Karen Read retrial gets back to forensic evidence

DEDHAM, Mass. — The Karen Read retrial returned to examining physical evidence in the case after multiple days examining a lack of professionalism by certain case investigators.

The day also included testimony from victim John O’Keefe’s niece, which the media was not allowed to record per a court order. She testified that O’Keefe and Read were “fighting a lot” toward the end.

Maureen Hartnett, a forensic scientist at the Massachusetts State Police crime lab, spent the most time on the witness stand Wednesday, the 15th day of trial. She said she was called to the Canton Police Department on Feb. 1, 2022, to examine the exterior of the alleged murder weapon: Read’s Lexus LX570 SUV.

Read, 45, of Mansfield, faces charges including second-degree murder in the death of John O’Keefe, a Boston Police officer who she had dated for roughly two years at the time of his death on Jan. 29, 2022. She was tried last year but that ended in mistrial. There have been 14 days of testimony so far in her retrial.

Prosecutors say that Read struck O’Keefe with her Lexus SUV sometime after midnight and left him to freeze and die on the front lawn of 34 Fairview Road in Canton.

The defense says that no vehicle strike ever occurred and that others killed O’Keefe and conspired to pin it all on Read, who is from Mansfield and is thus a Canton outsider.

The niece

O’Keefe’s niece, who along with her brother was raised by O’Keefe after their mother — his sister — and their father both died, testified that O’Keefe and Read were “fighting a lot” by the end of 2021 and into O’Keefe’s last month alive, according to reporters in the courtroom. She also said that Read would get more upset than O’Keefe.

Media courtroom access is determined on a weekly basis by a lottery system, and the Herald was not chosen for this week. The niece’s testimony was done under a media blackout based on a court order so her testimony was only heard by those physically in the courtroom.

The clips

Read was first tried last year but after nine weeks of trial the jury was unable to come to a verdict and a mistrial was declared. This new trial has a new lead prosecutor in Hank Brennan, who has opted to pad the testimony with clips from the many media interviews Read took part in. On Thursday, he played two.

The first was from a "Dateline" interview that aired on Oct. 18, 2024. In it, Read was asked if she and O’Keefe had “really been going at it” on Jan. 28, 2022, and it was kind of like a “last date.”

“That was not going on. John made it clear to me, ‘I’m never breaking up with you.’ Not ‘never’ that we’re in this good or bad but ‘You’re the best person I’ve ever been with,’” Read answered.

The second was a clip from the HBO/ID documentary “A Body in the Snow: The Trial of Karen Read." She talks about text messages she had with ATF agent Brian Higgins over the two weeks before O’Keefe’s death, in which the pair flirt, confirm a kiss and even join up for a date at a West Roxbury bar. In them she also reveals that she isn’t so happy in her relationship with O’Keefe.

“I don’t see how John would’ve known about my texts with Brian and I’m not sure if he knew he would have reacted very strongly. I think that we would have broken up, but I don’t think John would have lost it and caused a fight. I didn’t feel that John’s emotions with me got really strong,” she said.

The scientist

Hartnett was an unemotional witness called to speak to her professional analysis of the items she was tasked with looking at. Her time on the stand was a change of pace from three days of MSP Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik, during which his own professionalism and especially that of his investigative partner, now-fired Trooper Michael Proctor, was closely examined.

Hartnett looked at the clothing O’Keefe died in, Read’s SUV, the vehicle’s taillight housing as well as evidence provided to her that she was told was collected from the front lawn where O’Keefe was found.

She took swabs from various items, including O’Keefe’s clothing and the red-brown-stained snow Canton police collected in red SOLO cups from under where O’Keefe was found on the lawn. She said the swabs on the clothing came back positive for blood.

She also examined Read’s vehicle at the Canton PD garage. She noticed “apparent glass” and “an apparent hair” on the bumper. She also testified to seeing chipped paint and a dent on the vehicle. She had the entire taillight assembly removed and she held that up for jurors to see in court.

Under cross-examination by Robert Alessi, Hartnett said that she did not draw conclusions about where the dent and scratches came from, that she did not find any blood on the undercarriage of the vehicle, and that she had never tested any samples contained in SOLO cups — which is a storage method that has been much-ridiculed by the defense — before or since.

She also said that the hair and glass could have been from any time. She also agreed that she had no explanation for how a hair could have remained on the bumper of the vehicle after being towed 60 miles and in inclement weather that included strong wind gusts.

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