Karen Read’s defense lawyer told a Massachusetts jury that the murder trial for the death of her cop boyfriend is an elaborate stitch-up to “pin it on the girl,” in order to protect the officer’s police buddies.
“Pick your patsy, pin it on the girl,” Read’s lawyer Alan Jackson told a jury in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., during closing arguments Tuesday.
Read, 44, has been on trial for two months on second-degree murder charges. She is accused of backing over her lover, Boston police Officer John O’Keefe, with an SUV and leaving him to die outside during a snowstorm in Canton, Mass., on Jan. 29, 2022.
But Jackson said Read was really the victim of a sweeping conspiracy by local law enforcement to hide the fact that O’Keefe, 46, had gotten in a fight with some of his cop pals at his friend Brian Albert’s house after a night of drinking.
“Look the other way,” Jackson said. “Four words that sum up the commonwealth’ entire case, that sum up the hopes of those who have tried to deceive you.”
“The incontrovertible fact is that you’ve been lied to in this courtroom,” Jackson said, before offering alternate explanations for how the night of O’Keefe’s death played out.
“They cannot, and haven’t even tried, to explain the lack on injuries on John’s body from the neck down,” the defense lawyer said. “Nothing to suggest that he was hit by a 7,000-pound SUV at over 25 miles per hour.”
Instead, Jackson claimed the evidence showed, “John got into an altercation. He was punched [and] he tried to defend himself by putting his hands up… Every single injury is explained by that.”
But prosecutor Adam Lally, during his closing, said four witnesses testified at trial that she told first responders at the scene of where O’Keefe’s body was found in the snow, “I hit him, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.”
“Those are the words of the defendant,” Lally said. “This is all my fault, all my fault. I did this.”
“There is no conspiracy, no cover-up, no evidence of any of that beyond speculation,” the prosecutor told the jurors.
Lally attempted to pick apart Jackson’s explanation of events saying that O’Keefe couldn’t have gotten into a fight with his cop friends inside Albert’s home because a slew of witnesses claimed he never stepped foot inside the place.
Lally also said it was absurd to think that Brian Albert, a veteran cop, would be so sloppy as to critically injure O’Keefe and then dump him in his own yard.
“Twenty-eight years on the police force,” Lally said. “He’s going to beat John O’Keefe and leave him on his front lawn? Really?”
Lally also said expert testimony demonstrated that nobody else’s DNA was on O’Keefe’s clothes or body, more proof that he didn’t get in a fight.
“The defendant drove her vehicle in reverse at 24 miles per hour for 62.5 feet, struck Mr. O’Keefe, causing those catastrophic head injuries and leaving him incapacitated,” Lally said.
“The facts and that evidence, I would submit, collectively demonstrate certain guilt in the indictment before you. I would ask you to find guilt.”
Lally recapped testimony that Read had seven drinks the night over the course of roughly an hour-and-a-half before around 12:30 a.m. when she mowed him down outside Albert’s home on 34 Fairview Road.
And when she returned later that morning around 6 a.m., Read knew exactly where to find O’Keefe’s body despite the snow storm that had blown in.