CANTON, Massachusetts. – The woman accused of crashing her luxury SUV into her boyfriend and callously leaving him on the ground before a snowstorm had briefly dated the Boston police officer when they were in their 20s, and they reconnected after the pandemic.
Long before she was charged with murder in the death of John O’Keefe, Karen Read had a successful career as a financial analyst and adjunct professor at Bentley College. Now 44, she grew up in Blacksburg, Virginia, and Taunton, Massachusetts. She attended Coyle & Cassidy, a private Roman Catholic school now closed, and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in finance from Bentley, a private university in Waltham.
When she reconnected with O’Keefe, he moved to suburban Canton to care for his niece and nephew after their parents died. She told ABC News before the trial that she admired him for helping her family and helped with the children, staying over frequently.
But their relationship turned sour. The niece and nephew testified about their verbal fights. And what should have been a fun trip to Aruba that winter was marred by animosity with angry words and an accusation of treason.
Prosecutors suggested that O’Keefe was looking for a way out before your last night in bars together. And moments after she allegedly backed her SUV into him on the lawn of another officer’s home on Jan. 29, 2022, she left him a voicemail that was repeated to jurors, saying, “John, I ( swear word) I hate you.”
Read, who claims she was framed by the police, was supported by friends and family, including William Read, a former dean at Bentley who posted $50,000 bail for his daughter. He sits behind her every day in court and said he has faith in her innocence.
She has battled adversity before, undergoing multiple surgeries for Crohn’s disease before being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and her father told the Boston Globe, “Karen will never have a breakdown and will never lose her resolve.”
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