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Karen Read's defense squad is looking to physique connected momentum yesterday from a astonishment constabulary witnesser who testified that her taillight was little damaged erstwhile helium helped prehend it with a warrant than it appears successful photos taken aft it arrived astatine the Canton Police Department, wherever authorities archetypal towed it.
Taillight fragments weren't recovered astatine the transgression country until later, too, and her defense's accusation is that they could person been planted there.
Wednesday marks the 27th time of Read's retrial connected execution and different charges successful the January 2022 decease of her then-boyfriend, Boston bull John O'Keefe.
KAREN READ'S SILENCE IN MURDER TRIAL RAISES STAKES FOR DEFENSE
Karen Read listens to grounds during her execution proceedings successful Norfolk Superior Court successful Dedham, Mass., Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (Libby O'Neill/The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)
She is accused of hitting him with her 2021 Lexus SUV and leaving the scene, wherever helium died with caput trauma and signs of hypothermia. The defence says nary collision happened and thing oregon idiosyncratic other caused his injuries.
On Tuesday, Dighton Police Sgt. Nicholas Barros testified that erstwhile helium arrived astatine Read's parents' location to assistance authorities constabulary confiscate the vehicle, less pieces of taillight were missing from the cracked taillight.
Dighton Police Sgt. Nicholas Barros uses his fingers to bespeak the size of the missing process airy fragment portion testifying during the Karen Read execution retrial astatine Norfolk Superior Court Tuesday, June 3, 2025, successful Dedham, Mass. (Libby O'Neill/The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)
He said that a photograph of Read's SUV taken astatine the Canton Police Department's sallyport – a unafraid store – did "absolutely not" amusement the taillight successful the aforesaid information it was successful erstwhile helium saw it successful the driveway.
Barros amazed the courtroom erstwhile helium testified for the commonwealth during Read's archetypal trial, which ended with a deadlocked assemblage past year. This time, helium was a defence witness.
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Officer John O’Keefe poses for his authoritative headshot. O’Keefe’s girlfriend, Karen Reed, is presently connected proceedings for execution aft helium was recovered dormant extracurricular of a Massachusetts location successful January 2022. (Boston Police Department)
"He was a devastating witnesser who has the [district attorney's] lawsuit connected beingness support," said Mark Bederow, a New York City-based defence lawyer who is intimately pursuing the case.
He said peculiar authoritative Hank Brennan conducted an "excellent" cross-examination, showing Barros and the assemblage images of Read's taillight taken implicit the people of the day, earlier constabulary took her SUV, but defence lawyer Alan Jackson performed arsenic good connected redirect questioning.
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A photograph of Karen Read's SUV, parked successful the Canton Police Department's sallyport, is projected during her execution retrial showing pieces missing from the right, rear taillight, successful Norfolk Superior Court, Monday, May 12, 2025, successful Dedham, Mass. (Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via AP, Pool)
"The sum full is that Barros is 100% unequivocal: the taillight helium saw connected January 29 was not anyplace adjacent arsenic destroyed arsenic erstwhile the [Massachusetts State Police] had it," helium said.
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Grace Edwards, a Massachusetts defence lawyer who is besides pursuing the case, called Barros' grounds a "bombshell" and said the astonishment successful proceedings 1 was "a wide Brady violation" – referring to a regularisation that prosecutors indispensable stock exculpatory grounds with the defense.
"The information that a constabulary serviceman drove to the Omni Hotel to conscionable with the defence squad of a suspect connected proceedings for execution intelligibly indicates helium wanted to archer his story," she told Fox News Digital.
Dr. Judson Welcher, an adept for the prosecution, explained to jurors however helium recovered that O'Keefe appeared to person been struck successful the limb by the backmost country of Read's SUV earlier helium fell to the crushed and fractured the backmost of his skull.
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Christina Hanley, an expert with the authorities police's transgression lab, testified that investigators recovered integrative fragments from O'Keefe's covering that were a lucifer with the breached taillight oregon thing made of the aforesaid material.
Read could look beingness successful situation if convicted of the apical charge, second-degree murder.
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