image Source: Fox News
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