The latest on the Karen Read murder case
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Karen Read called John O’Keefe over 50 times the morning he died, left expletive-filled voicemails, trooper testifies
Eight voicemails were played in court Tuesday as Read's murder retrial continued.
On the stand Tuesday:
- Lt. Kevin O’Hara, Massachusetts State Police
- Lt. Charles Rae, Canton Police Department
- Trooper Nicholas Guarino, Massachusetts State Police
- Robert Gilman, Hull, MA
- Retired Lt. Paul Gallagher, Canton Police Department
3:45 p.m. update: State Police lieutenant testifies about search for evidence outside 34 Fairview Road
As they searched through the snow outside 34 Fairview Road on Jan. 29, 2022, Massachusetts State Police investigators found several pieces of broken taillight and a discarded sneaker, State Police Lt. Kevin O’Hara testified Tuesday.
The team commander for the State Police Special Emergency Response Team (SERT), O’Hara explained he received a call from State Police Lt. Brian Tully at 2:32 p.m. that day requesting a search of the area where Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe was found unresponsive in the snow.
O’Hara said he was informed O’Keefe had been injured in an incident involving a vehicle, and “we were instructed that it was believed that the vehicle may have had a broken taillight, so we were looking for taillight pieces. We were also informed the victim in this incident was missing his shoe, so we were going to be looking for a sneaker, as well.”
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He told jurors he arrived at 34 Fairview Road at 4:56 p.m. and was ultimately joined by six other SERT investigators. They sifted through the snow with shovels, a push broom, and garden rakes, using head lamps and cruiser headlights to illuminate the scene for “pretty decent” visibility, O’Hara explained. Answering a question from special prosecutor Hank Brennan, he said it didn’t appear that any snow displaced by plows had reached the area where O’Keefe’s body had been.
Investigators had found their first piece of evidence at 5:45 p.m., a taillight segment. As they uncovered more evidence, SERT members would notify O’Hara and Tully and pause their search until detectives could collect and document each item, O’Hara explained.
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He said his team found a sneaker “flush up against the curb” and “inverted upside down,” with snow inside it. They also uncovered “maybe six or seven pieces of taillight.”
“Do you know if any of the items were touching the ground, or were they on snow?” Brennan asked.
“A couple of the pieces were found at ground level, touching the asphalt,” O’Hara replied.
Brennan asked whether the investigators spotted any civilians in the area, and O’Hara said journalists arrived at some point during the search and took photos. He described seeing “fresh, undisturbed” snow in the search area when he first arrived.
Answering a later question from defense attorney Alan Jackson on cross-examination, O’Hara recalled seeing an adult man exit 34 Fairview Road at some point. O’Hara said he didn’t know the man.
Standing at the front door, “He asked if we were here ‘for what happened earlier,’” O’Hara testified. “We replied ‘yes,’ and he turned and went back inside the residence.”
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He told jurors the SERT investigators suspended their search around 6:15 p.m. after they failed to find any additional evidence. O’Hara said he then debriefed with Tully, adding, “I told him there was a good chance we did not locate everything that evening, and we offered to return at a later date or time at his request.”
While O’Hara testified his team never returned to the scene, he said he later learned other State Police troopers did. Jackson noted the SERT investigators weren’t the ones to find O’Keefe’s missing baseball cap at the scene; other troopers found the hat in the melting snow days later.
Jackson also highlighted the lack of security around the crime scene throughout the day on Jan. 29, confirming O’Hara saw no crime scene tape, barricades, or police presence when he arrived.
“So before you arrived at least, and before your presence was known, for some time before you got there, that scene could have been accessed by anyone, to your knowledge?” Jackson asked.
“Well, I think the weather played a good [role] helping us with the scene security, because with that being fresh, undisturbed snow, and with the man tracking we do, we would be able to determine if anyone had accessed that area,” O’Hara explained.
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Answering a later question about his familiarity with searches in snowy conditions, he said that while SERT has conducted missing persons searches in the snow, the search outside 34 Fairview Road was their first time looking for evidence during a blizzard.
Jackson turned his attention to the pieces of taillight purportedly found at the scene that day, asking O’Hara: “Did you become aware that over the next days and … several weeks, there would be 40 more pieces of taillight claimed to be recovered at the scene?”
“I was aware other pieces were located,” O’Hara replied. “I did not know that was the number.”
Brennan sought to undercut any notions of crime scene tampering.
“Did you ever see anybody place or toss or throw anything onto your grid?” he asked.
“I did not. No, sir,” O’Hara replied.
“Did you ever see anybody physically intrude upon your grid?” Brennan prompted.
“No,” O’Hara answered. “No one did that, sir.”
Judge Beverly Cannone dismissed jurors for the day at about 3:30 p.m., telling them the trial is proceeding on track and “maybe even a little ahead of schedule.”
