Karen Read once ‘admired’ the Boston police boyfriend she’s accused of killing

CANTON, Mass. — The woman accused of ramming her luxury SUV into her boyfriend and carelessly left him on the ground in a snowstorm, had briefly dated the Boston police officer in their 20s, and reconnected after the pandemic.

Long before she was charged with murdering John O’Keefe, Karen Read had a successful career as a financial analyst and adjunct professor at Bentley College. Now 44, she grew up in Blacksburg, Virginia, and in Taunton, Massachusetts. She went to Coyle & Cassidy, a now-closed private Roman Catholic school, and received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in finance from Bentley, a private university in Waltham.

When she reconnected with O’Keefe, he had moved to a suburb of Canton to care for his niece and nephew after their parents died. She told ABC News before the trial that she admired him for standing up for his family, and that she helped with the children and stayed with them regularly.

But their relationship soured. The niece and nephew testified about their verbal arguments. And what should have been a fun trip to Aruba that winter was marred by hostility with angry words and an accusation of cheating.

Prosecutors suggested O’Keefe was looking for a way out before their last late night bar hopping together. And moments after she crashed her SUV into him on the front lawn of another officer’s home on Jan. 29, 2022, she left a voicemail that was played for jurors saying, “John, I (expletive) hate you.”

Read, who claims she was framed by the policehas been supported by friends and family, including William Read, a former dean at Bentley who posted $50,000 bail for his daughter. He sits behind her every day in court and said they are confident in her innocence.

She has faced setbacks before, undergoing multiple surgeries for Crohn’s disease before being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and her father told the Boston Globe: “Karen will never collapse and she will never lose her determination.”