Several friends of John O'Keefe, the Boston police officer whose death is at the heart of the Karen Read murder trial, were called to the stand in Norfolk Superior Court Wednesday after a key witness returned to the stand for a third day of testimony, and a tense cross-examination.
Defense attorney Alan Jackson pressed Jennifer McCabe about several matters during the cross-examination. McCabe's sister, Nicole Albert, owns the home on Fairview Road in Canton with her husband, Brian Albert Sr., outside of which O'Keefe was found dead the morning of Jan. 29, 2022.
McCabe has become a key witness for several reasons — not only was she present at the gathering at the home the night of Jan. 28, but she was with Read to find O'Keefe's body in the morning. Plus, Google searches from her phone have become a central point for the Read defense.
Read, 44, of Mansfield, has been charged with second-degree murder, among other charges, in the death of O'Keefe, 46, her boyfriend. She has pleaded not guilty and is free on bond. She's accused of backing her SUV into him that night and leaving him there to die. The 16-year police veteran was found unresponsive outside the home, owned by McCabe's sister and brother-in-law, a fellow Boston police officer. The defense believes Read is being framed.
After McCabe was dismissed, the prosecution called three witnesses: Kerry Roberts, who was with McCabe and Read in the search for O'Keefe's body; Laura Sullivan, a close friend of O'Keefe; and Marietta Sullivan, Laura's sister and another friend of O'Keefe's.
Roberts discussed Read running to O'Keefe's snow-covered body outside the Fairview Road home. The Sullivans discussed a trip to Aruba the month before where they were joined by O'Keefe and Read — and where, they said, Read accused the younger sister of kissing O'Keefe.
There's no court on Thursday — here's a summary of what happened Wednesday.
Jennifer McCabe cross-examined on 'hos long to die in cold' search
For the past three days of the trial, defense attorneys have been pointing out purported changes in McCabe's account about what happened over the past two years, conversations she has had about the case in group chats with witnesses and about her calling O'Keefe around the time he likely died.
“So according to you, you literally butt-dialed John O'Keefe’s phone six times in the span of 19 minutes. Is that right?," Read's attorney asked McCabe during cross-examination.
“I don’t remember making any of those calls, so my assumption is that I put my phone in my back pocket and that was it," she said.
Wednesday opened with continued cross-examination of McCabe by Jackson, who picked up with an intense line of questioning circling around her relationship with state police investigators and the timing of now-infamous Google searches made on her phone.
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Jackson presented to the court data from a cell phone extraction of McCabe's phone, which showed a series of Google searches related to how long it would take for someone to die in the cold.
McCabe agreed that she searched the phrases "hos long to die in cold" and "how long ti die in cikd" at the request of Read when they found O'Keefe's body in the front lawn of the Albert home in the snow.
The contention came when Jackson alleged that McCabe made the search an additional time at 2:27 a.m. — hours before she, Read and another woman found O'Keefe outside in the cold. Jackson argued that the earlier Google search would have meant that McCabe knew O'Keefe was in the lawn — a claim McCabe vehemently denied. The report also showed that she deleted the disputed 2:27 a.m. search.
"I did not make that search at that time," McCabe said. "I never would have left John O'Keefe out in the cold to die because he was my friend that I loved."
McCabe said that she was actually researching a basketball team for her daughter at around 2:30 a.m., and left a tab open. She said that when Read asked her to look up how long to die in the cold when they found O'Keefe's body, she searched it from the same tab.
McCabe and Jackson spent the cross-examination sparring Wednesday morning — some lines of questioning elicited emotional responses from McCabe, and she often went back and forth with Jackson several times before satisfyingly his questioning.
She became particularly emotional while recounting harassment she says she and her family has been subjected to in relation to the case.
"I am a state witness that is being tortured because of lies," McCabe said. "It's a social media witch hunt."
That statement was in response to a line of questioning about a meeting in 2023 between Jennifer McCabe and Elizabeth Proctor, wife of lead investigator Michael Proctor. McCabe said she met with Elizabeth Proctor at the couple's home, but her husband was not home.
She said that they met to discuss the harassment they were both experiencing.
Kerry Roberts recounts the search for John O'Keefe
After Jennifer McCabe took the stand for a third day, the Commonwealth called Kerry Roberts to testify.
