DEDHAM, MASS. (WHDH) - Karen Read’s former friend Jennifer McCabe, who was with her when they found Boston police officer John O’Keefe’s body, was back on the witness stand Wednesday.
McCabe was facing tough questions from the defense in Read’s murder retrial. Prosecutors started questioning her Tuesday.
On Wednesday morning, jurors listened to the 911 call McCabe made the morning O’Keefe’s body was found in January 2022.
Read is accused of killing O’Keefe, her boyfriend, by hitting him with her car and leaving him to die in a snowbank after a night of drinking. Her lawyers argue she is being framed. Her first trial last summer ended in a mistrial.
McCabe also detailed the moment they found O’Keefe’s body. She described a chaotic scene as they tried chest compressions and called police.
She said when first responders arrived, she started to be concerned with what Read was saying to them.
“She told the first responder, ‘I hit him, I hit him, I hit him,'” McCabe said. “I think after the second or third time she was saying it, I was like, ‘Karen, Karen, what are you saying?'”
“Why were you trying to interrupt her?” asked special prosecutor Hank Brennan.
“Because I thought she was just talking crazy, and I’m saying, ‘Why is she saying she hit him?'” McCabe said.
She said in the midst of this, Read asked her to Google “hypothermia” and testified that she’s never searched that before.
“Was it after the police came?” asked Brennan.
“Yes,” McCabe responded.
“Have you ever, ever, attempted to search about hypothermia before that moment?” asked Brennan.
“No,” McCabe said.
The defense claims McCabe’s phone shows a search for “hos long to die in cold” — and that it happened hours before O’Keefe was found. But the commonwealth’s digital forensics expert, Ian Whiffin, said that 2:27 a.m. timestamp just marks when McCabe first opened her browser — not when the search happened.
McCabe said she had trouble typing due to her multiple sclerosis.
Defense lawyer Alan Jackson painted McCabe as a liar, saying she failed to tell the truth to federal agents in an April 2023 interview. He indicated that McCabe’s testimony changed since the first trial, specifically how close she got to O’Keefe when she first realize she could in fact see him in the yard when the women went looking for him after 6 a.m. on January 29.
McCabe told the agents she wanted to take a break from the questioning and later told them she had spoken to her husband and Kerry Roberts during the break, but not three other people, including somebody from the D.A.’s office, Brian Albert, and Peggy O’Keefe, the victim’s mother.
“I explained that I’d forgotten to mention a couple people that I reached out to,” said McCabe.
“You had forgotten?”
“Yes,” McCabe responded.
McCabe, Read, and O’Keefe had all been out drinking together that night, Jan. 28, 2022, at the Waterfall Bar in Canton. Around midnight, the group was heading to McCabe’s brother-in-law’s house at 34 Fairview Road.
McCabe testified she was texting with O’Keefe, wondering why he and Read weren’t coming in. She said at one point she looked out the front door and found Read’s Lexus outside the house near the flagpole at the far end of the property, where O’Keefe’s body was found.
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