Testimony in the trial of Karen Read, a Mansfield woman charged in the death of her Boston police officer boyfriend, John O’Keefe, resumed Wednesday morning.
This story will be updated throughout the day with the latest testimony.
- Read more: Everyone you need to know to understand the Karen Read trial
4:21 p.m. update: Read had at least eight drinks on the night of Jan. 28, 2022
Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik said that on Feb. 1, 2022, he and another officer went to C.F. McCarthy’s and the Waterfall, where John O’Keefe, Karen Read and their friends had been drinking on the night of Jan. 28, to get surveillance footage and transaction receipts from that night.
In video and still images from C.F. McCarthy’s shown in court Wednesday, O’Keefe could be seen wearing the gray hooded sweatshirt and jeans shown in the courtroom earlier in the day.
He was seen sitting at the bar at various moments with Michael Camarano and Kurt Roberts, as well as Karen Read. In one shot, Read was seen coming in the front door of the bar at 8:51 p.m. and walking up to O’Keefe, who put his arm around her.
At about 8:58 p.m., Read was seen accepting a drink in a tall, cylindrical glass from the bartender. At about 9:15 p.m., she received a second drink, and about five minutes later she received a third drink in a shot glass, which she poured into her tall glass and allowed O’Keefe to stir for her.
At 9:33 p.m., she again stirs a shot into her glass. At 9:57 p.m., she received both another tall cylindrical glass and a shot glass that she poured into the larger glass. At about 10:29 p.m., the group received a round of shots and Read poured hers into her tall glass.
After Read received a final drink in a tall cylindrical glass, she and O’Keefe were seen leaving C.F. McCarthy’s, Read still carrying the last drink.
Prosecutor Adam Lally provided Bukhenik with copies of transaction receipts he acquired from C.F. McCarthy’s, including two paid by Read and O’Keefe, each for $52.80. The receipts listed Tito’s vodka among other drinks.
Surveillance footage from the Waterfall showed Read and O’Keefe arriving at 10:54 p.m., Read waving to a group at the bar, and O’Keefe walking over to the group and giving one of them a hug. At about 11:39 p.m., Read is seen accepting and drinking from a shorter, fatter co*cktail glass than she had earlier in the evening.
O’Keefe was seen on the video leaving the bar at 12:11 a.m. holding a drink in a short co*cktail glass in his right hand.
Court was dismissed for the day at 4:20 p.m. Testimony will resume at 9 a.m. Thursday morning.
3:38 p.m. update: Ring camera footage from O’Keefe’s driveway reviewed
After a short recess, the court finished watching surveillance camera footage of Karen Read’s SUV arriving in the garage at Canton Police Department. Officers could be seen clearing snow from the ground around the vehicle, inspecting it and setting up yellow tape around it to keep anyone from touching it.
Bukhenik said neither he nor Trooper Michael Proctor touched the area around the damaged taillight.
Bukhenik said he was not present when a warrant was executed on the vehicle on Feb. 1, but Proctor was. He said the next time he was there was on Feb. 2, when the SUV was brought to the Milton State Police barracks for storage as Canton police had recused themselves from the investigation. Video from that day was also shown in the courtroom.
Prosecutor Adam Lally asked Bukhenik about the process for investigations in his unit, and Bukhenik said interviews are never conducted by only one officer, always two.
Bukhenik said Proctor, who led the investigation as the “case officer,” had filed for a search warrant for video from the Ring camera at John O’Keefe’s Canton home from Jan. 24, 2022, at midnight to Jan. 30, 2022, at midnight.
Lally played several of the videos provided in response to this warrant, starting with one from before the start of the blizzard on Jan. 28. In the video, O’Keefe’s vehicle can be seen parked next to Read’s SUV in the driveway until Read gets into her car and drives out.
In the second video, taken at about 5:07 a.m. on Jan. 29, O’Keefe’s car can be seen in the same location as Read’s SUV backs out of the garage as snow falls.
As the car drives away, the damaged taillight is visible. While the SUV does come close to O’Keefe’s vehicle, Bukhenik said no damage was found to O’Keefe’s car and no pieces of taillight plastic were found on the ground around it, implying the damage was not caused by the SUV being backed into O’Keefe’s car.
The third video, taken at about 12:30 p.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, showed O’Keefe’s and Read’s vehicles parked in the driveway in the snow, along with two other cars. Bukhenik said he did not know who the other two vehicles belonged to, but identified Read and her father exiting one of them and Read briefly opening the driver’s door to her SUV, before getting back out and walking away with her father.
The fourth video showed the same four cars parked in the driveway and Read’s brother getting out of the car that Read and her father had been in, and then clearing snow off the windshield.
