The Prosecution in the Karen Read Murder trial was set to wrap up its case on Friday with the final handful of scheduled witnesses set to testify and the expected introduction of communications between alleged murderer Karen Read and victim John O’Keefe.
Reporter Grand Smith Ellis shared a link earlier in the week to a document reported to contain text messages from the day of the murder between Read and O’Keefe. Parts of which were read in court on Monday before wrapping up for the day.
Despite being comedically read on the ReallyCoolNews All-Start Panel show on Wednesday night, the conversation contains a lot of hints of the relationship at the time of the alleged murder with both participants seeming less than enthused with the other.
Read had already begun an attempt at a relationship with ATF Agent Brian Higgins, who she had kissed at O’Keefe’s home during a gathering and had been text messaging. In those messages, she explained that she wanted a relationship without children and confused Higgins with her aggressive pursuit of him despite his friendship with O’Keefe.
The messages also come after the “Aruba Incident” where Read publicly accused O’Keefe of kissing a family friend when she mistook an innocent hug for something else. That incident led to O’Keefe allegedly trying to end the relationship with Read and asking her to move out of his house.
The texts start on the morning of the alleged murder and by afternoon, Read seems to be instigating a continuation of a fight that had happened that morning. She stated that she wanted to go for drinks and inquired about O’Keefe’s plans for the evening.
O’Keefe seemed ambivalent about going out due to the snowstorm that was moving into the area and his seeming need to take a break from Read. Read began to push O’Keefe into a meeting and became distraught when O’Keefe did not answer her multiple phone calls.
Read became increasingly odd and angry throughout the afternoon, baiting O’Keefe with different things in order to get him to respond, including alluding to his adoptive children being home alone and bringing up calling a plumber who lived near her in order to fix her hot water heater at her separate residence.
O’Keefe objected to the plumber as his father was visiting him and the two men could simply come over and fix the plumbing issues at no expense to Read. Read continued to press to have the plumber come over and the conversation left off with her having the plumber come over, leave to get more parts, and then O’Keefe agreeing to meet with her later that hour for drinks.
Despite the defense portraying Read and O’Keefe’s body chemistry on recordings from the bars they went to later that evening as a loving, caring, couple, the texts leading up to the outing were anything but. O’Keefe was distant to Read throughout the exchanges and Read attempted to manipulate O’Keefe into calling her to get into another apparent confrontation over the fight they had that morning.
Read is accused of drunkenly hitting O’Keefe with her car later that night after dropping him off at Brian Albert’s house for an after party. O’Keefe would later die of a combination of his injuries from the incident and hypothermia after Read allegedly left him to die in the snowstorm.
The defense is expected to get the case early next week.
Tip Jar
ReallyCoolNews is a free daily publication devoted to the First Amendment Auditing community. If you’d like to support the publication/help keep the author fed/help support his animals, we offer the following ways to contribute:
Direct Money Gifting:
CashApp: https://cash.me/$reallycoolsite
Paypal: https://paypal.me/ReallyCoolSite?country.x=US&locale.x=en_US
GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/b8144e31
Amazon Registry Gifting:
Paper Needs Registry: https://www.amazon.com/registries/gl/guest-view/2XZ4NUUYNXZH5
Critter Registry: https://www.amazon.com/registries/gl/guest-view/1GACKBD5N136L
Buy Something Neat Registry: https://www.amazon.com/registries/gl/guest-view/2BKN32QZLN1OD
Donations go towards keeping the lights on, feeding critters, improving the site and paying site hosting costs and future upgrades.
Share this:
- Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)