One of the key witnesses in the new Karen Read murder trial continued to testify for a third day on the events surrounding the death of the Read boyfriend, Boston police officer, John O’Keefe, who did not respond in the snow out of a Massachusetts house in 2022.
The prosecutors allege, after a night of drinking in Canton, who read hit O’Keefe with his SUV Lexus out of a meeting at the house of another officer and let him die in a snowstorm in January 2022. An autopsy discovered that the 46 -year -old died of hypothermia and forceful force injuries in the head.
After a jury could not reach a verdict in the trial for initial murder last year, Read is being removed from charges that include second degree murder, vehicular homicide while operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol and leaves the scene of a collision causing death. She declared herself innocent and maintains her innocence.
Karen read conversations with his lawyers during his trial in the Superior Court of Norfolk in Didham, Massachusetts, on May 2, 2025.
Mark Jarret Chavous/The Enterprise through AP
Jennifer McCabe, a friend of O’Keefe who had testified during the first trial, went on the stage for the third day during the new trial on Friday in Didham, Massachusetts.
In his extensive testimony this week, McCabe said that he had attended a social meeting at a bar the night before O’Keefe was unanswered in the snow with him, reading and others. McCabe was also at the meeting after the meeting at the bar of a house that belongs to his sister and brother -in -law, a Boston police officer.
McCabe and another friend of O’Kefe, Kerry Roberts, another key trial witness who testified last week, led to read through a snowstorm to find O’Keefe after he never came home last night, found him outside McCabe’s house at McCabe’s sister’s house.
McCabe testified on Wednesday that while talking to a first responder on the scene, he heard read: “I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.”
The defense lawyer Alan Jackson interrogated McCabe by remembering the events of that day and in the days, months and years later, highlighting the inconsistencies in his various testimonies and against police reports.
In one case, Jackson said that, after receiving a call from O’Kefe’s niece and reading that O’Kefe was missing, McCabe had called his sister, although he did not mention that call while testifying the Grand Jury who accused the charges of homicide and murder.
“There is nothing disastrous,” McCabe said about the call, testifying that his sister did not respond and did not remember to have called her.
Asked by Jackson about her use of the word “Nefarious,” said McCabe, “there is nothing in me calling my sister to be disastrous, and I feel that you are insinuating what could be and it is not.”
Witness Jen McCabe takes the position in the Superior Court of Norfolk during the Karen Read trial in Didham, Massachusetts, on May 2, 2025.
Mark Jarret Chavous/The Enterprise through AP
Jackson also interrogated McCabe about a broken rear light in the READ SUV. McCabe testified that Read first mentioned the rear light broken early in the morning with O’Kefe’s niece, although Jackson said he was not included in a police report. McCabe was standing next to his account.
When he pressed to forget certain details of that moment, McCabe said: “There are certain things that I will never forget.”
Jackson’s interrogation also focused on the search for Google of McCabe how long it has been dying in the cold. She testified this week that Read asked Google that after finding O’Keefe in the snow, with the search performed after 6 in the morning, although Jackson said there is evidence that he was made at 2:27 am that morning, hours before O’Keefe was found. McCabe denied having done the search at 2:27 am and said he looked for it later that morning, at Read.
Jackson also claimed that a group chat that includes McCabe and several family members showed that they were colluding in the days after death to coordinate their statements, which McCabe denied.
While he concluded his interrogation, Jackson interrogated McCabe at the time after they found O’Keefe in the snow out of his sister’s house, and why he did not run to see his sister and brother -in -law.
“The reason he didn’t enter the house is because you knew it better,” he accused.
McCabe said he was not worried because “something happened on the front grass that had nothing to do with anything inside that house.”
“You weren’t worried about them because you knew what really happened, right?” He replied.
“At that time, I didn’t know that it was beaten by a vehicle and that the back light was found beside him,” she replied.
Alan Jackson, defending lawyer of Karen Read, questions Jen McCabe during the Read trial in the Superior Court of Norfolk in Dedham, Massachusetts, on Friday, May 2, 2025.
Mark Jarret Chavous/AP
Upon directing, the special prosecutor Hank Brennan questioned McCabe about his mental state when he found O’Keefe.
“I was shocked, confused, nervous, scared, anxious: my friend was lying there on the ground, I didn’t know what happened,” he said.
In the search for Google, McCabe said that Read asked him to look for how long he died in the cold, and that he had never tried that search before.
Brennan mentioned McCabe’s texts with Roberts later that day, including one in which Roberts sent a text message: “I can’t stop seeing it in the snow, Jen, this is horrible.”
“Is your mental state collusion?” Brennan asked McCabe, which she replied: “No.”
McCabe has been fired as a witness. The trial was postponed for the day, with a forensic scientist of the Massachusetts State Police Crimes Laboratory at the Pstrado.
After McCabe’s testimony on Wednesday, Read alleged that McCabe was lying on the pod, saying he never told the witness to do a Google search that morning.
“Each statement is different. Under oath. Not under oath,” he said. “This is very similar to what we saw a year ago.”