2:05 p.m. update: Canton police lieutenant testifies about well-being check on John O’Keefe’s niece and nephew
Canton Police Lt. Charles Rae testified briefly about performing a wellness check on John O’Keefe’s young niece and nephew, who lived with their uncle after their parents died.
Rae explained investigators were concerned the children might be home alone after learning O’Keefe’s girlfriend, Karen Read, had found him unresponsive in the snow outside 34 Fairview Road on Jan. 29, 2022.
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Special prosecutor Hank Brennan played dashboard camera footage Rae’s police cruiser captured during the drive to O’Keefe’s home on Meadows Avenue the morning of the 29th. Read’s SUV was visible in O’Keefe’s driveway, and Brennan enlarged a still photo of the car, calling attention to its right taillight.
However, Rae testified he didn’t pay attention to the car’s right rear side. He told jurors O’Keefe’s niece and nephew weren’t home when he knocked at the door, and Read’s lawyers declined to cross-examine Rae.
1:50 p.m. update: Karen Read called O’Keefe a ‘f***ing pervert’ and told him she hated him in voicemails the morning he died
Karen Read left John O’Keefe a series of explosive voicemails the morning he died, calling her boyfriend of two years a “f***ing pervert,” telling him she hated him, and accusing him of cheating on her with “another girl.”
Massachusetts State Police Trooper Nicholas Guarino played the eight voicemails in the courtroom Tuesday, also walking jurors through the dozens of unanswered calls Read purportedly made to her boyfriend in the early hours of Jan. 29, 2022. Per Guarino’s timeline, Read appeared to have called O’Keefe more than 50 times between 12:33 a.m. and 6:03 a.m.
“John, I f***ing hate you!” she screamed in the first message, at 12:37 a.m. Seconds earlier, according to Guarino, Read’s cellphone had auto-connected to the Wi-Fi at O’Keefe’s Canton home.
After several more unanswered calls, Read left a second voicemail that contained beeping noises, as well as the apparent sound of footsteps. Guarino said the call appeared to be an accidental butt dial.
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“I’m going home,” Read allegedly texted O’Keefe at 12:55 a.m. “See u later.”
In a 12:59 a.m. message, she added, “John, I’m here with your f***ing kids. Nobody knows where the f*** you are, you f***ing pervert.”
She called O’Keefe a “pervert” again in a later message at 1:10 a.m., adding, “I’m with your f***ing niece and nephew, you f***ing pervert. You’re a f***ing pervert!”
Seven minutes and several unanswered calls later, she told him she was going to her house in Mansfield and accused him of “using me right now” and “f***ing another girl.”
“You’re a f***ing loser,” Read ended the call. “F*** yourself.”
After 1:18 a.m., according to Guarino’s timeline, Read’s next unanswered call to O’Keefe was at 4:38 a.m. Her next voicemail had a markedly different tone.
“John, where the f*** are you?” Read demanded, seemingly distressed.
An eighth voicemail was left on O’Keefe’s phone shortly after 6 a.m., around the time Read, Jennifer McCabe, and Kerry Roberts found his body outside 34 Fairview Road.
McCabe’s call to 911 could be heard in the background, as could Read’s frantic screams. Defense attorney Robert Alessi opted to forgo cross-examination following the lunch recess.
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After Guarino left the stand, special prosecutor Hank Brennan played a video clip in which Read told NBC’s “Dateline” that she initially questioned whether she could have “clipped” O’Keefe and knocked him out while dropping him off at 34 Fairview Road. She added that O’Keefe “didn’t look mortally wounded, as far as I could see.”
12:30 p.m. update: Ground would have been ‘impenetrable’ during ‘the biggest January storm in history,’ meteorologist explains
At 27 inches of snowfall, the blizzard that struck the Greater Boston area the weekend John O’Keefe died was “the biggest January storm in history,” longtime meteorologist Robert Gilman testified.
“It snowed heavily for several hours,” the Precision Weather Forecasting co-owner added. “Visibility under a quarter of a mile, and the temperature was dropping during that time, and the winds were gusting frequently to 40 and 50 miles an hour in this area.”
Later, Gilman told jurors the ground would have been “impenetrable” in the days leading up to Jan. 29, 2022.
He testified that the first snowfall began late in the evening on Jan. 28 and continued into the following day. Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally asked him how much snow had accumulated on the 28th.
“Very little,” Gilman replied. “Enough to track a cat — two-tenths of an inch.”
Lally then asked about hourly snowfall on the 29th, and Gilman estimated a rate of about three-tenths of an inch per hour until 1 a.m. He said the snow continued to be relatively light until a noticeable increase in intensity around 5 a.m. From there, the snow fell more heavily through the middle of the day before tapering in the evening, according to Gilman.
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He said 3.9 inches of snow had accumulated by 6 a.m. on the 29th — around the time O’Keefe was found cold and unresponsive on the front lawn of 34 Fairview Road.
