Karen Read's Vanity Fair interview - part 2. Here are 10 takeaways.
MANSFIELD - Vanity Fair released the second part of its highly anticipated Karen Read interview Wednesday. The second article is longer - and far more detailed - than the first.
Who is Karen Read?
Read, 44, is charged with second-degree murder, leaving the scene and manslaughter in the death of her boyfriend, Boston Police officer John O'Keefe. Prosecutors said she ran him down with her Lexus SUV after a night of heavy drinking and then left him to die in a snowstorm in Canton, Massachusetts in January 2022.
Read's attorneys said she was framed, and that O'Keefe was actually killed inside the home of another Boston police officer and then dragged outside and left in the storm.
Vanity Fair interview
Until now, Read had not sat down for any interviews since her first criminal trial ended in a mistrial on July 1. Vanity Fair said their reporter was granted unlimited access to Read for three days at her home in Mansfield, Massachusetts. The reporter slept over at Read's house each night, a practice the journalist admitted was unusual.
Read is scheduled to go on trial again, starting on January 27, 2025 at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham.
Here are ten new takeaways from part two of the interview. If you're not familiar with the Karen Read case, you can read more here.
Karen Read interview part 2 takeaways
1. Karen Read responds to allegations by the public, and media critics, that she is too outspoken and "happy" for a murder defendant.
"If I look happy, did it cross your mind that I have a free conscience? Because I didn't do it?" Read said. "If being innocent and enjoying the support and refusing to be down day after day, month after month, year after year makes me America's happiest murder defendant, then I'm America's happiest murder defendant."
Read also revealed that she Googles herself every morning to read new headlines before checking the court docket to see if her case has any updates. She also responded to criticism about being pictured drinking out in public during her trial.
"Read does not drink as much as she did with O'Keefe and was initially reluctant to order the occasional alcoholic beverage at a restaurant, worried that people would judge her. She has since stopped caring what strangers think," the article reads. "You're allowed a cocktail if you're being framed for murder," Read said.
2. Karen responds to criticism of her by the O'Keefe family, including directly responding to quotes from Paul O'Keefe's interview with WBZ-TV in July.
She directly addresses both Paul and John's mother, Peg.
"So Paul and Peg, if you think I killed John, that means you misjudged me for two years and entrusted two young family members in my care. Then in the blink of an eye, you now think I'm a cold-blooded killer who took away your son?" Read said.
"The O'Keefes never carried a pitchfork for me until I started getting support. You didn't speak to any media. Now you're giving interviews. You really just can't stand my rising from the ashes. The only thing that changed is I started to come from a position of power...I've reached the point that-John, if you can hear me-I've done everything I can. I don't think your family can be saved. They want to see me incarcerated for the rest of my life despite never seeing evidence while you were alive that I mistreated you. We were dating for two years, and I've since eclipsed those two years. I'm going on three, and I've got to save myself now."
3. Karen reflects on her relationship with John and whether she still mourns his loss.
"We argued," Read admits, "but was I abusive? Was I neglectful? Did I mistreat him emotionally or in any way? Or did we have ups and downs? And I helped him tend to the kids and we went on vacations and to sporting events and school and breakfast and haircuts?" Read told the reporter that she no longer feels the "acute" sadness she felt in the year after John died.
4. Alan Jackson lays out his argument to the reporter about how Judge Cannone declared a mistrial - and leaves out some important details.
"On July 1, Cannone read the jury's note aloud, which stated that they were at an impasse. In the very next breath, Cannone declared a mistrial. 'It was over, like a guillotine dropped,' says Jackson, adding that Read's legal team was given no information before that," the article reads.
WBZ was in the courtroom, and over the course of five days, the jury came back three different times saying it was deadlocked.
Each time, Attorney David Yannetti argued to give the jurors a "dynamite" instruction, which would move them closer to a mistrial.
The allegation that no information was given before a surprise mistrial lacks full context. This issue will be argued before the Supreme Judicial Court on November 6.
5. Alan Jackson suggests that Karen Read-sympathetic jurors were intentionally left out of deliberations by court staff.
In the article, Jackson suggests that three jurors seemed sympathetic to the defense, one who was dismissed on the final day of arguments and the two others who were randomly chosen as alternates, were dismissed intentionally.
In randomly selecting alternates through a lottery-style number picking device, "the magistrate did not show the numbers but said they belonged to the other two potentially sympathetic jurors," the article says. "The chances of that happening are next to nil," says Jackson, "referring to all three seemingly sympathetic jurors being removed from the deliberating pool."
6. Experts tell Vanity Fair that the federal investigation into this case likely suggests suspicion of a coverup.
The U.S. Attorney's Office, a federal agency, has or is (it will not confirm either) conducting some unknown investigation into the circumstances surrounding John O'Keefe's death. Its investigation is what led to two expert witnesses testifying about the alleged crash at Read's first trial, and the reason that multiple witnesses had to testify in front of a grand jury. However, no one has been indicted.
An expert told Vanity Fair that a federal investigation into a state case would likely mean suspicion of police misconduct or a coverup.
WBZ has repeatedly asked U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy about the investigation but has received no answer. Read told VF, "there'll be a federal indictment and my allegations will become even more validated."
7. The first trial itself cost Karen Read $1.2 million, not counting actual legal fees.
Read told the reporter that she spent $1.2 million to house her attorneys in the same hotel as her, pay for all of their meals, and get transportation and security to and from court. In response to criticism that the group was photographed eating at several fancy restaurants, Read said, "You try feeding Alan Jackson McDonald's." In the first article, Read revealed she owes $5 million in legal fees still.
8. A grand jury failed to indict Karen Read on witness intimidation charges for her relationship with Turtleboy.
This fact had already been hinted to in court paperwork for other, unrelated cases, but the Vanity Fair article author writes that a grand jury was convened in March of 2024 - one month before Read's trial - in an attempt to indict her on witness intimidation charges due to her relationship with the blogger known as Turtleboy, but failed.
Read and Turtleboy - whose real name is Aidan Kearney - exchanged 189 phone calls leading up to her trial. The article also mentions that Turtleboy made up to $50,000 a month through YouTube live shows during his coverage of the case.
9. Vanity Fair spoke to a juror who believes Karen was framed.
WBZ is unaware of which juror this reporter spoke with, but the juror told the magazine they believe Read was framed "one hundred percent."
During the testimony about inverted sallyport video, the juror told the magazine: "I'm like, 'Are you kidding me right now?' " one of the jurors tells Vanity Fair.
"That was like, 'Holy (expletive), they did this on purpose. This wasn't just an accident where they didn't know it was inverted.' I couldn't believe that a Massachusetts State Police sergeant was defending this in open court."
10. Vanity Fair asked an independent computer expert to investigate Jen McCabe's alleged 2:27 a.m. Google search.
The magazine contacted Umit Karabiyik, an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Technology at Purdue University, who looked into testimony and Jen McCabe's phone extraction and told the magazine he believes the "hos long to die in cold" Google search happened at 2:27 a.m., contradicting two prosecution expert witnesses.
"The time stamp for the search items is recorded for searches [and] stored in the database, not the time of the tab opening," he said.
