Karen Read was found not guilty on her retrail about boyfriend's death
It occurred in January 2022. He was found dead in the snow, with head injuries, while Read defended his innocence on manslaughter charges.
Karen Read, an American woman accused of murdering her boyfriend in January 2022, was found not guilty by a Massachusetts jury. After her first prosecution ended in a mistrial, she continued to plead not guilty to the charges and maintained her innocence.
However, Read was found guilty of operating under the influence of alcohol, sentencing her to one year of probation. After the verdict, she stopped to thank her followers for their financial and emotional support. "No one has fought harder for justice than John O'Keefe and I have -- than I have, and my team," she said.
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What happened in the night of the event?
John O'Keefe was a police officer who had a strained relationship with Read, according to some voicemails presented in court. After a couple of drinks with friends in January 2022, the woman drove her boyfriend to Brian Albert's home, a friend of the man, at 1 a.m. Hours later, Karen noticed that John didn't come home after a fight.
The police officer was found lying in the snow outside Albert's home. At the moment, Read repeatedly said, "I hit him. I hit him," thinking about an incident when she hit O'Keefe's SUV. The autopsy revealed that the cause of death was blunt impact injuries to the head and hypothermia.
Karen Read and John O'Keefe had a strained relationship, according to voicemails presented in court. Photo: NBC News
Theories presented in Court
Prosecutors said that Read hit the man and then left him to die during a blizzard, knowing that the man was injured. On the other hand, the defense argued that the woman's car did not hit O'Keefe and proposed a theory that the police officer was attacked by a dog and then beaten by people in the house who left the man in the snow.
Despite being found not guilty, Read admitted that she drove while she was drunk. After the verdict, the witnesses who testified against the woman called the sentence a "devastating miscarriage of justice." One of them was Jennifer McCabe, O'Keefe's niece, who was with Karen during the search for her uncle and was even mentioned as being involved in the police officer's death.
