Karen Read is slowly readjusting to private life.
Just over two months after the 45-year-old was found not guilty of second-degree murder in connection to the 2022 death of her boyfriend John O’Keefe, Read is giving a glimpse into what her life is like now.
“It’s not quite as I expected,” she shared on TheHowie Carr Show Aug. 28. “I was expecting a switch to be flipped that was the opposite of the one that got flipped on me at 6 a.m. on January 29, 2022.”
But as the Massachusetts native explained, it’s been more “like a dimmer that the lights are coming on, little brighter each week.”
“There’s moments I have every day,” Read said, “that have these little epiphanies of, ‘Wow, this is the first time I’ve done fill-in-the-blank in the last four years that I wasn’t living with this nightmare.”
She also discussed her life after her February 2022 arrest and subsequent legal battle, explaining that she had to sell her house to her to help pay for the attorney fees, especially as she headed into the second trial earlier this year. And she was especially sad about losing her job at Fidelity Investments.
“That job was not just a job,” Read reflected. “That was my career, and I still miss it.”
But through it all, Read was extremely grateful for all the support she received during her legal ordeal, from her parents WilliamRead and JanetRead—who she has been living with since selling her house—to those who believed her side of the story.
“What I said when I came out of the courthouse after the acquittal is just thank you to so many people,” she said. “It feels like already a short lifetime ago, but it’s only been two months.”
She added, “These people—journalists and supporters, community members—have emotionally pulled me through.”
Read also had a message for Norfolk District Attorney MichaelMorrissey and state investigators, saying, “You lost. You lost big time, and you know what you did.”
And while she’s been focusing on life after the trial, Hollywood has been focusing on how to bring her story to the small screen, with ElizabethBanks set to star as Read in an upcoming limited series for Prime Video, per Deadline. But according to Read, she’s not involved in the show and didn’t get a heads up on casting.
“I probably read that the same time you did give or take a couple minutes,” she explained. “I have nothing to do with that. It’s not authorized by me in any way.”
Read noted that she “did not bless this,” especially because there is so much “more to this story.”
“There’s a lot more to it than what I think Elizabeth Banks knows at this point,” she added. “But I’ve never spoken to her.”
As for what everyone does know? It’s that Read was accused of drunkenly hitting boyfriend O’Keefe, a 46-year-old Boston police officer, with her car on Jan. 29, 2022, before leaving him to die outside of a house party in blizzard conditions.
Readwas first tried for murder in 2024, but the proceedings ended with a hung jury after 25 hours of deliberation.
Her second trial began in April, where her legal team alleged that she was being framed to cover up for a fight that took place inside the Canton, MA, home of Brian Albert, a prominent law enforcement officer and friend of O’Keefe’s, before he was allegedly dragged out into the lawn.
Following the second trial, Read was found not guilty of motor vehicle manslaughter while driving under the influence and leaving the scene of a collision during the June 18 verdict. She was, however, convicted of the lesser charge of operating a motor vehicle under the influence, to which she was sentenced to one year probation.
As for Morrissey, who has previously called the defense’s argument “a desperate attempt to re-assign guilt,” following the June verdict, he simply told WBZ, “The Jury has spoken.”
For a deeper dive into everything we know about Read’s case, keep reading.
What Happened to John O’Keefe?
Karen Read told authorities that she and Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, her boyfriend of almost two years, were out drinking with friends at C.F. McCarthy’s bar in Canton, Mass., on the night of Jan. 28, 2022, after which they spent about an hour at Waterfall Bar & Grille across the street. Read said that she dropped O’Keefe off at the Canton home of Boston Police Det. Brian Albert shortly after midnight and went back to O’Keefe’s house.
Prosecutors, however, alleged at Read’s Feb. 2, 2022, arraignment on manslaughter charges that there was evidence indicated she hit O’Keefe with her car before driving off and left him lying there in frigid weather conditions.
