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Highlights from Karen Read’s ‘Dateline’ special, from a ‘coy’ tipster to calls with Turtleboy
“Could I have done something that knocked him out, and in his drunkenness and in the cold, [he] didn’t come to again?”
Karen Read invited viewers into her war room for a new NBC “Dateline” special Friday, offering a behind-the-scenes look at a defense team strategy session and sharing some of her thoughts on the murder case that has gripped true crime fanatics around the world.
The episode spotlights a nearly three-year saga that began when Read, 44, allegedly backed her SUV into her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, and left him to die outside a fellow Boston officer’s home in Canton on Jan. 29, 2022. Prosecutors allege Read killed O’Keefe intentionally, fueled by alcohol and rage at the couple’s deteriorating relationship.
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But Read’s lawyers have another theory: That O’Keefe entered the home on Fairview Road that night and was severely beaten, attacked by the family’s dog, and dumped outside in a blizzard. Read, they say, was framed in an elaborate law enforcement conspiracy.
Prosecutors’ first attempt at trying Read for second-degree murder and other charges ended in a mistrial July 1; a retrial is slated for January.
Here are some highlights from the “Dateline” episode on the case.
Read says she saw O’Keefe open the door to 34 Fairview Road
Prosecutors allege Read consumed a total of nine drinks as she and O’Keefe barhopped the night before he died, and a forensic toxicologist who testified during her trial estimated her blood alcohol content would have been between 0.135% and 0.292% around 12:45 a.m. on the 29th.
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However, Read told “Dateline” she didn’t feel impaired.
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“I’d had several [drinks]. But I felt fine,” she told NBC correspondent Dennis Murphy, adding, “I mean, I felt like I had had a couple drinks.”
The couple drank with friends and acquaintances at two Canton bars, and as the outing wound down, Brian Albert — a fellow Boston police officer — issued an open invitation to keep the night going at his home at 34 Fairview Road. Read drove herself and O’Keefe to the afterparty.
“I said, ‘John, can you just run in there and like, you know, can we make sure we’re welcome here and it’s somewhere we want to be?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I’ll be right back,’” she recalled.
Read claimed she saw O’Keefe approach the front door and “start to cross the threshold,” adding, “I see him open the door and put his head inside.”
She said she looked down at her cell phone, and O’Keefe was no longer in sight when she lifted her head moments later. Read said she waited for her boyfriend to reemerge and give her an indication to come inside.
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“He didn’t come back, and it pissed me off,” she said. “Because one, I didn’t really want to be there. Two, I had to go to the bathroom.”
Read added: “It’s 12:30, and I’m waiting here in the snow, in the darkness. I don’t know these people well, and what? Did you stay to have a beer? Why aren’t you signaling to me?”
Read ‘never said goodbye’ to O’Keefe’s niece and nephew
O’Keefe’s shell-shocked family gathered at his home shortly after his death, including the young niece and nephew he raised after both their parents died. According to Beth, a member of O’Keefe’s extended family who declined to use her last name on-air, Read joined the family and sat with the children “for a short time” before she and her father began collecting her belongings.
“She just left. Never said goodbye. And at that point it had been almost two years that she had been in their lives,” Beth told “Dateline.”
For her part, Read said she left the home following a chilly reception from O’Keefe’s family.
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“I felt some tension with John’s mother,” Read said. “She seemed to be keeping her distance, and it felt uncomfortable. She wasn’t really addressing me, and she did not seem to want the kids near me.”
While several witnesses testified that they heard Read say “I hit him” multiple times the morning O’Keefe died, Read insisted she actually said, “Could I have hit him? Did I hit him?”
She told “Dateline” she initially wondered, “Could I have done something that knocked him out, and in his drunkenness and in the cold, [he] didn’t come to again?”
A tipster sparked the coverup theory at the heart of Read’s defense
Speaking to “Dateline,” defense attorney David Yannetti remembered receiving a call from a tipster early on in the case.
