Karen Read retrial: Another expert testifies to 'Hos long to die in cold' search

Flint McColgan, Boston Herald on May 7, 2025

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DEDHAM, Mass. — Jennifer McCabe searched for “hos long to die in cold” after John O’Keefe’s body was already discovered, according to a second prosecution digital forensics expert called in the Karen Read case.

“What I can state with a scientific degree of certainty is that that search occurred at 6:24 a.m. and was the last search in the tab that had been opened at 2:27,” Jessica Hyde, the founder of and an investigator for the Bridgeport, New York-based digital forensics firm Hexordia, testified Wednesday in the 11th day of Read’s retrial.

The time McCabe made the search regarding hypothermia is one of the most hotly contested pieces of evidence in an extremely complex case.

The prosecution and now two of its experts say McCabe made the search at 6:24 a.m. McCabe herself testified that she made the search when Read asked her to after they discovered O’Keefe’s body in the snow on the front lawn of 34 Fairview Road in Canton.

The defense counters that the search was actually made at 2:27 a.m., hours before O’Keefe would be discovered on the lawn, thus indicating prior knowledge of his fate and thus evidence of a conspiracy. They are expected to call their own digital forensics expert later in the trial to testify to this conclusion.

But so far it’s still the prosecution’s case, and special prosecutor Hank Brennan has now called two experts who say that their analysis puts the search when McCabe says it happened.

Most of Hyde’s testimony Wednesday was a breakdown of how the analysis works, the tools she uses and colorful illustrations of how the phone’s various databases record data — at one point she made an analogy for ordering food and then sending it back to describe how the phone may record a deletion of a record.

But after the set-up came her conclusion: that McCabe made the search at 6:24 a.m. and that there is no evidence that the search was deleted. She explained that the 2:27 a.m. time stamp was when the Safari tab on McCabe’s iPhone used for the search was last interacted with before the search.

It’s the same conclusion reached by Ian Whiffin, who works for Cellebrite, one of the main companies that makes mobile forensic tools, and who testified earlier in the trial.

Court recessed for a lunch break and reconvened at around 1:50 p.m. when defense attorney Robert Alessi began his cross examination.

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