In tearful testimony, the mother of a Boston police officer recounted Wednesday how her son was discovered unresponsive in a snowbank and disputed comments made about her in media interviews by Karen Read, whom prosecutors accuse of killing the officer.
Peggy O’Keefe testified that she got a call around 6 a.m. Jan. 29, 2022, from a friend of her son John O’Keefe’s who was with Read when she discovered the unresponsive officer on the front lawn of Brian Albert, then a sergeant with the Boston Police Department.
“She said, ‘John was found in a snowbank,’” O’Keefe recalled. “I didn’t understand. I said, ‘What do you mean?’ She’s like: ‘Found him in the snow. They don’t know what happened.’”
O’Keefe did not testify during Read’s widely publicized first trial, which ended with a hung jury last summer.
Read, 45, was charged with second-degree murder, motor vehicle manslaughter while driving under the influence and leaving the scene of a collision causing death.
Karen Read and a defense team member, Alan Jackson, address potential jurors during jury selection in Dedham, Mass., on April 14.Pat Greenhouse / Pool/The Boston Globe via AP
In opening statements Tuesday, prosecutors accused Read of fatally striking John O’Keefe, 46, and leaving him for dead outside Albert’s home in suburban Boston on a snowy morning in January 2022.
Defense attorney Alan Jackson blamed the killing on others who were at the home and said Read was the victim of police misconduct and a cover-up.
Peggy O’Keefe said Wednesday that with Read in her vehicle, her son’s friend picked both of them up and drove them to the hospital where John O’Keefe was taken.
At one point during the drive, she testified, she asked Read what happened to her son. Read responded that they had gone to a party and that she had left him there.
“You just left him there?” O’Keefe recalled asking her. “She said, ‘Yes, I just left him there.’”
Prosecutors have said Read dropped John O’Keefe off at Albert’s house and began driving away but then put her Lexus SUV into reverse and fatally struck him.
According to the defense’s account, there was no collision and Read watched John O’Keefe enter Albert’s house, where he was most likely beaten and bitten by Albert’s dog. (During the first trial, Albert testified that John O’Keefe did not enter his home.)
Peggy O’Keefe testified that Read did not tell her whether she left her son inside or outside Albert’s home.
Once she was at the hospital, Peggy O’Keefe testified, officials were leading her through the emergency room when she saw Read.
“She started yelling, ‘Is he dead?’” O’Keefe recalled.
Toward the end of O’Keefe’s nearly 20 minutes of testimony, special counsel and lead prosecutor Hank Brennan referred to an interview Read gave for a documentary by Investigation Discovery.
Brennan sought to admit Read’s comments to Investigation Discovery and “20/20” about Peggy O’Keefe because they show her “consciousness of guilt,” he said.
Norfolk County Superior Court Judge Beverly Cannone did not immediately rule on the matter.
The Investigation Discovery clip showed Read describing how she saw Peggy O’Keefe in her kitchen in the hours after the hospital trip. Read recalled O’Keefe leaning over a kitchen island and saying, “I think it looks like he got hit by a car.”
“Did you ever lean over a kitchen island and say, ‘I think he looks like he got hit by a car?’” Brennan asked O’Keefe.
“I don’t remember talking to her that morning,” she replied.
Jackson did not question O’Keefe, but he said the clip should not be admitted because it only shows Read repeating “something somebody else said.”
The clip, he added, is “obviously and strategically being used to try to vilify my client with something that is completely irrelevant.”
Brennan, meanwhile, said it was not only relevant but “an extraordinarily strong piece of consciousness of guilt evidence.”
