A witness for the prosecution in Karen Read's second murder trial testified Wednesday that a critical phone search for hypothermia was done after the defendant's Boston police officer boyfriend was found in the snow not hours earlier.
Prosecutors say Read, 45, backed her SUV into O’Keefe, 46, and left him to die after dropping him off at a party hosted by a fellow officer. Her lawyers say she was framed in a police conspiracy and that someone inside the home that night in January 2022 must have killed him.
A mistrial was declared last year. Read's second trial on charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter and leaving the scene has appeared to be similar so far.
When was the phone search?
Jessica Hyde, a digital forensic examiner, testified that she was asked by the state to examine the phone of Jennifer McCabe. She was with Read the morning that they found O'Keefe in the snow.
Hyde testified that she found McCabe searched the words "hos (sic) long to die in cold" at 6:24 a.m. soon after O"Keefe was found on the front lawn of a Canton home. Read's defense argued during the last trial the search was made around 2:27 a.m. and then deleted.
“What I can state, to a scientific degree of certainty, is that that search occurred at 6:24 a.m. and was the last search in the tab that had been opened at 2:27″ a.m.," Hyde said.
Hyde also said she didn't find any evidence that McCabe deleted that search from her phone nor deleted any phone calls in the hours before O'Keefe was found.
Read's attorney Robert Alessi, pointing to earlier reports Hyde wrote about the phone, questioned whether she could say definitively when the phone search was made. Alessi pointed to a May 2023 report in which Hyde wrote that testing showed “great inconsistency” with regards to time stamps on the phone.
“So as of May 2023, you said the definitive reason as to why the time-stamp is listed as 2:27:40 is unknown,” Alessi asked Hyde. "Correct? I’m just asking, is that what you wrote? Unknown."
Hyde didn't dispute that she used the word unknown in the report but she never wavered from her testimony earlier in the day.
Solo cups and cocktail glasses
On Tuesday, State Police Trooper Kevin O’Hara testified police officers searched the site on the afternoon of Jan. 29, 2022. They found a shoe along the curb — O’Keefe was missing a shoe when he was found — and six or seven pieces of a broken taillight. The pieces were red and clear, and prosecutors showed the jury images of them. The search was suspended that day because of darkness.
On Wednesday, Trooper Connor Keefe took the stand and showed the jury other items that were found at the scene — including two red pieces of broken taillight and a black Nike shoe.
Karen Read was angry or distraught?
Prosecutors on Tuesday called State Police Trooper Nicholas Guarino, who retrieved cellphone data from O'Keefe's phone.
He detailed how the data show Read called O'Keefe nearly 30 times that morning. The first batch continued for nearly an hour after 12:35 a.m. Most were missed calls. She also left several profanity-laced emails, including one in which she accused O'Keefe of sleeping with someone else and leaving his two adopted children home alone.
“John I (expletive) hate you," she yells in one voice message that was played to the jury.
The calls from Read resumed several hours later. Most didn't connect, but one voicemail just after 6 a.m. sounded like it came from the scene and included a muffled voice, apparently Read's, screaming and sounding distraught.
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