By Abby Patkin
updated on April 30, 2025 | 9:33 AM
Livestream via NBC10 Boston.
On the stand:
- Jennifer McCabe, Canton, MA
Key witness Jennifer McCabe returns to the stand Wednesday in Karen Read’s murder retrial.
McCabe was one of two women with Read when she found her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, unresponsive on a snowy lawn in Canton on Jan. 29, 2022. McCabe began her testimony Tuesday, recalling the frantic call she received at 4:53 a.m. that day from O’Keefe’s niece, with Read screaming in the background.
McCabe described Read as “hysterical” during the ensuing search for O’Keefe and said Read pointed out a damaged taillight on her SUV and repeatedly asked, “Could I have hit him? Did I hit him?”
Prosecutors allege Read, 45, drunkenly and deliberately backed her SUV into O’Keefe while dropping him off at a house party shortly after midnight on Jan. 29. McCabe, whose sister and brother-in-law owned the home in question, was among the guests present at the time and testified about seeing a dark SUV outside that she believed was Read’s.
While McCabe testified that neither Read nor O’Keefe ever made it into the house, Read’s lawyers contend O’Keefe was attacked inside the home and later dumped in the snow. They claim Read was a “convenient outsider” framed in a massive conspiracy among law enforcement and party guests, McCabe included.
But on the stand Tuesday, McCabe said she liked Read and considered O’Keefe a close friend.
“He was a very good friend of mine that I knew I could call for anything,” she testified.
Read’s first trial ended in a mistrial last summer after the jury returned deadlocked. Speaking to reporters outside the courthouse Tuesday, she said she has “nothing to say” to McCabe and told trial watchers to expect “a lot” from McCabe’s cross-examination.
Karen Read listens to testimony during her murder retrial at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham on Tuesday. – Libby O’Neill/The Boston Herald via AP, Pool
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