During the trial, lawyers for Ms. Read, 44, picked apart the prosecution’s assertion that she intentionally struck Mr. O’Keefe after a night out drinking in January 2022, leaving him to die of head injuries and hypothermia as a blizzard raged. They proposed an alternate theory: that he was fatally beaten at a late-night party hosted by another Boston police officer in Canton, Mass., and then dumped outside in the snow.
“The incontrovertible fact is, you have been lied to in this courtroom,” Alan Jackson, a lawyer for Ms. Read, said during closing arguments. “One lie begets another, and it’s a malignancy that grows — and that, folks, is how a cover-up is born.”
Ms. Read, who previously worked at an investment firm and taught college finance classes, pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter, and leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death. She faced penalties ranging from five to 20 years in prison for manslaughter, 10 years for leaving the scene, or life in prison for murder.
Prosecutors asserted that the couple had been fighting and that Mr. O’Keefe, 46, had recently tried to end the relationship. They told jurors that Ms. Read had repeatedly claimed responsibility for her boyfriend’s death in the first moments after his body was discovered, as described by several emergency responders who were called to the scene.
“‘I hit him, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him,’” Adam Lally, an assistant district attorney for Norfolk County, said during closing arguments. “Those are the words of the defendant, and you heard testimony from four witnesses who overheard those statements.”