Prosecutors in Karen Read's second murder case focused Monday on another witness who told the court they heard Read repeatedly utter the words "I hit him" after finding her Boston police officer boyfriend dead in the snow.
Firefighter Katie McLaughlin is the third person to testify this trial that Read repeatedly said “I hit him” that morning.
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.
Read's words being used against her
McLaughlin said she asked Read that morning for basic information — O'Keefe's age and medical history, and whether he had suffered significant trauma — when Read told her: “I hit him. I hit him.” A woman standing next to Read, later identified as Jennifer McCabe, told Read to calm down, but Read repeated the phrase, McLaughlin said.
A police officer then said “you what?” and Read repeated the phrase a fourth time, “I hit him,” she testified.
Prosecutor Hank Brennan then showed the jury police dash camera video showing McLaughlin, McCabe and Read in apparent conversation together. McLaughlin said she returned then to an ambulance and sharing what Read had said with her colleagues.
Brennan also questioned McLaughlin about her relationship with Caitlin Albert, whose family lived at house where O’Keefe’s body was found on the front lawn. McLaughlin acknowledged that they were high school classmates and had some of the same friends but that the two were not close.
Defense attorney Alan Jackson, who grilled McLaughlin about that relationship in the first trial, challenged her again, telling jurors that she and Albert were in the same friend group, attended the same baby shower and had gone on beach trips and weekend getaways together. He showed a series of photos that put them together.
“Your relationship with Caitlin Albert is far more than simply somebody that you went high school with, isn't that true?” he asked. McLaughlin responded that she had already clarified their relationship.
Investigator from scene questioned
Both sides questioned a former Canton police lieutenant about evidence-gathering at the scene. In the first trial, Lt. Paul Gallagher testified about the use of red Solo cups to gather O'Keefe's blood, and a leaf blower to clear snow.
Gallagher agreed this time that a plastic cup is not normally used to collect evidence, but he said the circumstances required quick thinking and improvisation.
“If we didn’t collect that biological matter, we weren’t going to get that biological matter,” Gallagher said.
Questioning McCabe's testimony
Last week, much of the attention was on the testimony of McCabe.
Jackson tried to convince the jury that McCabe's testimony has shifted over time, leaving out key details.
McCabe, he said, never mentioned that she called her sister just before O’Keefe was found in the snow — something she denied. The two also sparred over what she told former State Trooper Michael Proctor, the lead investigator, about a broken taillight on Read’s vehicle. Jackson said McCabe told Proctor that it was cracked. “I said it was broken and cracked and it was missing pieces,” she countered.
When Jackson challenged her about her route to the house that morning, McCabe sounded exasperated.
“I was in shock,” she told the court. “So a lot of things from that day are foggy. Certain things, certain details I may have forgotten.”
Jackson responded that “all of your testimony over the last several days is based on that memory that you just described to these jurors, correct?
“There are certain things I’ll never forget,” McCabe shot back.
Jackson accused McCabe and other witnesses of coordinating their stories in the hours and days after O’Keefe died. He brought up a group chat in which McCabe and several others acknowledged listening to a police interview of another witness, Kerry Roberts, who also was with Read and McCabe that morning.
“In the text that we just saw, you were colluding with other witnesses,” Jackson declared, and then pressed on, suggesting she had listened to Roberts’ interview to shape her own version of events. She denied it.
Going back over the Google search
The two also sparred over a Google search — “hos (sic) long to die in cold” — McCabe had made that morning. Jackson suggested it was done hours before O’Keefe’s body was discovered. She pushed back, insisting that she made the search at Read’s request, soon after they arrived on the scene, despite no other witnesses recounting that.
“I stand by that 110%,” she said, when Jackson challenged her account.
Jackson also questioned how McCabe reacted to encountering O’Keefe’s body, arguing that she should have done more to help him. She knew that the homeowner, Brian Albert, a friend who had been a Boston police officer, was trained to provide life-saving treatment.
“You could have walked 25 feet to the front door, walked in the house and screamed for Brian Albert to help you in those precious minutes,” Jackson asked.
McCabe said her focus was exclusively on O’Keefe at the time, and "that would have taken me away from helping John, getting Kerry blankets, giving him compressions.”
Finding O’Keefe in the snow
McCabe opened her testimony by testifying that the scene was chaotic, and that she called 911 while Read and Roberts tried to warm O’Keefe up and perform CPR. Then police arrived, and Read was running around and screaming so much that officers suggested she sit in a police cruiser.
As the three women sat together praying, McCabe said Read wondered aloud who would take care of O’Keefe’s two adopted children. And when O’Keefe’s body was moved to an ambulance, Read screamed for Roberts to go check on him, wondering if he was dead.
McCabe also testified that she was standing next to a police officer and a paramedic as Read told them “I hit him” three times — corroborating earlier testimony from paramedics.
But Jackson challenged McCabe, questioning why those comments couldn’t be found in earlier police reports or in the 227 pages of her grand jury testimony. Instead, Jackson said she told the grand jury that she recalled Read saying to a paramedic, “Did I hit him? Could I have hit him? Is he dead? Is he dead? Is he dead?”
“In point of fact, in your entire grand jury testimony, you never said my client said the words I hit him,” he said.
McCabe insisted she had told police what Read said — even if it wasn’t in the reports — and that it wasn’t in the grand jury testimony because she wasn’t asked specifically about it, among the many conversations with paramedics and police at the scene.
“‘I hit him. I hit him. I hit him,’ is just as fresh today as it was three years ago,” she said.
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