A romance turned deadly or police frame job? Closing arguments loom in Karen Read trial

By MICHAEL CASEY
Associated Press

DEDHAM, Mass. (AP) — Jurors in the murder trial of Karen Read must decide whether she was a callous girlfriend who drove off after killing her Boston police officer boyfriend with her SUV, or whether police framed her to cover a brutal beatdown by his fellow officers. Lawyers are to give closing arguments Tuesday before jurors consider the wildly differing accounts of the death of Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe. Prosecutors contend Read struck O’Keefe with her Lexus SUV and drove off in January 2022, leaving him unconscious in the snow after a night of bar hopping. But the defense said she was a “convenient outsider” who saved them from having to consider other suspects.