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Karen Read case: Judge denies requests for parents’ phone records
Judge Beverly Cannone sided with Read’s lawyers, agreeing prosecutors' requests did not meet the legal requirements.
The judge overseeing Karen Read’s murder case has denied prosecutors’ requests to access phone records for Read’s parents, Janet and William Read.
Judge Beverly Cannone sided with Read’s lawyers, agreeing prosecutors did not meet the legal requirements for a pretrial motion seeking third-party records.
More on Karen Read:
“Despite the detailed arguments articulated in the supporting memorandum and at oral argument, the affidavit in support of the motion is insufficient on its face,” Cannone wrote Friday in response to both motions.
During a hearing Tuesday, prosecutors said Read called her parents and texted her father after she allegedly backed her SUV into her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, shortly after midnight on Jan. 29, 2022. Read, 44, is accused of leaving O’Keefe to die in a blizzard following a night of bar-hopping, though her lawyers maintain she was framed in a law enforcement coverup.
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“The inference that a 40-something-year-old woman is calling her parents at 1:30 in the morning after this tumultuous event, the inference is strong evidence that Ms. Read knew she had done something terrible, she knew she had struck John O’Keefe, and she knew that she had left him behind,” special prosecutor Hank Brennan alleged during the hearing.
He explained he sought a month’s worth of phone records leading up to O’Keefe’s death in order to establish whether it was unusual for Read to call her parents in the middle of the night.
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“In the absence of any other calls, it is terribly remarkable that she is panic-calling her parents at 1:30 in the morning,” Brennan said.
Read’s lawyers strongly opposed the motions, with defense attorney Elizabeth Little describing the requests as a “fishing expedition” and a “gross invasion” of privacy.
Several pending motions remain, including a joint request from prosecutors and defense attorneys to delay Read’s retrial until April. Read’s first trial ended with a mistrial in July, and she is currently slated to stand trial again in January.
Ahead of her upcoming retrial, Read has added another lawyer to her team of high-powered attorneys: New York City’s Robert Alessi. Her next hearing is Dec. 12.
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