Karen Read case: Fight over federal probe experts centerpiece of pretrial hearing

Flint McColgan, Boston Herald on Apr 16, 2025

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BOSTON — A battle over the experts the defense used at Karen Read’s last murder trial in an attempt to discredit the idea that John O’Keefe was killed by a car strike is taking center stage at a motions hearing less than a week before opening statements.

Special prosecutor Hank Brennan told Judge Beverly J. Cannone that he is concerned with a lack of information regarding two experts from ARCCA, a Pittsburgh-based forensic science group, who each testified that in their analysis O’Keefe’s fatal injuries could not have resulted from a vehicle strike.

“This is the very issue I have been concerned about from the beginning of this case,” Brennan said. “My intent was never to preclude ARCCA from testifying. Never. My intention was to prevent the defense from doing trial by ambush.”

Brennan said that he wants to experts to be able to testify, but be limited to only reports and analysis that made it in by deadlines and that they be precluded from testifying to anything that comes in late and that the prosecution has no time to prepare for.

The experts, Andrew Rentschler and Daniel Wolfe, and their firm had originally been hired by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston during a mysterious probe of the investigation involving O’Keefe’s death in Jan. 29, 2022. While Brennan definitively stated in court earlier this year that the federal investigation was over, its fingerprints remain all over the Read case.

Read, 45, of Mansfield, is accused of striking Boston Police Officer O’Keefe, 46, her boyfriend of about two years, with her SUV and leaving him to freeze and die in a major snowstorm on the front lawn of 34 Fairview Road in Canton.

She was tried last year on charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence, and leaving the scene of an accident causing death, but that ended in a mistrial on July 1, 2024, after the jury reported an impasse.

Attorneys secured 18 jurors on Tuesday, enough for the trial to start. Opening statements are expected to take place next Tuesday.

Regarding the ARCCA experts, defense attorney Alan Jackson said that he and his team have provided everything they can and that the discovery process — for both sides — is a fluid process and often takes place on timelines outside of attorneys’ control.

When it comes to these experts, he said, that process is more controlled. While he said the defense turned over some 1,000 pages last week regarding the ARCCA experts, there is other information he can’t turn over because he doesn’t have access to it himself.

He said that the U.S. Attorney gave permission to both sides to retain ARCCA for the state trial and that the defense took up the offer. But ARCCA’s dealings in the federal probe are off limits. They are still not allowed to testify to classified information, like “what their directives were, that is confidential.”

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