Lally asked a series of questions about the temperature at the surface of the road, or ground, and Gilman said he began his analysis with Jan. 26th.
“It typically happens in this climate in the midwinter that our ground freezes,” he explained. “So if you look a few days before, you get a good sense if that was the case.”
Lally asked about the ground temperatures recorded in the days leading up to the 29th.
“This particular year, 2022, it was colder than normal. So road temperatures were dropping much of the time,” Gilman testified. “They may have come up a little bit during the course of the day thanks to sunshine during the 26th and 27th, a little moderation in the temperature on the 28th. But for the most part, there was a frost in the ground. The soil was frozen, and the temperature was unusually cold at the middle of winter.”
“And what impact would that have on the hardness of the ground over that time period?” Lally asked.
“It would have made the ground impenetrable,” Gilman said. “You wouldn’t be able to dig in the ground.”
On cross-examination, defense attorney Robert Alessi grilled Gilman on the hour-by-hour accumulation. Answering a later question from Alessi, Gilman testified the visibility reported at 1 a.m. on the 29th was about a mile-and-a-quarter.
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Alessi asked whether someone would be able to see an object from 30 feet away under those conditions.
“All other things being equal, yes,” Gilman testified. However, he said “good visibility” would generally be considered 8 or 10 miles.
“I would never expect … a broadcast meteorologist to say visibility was good if it was less than a mile-and-a-half,” Gilman added.
Alessi also noted the “vast majority” of the accumulation happened “well after” 6 a.m.
11 a.m. update: Retired Canton police lieutenant says he didn’t give Brian Albert special treatment
Returning to the stand Tuesday, retired Canton Police Lt. Paul Gallagher adamantly denied giving special treatment to homeowner Brian Albert during the early investigation into Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe’s death.
Gallagher was the highest ranking officer at the scene outside Albert’s home at 34 Fairview Road, where O’Keefe was found unresponsive in the snow on Jan. 29, 2022. He previously testified about using a leaf blower to search the snowy lawn, showing jurors a broken cocktail glass investigators found near where O’Keefe’s body had been.
Defense attorney Alan Jackson noted Canton police investigators did not find O’Keefe’s hat or missing shoe in the snow. Massachusetts State Police found the baseball cap and sneaker at the scene during a later search.
“You did not see a single piece of bright red plastic taillight material either, did you?” Jackson asked.
“No sir, not in that area,” Gallagher replied.
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“As a matter of fact, you didn’t see 46 pieces of taillight material — either clear or bright red plastic — in any part of the area that you searched?” Jackson continued.
“No, the only thing we discovered was the blood sampling and the glass, that is correct,” Gallagher said.
Answering a follow-up question from Jackson, he testified he didn’t search inside 34 Fairview Road to see if there were cups matching the broken cocktail glass found on the lawn. While Gallagher confirmed he entered the home at one point, he explained he didn’t search it. At Jackson’s prompting, he later confirmed he did not see a dog inside the home.
“Is the reason that you didn’t seek a search warrant or separate the witnesses, or ask any of the potential witnesses to join you down at the station, did that have anything to do with your knowledge that the homeowner was a police officer?” Jackson asked, grilling Gallagher about his actions during the early investigation.
“Absolutely not,” Gallagher replied. “I’ve actually executed warrants on police officers’ houses in the past, including police officers I personally worked with and had to charge some of their children. So that absolutely would not factor into a reason.”
Jackson asked whether Albert, a since-retired Boston police officer, got any special treatment from investigators.
“Not by me. Absolutely not,” Gallagher replied, adding, “I can only speak to my personal knowledge.”
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Jackson turned his attention to the home security camera outside the nearby home of Canton Deputy Police Chief Thomas Keleher, and Gallagher testified he didn’t seek any footage from Keleher. He told jurors he couldn’t remember whether he spoke with Keleher about the footage but maintained the camera wouldn’t have captured the scene at 34 Fairview Road anyway.
Jackson asked whether it would have been best practice to request the footage, “just to have [a] belt and suspenders.” Gallagher said he didn’t think it would have been practical to do so. Pressed by Jackson, he also denied giving Keleher any special treatment.
Gallagher’s friendship with witness Brian Higgins — a federal agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives who had a satellite office in the Canton police station — also came under the microscope during cross-examination. Gallagher testified he considers Higgins a close friend but noted the Canton Police Department recused itself from the investigation into O’Keefe’s death before he learned Higgins was connected to the case.
Higgins had exchanged flirty texts with Karen Read during her relationship with O’Keefe and was present at 34 Fairview Road shortly after midnight on Jan. 29, 2022. Read’s lawyers have sought to implicate him in their third-party culprit theory, and Jackson on Tuesday highlighted Higgins’s access to parts of the Canton police station, particularly the sallyport garage where Read’s SUV was kept.
