Karen Read defense faces hurdles as trial moves into fifth week

Fox News

19-05-2025

incoming update…
Karen Read arrived at the Norfolk Superior Courthouse alongside her defense team as the fifth week of her murder trial is set to begin Monday.
Read is facing the possibility of life in prison for the alleged murder of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe.
Testimony is scheduled to resume with the Commonwealth continuing to call witnesses to the stand.
A Massachusetts judge has agreed to bar references to an unrelated, botched murder investigation in Karen Read's second trial on murder and other charges in the 2022 death of her Boston police officer boyfriend, John O'Keefe.
Police in Canton, a suburb about 20 miles south of Boston, inaccurately determined the Feb. 4, 2021 death of Sandra Birchmore, 24, was a suicide before federal investigators said she had been strangled and charged a Stoughton officer with her murder.
The FBI arrested former Stoughton Police Officer Matthew Farwell, 38, in August in Birchmore's murder.
He is accused of grooming her since she was a teenager, maintaining a sexual relationship for years and then killing her when she told him she'd become pregnant and staging the murder to look like a suicide.
Canton Police were also the first to respond after O'Keefe was reported unresponsive outside another Boston Police officer's house Jan. 29, 2022, during a blizzard.
"Gov. [Maura] Healey should have ordered the revamping of police training in the state after the debacle in Karen Read 1.0," said Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant and criminal justice professor at Penn State Lehigh Valley. "Everything from response to the scene by patrol officers to securing the scene to identifying evidence, the proper collection of evidence, the proper containers for that evidence and so on."
Read the full story here.
Karen Read's trial is set to enter its fifth week as the prosecution aims to further cement its timeline surrounding the death of Boston police officer John O'Keefe.
Read is facing the possibility of life in prison for the alleged murder
of O'Keefe, who was found frozen to death in the front yard of 34 Fairview Road in the early morning hours of Jan. 29, 2022.
The prosecution alleges Read struck O'Keefe with her vehicle during a drunken argument, leaving him to die in the middle of a blizzard. Read's defense, however, insists she never hit O'Keefe in a bid to maintain her innocence.
Live Coverage begins here