Following a 12-person jury in Massachusetts finding Karen Read not guilty of murdering her Boston police officer boyfriend John O’Keefe, some jurors have shared insights into how they reached their decision. Read had been accused by prosecutors of striking O’Keefe with her SUV and leaving him to perish during a snowstorm on Jan. 29, 2022. After a previous trial in 2024 resulted in a hung jury, she was acquitted on June 18 of charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter. However, she was convicted of a drunk driving offense and received one year of probation. Read’s defense team has maintained that O’Keefe’s death was linked to an incident at the residence of fellow police officer Brian Albert in Canton, Massachusetts. O’Keefe was discovered deceased on Albert’s front lawn, yet Albert claimed O’Keefe never entered the house.
Jurors have started to share their perspectives on the trial. One juror, Jason, who expressed his belief in Read’s innocence to TMZ, stated, “I think for the jurors there’s a mix of, some people think that she was definitely innocent, and the other people, there was a lot of reasonable doubt at least to where we didn’t want to convict her.” Addressing the possibility of a setup in O’Keefe’s death, Jason mentioned uncertainty, saying, “I was only presented a limited scope of what happened at the night, and I can only base my opinion off of the evidence that was shown in the courtroom.” He emphasized, “All I know is that there was a lot of holes in the investigation.”
Another juror, Paula Prado, who also found Read not guilty, expressed concerns to the media about inconsistencies in the investigation. She initially suspected Read of potential manslaughter, but as time passed, she noted numerous unresolved issues that prevented a conviction. Prado, a lawyer from Brazil, shared on the TODAY show, “I’m confident we did the right thing,” while expressing regret that justice might not have been served for O’Keefe’s family. She urged for continued efforts to seek truth and justice for O’Keefe, stating, “The reason why I’m coming out and talking to people is to keep the flame going and the supporters going after the DA, or whatever they have to do, to reopen the case and find who really killed John O’Keefe.”
