BOSTON – Prosecutors in Karen Read’s case are now looking for records from her father’s cell phone. When Read’s second trial begins, prosecutors plan to call William Read as a witness.
Read is charged in the death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe January 29, 2022in Canton.
Prosecutors say William Read’s phone records could help establish a timeline of his daughter’s contact with him. They say Read made several phone calls to different people, giving conflicting accounts of what happened.
William Read’s cell phone records
The Commonwealth has asked the court to order Verizon Wireless to produce call records, text messages and data from William Read’s account from January 29, 2022 to January 30, 2022, the immediate aftermath of the alleged crime.
Prosecutors are also seeking phone records from December 30, 2021 to January 30, 2022. “The relevance of this request is to compare the timing and frequency of Karen Read’s phone calls to her father on the night of the victim’s death with the frequency. or lack thereof, on dates not involving the alleged crime,” the special assistant district attorney said Hank Brennan wrote in the motion filed Friday.
Brennan said it is possible that William Read will be “an adverse witness for the Commonwealth” and that the data should be made available for possible impeachment evidence.
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“The records reasonably indicate that there is a pattern or common occurrence between the defendant, a forty-four-year-old woman, who regularly calls her parents in the middle of the night after drinking large amounts of alcohol and engaging in a domestic activity. dispute with her boyfriend,” Brennan wrote.
Who is Karen Read?
Karen Read is a Massachusetts woman accused of killing her boyfriend, John O’Keefe, on a snowy night in January 2022.
Prosecutors allege she hit O’Keefe with her SUV after a night of heavy drinking and arguing. She is charged with manslaughter, leaving the scene and manslaughter.
Read’s lawyers said she was framed, and O’Keefe was killed at another Boston police officer’s home in Canton and dragged outside.
Read’s first trial ended in a mistral on July 1, 2024 due to a hung jury. Her second trial will begin on January 27, 2025.
