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John O’Keefe’s niece’s testimony wasn’t livestreamed due to her age. Here’s what she said.
O’Keefe’s niece was just 14 years old when her uncle “JJ” died. She took the stand in Karen Read's murder retrial Wednesday.
The final few weeks of John O’Keefe’s relationship with Karen Read were marked by frequent verbal arguments and mounting tension, O’Keefe’s teenage niece told jurors Wednesday.
She and her younger brother lived with O’Keefe for several years after their mother died of brain cancer and their father had a fatal heart attack just months later. A court order bars media outlets from naming the children or livestreaming their testimony, as they are minors.
Read, 45, is accused of drunkenly and deliberately backing her SUV into O’Keefe while dropping him off at an afterparty in Canton following a night of bar-hopping in January 2022. Prosecutors have pointed to her strained relationship with O’Keefe as a possible motive, including the flirty texts she exchanged with another man while she was dating O’Keefe.
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Just 14 years old when her uncle “JJ” died, O’Keefe’s niece testified he began dating Read in 2020, and Read stayed over at the family’s home more frequently as the relationship progressed. By the time January 2022 rolled around, Read was there almost every day, she said.
More on Karen Read:
The teen told jurors she and Read would get food and go shopping together, though their relationship “kind of depended on the day.” Some days, she said she felt she’d fallen out of Read’s good graces, and Read would appear cold toward her while favoring her younger brother.
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Likewise, she said Read’s relationship with O’Keefe was “pretty good” and “lighthearted” at the start, though fractures began to form toward the end of 2021.
“They were fighting a lot,” both at home and over the phone, the niece recalled. She said she once overheard O’Keefe talking on the phone with Read, and “you could tell he was frustrated.”
She also recalled an argument Read and O’Keefe had during a trip to Aruba over New Year’s Eve in 2021. She testified she and her brother were in a hotel room when their uncle came to check on them and saw her brother using an iPad. When O’Keefe told his nephew to put the device away, Read came to the boy’s defense and started yelling about how O’Keefe had “kissed someone else,” O’Keefe’s niece recalled.
O’Keefe allegedly denied the allegation, but he and Read argued back and forth.
“It was very loud,” the teen recalled, adding that Read “was very upset.”
The fighting continued after they arrived back in Massachusetts, she said. She testified she overheard an argument in early January, during which O’Keefe told Read their relationship “was good, but it had run its course.”
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Read “was very upset by it” and yelled back, the niece said. She told jurors O’Keefe asked Read to leave the house, but Read didn’t want to go and followed O’Keefe upstairs to his bedroom. When he refused to let Read into the room, she began banging on the door, the teen testified.
By the end of January, the couple was arguing a couple times a week, according to O’Keefe’s niece.
After one of their arguments, O’Keefe left the house for a drive to cool off, his niece said. She testified she heard Read on the phone saying O’Keefe’s niece and nephew were worried about him, though the teen explained she actually didn’t know O’Keefe had left until she overheard Read’s call and wasn’t concerned up to that point.
The evening of Jan. 28, 2022, O’Keefe’s nephew headed over to a friend’s house for a sleepover while his niece stayed home with a friend. O’Keefe went out for drinks with his friend, Michael Camerano, and his niece testified she went to bed around midnight after her friend left.
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She testified she awoke hours later to Read shaking her and telling her O’Keefe hadn’t come home — unusual behavior for him, the teen added. She told jurors Read appeared more frantic than she’d ever seen her before.
At Read’s insistence, the teen called and texted her uncle, though he didn’t answer. Read then asked her to call family friend Jennifer McCabe, and she did, handing the phone to Read.
Over the course of several phone calls that morning, O’Keefe’s niece said she overheard Read “asking what could’ve happened,” her frenzied questions including, “could I have done something?” and “could he have gotten hit by a plow?”
After Assistant District Attorney Laura McLaughlin showed her documents to refresh her memory of her prior testimony, the teen told jurors she also heard Read say, “maybe I hit him.”
O’Keefe’s niece said Read left the house soon after, returning with McCabe and another family friend, Kerry Roberts. The teen told jurors McCabe came to her bedroom to speak with her and seemed “level-headed,” though Read remained frantic and did not check in or try to comfort her.
The three women left together and ultimately found O’Keefe cold and unresponsive in the snow outside 34 Fairview Road, where Read had purportedly dropped him off for the afterparty hours earlier.
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Later on Jan. 29, 2022, Read returned to O’Keefe’s house with her father and brother, O’Keefe’s niece recalled. The Reads didn’t stay long, but Read told O’Keefe’s father and niece she “felt like she was living in a nightmare” before she left, the teen recalled.
On cross-examination, defense attorney David Yannetti focused on Read’s semi-parental role during her relationship with O’Keefe, from manicures and salon visits to sporting events and school projects. Yannetti also asked the teen a series of questions about the Aruba incident, but she said she didn’t recall many specifics.
“I’d just gotten dumped by my eighth-grade boyfriend, so I was in a crisis,” she added, earning a chuckle from many in the courtroom.
However, Yannetti confirmed the teen never witnessed physical violence in Read’s relationship with O’Keefe.
“They just seemed less happy to be around each other” in January 2022, O’Keefe’s niece later told jurors. After Aruba, she added, “there was a lot more, like, tension and fighting.”
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