Read, a financial analyst living in nearby Mansfield, maintained that she returned to Albert’s house the following morning after O’Keefe failed to come home and she couldn’t reach him on his phone. She called a couple of people who were with her, Read said, when they found him lying in the snow outside the Albert residence at 6 a.m.
The 46-year-old cop had bloody cuts on his right arm, his eyes were swollen shut and his clothes were covered with blood and vomit, according to prosecutors. He was transported to Boston’s Good Samaritan Hospital, where he was pronounced dead later that morning.
A subsequent autopsy found that O’Keefe had suffered multiple skull fractures, as well as cuts to the back of his head and nose. The coroner ultimately attributed his death to hypothermia and blunt force trauma.
Karen Read Arrested for Manslaughter in Death of John O’Keefe
Read was arrested Feb. 1, 2022, and charged with manslaughter, leaving the scene of a motor vehicle causing death and motor vehicle homicide.
Investigators located her 2021 black Lexus SUV parked at her parents’ house, prosecutors said, and it had a shattered rear taillight and scratches on the rear bumper.
Read pleaded not guilty Feb. 2 and was released from custody after posting $50,000 bail.
Her attorney David Yannetti said during her arraignment that a manslaughter charge was “a tremendous reach” and denied any criminal intent on his client’s part. “This was not some random stranger,” he said, per NBC Boston. “This was my client’s boyfriend, somebody whom she loved.”
In a statement calling O’Keefe “a kind person” who was “dedicated to his family,” the Boston Police Department said that “the person responsible for John’s death” had been arrested.
What Did Karen Read Say After Finding John O’Keefe Dead?
Prosecutors said at her arraignment that one of the friends who went looking for O’Keefe with Read told police that her pal had called her at 5 a.m. and said, “John’s dead. I wonder if he’s dead. It’s snowing, he got hit by a plow.”
Canton firefighter Lt. Anthony Flematti later testified during Read’s trial that she told him at the scene, “’I hit him, I hit him. Oh my God, I hit him.’”
Firefighter Katie McLaughlin testified that Read “seemed very upset” and was “just visibly distraught,” and that she also heard Read say, more than once, “I hit him.”
Read maintained at trial, however, that what she screamed at Flematti was, “Did I hit him? Could I have hit him?”
Another firefighter, Matthew Kelly, testified that he only remembered Read saying, “He’s dead, he’s [expletive] dead.”
Karen Read Is Charged With John O’Keefe’s Murder
A grand jury indicted Read on a charge of second-degree murder on June 9, 2022.
Norfolk County Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally alleged during Read’s June 10 arraignment that she and O’Keefe “had been arguing for quite some time” before he died and, weeks before the night in question, he had tried to break up with the defendant, and she refused to leave his home when asked. Lally said Read drunkenly backed into O’Keefe with her Lexus and left him to die in the snow.
Read posted an additional $100,000 bail and later pleaded not guilty to murder.
Yannetti protested during the June 10 hearing that Read had performed CPR on O’Keefe in an attempt to revive him. Moreover, the attorney alleged, the officer’s injuries were inconsistent with being hit by a car.
“He’s got scratch marks all up and down his arm that are completely unexplained,” Yannetti said in court. “He’s got two black eyes, appears to have a broken nose. There’s something else going on here.”
Defense Alleges That Karen Read Was Framed by Police in John O’Keefe Murder
During a Sept. 22, 2022, court appearance, Yannetti alleged that O’Keefe had been severely beaten at Albert’s house and the detective used his connections within the Canton Police Department and Massachusetts State Police to try to cover up the truth by framing his client.
Yannetti emphasized that Brian Albert’s brother Kevin Albert was also a detective with the Canton PD, and that Massachusetts State Trooper Michael Proctor, who headed up the Read investigation, was a close family friend. (Brian, who retired from the force with an injury in 2023, according to a family spokesman, denied that there was any physical altercation involving O’Keefe at his house and his brother and Proctor have denied any wrongdoing regarding the investigation.)
Defense attorney Alan Jackson said on NBC’s Dateline in July 2023 that he had “an innocent client, period.”
