Karen Read retrial: Angry voicemails and sudden taillight pieces

Flint McColgan, Boston Herald on May 6, 2025

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DEDHAM, Mass. — Jurors heard Karen Read’s furious and jealous voicemails left among 52 calls she made to her boyfriend John O’Keefe in the hours after she had allegedly killed him.

“John, I (expletive) hate you!” Read screamed in the first voicemail at 12:28 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022.

In all there were eight voicemail messages over 52 calls Read placed to O’Keefe’s phone between 12:33 and 6:03 that morning. They were presented in court by Massachusetts State Trooper Nicholas Guarino, recalled to the stand once more, who had done the data extractions of both Read and O’Keefe’s phones. Defense attorneys asked him no questions.

That last call resulted in a message recording the chaotic scene surrounding the discovery of O’Keefe’s body in the snow on the front yard of 34 Fairview Road in Canton.

In it jurors could hear Read screaming in the background and portions of the 911 call, the same that was played in court in its entirety when the woman who made the call, Jennifer McCabe, was on the stand.

Another voicemail at 1:10 a.m.: “Yeah it’s one in the morning. I’m with your niece and nephew. You’re a (expletive) pervert. You’re a (expletive) pervert!”

Then seven minutes later: “You are (expletive) using me right now. You’re (having sex with) another girl.”

Evidence at the scene

Prosecutors say Read, 45, of Mansfield, struck and killed O’Keefe, a Boston police officer, with her Lexus LS570 SUV sometime after midnight on Jan. 29, 2022, after yet another fight in a troubled two-year relationship. They say she left him to freeze and die on that Canton front yard, the property of fellow Boston cop Brian Albert.

Central to that theory is a busted passenger-side taillight on her SUV. But the defense disputes that the taillight was broken by striking O’Keefe but was only cracked elsewhere and then pieces placed at the scene of the crime by corrupt investigators who were working with the Albert family to frame Read.

The defense got their first chance to introduce the taillight concept to jurors thanks to two prosecution witnesses called to the stand Tuesday: now-retired Canton Police Lt. Paul Gallagher, who found no taillight pieces, and Massachusetts State Police Lt. Kevin O’Hara, who found taillight pieces.

Gallagher testified that he arrived at the scene at around 7 a.m. It was his job, he said, to secure the scene for the State Police, who had jurisdiction over unattended death and homicide cases. But as the snow continued to fall, he testified, he made the decision to do his best to secure any evidence he could find.

The snowstorm from late Jan. 28 through Jan. 29, 2022, was a bad one, meteorologist Robert Gilman testified Tuesday.

“This was the biggest January storm in history,” Gilman said of the snowstorm that layered the Greater Boston region with 23.8 inches, or just under two feet, of snow. "Visibility under a quarter of a mile. And the temperature was dropping during that time and the wind was gusting frequently to 40, 50 miles per hour in that area.”

Gallagher testified Monday that he used a leaf blower to slowly remove the layers of snow and found blood — which he stored in red SOLO cups — and a broken cocktail glass. But on Tuesday defense attorney Alan Jackson was more interested in what he didn’t find.

“You didn’t see a bright red piece of taillight?” Jackson asked.

Gallagher said he didn’t.

“And you certainly didn’t see 46 pieces of broken taillight there, did you?” Jackson asked, indicating the number that would eventually be reported found at the scene by the MSP.

Once again, Gallagher said he didn’t.

O’Hara, the leader of the MSP Special Emergency Response Team (SERT), was called to assemble a search crew that afternoon. The storm made it hard to get people to the scene and only seven could muster of the eight he needed, so, he said, he took a hands-on role in the search instead of supervising.

He said he was the left-most of the eight MSP line searches of a 60-square-foot area of the front left part of the yard, where he said he was told O’Keefe was found.

The search began at around 5:20 p.m. Over the course of nearly an hour, he testified, his team found O’Keefe’s missing sneaker near the roadway and six or seven pieces of taillight — both clear and red.

In cross-examination, Jackson asked about how the scene was not protected by either barricade or police presence.

He also asked about the presence of members of the MSP unit stationed at the Norfolk District Attorney’s office, who would ultimately be responsible for the investigation and who the defense has repeatedly suggested meddled with the evidence, including by possibly planting the taillight evidence.

While O’Hara admitted that it was theoretically possible for the scene to have been compromised before his team’s arrival, he said it was highly unlikely because the snow was fresh and undisturbed and his team is trained to look for instances of such interference.

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