The final video again showed the same four cars and several people standing in the driveway, including Read’s brother, who was clearing snow from Read’s car.
Bukhenik said that although her brother was seen multiple times clearing snow off Read’s car, he did not do so around the broken taillight.
2:30 p.m. update: Read told police she did not stay at 34 Fairview Road because of “stomach issues”
When court resumed after lunch, Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik said John O’Keefe’s clothing that was recovered from the hospital was initially placed in one evidence bag together at the hospital, when it was brought back to the police station, the individual pieces were laid out on butcher paper to dry because they were “soaking wet.”
Once the clothing was dry, the items were repackaged in individual evidence bags.
Prosecutor Adam Lally asked Bukhenik if the clear and red plastic he and other officers recovered from the scene at 34 Fairview Road was ever packaged in the same evidence bag as any of the clothing.
“Absolutely not,” Bukhenik said.
Lally next asked Bukhenik about the State Police Crime Scene Services section, which provides support to officers in documenting crime scenes. Bukhenik said an officer from Crime Scene Services arrived at the hospital to document O’Keefe’s body and estimated he was assisted between four and six times by Crime Scene Services during the investigation, but never the same officer twice.
Lally displayed three photos of O’Keefe’s body at the hospital, and Bukhenik pointed out the injuries he had observed.
When Bukhenik and Trooper Michael Proctor finished at the hospital, they drove 45 minutes to an hour to Karen Read’s parents’ home in Dighton to seize her vehicle. They called the Dighton Police Department on their way to request a uniformed officer to come with them, as they were in plain clothes.
“We were considerate of the circ*mstance and wanted to be courteous to the residents and not just show up without any uniform presence,” he said. “We have never met the Read family. They have never met us. And with the clothing we were wearing it would be difficult for them to see that we were law enforcement.”
Bukhenik and Proctor arrived at about 2:30 p.m. on the Reads’ street and waited “a significant amount of time” for the Dighton marked cruiser to arrive.
When they approached the home, Bukhenik saw Read’s black Lexus SUV in the driveway. He said he saw that the back right taillight was damaged, with snow “compacted and caked onto portions of the taillight casing.”
He said he asked Proctor to take a closer look to confirm that it was damaged, but said neither he or Proctor or the Dighton officer touched the vehicle, and only the tow truck driver came into contact with it.
Bukhenik and Proctor went inside the home where Read and both her parents were. He said Read was sitting on the couch in the living room with her laptop on her lap and her cell phone on the right armrest next to her.
“She had just been through a traumatic event, so we were considerate of her losing her boyfriend,” he said. “We had a normal tone conversation. We were in the information-gathering, fact-finding phase of the investigation. We just wanted to collect her recollection of events as she remembered.”
Before Bukhenik described the interview of Read, Judge Beverly Cannone instructed the jurors that the prosecution must prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Read had made the statements and that she had done so “freely, voluntarily and rationally.”
Bukhenik said Read was willing to answer questions, but told him she did not want to go into detail about what had happened the night before.
According to Bukhenik, Read said the previous morning she had gotten into an argument with O’Keefe about what his niece and nephew had for breakfast. That night, she and O’Keefe went to C.F. McCarthy’s Pub at about 9 p.m. to meet friends, and the men had been drinking Bud Light while she had vodka soda.
When they left to go to the Waterfall, Bukhenik said, Read denied taking a drinking glass with her from C.F. McCarthy’s.
They spent about an hour at the Waterfall, where they spent time with acquaintances, then were invited to the Alberts’ home in Canton. They drove there and Read dropped off O’Keefe, then did a three-point turn and drove home. She told Bukhenik she did not stay because she was having “stomach issues,” he said.
“She also confirmed that Mr. O’Keefe did not have any injuries on him when she interacted with him at C.F. McCarthy’s or the Waterfall and he did not get into any verbal or physical altercation with anyone to sustain those injuries,” he said.
According to Bukhenik, Read said she did not know how her taillight was damaged, but that it had happened the previous night.
She provided contact information for some people who were present the night before, and then Bukhenik told her they would be seizing her SUV and her cell phone as evidence.
When he went outside when the interview was over, Bukhenik said a plow truck was clearing the driveway and Read’s SUV was being loaded onto the flatbed of a tow truck. Video of the tow truck taking the vehicle taken from the Reads’ surveillance cameras was shown in the courtroom.
Bukhenik said he and Proctor followed the tow truck back to the Canton Police Department, where the SUV would be stored. He said the vehicle was brought to the sally port at the station because it was the town where the incident took place and the facility was large enough and heated to help melt the snow on the SUV.
Video from police station surveillance cameras was shown in the courtroom of the SUV arriving on Jan. 29.