O’Keefe “walked into an element of hostility in that house,” Jackson said. “John O’Keefe got out of a car, walked into the house, was sucker punched, fell, hurt himself, and then ultimately his body was moved.”
Jackson, a former L.A. prosecutor, and Read co-counsel Elizabeth Little, both partners at Werksman Jackson & Quinn LLP, previously represented Kevin Spacey in a 2016 sexual assault case on Nantucket. The charges against the actor were ultimately dropped.
District Attorney Michael Morrissey Fires Back Against Karen Read Defense Allegations
In a lengthy Aug. 25, 2023, video statement, Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey denied that any fight occurred within the Albert home on the night O’Keefe died. Eleven people had given statements saying they did not see the officer enter the house, he said, and “zero people” said they saw go inside. Data from O’Keefe’s phone that was found under his body, Morrissey said, “shows that his phone did not enter that home.”
Accusing any of the witnesses of murder was “outrageous,” the prosecutor added. Moreover, he said, Proctor had no opportunity to plant evidence nor motive to do so. (Read has said that she cracked her taillight pulling out of the garage to go look for O’Keefe, but alleged it was smashed only after her vehicle was in police custody.) Proctor didn’t have a “close personal relationship” with anyone involved in the investigation, Morrissey said, and “every suggestion to the contrary is a lie.”
Prosecutor Lally argued against a defense motion to obtain records of texts, calls and social media message between Proctor’s wife and Brian Albert’s sister-in-law JenniferMcCabe, one of the people with Read when O’Keefe’s body was found. Lally said during a January 2024 court hearing, “As the Commonwealth understands it, Trooper Proctor has a sister, who has a friend, who has a sister, who has a husband, who has a brother, who has a wife, who has a sister who is Jennifer McCabe.”
Prosecutors, Defense Clash Over Google Search Timing in Karen Read Trial
On April 12, 2023, defense lawyers Yannetti and Jackson stated that newly recovered cell phone data from McCabe’s phone had provided evidence that “unequivocally exonerates Karen” because it established that other people “were aware that John was dying in the snow before Karen even knew he was missing.”
McCabe Googled “Hos [sic] long to die in cold” at around 2:30 a.m., the defense alleged in an April 12 court motion, per NBC Boston.
Prosecutors said in a statement at the time that it was yet to be determined whether the defense had “interpreted the raw data correctly,” noting that they had “repeatedly” asked the defense to provide “any actually exculpatory evidence to support their claims.”
McCabe testified during Read’s murder trial that the defendant asked her to Google how long it took to die in the cold after they found O’Keefe. She said that she had researched something else at 2:27 a.m., then used the same open tab to punch in the other search, and she denied deleting any search history or numbers from her call log. “I never would have left John O’Keefe out in the cold to die,” she said, “because he was my friend that I loved.”
The prosecution called their own digital forensics expert to the stand to back up their assertion that McCabe’s search was made at 6:23 a.m.
In a January 2025 court filing, prosecutors looked to have the defense’s data expert barred from testifying again at the retrial, writing that his “opinions” had been “debunked.” (The motion was denied, clearing the expert to testify.)
Prosecutors Share DNA Evidence From Karen Read’s Car
On Feb. 22, 2024, prosecutors filed a memorandum detailing crime scene investigation results, including that O’Keefe’s DNA had been recovered from Read’s broken taillight and a small hair of his was stuck to the rear passenger side of her Lexus.
“Through trace analysis and forensic testing, the Massachusetts State Police Crime Laboratory discovered the victim’s DNA present on the broken taillight and microscopic pieces of red and clear apparent plastic located in the victim’s clothing,” prosecutors wrote in the filing, per NBC Boston. “Comparison testing was conducted, and the results demonstrate that the microscopic pieces of red and clear plastic are consistent with the broken pieces of plastic from the defendant’s rear taillight.”
At trial, the defense contended that the DNA evidence was planted, in keeping with their overall argument that Read was framed, but that it also could’ve gotten on the vehicle another way aside from it hitting O’Keefe.
