Witness in Karen Read trial describes ‘strange’ exchange between McCabe and Read before boyfriend’s death
Karen Read’s defense team is looking to build on momentum from a surprise police witness who testified on Tuesday that her taillight was less damaged when he helped seize it with a warrant than it appears in photos taken after it arrived at the Canton Police Department, where authorities first towed it.
Following testimony from a plow driver who said he drove by the address where O’Keefe was found and didn’t see a body — but did pass a parked Ford Edge SUV at one point — a friend of Read and O’Keefe named Karina Kolokithas took the stand.
She said it seemed strange when Jennifer McCabe, a key witness in the case, pulled Read aside at the end of the night.
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“Jen went over to Karen, kind of put her arm around her, and she’s like, ‘Karen, you’re coming with me. You’re coming with me,'” Kolokithas testified. “And Karen’s like, ‘What?…Where are we going?’”
She said it struck her as odd and stood out in her memory of that evening.
“It just was strange,” she testified. “It was just like, ‘You’re coming with me.'”
The three women walked out of the bar and went their separate ways. Read hugged McCabe goodbye, she said, and got into her own SUV with O’Keefe rather than going with McCabe.
Kolokithas’ youngest daughter played sports and is friends with O’Keefe’s niece and McCabe’s daughter, and the parents were friendly with one another as well, she said. She was present at the Waterfall Bar and Grille in Canton along with O’Keefe, Read, McCabe and other central figures to the case, including Brian Higgins, an ATF agent who was flirting with Read behind her boyfriend’s back.
In a short cross-examination, special prosecutor Hank Brennan asked Kolokithas about O’Keefe’s demeanor.
She testified that he was very kind, very generous and very thoughtful. He was in an elated mood the night before he died because his niece had just gotten into a prestigious private school.
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Read’s defense started the day with Brian “Lucky” Loughran, a Department of Public Works employee and a plow driver, on the witness stand.
He testified that he passed by 34 Fairview Road, the home of Brian Albert, where John O’Keefe was found dead in the snow on Jan. 29, 2022, multiple times between 2:40 a.m. and around 6 a.m. Prosecutors allege Read hit her boyfriend outside and drove off, leaving him to die amid blizzard conditions.
Loughran said he had good visibility despite the blizzard conditions due to multiple lights on the plow truck and a high seat. Asked if he saw a body in the snow, he said no — but he added that he did see a Ford Edge SUV parked outside the address on a later pass around 3:30 a.m.
He said it stood out to him because he was from the area and knew the Albert family — and he had to maneuver around the vehicle as he cleared the road.
“For as long as I can remember, they have never parked a vehicle in front of their house,” Loughran testified. “They’ve always had enough ample parking in the driveway.”
Brennan asked Loughran during cross-examination about purported threats from an online blogger and inconsistencies in his timeline.
Loughran said he never felt threatened by the blogger and denied having a bad memory when Brennan confronted him with multiple statements that offered different times for when the driver passed by Fairview Road.
Then Brennan played police dashcam video taken outside 34 Fairview Road that showed the heavy snowfall and the distance between the house there and Cedarcrest Road, where a plow truck drove by multiple times in the background.
Loughran agreed that some of the passes were him in the plow, dubbed “Frankentruck,” but said he couldn’t be sure at other moments.
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Wednesday marks the 27th day of Read’s retrial on murder and other charges in the January 2022 death of O’Keefe, her then-boyfriend, a Boston police officer, and an uncle who had taken in the orphaned children of his late sister and brother-in-law.
In court Tuesday, Dighton Police Sgt. Nicholas Barros discussed taillight damage to Read’s SUV. Fragments were not found at the crime scene until after the vehicle was in police custody, and the defense’s implication is that they could have been planted there.
She denies hitting him with her 2021 Lexus SUV and leaving the scene, where he died with head trauma and signs of hypothermia. The defense says no collision happened and something or someone else caused his injuries.
Barros testified that when he arrived at Read’s parents’ house to help state police confiscate the vehicle, fewer pieces of taillight were missing from the cracked taillight.
He said that a photo of Read’s SUV taken at the Canton Police Department’s sallyport — a secure garage — did “absolutely not” show the taillight in the same condition it was in when he saw it in the driveway.
Barros surprised the courtroom when he testified for the commonwealth during Read’s first trial, which ended with a deadlocked jury last year. This time, he was a defense witness.
“He was a devastating witness who has the [district attorney’s] case on life support,” said Mark Bederow, a New York City-based defense attorney who is closely following the case.
He said special prosecutor Hank Brennan conducted an “excellent” cross-examination, showing Barros and the jury images of Read’s taillight taken over the course of the day, before police took her SUV, but defense attorney Alan Jackson performed equally well in redirect questioning.
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“The sum total is that Barros is 100% unequivocal: The taillight he saw on Jan. 29 was not anywhere near as destroyed as when the [Massachusetts State Police] had it,” he said.
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Grace Edwards, a Massachusetts defense attorney who is also following the case, called Barros’ testimony a “bombshell” and said the surprise in the first trial was “a clear Brady violation” — referring to a rule that prosecutors must share exculpatory evidence with the defense.
“The fact that a police officer drove to the Omni Hotel to meet with the defense team of a defendant on trial for murder clearly indicates he wanted to tell his story,” she told Fox News Digital.
Dr. Judson Welcher, an expert for the prosecution, explained to jurors how he found that O’Keefe appeared to have been struck in the arm by the back corner of Read’s SUV before he fell to the ground and fractured the back of his skull.
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Christina Hanley, an analyst with the state police’s crime lab, testified that investigators recovered plastic fragments from O’Keefe’s clothing that were a match with the broken taillight or something made of the same material.
Read could face life in prison if convicted of the top charge, second-degree murder.
Judge Cannone canceled court for Thursday. The parties are expected to return Friday morning at 9 a.m.