1:03 p.m. update: Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik shows O’Keefe’s clothing in courtroom
Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik was the next witness to testify Wednesday. Bukhenik said he was on call as a supervisor on Jan. 29, 2022, and Trooper Michael Proctor was the trooper on call that day.
At about 6:44 a.m., Bukhenik said he received a call notifying him that a body had been found in a snowbank in Canton. He called Proctor to let him know and began to clear his driveway of snow so he could get out, then drove his personal truck to meet Proctor at Canton Police Department.
After being briefed on what Canton police had learned thus far, Bukhenik and Proctor drove in Bukhenik’s truck to the home of Jennifer and Matt McCabe, where they separately interviewed first Jennifer then Matt McCabe as well as Brian Albert, who arrived while they were interviewing the McCabes.
Next, the two officers drove to Good Samaritan Hospital in Brockton, where they observed John O’Keefe’s body on a gurney in the emergency department. Bukhenik said O’Keefe’s clothing had been cut off of him and was lying in a pile on the floor at the foot of the gurney, so he and Proctor collected and logged it as evidence.
Bukhenik said the clothing, which was “soaking wet” and had vomit on it, included a pair of plaid boxers, an orange t-shirt, a pair of blue Lucky brand jeans, a belt, a two-toned gray hooded sweatshirt and single black Nike sneaker for the right foot.
Since there was only one sneaker, he asked for the paramedics to check if the left shoe was left in the ambulance and asked for police at the scene to look for it.
Bukhenik explained that when any evidence is collected by police, it is sealed in a bag or box and the officer dates and initials the tape sealing the container, then stored in a secure, controlled evidence storage facility. When it is removed for processing, review, or court proceedings, the person requesting it must sign it out and log it in the tracking system.
If evidence is removed from its container, the tape seal is cut and when it is returned, the officer must re-seal it and date and initial the tape again.
“It is definitely noticeable and it’s noted in the systems,” Bukhenik said of the sealing and signing procedure.
Bukhenik said when he saw O’Keefe that day, he had bruising on his eyelids, which he said is common for victims of head trauma. O’Keefe also had small cuts on his nostril and above one eye and cuts to the upper forearm and lower bicep of his right arm.
“Each abrasion appeared to me to be linear and concentrated in a specific location on the arm,” he said. “It was concentrated on the elbow, a few inches below the elbow, a few inches above the elbow.”
He and Proctor then attempted to speak to Karen Read, who had also been brought to the hospital earlier in the day, but learned she had left and was at her parents’ home in Dighton.
Bukhenik next displayed O’Keefe’s clothing that was recovered from the hospital after his death.
He started with the gray hooded sweatshirt, then showed the orange t-shirt with an image of palm trees and a car, the right sneaker and finally the jeans and belt (O’Keefe’s boxers were contained in the bag with the belt and jeans, but were not displayed or admitted into evidence). Each item was removed from a brown paper evidence bag and held up for the jury to see.
After the items were displayed, court was dismissed for lunch and was expected to resume half an hour later.
12:13 p.m. update: Pieces of glass from the scene matched drinking cup, but glass from bumper did not
After a brief sidebar conversation requested by Judge Beverly Cannone, defense attorney Alan Jackson began his cross-examination of Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab forensic scientist Christina Hanley. He began by showing her a chain of custody document for various pieces of evidence examined by the Crime Lab.
Jackson asked for the document to be admitted into evidence, but prosecutor Adam Lally objected. Cannone again called for a sidebar conversation, after which it was not admitted into evidence.
Jackson then asked Hanley for a more detailed account of the analysis she did on the various pieces of glass.
She said six of the nine pieces of glass found at the scene physically matched the drinking glass also found at the scene, but the three remaining pieces did not. In addition, one of the five pieces of glass from the SUV’s bumper matched a single, larger piece found at the scene by Trooper Michael Proctor both physically and by their properties measured by laboratory equipment, but none were a physical match to the drinking glass.
After Jackson ended his questioning, prosecutor Adam Lally briefly asked Hanley about the differences in her analysis between the glass pieces and the plastic pieces, and she explained that the different properties of the materials required different types of analysis.
Hanley left the witness stand at 12:11 p.m.
11:43 a.m. update: Plastic found on O’Keefe’s clothes had same microscopic characteristics as taillight
The next witness to take the stand after a morning recess was Christina Hanley, another forensic scientist from the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab.
Hanley analyzed pieces of clear glass that were recovered from the ground at 34 Fairview Road as well as the bumper of Karen Read’s SUV, which she said appeared to have come from a drinking glass. She said the pieces of glass found at the home had dirt on the interior and exterior.