“It was planted on the vehicle. I mean, it was,” Yannetti said outside court on June 14 after the prosecution’s DNA experts testified, per CBS Boston. “You know the question is how did that magic hair survive a 30-mile drive through a blizzard?”
Prosecutors and law enforcement denied all accusations of planting or mishandling evidence.
Federal Prosecutors Investigate the Investigators in Karen Read Murder Case
Norfolk Superior Court Judge Beverly Cannone postponed the start of Read’s trial from March 12 to April 16, 2024, after federal prosecutors—who were investigating how the O’Keefe inquiry was conducted in light of the defense’s cover-up accusation—released 3,000 pages of documents pertaining to the case.
The defense argued in court Feb. 26 that the document dump contained exculpatory evidence, while the prosecution countered that most of the findings were consistent with prior testimony. (The federal probe concluded without any charges being filed against law enforcement, special prosecutor Hank Brennan said during a March 4, 2025, motions hearing.)
In a separate motion to have the case dismissed, the defense argued at a March 13, 2024, hearing that the prosecution deceived the grand jury that indicted Read because the panel had no knowledge of the personal ties among the investigators and witnesses.
“A majority of the witnesses who testified before the grand jury” were called because they allegedly saw what happened to O’Keefe, the defense stated in court documents unsealed weeks later, per NBC Boston. Rather, the filing continued, they were called to testify to “remote and irrelevant ‘bad character’” to prejudice the panel against Read, “misleading the grand jury, confusing the issues and wasting time.”
Assistant District Attorney Lally fired back during the hearing that the defense was trying to play “three-card monte,” as in, “’Look at this relationship, look at that relationship.’ The defense is obfuscating from the extensive evidence. They don’t want you to look at that. They want you to look at who texted who when.”
Cannone denied the defense’s motion March 26, paving the way for the trial to begin as scheduled.
Karen Read Goes on Trial for Murder of John O’Keefe
In his April 29, 2024, opening statement, Yannetti maintained that O’Keefe suffered fatal injuries from a beating and his client had been framed.
“You will learn that at that address, lived a well-known and well-connected law enforcement family in Canton—the Alberts,” Yannetti said. “Because the Alberts were involved, and because they had close connections to the investigators in this case, Karen Read was framed for a murder she did not commit.”
The prosecution countered that Read was a woman scorned and, after drinking too much, she backed her car into O’Keefe and drove off, leaving him to die.
The case ended with a hung jury and Cannone declared a mistrial on July 1.
Karen Read’s Defense Argues She Was Acquitted of John O’Keefe’s Murder in Bid to Dismiss Charge
In a July 2024 motion to have the murder case against Read dismissed, reviewed by E! News, the defense argued that double jeopardy applied because three jurors from the first trial had indicated to them “in no uncertain terms”—through “unsolicited communications”—that they unanimously agreed she was not guilty of murder and leaving the scene or a personal injury or death, and therefore the judge could have asked for a partial verdict in the case.
The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in February 2025, however, that “posttrial accounts of jurors’ private deliberations” that were “inconsistent with their public communications in court” could not negate the mistrial ruling or constitute an acquittal.
Karen Read Speaks Out About Her Murder Case
Though she felt “incredibly violated,” she was “not backing down now,” Read, who did not take the stand during her trial, told Vanity Fair last August.
“As scary as a potential conviction is,” she said, “I will go to jail for something I didn’t do before I plea out. I will never give them that win.”
While she fell for O’Keefe quickly after he reached out to her on Facebook in the pandemic-plagued spring of 2020—16 years after they first met and dated for a few months—problems started to crop up, Read said. During a New Year’s trip to Aruba with other couples, she said she saw caught him kissing another woman. (The woman in question denied this on the stand during Read’s trial.) And Read said she had exchanged flirty texts with a federal agent O’Keefe knew, to help “emotionally validate” her at the time.