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He showed jurors a series of photos, including pictures of the back of Read’s SUV and of a paper Stop & Shop grocery bag holding red Solo cups that contained blood samples collected at the scene. Jackson questioned the chain of custody for the Solo cups and emphasized they were not sterile, nor were they sealed against possible cross-contamination.
Fielding questions from special prosecutor Hank Brennan on redirect examination, Gallagher said no witness ever suggested to him that O’Keefe had been in a fight.
“In this particular case, we came up with scenarios that possibly could have brought John to that spot, and we were focused on trying to find out,” he testified.
“Was that anything beyond the surmise or speculation of detectives, or did that information come from a witness?” Brennan asked.
“No, that was us — I guess you would call it spitballing on possibilities,” Gallagher replied.
Gallagher again denied seeing footprints, dog tracks, or visible signs to suggest anything had been dragged through the snow outside 34 Fairview Road. He also noted the portion of the front yard Canton police initially searched was limited in scope.
Answering additional questions from Jackson, Gallagher confirmed he did not formally search inside 34 Fairview Road, nor did he seek Albert’s consent or a warrant for a search.
“You don’t get in trouble … or get slapped, or get fined if you seek a search warrant that is denied, correct?” Jackson asked.
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“In this particular situation, I would need to articulate facts, certain circumstances, and witness statements,” Gallagher replied. “What I had was, nobody could put O’Keefe in the house — including Ms. Read — and that we had a glass where they were coming from a bar, and I had three separate police officers, including myself, that had been in that house on three separate occasions and saw nothing amiss.”
He noted law enforcement officers have a good-faith obligation to present the truth to a judge when seeking a search warrant and could land themselves on a Brady List of officers with a history of misconduct or dishonesty if they don’t.
After Gallagher left the stand, Brennan played a clip from one of Read’s media interviews, during which she explained O’Keefe took a cocktail glass with him as he exited her car outside 34 Fairview Road.
In another interview clip shown to jurors, Read said she initially wondered whether she could have struck O’Keefe with her car because she had been out late drinking, and O’Keefe was “in the general vicinity of where I last saw him.”
Livestream via Court TV.
A retired Canton police lieutenant returns to the stand Tuesday in the Karen Read murder retrial following his testimony about using a leaf blower and red Solo cups to process the crime scene outside 34 Fairview Road.
Retired Lt. Paul Gallagher testified about searching for evidence on the snowy lawn where Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe was found cold and unresponsive on Jan. 29, 2022.
More on Karen Read:
Read, 45, is accused of drunkenly and deliberately backing her SUV into O’Keefe, her boyfriend of two years, while dropping him off at another Boston officer’s home that morning for an afterparty. Prosecutors allege Read left her boyfriend to die in a blizzard, but her lawyers contend Read was a “convenient outsider” framed in a vast conspiracy involving law enforcement and afterparty guests. They’ve suggested O’Keefe was actually wounded during an altercation inside the house and ultimately dumped outside in the snow.
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However, Gallagher testified Monday that he saw no evidence or footprints to suggest anything had been dragged through the side or front yards at 34 Fairview Road. Special prosecutor Hank Brennan played video clips of Canton police using a leaf blower to shift the top layers of snow, and Gallagher pointed out a patch of what appeared to be bare ground where O’Keefe’s body had been.
He also testified that Canton police found a broken cocktail glass in the snow, holding the glass up for the jury to see. When they unearthed apparent blood drops in the snow, investigators collected the samples in red Solo cups obtained from Deputy Police Chief Thomas Keleher, who lived in a neighboring home, Gallagher explained.
“The same kind of Solo cups that we all see at backyard barbecues?” defense attorney Alan Jackson asked on cross-examination.
“Yep, they hold liquid terrifically,” Gallagher replied.
“They’re also not sealed, correct?” Jackson continued.
“They are not,” Gallagher confirmed.
“They’re also not used normally … for evidence collection, correct?” Jackson prompted.
“Oh, absolutely not,” Gallagher agreed.
Jackson grilled Gallagher about his decision not to send an officer back to the police station for proper evidence collection materials, appearing skeptical when Gallagher argued the 15 minutes it might have taken “would have made a difference” in the initial crime scene investigation.
Earlier on Monday, jurors heard from Katie McLaughlin, a Canton firefighter and paramedic who runs in the same social circles as the daughter of Brian and Nicole Albert, the homeowners of 34 Fairview Road at the time. McLaughlin testified she heard a “distraught” Read say “I hit him” a total of four times while speaking with first responders at the scene.
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Three others testified Monday about what they saw outside 34 Fairview Road after midnight on Jan. 29: Sarah Levinson, Heather Maxon, and Ryan Nagel. The ongoing trial is Read’s second, after her first murder trial ended with a hung jury last July.
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