Some of the pieces of glass were a physical match, meaning they physically fit together, she said, and some had the same refractive characteristics as measured by laboratory equipment. Hanley said this indicated they came from the same source, or different sources with the same characteristics.
She also analyzed the pieces of debris recovered from John O’Keefe’s orange t-shirt and grey sweatshirt that fellow Crime Lab scientist Ashley Vallier previously testified about, including pieces of plastic that fit together with Read’s SUV’s taillight.
Hanley said the clear and red plastic pieces recovered from O’Keefe’s clothing had the same characteristics measured by laboratory equipment as the plastic on the taillight, again indicating they came from the taillight or from another source with the same characteristics.
10:37 a.m. update: Defense questions chain of custody of evidence
Defense attorney David Yannetti began his cross-examination of forensic scientist Ashley Vallier at about 10 a.m. He asked Vallier about the chain of custody of John O’Keefe’s shirts and the debris that was recovered from them. He asked her what state trooper had delivered the debris to the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab.
“That’s kind of an odd question,” Vallier said, to laughter in the courtroom.
“Oh, it’s not for me,” Yannetti said.
“It wouldn’t be delivered as debris, it would be delivered as the original piece of clothing,” Vallier said.
After checking a log of the chain of custody, Vallier said Trooper Michael Proctor delivered the orange t-shirt and gray long-sleeve shirt belonging to O’Keefe to the Crime Lab on March 14, 2022, about six weeks after O’Keefe’s death.
“So between Jan. 29, 2022 and March 14, 2022 you do not know what Michael Proctor did or didn’t do with the orange t-shirt or grey long sleeve shirt in question,” Yannetti said, which Vallier confirmed.
He then showed photos of other pieces of red plastic found by Proctor at 34 Fairview Road on Feb. 8, 11 and 18 that had been identified as pieces of taillight. He asked Vallier if they were “quite a bit larger” than the pieces she had analyzed, which she agreed with.
“In addition to collecting those pieces on all those different days, Michael Proctor was also the person to hand-deliver those evidence bags on March 14,” Yannetti said.
Finally, Yannetti brought up a photo of Vallier’s reconstruction of the taillight. He pointed out a hole where plastic was still missing, and Vallier said she did not know where those pieces were or what had happened to them.
Before Vallier left the witness stand, prosecutor Adam Lally asked Vallier if she had ever physically seen the clothing that the debris was recovered from, which she had not.
Court was dismissed for a morning recess at 10:36 a.m. and will resume with the next witness for the prosecution.
10:02 a.m. update: Plastic found on O’Keefe’s clothing matched taillight from Read’s SUV
Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab forensic scientist Ashley Vallier continued her testimony Wednesday morning, explaining the physical match analysis she performed on pieces of debris recovered from John O’Keefe’s clothing.
Vallier previously explained that within the debris, she found pieces of mostly red, clear and silver apparent plastic, some pieces of clear apparent glass and other items. On Monday and again on Wednesday morning, the prosecution displayed a number of photos of individual pieces of the debris to illustrate Vallier’s testimony.
Vallier said she was able to successfully fit together some of the larger pieces of plastic.
“When things break, they break in a unique pattern. It’s pretty different every time,” she said. “A mechanical fit is bringing two things with broken edges together to see if they were originally part of the same item, to see if the broken edges align.”
She said the larger piece of plastic she was able to make from fitting together smaller pieces was also a mechanical fit to the taillight that was removed from Karen Read’s SUV.
9:15 a.m. update: Testimony begins Wednesday morning
Court began at 9:13 a.m. Wednesday. The first witness to take the stand was Ashley Vallier, a forensic scientist with the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab who began testimony on Monday about her analysis of debris found on John O’Keefe’s clothing.
Read, 44, is charged with second-degree murder in the death of O’Keefe, who was found cold to the touch and unresponsive on Jan. 29, 2022, outside of a home in Canton.
Norfolk County prosecutors say Read struck O’Keefe with her SUV while driving intoxicated. Read’s attorney, David Yannetti, said during the trial’s opening statements that her car never struck O’Keefe and that others are to blame for his death.
The trial is taking place in Dedham’s Norfolk County Superior Court.
Jurors were shown photographs of physical evidence, such as pieces of cracked taillight and O’Keefe’s sneaker, on Monday.
More about the case
- Jury in Karen Read trial expected to begin deliberations next week
- Karen Read trial live updates: First defense witnesses include plow driver, dog bite expert
- Karen Read trial live updates: GPS data shows O’Keefe never entered the house
- Here’s what Karen Read said about taking the stand during her murder trial
- Karen Read trial live updates: Defense expert says scratches on O’Keefe’s arm are consistent with dog attack
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