The case of Karen Read, the Mansfield woman accused of backing her car into her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, took a harsh turn Friday.
Prosecutors say Read dropped O’Keefe off at a friend’s house in Canton in the early morning hours of Jan. 29 for a get-together following a night out at two Canton bars with friends and had backed into him as she made a three-point turn to leave.
His body was found hours later in front of the Fairview Road home as the snow was already falling ahead of that weekend’s major nor’easter.
What was scheduled as a probable cause hearing Friday morning morphed into a battle over motions filed by her defense for access to investigative records. The probable cause hearing has been rescheduled to June 29.
Read’s defense attorney said that the prosecution’s case against his client is “unraveling.”
“On the other side of this, she’s been unfairly targeted,” he told reporters following the hearing. “We are not going to lay down and acquiesce to the police theory of this case, because we believe the police theory of this case is wrong.”
The prosecution has empaneled a grand jury.
Read, 41 — a faculty member in the finance department of Bentley College and an equity researcher at Fidelity Investments at the time of the incident — pleaded not guilty at her Feb. 2 arraignment to charges of manslaughter, motor vehicle homicide by negligent operation and leaving the scene of personal injury and death.
Read, who has no prior criminal record, posted $50,000 bail following that arraignment.
Ahead of Friday’s hearing, Read’s defense attorney David Yannetti filed motions to gather further records and evidence. Prosecutor Adam Lally objected to two of Yannetti’s motions, both for phone data records: Google geofence data and cell phone tower data.
Both types of data, Yannetti told the Herald, would help to show who was at the scene and when and what their movements were during that night. Both motions were granted.
Read and O’Keefe had been dating for two years and were living together and raising O’Keefe’s niece and nephew together.
Boston Herald file photoBoston Police Officer John O’Keefe died during this past weekend’s storm. (BDNews.com photo.)