Court proceedings connected to the death of Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe continued this week as the defense team for O’Keefe’s girlfriend filed a motion asking for records they believe exonerate their client, Karen Read of Mansfield, who is facing charges in the case.
Read has been charged with charges including second-degree murder. She has pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors maintain Read and O’Keefe had been out drinking with friends, including another police officer, on the night O’Keefe died.
O’Keefe’s body was later found in a snowbank outside the other officer’s home hours after Read dropped him off. Read, who is accused of backing her SUV into O’Keefe, has claimed she is innocent for more than a year.
Her defense has now asked for cell phone records that they said show the sister-in-law of the homeowner in whose snow-covered yard O’Keefe’s body was found deleted a Google search for the phrase “hos (how) long to die in the cold.”
Read’s defense said the search was made at 2:27 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, hours before the sister-in-law was supposedly aware O’Keefe was missing.
According to court documents, witnesses told police O’Keefe never made it inside the home where he was dropped off.
The defense, though, now says data on his phone shows he did make it inside.
“…The only reasonable interpretation of the 80 steps and three flights of steps recorded by Apple Health on O’Keefe’s cell phone clearly suggest that O’Keefe did, in fact, make it inside the Albert Residence that night,” the defense wrote.
The defense has said this new evidence undermines the prosecution’s case against Read.
The Norfolk District Attorney’s office responded in a statement, saying it “is in receipt of the motion filed today, but it has not yet been determined that defense has interpreted the raw data correctly.”
“The Norfolk District Attorney’s Office has asked defense repeatedly during the pendency of this matter to provide any actually exculpatory evidence to support their claims,” the DA’s office said.
The District Attorney’s office said its formal and detailed response to this motion will be made to the court on or after May 3, when the next hearing in the case is expected to take place.
7NEWS reached out to the people whose phone records the defense wants access to but did not hear back as of Wednesday night.
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