“He had a very distinctive voice, very gravelly voice,” Yannetti recalled. “He said, ‘Dave, you don’t know me. I want you to know, your client is innocent.’”
According to “Dateline,” the tipster was a “former sheriff’s investigator turned private eye.”
“I didn’t know what he knew or didn’t know. I didn’t know how he knew it,” Yannetti said. “He was coy about that. But there’s something else going on here, pointing to a potential other suspect.”
Read noted the tipster seemed to have “inside information” about the case. He allegedly pointed to people who attended the afterparty at Brian Albert’s home that morning.
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“He believed that it was Brian Albert who had ‘tuned up’ John,” Yannetti said, adding that the tipster seemed to get nervous when he saw Yannetti taking notes. Read said the man “recanted” his story upon meeting with police.
Court documents from the case may shed further light on the tipster’s intel, outlining a meeting Massachusetts State Police had last year with a local private investigator who fit the tipster’s description. According to a recap of the interview, the investigator told police he reached out to Yannetti in early 2022 and suggested O’Keefe may have been beaten up, though he couldn’t say for certain and had no personal knowledge of the case.
“I just had the feeling he knew more than he was telling us, and he didn’t want to tell us how or why he knew it,” Yannetti said in the “Dateline” episode. “I still feel that way.”
But with the tipster’s initial information, he said, “We were off and running.”
Read added: “He crystallized and confirmed our suspicions.”
Read acknowledges behind-the-scenes calls with Turtleboy
Read told “Dateline” she cold-called local law professors to get their take on the case, which eventually led her to high-profile Los Angeles defense attorney Alan Jackson.
Asked if he opted to tread lightly when he signed onto the case as an out-of-towner, Jackson replied: “I don’t know how to tread lightly. I tread toward the truth, period. And if that ruffles feathers, so be it. If that pisses people off, so be it. Get over it.”
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There’s a “plethora” of evidence to suggest O’Keefe was not struck by a car, he asserted in his “Dateline” interview.
“It’s just not there,” Jackson said. “He had to have been killed in another way, and the only other reasonable way for him to have been killed and suffer those injuries is for him to suffer a beating inside that house.”
Jackson also denied bringing controversial “Turtleboy” blogger Aidan Kearney into the fray. Kearney, the de facto face of the “Free Karen Read” movement, rose to national prominence writing about Read’s case and amplifying the defense team’s coverup theory. He’s also facing several witness intimidation charges for allegedly harassing individuals connected to the case.
Speaking to “Dateline,” Read admitted to speaking with Kearney by phone 189 times in the months leading up to her trial.
“It was almost every day, for like 20 minutes,” she said. “Like, ‘What do you make of this?’ or ‘What do you think?’ We’d talk about after court, ‘Oh my — I can’t believe the judge said this.’”
Read’s case has become a national spectacle, the battles over Google searches, surveillance videos, and a German shepherd named “Chloe” taking center stage. And amid the furor, some say O’Keefe’s life and legacy have been overlooked.
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“John O’Keefe had done nothing wrong and wound up dead. And on a regular basis, he was just left out of this conversation,” NBC10 Boston commentator Sue O’Connell said in the episode. “And, you know, Karen would arrive, and people had pom-poms; they would cheer her on.”
What’s next?
Read’s lawyers are seeking to dismiss two of her charges after jurors allegedly came forward to say they unofficially agreed to acquit Read of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a fatal accident. The Supreme Judicial Court is scheduled to hear the appeal Nov. 6.
In the meantime, newly appointed special prosecutor Hank Brennan is requesting access to phone records from Read’s father, William, as well as written and recorded statements he made to Boston 25 News last year.
According to an affidavit accompanying Brennan’s request, Read’s parents have attributed statements to her that are relevant to Read’s “state of mind, intent, and conduct in the minutes and hours following the murder” and are either inconsistent with her previous statements to authorities or refuted by other evidence.
Read’s second trial is slated to begin Jan. 27.
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