Murder defendant Karen Read says she would’ve ‘cheered’ OJ Simpson verdict as she prepares for 2nd trial
Karen Read, accused of mowing down her Boston cop boyfriend, John O’Keefe, and leaving him to die on the ground in a blizzard, told an interviewer that she would have applauded OJ Simpson’s acquittal on murder charges in the 1990s if she’d gone through the same legal battles she’s now facing, back then.
“I’m not saying I believe OJ was innocent, but I believe that it was not a completely above-board investigation,” Read, 45, told Vanity Fair in remarks published Thursday. “Now that I am smarter, I would’ve cheered at that acquittal. You have to hold cops accountable.”
When the trial came to a verdict in October 1995, she said, she thought his “dream team” of elite Los Angeles defense lawyers “all looked like snake oil salesmen.”
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Now she has her own high-powered LA attorney, former prosecutor Alan Jackson, who helped convict music producer Phil Spector of murder.
Last week, Los Angeles-based former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani compared Michael Proctor, the fired lead investigator in Read’s case, to the homicide detective who had a similarly rough experience on the stand against Simpson, calling him “the worst law enforcement witness [he’s] seen since Mark Fuhrman in the OJ case.”
Furhman was a former LAPD detective who was caught on tape using racial slurs. Jurors later found Simpson not guilty.
Proctor sent lewd text messages about Read that were read in court for the jury in which he wrote about searching her phone for nude selfies and said he wished she would kill herself. The judge declared a mistrial less than a month later, after jurors had deadlocked for days.
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“The defense is having a field day here,” Rahmani said. “I’m not saying Karen Read is actually innocent, and this is a frame job, but the defense has a lot to work with.”
While on the witness stand at Read’s first trial, Proctor called his texts “juvenile” and “unprofessional” but said they do not change the evidence against Read or the facts of the case. The jury deadlocked.
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His wife and sister, also named as witnesses for the second trial, have publicly defended him as a 16-year police veteran whose only blemish came when he was fired as a result of the texts. Read took notice and called them out, too.
“All [their] statement did was put his vile behavior back in the news cycle, and he had to use two women to do it?” Read told Vanity Fair. “Can’t he speak for himself?”
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Elizabeth Proctor, the former trooper’s wife, told Fox News Digital that the defendant’s many media interviews are part of an “unrelenting propaganda” campaign and an attempt to draw attention away from evidence in the case.
“What Ms. Read stated is inaccurate, per usual,” she said. “Michael spoke for himself on the stand under oath – something Ms. Read will never do. She will never take the stand and speak to the jurors under oath and instead continues to spread a false story to the media.”
She noted that the charges and evidence against Read have not been changed after a federal probe, the state police review that led to her husband’s firing, and an audit into the Canton Police Department, which played a backup role in the investigation into O’Keefe’s death.
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Read is asking the Supreme Court to toss two of the three charges she faces the second time around, arguing double jeopardy, but jury selection is already nearing competition, which could see opening statements early next week.
Sixteen jurors were selected as of the end of the day Thursday – 12 to deliberate, with four alternates – but Judge Beverly Cannone said she wanted another two alternates added to the panel, a court official told Fox News Digital. The process resumes Monday.
If Read is convicted of the top charge of second-degree murder, she could face life in prison.
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If her petition before the nation’s top court is successful, the only remaining charge would be manslaughter.
Prosecutors allege that in a drunken fight after a night of drinking, Read backed into O’Keefe at about 25 mph, knocking him to the ground before driving away without him. A severe snowstorm blasted the region that night, and he was discovered on fellow Boston Police Officer Brian Albert’s front lawn the next morning.
While O’Keefe’s manner of death was ruled “undetermined,” the cause was a combination of trauma to the head and hypothermia, according to the medical examiner’s autopsy.
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Read has denied the charges and has pleaded innocent. She claims that someone else killed O’Keefe and dragged him into the cold and she is being framed.
Her case prompted residents of the community, Canton, Massachusetts, to commission an audit of their police department. A report on the auditor’s findings was published earlier this month.
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It found no evidence that Canton police had been involved in a conspiracy to frame Read, but the lead agency on the case was the Massachusetts State Police.
Proctor, the lead investigator, lost his job with the Massachusetts State Police in March after an internal review into his handling of the case kicked off following Read’s first trial.
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The disciplinary report found that he had conducted himself unprofessionally, shared confidential information with people who were not privy to law enforcement information on the case, and drunk alcohol on the job. He was not accused of concocting evidence against Read.