After Karen Read was acquitted of killing her boyfriend, a look at the key evidence presented in her successful defense

Boston Globe

9 hours ago

But her lawyers said
Here's a look at several key issues that may have cast doubt about the government's case in the eyes of jurors.
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Brian Higgins's texts, video footage, statements
Brian Higgins testifies during the trial of Karen Read on May 24, 2024.
Charles Krupa/Associated Press
Throughout the retrial, Read's lawyers focused on ATF agent Brian Higgins, who attended the afterparty at the Canton home and was a key figure in the first trial.
He did not testify at the retrial, but Read's defense team questioned other witnesses in an effort to show he may have had a motive to harm O'Keefe.
Jurors saw
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The jury also learned that State Police never directly searched Higgins's phone; instead, he provided the text messages himself to investigators, according to State Police Sgt. Yuri Bukhenik, who testified that he felt the texts showed Read was pursuing Higgins romantically.
Jurors also viewed surveillance footage from the Waterfall, the second bar the group went to before the afterparty, where O'Keefe kisses Read on the forehead in view of Higgins, who's later seen gesturing aggressively towards O'Keefe as Albert's brother grabs his forearm to restrain him.
Jurors also viewed
In that footage, Higgins is seen briefly ducking into dispatch and then exiting the station on his phone before he retrieves an empty duffel bag from another vehicle in the parking lot. He also retrieves a garden hoe from another area of the lot.
(Higgins testified at the first trial that he went to the police station to move cars due to the snowstorm.)
Read attorney Alan Jackson also
Higggins also testified during the first trial that he disposed of his phone a few months after O'Keefe's death on a Cape Cod military base after a target of one of his ATF probes called him and said his girlfriend had gotten the number off the Internet.
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Jennifer McCabe's Google search, statements, texts
Jennifer McCabe continues her cross-examination testimony during the Karen Read murder trial in Norfolk Superior Court on April 30, 2025.
Greg Derr/Associated Press
Jennifer McCabe, Brian Albert's sister-in-law,
But on cross-examination, she was confronted with a Google search on her phone timestamped 2:27 a.m., five minutes after the alleged butt dials between Higgins and Brian Albert, that said 'hos [sic] long to die in cold.'
McCabe testified that she actually made that search hours later at the crime scene at Read's request, and government forensic experts
The government experts also said the deletion of the search appeared to have been done automatically, rather than manually by the user.
The defense also pressed McCabe about her initial evasiveness when the FBI first approached her outside her home to discuss the case in April 2023.
The jurors were told only that the agents were from an unspecified law enforcement agency, as they were barred from knowing the Justice Department had convened a separate federal grand jury investigation into the state authorities' handling of O'Keefe's death.
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The authorities later called her when she was in her house and identified themselves as law enforcement, she said.
McCabe said she told the investigators she would speak with them but she needed about 10 minutes to get ready.
Jackson asked McCabe if she suspended that interview at one point because she didn't feel comfortable, and she said, 'correct.'
She said she had also called her husband who returned home, and that she had also called Roberts before the interview began.
Omissions in the investigation
Jurors learned that authorities, while they questioned some witnesses inside the Canton home on the morning of O'Keefe's death, never conducted a search of the premises.
In addition, jurors were told that investigators never reviewed Ring video footage from the front porch of a Canton police official who lived diagonally across the street from Brian Albert.
Paul Gallagher, a retired Canton police lieutenant,
O'Keefe's injuries
Dr. Irini Scordi-Bello, the medical examiner who conducted the autopsy on John O'Keefe, testifies during the trial of Karen Read on May 15, 2025.
Mark Stockwell/AP, Pool
Dr. Irini Scordi-Bello, the state medical examiner who conducted O'Keefe's autopsy,
Scordi-Bello also testified, however, that O'Keefe's manner of death was undetermined, and that she 'did examine his legs and I did not see any evidence of an impact site.'
O'Keefe had also sustained a number of linear scratches on his right arm, and a defense expert, Dr. Marie Russell, a veteran emergency room physician in Los Angeles and former Malden police officer,
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A government expert testified that the scratches were consistent with O'Keefe's arm being caught in Read's shattered taillight.
But the defense also called another expert, Dr. Elizabeth Laposata, the former chief medical examiner in Rhode Island, who
The ARCCA witnesses
Expert Daniel Wolfe returns to the stand in the murder retrial of Karen Read in Norfolk Superior Court, Monday June 9, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via AP, Pool)
Pat Greenhouse/Associated Press
The defense also called two analysts from the Philadelphia-based crash reconstruction firm ARCCA, who
Government experts contradicted that assessment, but the word of the ARCCA analysts, who were initially hired by the Justice Department as part of the federal probe and later retained by the defense, evidently carried weight with jurors.
The defense also repeatedly mocked a so-called paint
In his closing argument, Jackson likened the 'ridiculous blue paint' test to a 'kindergarten project.'
Allegations of vehicle tampering, planting evidence, firing of lead investigato
Law enforcement witnesses also testified to recovering a number of taillight shards and a broken drinking glass at the crime scene near O'Keefe's body,
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But jurors learned that many of the pieces on the lawn were discovered days after the initial snowy search, including
Jackson asked Bukhenik if he had asked Berkowitz,
'No,' Bukhenik said repeatedly.
Canton police quickly recused themselves from the investigation because a detective on the force is Brian Albert's brother.
Jurors were also told
The jury learned Proctor was
Dever
Dever, speaking in a deliberate tone, testified that the defense later produced a timeline showing the SUV was brought into the garage after her shift ended that day, 'meaning it is not possible that I saw that.'
Dever said it was a 'false memory' that she 'provided in good faith,' which she then 'retracted immediately [upon] being provided evidence that it was not possible.'
She also testified that Boston police Commissioner Michael Cox, her boss at her current department, had called her into his office for a one-on-one discussion before her testimony at the retrial.
Jackson asked if Cox told her to 'do the right thing,' and Dever said she couldn't recall the direct quote.
'He said nothing with the intent of guiding me one way or the other,' Dever said, adding that Cox 'wanted me to tell the truth up here.'
Dever also testified that she must be truthful, adding that 'my entire job revolves around what I say on the stand right now.'
Jackson pointedly reminded jurors of that statement at closing, adding, 'you bet it does.'
Dighton police officer Nicholas Barros's testimony
Jurors also
State Police seized the SUV after interviewing Read inside the residence, and Barros told the jury the taillight damage was more severe in a photo of the vehicle inside the Canton police garage than when he saw it in Dighton.
'That taillight is completely smashed out' in the Canton photo, Barros said. 'That middle section was intact when I was there' in Dighton.
Prosecutor Hank Brennan highlighted that Barros had testified differently during the first trial.
But the officer was adamant.
'I know what I saw,' Barros said. 'And that wasn't it.'
Travis Andersen can be reached at