Roberts called O'Keefe one of her closest friends, explaining that she knew him from high school and that her son was close friends with O'Keefe's nephew. Roberts' husband was also a good friend to O'Keefe.
Under direct examination by Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally, Roberts told the court that she woke up at 5 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, to Read calling her phone. When she picked up, she said that a frantic Read said, "John is dead! Kerry! Kerry!" and hung up.
The two got back on the phone, and Read explained to Roberts that she feared John was dead, and that he might have gotten hit by a plow, Roberts testified, adding that Read told her she drank a lot and couldn't remember anything.
Roberts started getting ready to help look for O'Keefe. She drove to Jennifer McCabe's house to meet Read and McCabe. The three women then go to O'Keefe's home on Meadows Avenue to ensure he wasn't anywhere in the house.
Read mentioned the taillight on her Lexus SUV, Roberts said, who testified that she noticed there was a small piece missing. Roberts said that Read asked, "Do you think I hit him?"
Roberts, Read and McCabe search through O'Keefe's home, and without any luck, proceed to Fairview Road in the same car.
As their car approached the home, Roberts said that Read spotted O'Keefe in the snow and started kicking the door to get out. She ran over to what Roberts only described as a "mound of snow," which at some point she realized was the shape of a body.
Roberts uncovered snow from O'Keefe's face, she said. She attempted CPR chest compressions, while Read gave him mouth-to-mouth, and McCabe called 911. She remembered Read panicking and running around the scene, asking if she hit him and whether he was dead.
O'Keefe was put into an ambulance by paramedics and taken to the hospital. Roberts called some of his family members, including his parents.
After the lunch break, she described going to the hospital and learning that O'Keefe had died, crying as she recalled the moment. Roberts also described the injuries she saw, including scratches on his forearm. She drove home with the O'Keefe family, with heavy snow falling.
Lally jumped ahead, asking about investigators cloning the information on her phone and McCabe's, so they could access information that was on it, and then about one of the police investigators, Canton Police Lt. Michael Lank, whose daughter is friends with Roberts' daughter.
Roberts, her daughter and Jennifer McCabe went to the Lanks' house on Jan. 30, she testified, to drop her daughter off. Lank's wife got into the backseat to check in, Rogers said, estimating that they likely ended up talking for a while.
Their conversation had come up in McCabe's testimony.
Sullivan sisters discuss Aruba trip
Lally's questions for both Laura and Marietta Sullivan centered around a large New Year's group trip to Aruba over that Laura Sullivan organized.
On the trip, Read accused O'Keefe of kissing Marietta Sullivan, causing apparent tension. Both women's testimony prompted warnings to the jury from Judge Beverly Cannone, who said they were only to use the information to help understand what was in people's minds at the time, not to weigh Read's guilt.
"He said, 'Well, apparently I made out with your sister the other night, according to Karen,'" Laura Sullivan recalled.
She and O'Keefe were close — he was the godfather to her son, whose father was his best friend and a fellow Boston police officer, but who died by suicide while Sullivan was still pregnant.
Marietta Sullivan, who is 10 years younger than Laura, testified that her whole family became close with O'Keefe over the ensuing years: "he was similar to a big brother to me."
She recalled seeing a "glassy-eyed" and stumbling O'Keefe at their hotel on New Year's Eve and giving him a hug as she said hello. Moments after they split up, she heard a voice yell across the lobby, "Who the f--- was that?"
O'Keefe, Sullivan recalled, told a woman, "Calm down, that's Laura's little sister," and Sullivan walked up to introduce herself.
"I said, 'Hi, nice to meet you.' That's when Ms. Read's head snapped up, and she very loudly said to go f--- myself across the lobby. And I said, 'Yeah? F--- you too,'" Sullivan said.
O'Keefe and Read didn't make many appearances with the rest of the group during the rest of the roughly weeklong group trip, Laura Sullivan said, though she said that, on their way out, Read approached her and tried to make it right.
"Karen grabbed me and she said, 'Hey, I'm sorry, I thought I saw something that I didn't and I would like to pay for some of your sister's room,'" adding that she replied that paying wasn't necessary, an apology would do.
Defense attorney David Yannetti only had a few questions for each sister: whether they were at the bar with Read and O'Keefe or the Fairview Road before O'Keefe died (they weren't) and whether they were interviewed Feb. 8 by state police investigator Michael Proctor (they were).
