A witness in the murder trial of Karen Read on Thursday recounted driving to her relative’s Canton home on Jan. 29, 2022, to drop off birthday donuts for her nephew, only to learn Read’s boyfriend had been found left for dead on the front lawn of the property hours earlier.
Snow was falling at a “pretty good” rate when Julie Albert, a Canton resident who lived two doors down from Boston police Officer John O’Keefe, pulled into the driveway of her brother-in-law’s home at 34 Fairview Road around 8:30 a.m. to leave donuts and a card in her nephew’s car, Albert testified in Norfolk Superior Court.
She said she only planned to drop the gifts and leave, but her brother-in-law, Brian Albert, came to the door and asked her to come inside.
“Everyone was just sitting there,” she recalled. They were “visibly upset,” she said.
She said Jennifer McCabe, another sister-in-law to Brian Albert, told her, “Something’s happened to John,” referring to O’Keefe.
“I said, ‘Is he OK?’ And she said, ‘We don’t know,’” Julie Albert testified.
O’Keefe, 46, would be pronounced dead that morning at a Brockton hospital, leaving behind a stunned circle of friends and relatives, including a niece and nephew he had been raising after their parents died of cancer.
As the high-profile trial moves through its second week, Albert was also questioned sharply by defense lawyers about her relationship with the sister of Michael Proctor, the State Police’s lead investigator on the case.
Prosecutors allege Read, 44, of Mansfield, intentionally and drunkenly backed her SUV into O’Keefe after dropping him off outside the Fairview Road home following a night of drinking and bar-hopping. They say that Read returned in a frantic state shortly after 6 a.m. with two other women and discovered O’Keefe’s body on the front lawn, telling first responders “I hit him” several times.
Read’s lawyers contend that she’s being framed and that O’Keefe went inside the home, where Brian Albert was hosting an afterparty, and was fatally beaten before his body was planted on the front lawn.
Julie Albert testified that when she entered the Fairview Road home on the morning of O’Keefe’s death, she saw no injuries on either Brian Albert, then a Boston police officer, or his friend Brian Higgins.
Lawyers for Read, citing text messages and prior testimony, have said that Higgins, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who was at the afterparty, had a romantic interest in Read.
Both Julie Albert and her husband, Chris, testified Thursday that their son Colin, then 18, had been at the Albert home on the night of Jan. 28 to celebrate his cousin’s birthday.
A lawyer for Read, David Yannetti, at one point asked Chris Albert if Colin had ever given O’Keefe the finger or told him “[expletive] you,” allegations Chris denied. The defense has suggested that Colin Albert had a contentious relationship with O’Keefe and was at the afterparty on the night in question.
Yannetti also asked Chris Albert if he neglected during his February 2022 interview with State Police to mention that his son had been at 34 Fairview that night.
“I don’t remember,” Chris Albert said.
He testified that he did not go to his brother’s home for the afterparty because he was tired, arriving back at his Canton home between approximately 12:05 a.m. and 12:10 a.m.
He said Colin Albert returned home about 10 to 15 minutes later.
Yannetti sought to undercut that timeline, playing surveillance footage of Chris Albert leaving the Waterfall Bar & Grille, where a group of friends had gathered, at 12:13 a.m.
“That would mean it would have been impossible for you to get home between 12:05 a.m. and 12:10 a.m.,” Yannetti said.
“Correct,” Chris Albert said.
Prosecutors have said Read dropped O’Keefe off outside the Fairview Road home after Colin Albert had left, and that a witness in the home observed a black SUV similar to Read’s leaving the area at 12:45 a.m.
On cross-examination, Yannetti questioned Julie Albert about her friendship with Courtney Proctor, the sister of Michael Proctor, the lead State Police investigator on the case. Lawyers for Read have focused on ties between the Alberts and investigators in the case, saying law enforcement officials conspired to frame Read and protect O’Keefe’s true killers.
Yannetti asked if she and Courtney Proctor spoke to each other 67 times by phone between Feb. 1, 2022, and Sept. 6, 2022. She replied that she didn’t recall the exact number of conversations and also said she didn’t remember speaking to Courtney Proctor for 12 minutes by phone on Feb. 1, 2022, the day of Read’s arrest. Her district court arraignment was the following day.
“You spoke to Courtney Proctor three times that day, before my client’s televised arraignment,” Yannetti said. “Did you not?”
”Again, I don’t remember,” Julie Albert said.
Before she took the stand, her husband recounted waking up on Jan. 29 and learning from his wife that O’Keefe was dead.
She told him “basically that John had died,” Chris Albert said, and that “he was found somewhere on the front lawn of 34 Fairview.”
Chris Albert, currently a selectman in Canton, said he was in disbelief.
“What are you talking about?” he recalled asking her. “What do you mean?”
Testimony resumes Friday.
Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com.