Karen Read's murder retrial opens with competing accounts: Angry girlfriend or victim of a cover-up?

Opening statements in the retrial of Karen Read painted starkly different portraits of the defendant Tuesday, with the prosecution alleging she fatally struck her boyfriend with her SUV as their relationship unraveled and her lawyers arguing she was the victim of law enforcement misconduct and a cover-up.

Opening statements in the retrial of Karen Read painted starkly different portraits of the defendant Tuesday, with the prosecution alleging she fatally struck her boyfriend with her SUV as their relationship unraveled and her lawyers arguing she was the victim of law enforcement misconduct and a cover-up. 

The theories largely echoed those put forward in Read’s widely publicized first trial on charges of second-degree murder and other alleged crimes in the Jan. 29, 2022, death of Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe. That nine-week trial ended with a hung jury last summer. 

But there were notable differences in some of the details prosecutors and defense lawyers presented Tuesday.

Read has repeatedly pressed her case publicly, speaking to reporters outside the courtroom in recent weeks and giving lengthy interviews for documentaries and a magazine story. The lead prosecutor, special counsel Hank Brennan, said he intends to rely on Read’s own words in what he called her “campaign to make public statements.”

“Her statements will confirm what you know from the science and the data,” Brennan told the jury. “You’re going to hear from her own lips — and many of her statements — her admissions to extraordinary intoxication ... her admission to being angry at John that night.”