Karen Read judge denies prosecution's request to access parents' phone records

BOSTON — Prosecutors in the Karen Read murder case won’t be gaining access to her parents’ phone records that they said could have bolstered their argument that the defendant knew she struck and left John O’Keefe to die in a snowstorm.

Norfolk Superior Court Judge Beverly Cannone has denied the prosecution’s request for Verizon to hand over all the phone records of Read’s father and mother for the day of O’Keefe’s death to the next day, and the call detail records of the period of Dec. 30, 2021, to Jan. 30, 2022.

“Despite the detailed arguments articulated in the supporting memorandum and at oral argument, the affidavit in support of the motion is insufficient on it’s face,” Cannone wrote in her decision on Friday.

Special prosecutor Hank Brennan told Cannone on Tuesday that if she granted access to William and Janet Read’s phone records, they would have pointed to the defendant’s guilt.

“The inference that a 40-something-year-old woman is calling her parents at 1:30 in the morning after this tumultuous event,” Brennan said, “the inference is strong evidence that Ms. Read knew she had done something terrible, she knew she had struck John O’Keefe, and she knew that she had left him behind.”

Brennan emphasized that the 30-day request from Dec. 30, 2021, to Jan. 30, 2022, was solely for call records to see if Karen Read tended to call her parents in the middle of the night.

He argued she called her mother three times in the early morning of Jan. 29 – at 1:14 a.m., 4:38 a.m., and 4:42 a.m. — but none of those calls were answered.

“If there were phone calls at 1:30 in the morning I would not argue the inference that it was remarkable. That would be an unfair inference. But in the absence of any other calls, it is terribly remarkable that she’s panic-calling her parents at 1:30 in the morning.”

“Here’s why it’s important: The type of injury John O’Keefe suffered that led to his death was a type of an injury that was treatable. If he had received treatment within one to two hours, I expect there are medical procedures that could have saved him.”

Read, 44, is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence, and leaving the scene of a fatal accident. Her first trial ended with a hung jury in July.

Prosecutors say Read struck O’Keefe, a 16-year Boston Police officer, and her boyfriend of two years, with her SUV following a drunken argument and left him to die in a snowstorm during that late January morning, in Canton.

O’Keefe died at the age of 46.

Defense attorneys counter that outside actors killed O’Keefe and conspired with state and local police to frame Read for his murder.

Prosecutors and the defense are requesting the second trial be pushed back from late January to April.

Defense attorney Elizabeth Little argued the prosecution didn’t need to access William and Janet Read’s phone records since they had already obtained the defendant’s phone. She highlighted how Read called her father only once, at 6:32 a.m., after finding O’Keefe’s bloody body covered in snow.

Little described the prosecution’s motion as an “invasion” of William Read’s “privacy.”

The state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner found that O’Keefe died from blunt-force trauma to his head and hypothermia, per a main autopsy, while a neuropathology examination detected significant injuries to the victim’s brain itself — both bleeding as well as bruising to the front and temporal areas of the brain.

During his argument at Norfolk Superior Court on Tuesday, Brennan described procedures that could have potentially saved O’Keefe’s life including either drilling into his brain to create bleeding that may have prevented swelling or cracking his cranium.

“Certainly, he would have suffered significant impairment,” Brennan said. “My expectation on my research is that … life-saving procedures within the first two hours would have saved or could have saved John O’Keefe.”