A verdict has been reached in Karen Read’s murder retrial.
Read’s second trial came to an end on Wednesday, June 18, after the jury found her not guilty of second-degree murder in the 2022 death of her then-boyfriend, John O’Keefe.
Read, 45, was also found not guilty of leaving the scene of an accident. The jury did, however, find her guilty of operating a vehicle under the influence. The judge sentenced Read to serve a one-year probation since it is her first offense.
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Read was accused of hitting O’Keefe with her car in January 2022 and leaving him to die. She was arrested in February 2022 and pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.
Karen Read Says She Would’ve ‘Cheered’ Over OJ Simpson Verdict
Her case began in April 2024 and ended in a mistrial that July as the result of a hung jury. Throughout the legal battle, Read maintained her innocence. She did not take the stand in either trial.
“I have nothing to hide. My life is in the balance, and it shouldn’t be,” she told Boston 25 News in February. “The more information the public has, the more they understand what we already know.”
Standing trial for murder also made Read reexamine her thoughts on other famous cases, including O.J. Simpson’s 1995 acquittal in the murder of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman. (Simpson was later found liable for their deaths in a civil trial and ordered to pay $33.5 million. He died in April 2024 at the age of 76.)
“I felt so strongly about the prosecution and his guilt and the fact that he spent all this money on this dream team of lawyers. They all looked like snake oil salesmen to me,” Read told Vanity Fair in April. “I’m not saying I believe O.J. was innocent, but I believe that it was not a completely above-board investigation. Now that I am smarter, I would’ve cheered at that acquittal. You have to hold cops accountable.”
Ahead of the retrial, lead State Police investigator Michael Proctor was dishonorably discharged after admitting to sending “derogatory, defamatory and disparaging and/or inappropriate text messages” about Read during the investigation, including texts that discussed her appearance. His family claimed in a statement that he was subject to “egregiously false statements” from Read and her legal team that led to his firing.
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“All the statement did was put his vile behavior back in the news cycle,” she told Vanity Fair. “And he had to use two women to do it? Can’t he speak for himself?”
According to Read, she found it “rich” that Proctor’s family statement specifically mentioned the phrase, “How would you feel if the contents of your personal phone were questionably released to the public without full context?”
Us Weekly
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