Huge hotel bill, haunting nightmare among new details revealed in Part 2 of Karen Read interview

DEDHAM, Mass. — Part 2 of Vanity Fair’s wide-ranging interview with Karen Read dropped Wednesday, revealing new details about the high-profile murder case.

Vanity Fair author Julie Miller said in the lengthy article that she stayed in Read’s four-bedroom Mansfield home for three days as she conducted the interview.

The first article in a two-part series about Read’s trial, which ended with a hung jury in July, dropped Tuesday. Read discussed her relationship with Boston police officer John O’Keefe, what she believed happened to him on the night of his death, and the financial toll of the ongoing murder case as her second murder trial looms amid the prospect of double jeopardy.

Read, 44, is accused of ramming John O’Keefe, her Boston police officer boyfriend, with her SUV and leaving to die in a snowstorm outside of the Canton home of former Boston police officer Brian Albert after a night of heavy drinking at two local bars.

The defense has portrayed Read as a scapegoat, saying O’Keefe was actually killed inside Albert’s home and then dragged outside and left for dead.

Here are the takeaways from Part 2 of Vanity Fair’s interview:

“HOS [SIC] LONG TO DIE IN COLD” GOOGLE SEARCH

Vanity Fair asked Umit Karabiyik, a PhD at Purdue’s Department of Computer and Information Technology, to evaluate the prosecution’s expert testimony from Jennifer McCabe, who Googled, “hos [sic] long to die in cold” after the death of O’Keefe.

Karabiyik was also asked to analyze as an affidavit from Read’s expert Richard Green.

He agreed with Green’s statement that the Google search was made at 2:27 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, despite a prosecution’s expert who argued that the time stamp “is not indicative of the time of the search.”

During the trial, McCabe denied making the Google search before 6 a.m.

“TURTLEBOY” PROFITING OFF MURDER CASE

Aidan Kearney, the Massachusetts blogger known as“Turtleboy,” has earned as much as $50,000 a month of live YouTube shows his 400 installments of his “Canton Cover-Up,” the magazine said.

Kearney was arrested on witness intimidation charges in connection with the Read case in October 2023.

READ STAYED IN THE SAME HOTEL AS HER DEFENSE TEAM

Read housed her attorneys David Yannetti, Alan Jackson, Elizabeth Little, and herself in the same hotel throughout the trial at a cost of $1.2 million.

“We don’t typically work that closely with clients,” Little told the magazine. “But in this case, we needed every hand on deck.”

Read said in the interview that she spent from her savings, $500,000 from a now-depleted legal fund, and $400,000 in donations from family and friends.

Read called the proceedings a “trial on budget.”

READ RESPONDS TO CRITICISM

Read responded to criticism for not looking like a grieving girlfriend in the courtroom during the trial.

“I have mourned and cried over John O’Keefe, but that is not productive now,” Read told Miller. “I don’t feel the acute sadness I did when I first lost him.”

Read added, “If that sounds callous, I’m not going to apologize. We weren’t married. The public is now hearing a lot for the first time, but they have to realize I’ve gone through these stages of grief. I’ve reached the point that—John if you can hear me—I’ve done everything I can. I don’t think your family can be saved. They want to see me incarcerated for the rest of my life despite never seeing evidence while you were alive that I mistreated you. We were dating for two years, and I’ve since eclipsed those two years. I’m going on three, and I’ve got to save myself now.”

READ ADDRESSES CELEBRITY STATUS GAINED IN AFTERMATH

Each day during the trial, hundreds of supporters and demonstrators lined the streets outside Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham.

“I implore any critic to get out of a car in the middle of a waking nightmare, see 200 people wearing your favorite color—telling you to keep your head up, to keep your spine strong—and you don’t crack a smile. It has been a lot worse. I’ve been frog-marched into court with shackles on my feet, in clothes that I slept in in a jail cell the night before, in front of cameras, to all negative headlines. And the only people in court were my parents and my brother. I can’t not smile. I just feel God’s presence,” Read told Miller.

READ’S RECURRING NIGHTMARE

Read told the magazine that she’s been having a recurring nightmare that O’Keefe survived whatever happened to him on Jan. 29, 2022, but can’t recall what that was.

Miller said that Read’s dream haunts her as much as the reality that O’Keefe’s family has sided with the McCabes and Alberts, not her.

READ ASKED ABOUT DAILY MAIL HEADLINE

Miller asked Read about a Daily Mail article that labeled her as the “happiest murder suspect.”

Read said, “If I look happy, did it cross your mind that I have a free conscience? Because I didn’t do it? If being innocent and enjoying the support and refusing to be down day after day, month after month, year after year makes me America’s happiest murder defendant, then I’m America’s happiest murder defendant.”

READ HAS A TEMPERATURE-CONTROLLED STORAGE UNIT

Read told Miller that she’s been paying for a temperature-controlled storage unit that houses carpeting torn out from the Alberts’ home after they sold it last year. She hopes to afford to swab it for blood and DNA one day.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT WITH THE CASE?

Read’s lawyers have filed an appeal with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and will argue on Nov. 6 that two of three criminal charges against her be dismissed on the grounds of double jeopardy.

The legal team has argued that Read’s double jeopardy protections have been violated because several jurors who came forward after the mistrial indicated that Read was found not guilty of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a deadly crash.

Judge Beverly Cannone denied a request from the defense to dismiss charges the charges and prosecutors have stated that there’s no basis for dismissing them.

A Plymouth County Superior Court Judge is now deciding if a wrongful death lawsuit filed against Read by the family of O’Keefe will proceed as scheduled.

Read’s hopeful to avoid a retrial in January 2025.

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