Karen Read, Awaiting Second Trial on Accusations She Killed Cop Boyfriend, Says, 'I Feel Incredibly Violated'

Losing boyfriend John O’Keefe, the Boston police officer who died in 2022 after being found unconscious in the snow outside a fellow cop’s house after a night out, was excruciating for Karen Read, she has said.

Being accused of killing him and enduring what she has described as an invasive police investigation and circus-like trial for second-degree murder made a tragic situation even more unbearable, she says.

Read’s first trial ended in a hung jury, but prosecutors say they will try her again. They allege that on the night of Jan. 29, 2022, Read dropped O’Keefe, 46, off at the Canton, Mass., home of retired Boston police officer Brian Albert after a night of drinking before backing into him and leaving him to die in the snow.

Her attorneys argued that O’Keefe was jumped by people at the Alberts’ house who had a dispute with him, and that those people dragged him out of the house and into the yard — and then framed her in a massive cover-up that has completely upended her life.

“Other than feeling wrongfully persecuted and prosecuted, I feel incredibly violated,” Read, 44, tells Vanity Fair in part one of a wide-ranging two-part interview.

Read, whose second trial is expected to begin in January 2025, tells Vanity Fair about how police allegedly zeroed in on her immediately after O’Keefe died on the morning of Jan. 29, 2022. Her house was searched multiple times, her phones were seized and her text messages were made public, she says.

His injuries, her lawyers pointed out, were baffling: he had two swollen black eyes, cuts on the back of his head and on his face and scratches on his right arm that one defense expert during the trial said was “consistent with a large dog attack.”

While prosecutors argued that O’Keefe sustained these injuries from being hit by the SUV, Read thinks the man she referred to as her “husband” ran into trouble the minute he set foot in the Alberts’ house.

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“I believe whatever happened to John was a setup to teach him a lesson or tune him up, and it got out of control,” Read says. “No one would choose to kill someone in their own home and then set it up so sloppily.”

The medical examiner ruled the cause of death as “blunt impact injuries of the head and hypothermia,” but could not determine whether the manner of death was homicide or accidental.

Read was charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence of alcohol and leaving the scene of personal injury and death. She pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The second installment of Vanity Fair’s interview with Read will be released on Oct. 30.