MA - Professor Karen Read, 43, charged with murdering police officer boyfriend John O'Keefe by hitting him with car, Canton, 14 Apr 2023

[beachhut]

I hope I'm not breaking any rules when I say that there's an incredible attorney who is following and explaining Karen Read's case. Melanie Little on yt. She also goes over the court documents in this case and she has relevant experts as guests! Dog bites for example

 

[beachhut]

Do you mean Grant Smith Ellis? Not sure who AK is. He live blogged the hearing yesterday on Twitter and he's been a guest on several podcasts about the case. Twitter handle is @GrantSmithEllis

I think it's interesting that the very first thing he describes himself as is "disabled". Disabled first, journalist at heart is second. Most of us with disabilities don't define ourselves as such because it might be perceived as manipulative. Oh, well. I've just never seen that before.

 

[HarmonyE.]

I think it's interesting that the very first thing he describes himself as is "disabled". Disabled first, journalist at heart is second. Most of us with disabilities don't define ourselves as such because it might be perceived as manipulative. Oh, well. I've just never seen that before.

He's a little odd. Mother is Wendy Murphy a Boston lawyer and frequent talking head on CourtTV who often gets facts wrong.

 

[ch_13]

He's a little odd. Mother is Wendy Murphy a Boston lawyer and frequent talking head on CourtTV who often gets facts wrong.

Even amongst all the spectacle that this case has generated, Grant Smith Ellis is one of the more extreme personalities who's been trying to draw attention to himself.

He has a lot of half-baked theories. Like for a while he was claiming that Turtleboy was an FBI informant in some drug case, based on absolutely nothing as far as I can tell. He also likes to yell ludicrous questions at the defense team as they enter or exit the courtroom. Then he posts the clips for upvotes and likes. The other day he asked Karen Read if she was sleeping with her defense attorney.

I think he saw how lucrative this case has been for Turtleboy and figured he'd try to do the same thing, but from the other side.

 

[CourtandSims4]

If we're speculating about this under the assumption this was a cover-up: I think going the accident route could leave too much up to chance, and/or I could reasonably see why the perpetrators would think that. I'm not sure if the end goal would even was for KR to be trial for murder, perhaps they just wanted the focus on her for as long as possible so they could tie up any loose ends or distance themselves from that night. Especially with the added drama of it being a cop found on the property of another cop, they probably felt they needed to give a concrete suspect to deflect onto.

Thanks for your response. I have question.

Is it believed that her friends who said that KR mentioned O'Keefe being hit, either by herself or a snowplow, before returning to the residence, is lying about her saying that? If they are KR's friends, why would they lie about this?

It's all just a very bizarre series of events to me. She went home and woke up a few hours later, saw her boyfriend was not home and was worried. But how farfetched is it that a cop who was drinking and left at another cop's house, who was also drinking, would decide to sleep it off before driving on icy roads? It was a party where even more drinking would have been expected to take place.

And why not worry that it was a regular car accident versus being hit by either herself or a snowplow? This is a hard element for me to overcome to even consider the rest of the story she is telling because everything else just seems like taking advantage of the circumstances of it being cops investigating cops.

I do agree that these elements can rise to reasonable doubt, and that could be why she is ultimately acquitted, but based on her own words and reactions, and how implausible her conclusions were given the circumstances, my visceral and initial reaction is that she hit him. If she did hit him, she should have just waited for someone to find him, but she was in the mindset of trying to convince people it was an accident and was trying to get ahead of the story. Possibly because she knew she had a broken tail light and would need to account for the forensics, but that's why if she wanted people to believe it was an accident, she needed to just let it play out.

My mind can change as the trial goes on and I'm absolutely fine with admitting that I am wrong, but I've seen a case or 2 play out like this one where the defendant had a good media campaign leading up to trial, but once the trial begins it is evident they are guilty and are found guilty. The people who have been sold on the pretrial media campaign often cannot accept they were wrong and that's where things get crazier.

 

[Charlot123]

Thanks for your response. I have question.

Is it believed that her friends who said that KR mentioned O'Keefe being hit, either by herself or a snowplow, before returning to the residence, is lying about her saying that? If they are KR's friends, why would they lie about this?

It's all just a very bizarre series of events to me. She went home and woke up a few hours later, saw her boyfriend was not home and was worried. But how farfetched is it that a cop who was drinking and left at another cop's house, who was also drinking, would decide to sleep it off before driving on icy roads? It was a party where even more drinking would have been expected to take place.

And why not worry that it was a regular car accident versus being hit by either herself or a snowplow? This is a hard element for me to overcome to even consider the rest of the story she is telling because everything else just seems like taking advantage of the circumstances of it being cops investigating cops.

I do agree that these elements can rise to reasonable doubt, and that could be why she is ultimately acquitted, but based on her own words and reactions, and how implausible her conclusions were given the circumstances, my visceral and initial reaction is that she hit him. If she did hit him, she should have just waited for someone to find him, but she was in the mindset of trying to convince people it was an accident and was trying to get ahead of the story. Possibly because she knew she had a broken tail light and would need to account for the forensics, but that's why if she wanted people to believe it was an accident, she needed to just let it play out.

My mind can change as the trial goes on and I'm absolutely fine with admitting that I am wrong, but I've seen a case or 2 play out like this one where the defendant had a good media campaign leading up to trial, but once the trial begins it is evident they are guilty and are found guilty. The people who have been sold on the pretrial media campaign often cannot accept they were wrong and that's where things get crazier.

My intuitive feeling is that KR could have something to do with JO’s death, but that in might have happpened in some other way than hitting him with her car. There might have been a bottle of whiskey in the car; in anger, or even in a mutual fight, she might have hit him on the head, and when he stumbled out of her car trying to escape, she might have intentionally hit him with a car, to conceal the other attack. She might have mentioned being afraid of hitting JO with a car purely on purpose so that this way of death would be investigated, not anything else. To me, the presence of a glass in his hand doesn’t imply he was carrying it from a bar. Rather, it bespeaks a bottle being in a car nearby. Or some other tool. But I think the car hit is a diversion, in a way. I view KR is impulsive, but also a very smart woman. I also suspect that while her BAL that night was above the limits, she may not have been that horribly drunk that night, just disinhibited, but thought fast. She really invested the time into finding a very good lawyer in the next few days.

But this is just a general feeling. The odds are higher with KR than with police conspiracy. However, at this moment, no one can tell if JO walked into the house or not. This is when one wishes people were sober the next morning to investigate, but obviously, everyone was having a major hangover.

So I think it would be hard to reach a guilty verdict.

Why I think it was not a police conspiracy? Well, that PD has lost a lot. And apparently, they were previously mentioned in local news in a very favorable way.

Could it be a SODDI case? Quite possible.