Vanity Fair on Tuesday published the first of a two-part feature on Karen Read, the Mansfield woman charged with fatally striking her boyfriend and leaving him for dead in Canton in January 2022.
Prosecutors allege Read, 44, drunkenly backed her Lexus SUV into Boston police Officer John O’Keefe after dropping him off outside a Canton home following a night of bar-hopping. Read’s lawyers say she was framed and that O’Keefe entered the residence, owned at the time by a fellow Boston officer, where he was fatally beaten in the basement before his body was planted on the front lawn.
Read has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence, and leaving the scene of personal injury and death. Her first trial ended in a hung jury in July and her retrial is scheduled for January.
Here are some key takeaways from the first part of the wide-ranging interview.
Read was arrested days after O’Keefe’s death on the manslaughter and leaving the scene counts, and a grand jury later indicted her on those charges and second-degree murder, which carries a life sentence with parole eligibility after 15 to 25 years.
“I believe it was to scare me and get some kind of plea deal going,” Read said of the murder indictment. “Do two years on a lesser manslaughter [charge] and you’ll be free. Which we were never going to consider.”
Read says O’Keefe’s killers wanted to ‘teach him a lesson,’ and things spun out of control
Read told the magazine she didn’t think O’Keefe’s assailants initially set out to kill him.
“I believe whatever happened to John was a setup to teach him a lesson or tune him up, and it got out of control,” Read said. “No one would choose to kill someone in their own home and then set it up so sloppily.”
She also speculated that Brian Albert, the police officer who owned the Canton home, may have harbored animosity toward O’Keefe, who worked a desk job so he could better care for his niece and nephew, who had lost their parents. Albert, who retired in 2023, had served in the fugitive apprehension unit and appeared on the police reality show “Boston’s Finest.”
“I could see how someone could look at John and say, ‘I’m a real cop. I’m the head of the fugitive unit, I’ve been on the drug unit, the gang unit,’” Read told the magazine. Albert’s lawyer told the publication there was no “beef” between the men and that Albert had attended O’Keefe’s wake and a fund-raiser for O’Keefe’s sister.
During Read’s first trial, Albert testified that O’Keefe never entered his home on the night of his death.
“Absolutely not,” Albert testified. “I wish he had.”
Read has turned to literature amid her legal woes
Read said she has drawn inspiration from both canonical and contemporary books as she battles the criminal charges and a wrongful death lawsuit.
She told Vanity Fair that Alexandre Dumas’s novel “The Count of Monte Cristo,” whose lead character is falsely accused of treason but ultimately prevails, has been a source of comfort, and the magazine noted that a copy of David Rudolph’s 2021 book “American Injustice,” which chronicles prosecutorial misconduct, sits atop “a stack of finance books” in the former equity analyst’s home.
Read keeps a Ziploc bag ready to go in case she’s re-arrested
The magazine reported that a Ziploc bag, “in case of sudden arrest,” sits hidden in Read’s dining room.
What’s in the bag?
“Advil, melatonin, toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, drugstore lipstick, strip of paper with her lawyer’s phone number on it, and a bottle of Laura Mercier foundation, left over from her previous life,” the magazine reported.
The criminal case has taken a financial toll
Read lost her jobs as an analyst and adjunct professor at Bentley University following her arrest and currently owes more than “$5 million in deferred fees” to her high-powered defense team, which includes Alan Jackson, David Yannetti, Elizabeth Little, and Martin G. Weinberg, the magazine reported.
She has lost her life savings and is “living off what remains of her 401(k),” the magazine said. And when she was indicted for murder, Yannetti gave her distressing financial news.
“The day after I’m upcharged, David’s like, ‘Listen, I know this is the worst time to have this conversation, but my fees double for murder,’” Read told Vanity Fair.
Following the murder charge, Read told the publication, “David [Yannetti] and I realized this is [expletive] dirty. ... This is intentional. They’re framing me.”
Read had volunteer security for the Vanity Fair interview
Read arranged for Vanity Fair Hollywood correspondent Julie Miller to stay at her Mansfield home, which she has since sold to pay for legal fees, for three days in August to hear her side of the story.
But reporter and subject weren’t alone.
“Read told me she’d have a security person stay overnight,” Miller wrote. “Said security turns out to be a volunteer, a friend of sorts, who declined to be named for this story but who looks like [pro wrestler and action star] John Cena and has a license to carry. As Read said, ‘Strangest sleepover ever.’”
Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com.