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Judge allows access to Karen Read interview notes
Prosecutors have been granted access to recordings and materials from interviews Read and her family gave to Boston magazine and Boston 25 News.
The judge overseeing Karen Read’s case has granted prosecutors’ requests for recordings, notes, and correspondence from Read’s conversations with a Boston magazine reporter, as well as materials from interviews her family gave to Boston 25 News.
In a pair of decisions filed Thursday, Judge Beverly Cannone allowed prosecutors access to unredacted recordings and off-the-record notes from Read’s interviews with Boston magazine reporter Gretchen Voss, who published a 2023 article digging into Read’s high-profile murder case.
The 44-year-old is accused of drunkenly and deliberately backing her SUV into her boyfriend — Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe — while dropping him off at a house party in Canton on Jan. 29, 2022. Her lawyers maintain she was framed, suggesting instead that O’Keefe was beaten and possibly attacked by the homeowner’s dog after walking into the party.
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Boston magazine previously turned over some materials from Voss’s interviews with Read, but special prosecutor Hank Brennan argued the recordings were full of significant redactions and interruptions from Read’s lawyers. The magazine is one of several media outlets whose interviews with Read are now subject to requests from prosecutors.
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Defendants “enjoy a Fifth Amendment privilege, as they should; a defendant is presumed innocent,” Brennan asserted at a hearing last week. “But when they cast it aside, it’s at their own peril.” He further alleged Read gave contradictory statements during her various interviews.
Read’s first trial ended with a hung jury in July, and she’s slated for retrial in 2025. Cannone determined prosecutors showed a “strong interest” in obtaining the unredacted interview records ahead of the second trial.
“The defendant is charged with several serious crimes. The information sought is her own account of the events leading up to O’Keefe’s death,” she noted. “The redacted materials suggest that the account she gave to Boston Magazine may have differed in certain respects from the expected evidence at trial and from other accounts she has given; however, the redactions prevent the Commonwealth from hearing the defendant’s statements on relevant and material issues such as her consumption of alcohol on the night in question.”
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Moreover, Cannone wrote, Voss, Read, and her attorneys “presumably knew or should have known that there is no privilege for news reporters under Massachusetts law” when Read and Voss spoke off the record.
Boston magazine had argued that Voss’s harassment and fears for her safety immediately following the article’s publication should also support withholding additional interview materials. However, Cannone noted the article ran more than a year ago and Voss attended Read’s first trial on a daily basis, “thus suggesting that she no longer continues to be overcome with fear of members of the public interested in the case.”
Cannone also allowed prosecutors’ motion for video recordings and notes from interviews Read’s parents and brother gave to Boston 25 for an August 2023 segment.
Read’s next hearing on Dec. 12 will determine whether the defense’s dog bite expert — who previously opined O’Keefe arm wounds were from an animal attack — will be allowed to testify at her second trial.
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