But, Read said, as of January 2022 they were committed to caring for his orphaned niece and nephew together (O’Keefe was the primary guardian of his late sister’s kids, according to his family) and didn’t want to break up their dynamic.
When she and O’Keefe went to the Alberts’ house early on Jan. 29, 2022, after being invited there for more drinks, O’Keefe said he’d check out the atmosphere inside before they decided to stay or not, Read told Vanity Fair. When he stopped responding to her texts, Read said, she “got pissed” and assumed he was “screwing around” with an old paramour who lived nearby. “I didn’t think he was physically incapacitated,” she said. Read said she waited about 10 minutes before driving off, after which she sent him more texts and left angry voicemails.
Still, Read wondered if she did hit O’Keefe with her car, she told VF, and recalled telling her parents she would “pay [her] dues” if she had done “anything in any way.”
O’Keefe’s family told the magazine at the time that they still believed she was liable for his death.
“Unlike most people accused of murder and sued for wrongful death, Karen Read has embraced her celebrity in outsized ways,” said the family, whose civil suit against Read has been stayed until her criminal case is resolved. “This intensive media campaign to influence potential jurors compounds the O’Keefe family’s terrible loss while delaying and denying her accountability.”
Lead Investigator in Karen Read’s Case Is Fired
Massachusetts State Police Trooper Proctor admitted on the witness stand during Read’s first trial to using misogynistic language and making other disparaging remarks about Read in text messages to friends, family members and fellow cops, some of which the judge had him read aloud in court. And in response to a text asking whether the owner of the house O’Keefe was found would also “receive some s–t,” he replied, “Nope. Homeowner’s a Boston cop too.”
Proctor apologized on the stand, saying “emotions got the best of me.” But, he said, though his words were “unprofessional and regrettable,” they did not affect how he conducted the investigation.
He was fired less than two weeks before Read’s retrial was set to begin, according to a March 19, 2025, state police personnel order reviewed by E! News.
He had been suspended last July, with the State Police Association President clarifying that Proctor was being disciplined for the language in his personal texts, and not in connection with “salacious allegations of cover-ups, collusion or conspiracies offered by the defense.”
In response to his termination, Proctor’s family told NBC News in a statement that the trial board’s decision “lacks precedent, and unfairly exploits and scapegoats one of their own, a trooper with a 12-year unblemished record.” Proctor’s text messages proved he was “human—not corrupt, not incompetent in his role as a homicide detective and certainly not unfit to continue to be a Massachusetts State Trooper.
Karen Read’s Unfinished Story Is Told in Body in the Snow: The Trial of Karen Read
The five-part ID docuseries Body in the Snow: The Trial of Karen Read premiered March 17 ended with Read still in limbo after the mistrial.
“We needed to make sure we were 100 percent as balanced as we could be, because we knew there was going to be another trial,” director Terry Dunn Meurer told Vanity Fair of putting the finished product together.
“It’s a very divisive case and we need to respect everyone’s opinion,” Meurer said. “If you’re ‘Free Karen Read,’ great. If you’re more on the prosecution side, fine. But it’s been upsetting to watch how vile this has been—the name-calling and the vitriol, the personal attacks. The case has been tried on social media, and I think that’s a shame. It’s a disservice to the justice system and to Karen.”
Read pushed back against any notion that she was making the most of her newfound celebrity status.
“Anyone in my position who’s being falsely accused would be shouting from the rooftops,” Read told Vanity Fair last summer. “But if you think for a second that anyone has fought harder to find the truth about what happened to John and to enlighten everyone about what happened to John harder than me, you’re wrong.”
Karen Read Found Not Guilty of Murder in 2025 Retrial
Read’s retrial got underway on April 1, 2025.
And this time, the dramatic proceedings concluded with the desired outcome: On June 18, Read was found not guilty of second-degree murder and motor vehicle manslaughter while driving under the influence and leaving the scene of a collision.
She was found guilty of operating a motor vehicle under the influence of liquor and subsequently sentenced to one year’s probation.
