Karen Read returns to court for motions to be heard

Criminality

“When Ms. Read learned she hit John O’Keefe is a key issue in this case,” special prosecutor Hank Brennan said Tuesday.

There is ‘strong evidence’ Karen Read “she knew she had done something terrible” when she called her parents shortly after she allegedly left her boyfriend, John O’Keefe, to die in a blizzard, special prosecutor Hank Brennan argued during Tuesday’s hearing.

When Read returned to Superior Court in Norfolk, the docket included several requests, including prosecutors’ requests for phone records from her parents, Janet and William Read.

Prosecutors say Read called her parents and texted her father after she allegedly drove her SUV into Boston Police Officer O’Keefe shortly after midnight on Jan. 29, 2022. Authorities say Read, 44, was driving then under the influence of alcohol and intentionally hit O’Keefe and left him for dead on a snowy lawn in Canton. Her lawyers claim she was framed for a law enforcement cover-up.

“The inference that a 40-year-old woman called her parents at 1:30 a.m. after this tumultuous event is strong evidence that Mrs. Read knew she had done something terrible, knew she had hit John O’Keefe and she knew she had left him,” Brennan stated. He said Read’s calls went unanswered.

Read is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence and leaving the scene of a fatal accident. Her first trial ended in a hung jury in July, and she is scheduled to go on trial again in January, although lawyers for both sides have requested a postponement in April. Judge Beverly Cannone said Tuesday she was still considering the request.

Brennan said prosecutors would likely call William Read as a witness in his daughter’s upcoming retrial, pointing to his testimony in court interview with Boston 25 News last year.

“She felt like she hit something,” William Read told Boston 25 segment. “She said, ‘Dad, I think I hit something. … I remember… I was backing up and I hit something.” However, later in the video, he explained his belief that his daughter had damaged her tail light while driving. backing out of O’Keefe’s garage to look for him just after 5 a.m. on the 29th.

Read’s parents did not testify at her first trial, although they sat behind her in the courtroom to show support.

“When Ms. Read found out she hit John O’Keefe is a key issue in this case,” Brennan said. He explained that he was looking for phone records from the month before O’Keefe’s death to determine whether Read had a habit of calling his parents in the middle of the night.

“In the absence of other calls, it is extremely unusual that he would call his parents in a panic at 1:30 a.m.,” Brennan said. Prosecutors also asked for recordings of William Read’s calls, text messages and data usage between January 29 and 30, 2022.

Brennan argued that Karen Read’s data was insufficient for prosecutors because call records could vary by device and some of Read’s phone records may also have been redacted as investigators analyzed the data.

But defense lawyer Elizabeth Little called the request a “gross invasion” of privacy, and Read’s alleged call logs confirm that she made no calls to her father on Jan. 29 until she found O’Keefe incapacitated in the snow around 6 a.m.

“The Commonwealth did quite a funny thing, didn’t it? During the argument, they suggested that she called both her parents in the middle of the night. That’s not true,” Little said. “There was only one call to her father on the morning of January 29. It was at 6:32 a.m.

Brennan argued that it was unclear whether Read’s father answered her mother’s phone call or vice versa.

Describing prosecutors’ requests as a “fishing expedition,” Little urged Cannone to reject the requests. The judge reviewed the case and did not issue a verdict.

Separately, prosecutors also searched recordings from several news outlets that interviewed Read or her parents, including: Boston warehouse, Boston 25, NBC’s “Dateline.” AND “20/20” ABC Brennan accused Read of giving conflicting statements during various interviews.

One sec Boston magazine had previously released some transcripts of interviews with Read, Brennan alleged that the recordings were peppered with significant redactions and interruptions from Read’s lawyers.

“One thing that stands out when you actually listen to the interviews and look at the transcripts is that many times during lawyers’ breaks, there is editing, and then when the conversation resumes, a change – sometimes subtle, sometimes not subtle – has occurred change in Mrs. Read’s statement,” Brennan said.

The defendants, he added, “enjoy the Fifth Amendment privilege, as they should; the accused is presumed innocent. But when they reject them, they do so at their own risk.

Robert Bertsche, a lawyer for the magazine, blamed the redaction on prosecutors’ original motion, which only asked for explanations from Read, not her lawyers. Cannone sought advice on the matter.

Read’s lawyers also turned to Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey personal records of telephone and e-mail conversationsand lawyers briefly discussed the protective order, which Brennan said would allow prosecutors to turn over some of the requested materials, with more yet to come.

Cannone suggested that the prosecution and defense continue to confer with each other, leaving open the possibility of a hearing on the matter at Read’s scheduled Dec. 12 hearing.

Broadcast live via NBC10 Boston.