Dateline: Center of the Storm - 5 harrowing details about the infamous Karen Read trial, revealed 

The Karen Read trial case has been a slow-burning, headline-making enigma since the January morning of 2022, when Boston officer John O’Keefe was discovered critically wounded outside a house in Canton. Over the course of the last three years, it blossomed into two very different narratives: prosecutors had alleged that the officer was killed in a car crash, and the defense, Karen Read, said that he had been brutally battered inside the house and that the accident was only a cover-up.

The case resulted in fierce local investigations, dismissal of several officers, and intensive national coverage culminating in a Dateline special titled Center of the Storm. Here are five key, hotly contested details that outlined the case from the initial charges, a 2024 mistrial, a 2025 retrial, and the dramatic verdict that came after.

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1) The night and the early scene

On the morning of January 29, 2022, friends and first responders surrounded a Canton lawn and found John O’Keefe unconscious in the snow following a night involving a small birthday party. John was taken to the hospital by paramedics, where doctors recorded blunt head trauma and hypothermia in their medical examination.

Investigators were met with oddities right away: which place was he transferred to, which photos and videos had been shot, and the sequence and contents of the initial interviews. The questions of early handling, concerning the initial recording of the scene and evidence gathering, cast a long shadow and gave rise to doubts, media inquiry, and the audit that subsequently reviewed policing decisions during the early response.

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The prosecution’s through-line

The prosecutors gave a pretty clear narrative: Karen Read was out with John O’Keefe that night, and after a row with him, she attacked John with her Lexus and drove off as the argument escalated into a homicide. The evidence the Commonwealth relied on was largely circumstantial, although concrete, like broken parts of a taillight discovered in the yard and on clothing, phone, and video recordings that tracked key minutes, and first responder interviews that served to construct a timeline.

Special prosecutors instructed jurors to consider the alleged remarks of Read and the gathered evidence as fitting together, implying that the combination of the motive, the opportunity, and the physical evidence all indicated a car crash, rather than some other form of accident.

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Karen Read's counter as the defense party

The defense that Read presented over the next few months into the trial was, in fact, quite a different narrative: she claimed to have dropped O’Keefe off at the house of a friend and to have found him seriously hurt, not by a vehicle collision, but from an indoor assault. Karen Read insisted that it was some prosecutorial prejudice that framed the case against her.

In a preview of Dateline’s report, Karen Read said:

“I couldn’t see his face or his hair, but I knew it was him. I knew it was something that didn’t belong on that lawn….And I didn’t know what the hell happened. How did the night end up like this?”

The defense counsel put forward other possibilities, such as that there was a third party involved or even a dog attack, and pointed to inconsistencies in witness testimonials and poor investigative workmanship.

In a conversation with Dateline's Andrea Canning, Michael Proctor, the case’s lead investigator and former Massachusetts State Trooper, in response to allegations against him of framing Karen Read, said:

“I laugh because it’s such a ridiculous accusation. There’s not one piece of evidence or fact to support that, because it did not happen. I would never do something like that.”

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Forensics and witnesses in Karen Read's trial

The court became a forensic battlefield. According to defense experts, the appearance of the injuries did not indicate that they were caused by a car accident, and they questioned how the broken pieces of the taillight and the damaged bumper were being taken into consideration. Experts of the prosecution counterattacked by providing accident reconstructions, phone records, and physical evidence.

There were also disputes among doctors concerning whether the head injuries were a result of a fall or as a result of hitting something. The judge determined the experts who were to speak depending on their qualifications. There was even an excursion into side issues, like whether a snowplow could have inflicted any injuries, or even a dog, and whether the evidence had been properly handled. Ultimately, the jurors were pushed to pick the experts who appeared to make the most sense.

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Trials, verdict and fallout

That legal rollercoaster of Karen Read’s trial included a grand jury indictment in 2022, a first trial in 2024 that concluded in a mistrial, and a second trial in 2025 that resulted in Read being acquitted of second-degree murder, manslaughter, and leaving the scene but convicted of a single felony: driving under the influence, a misdemeanor carrying 12 months of probation. The verdict was released on June 18, 2025.

The fallout was dramatic. It initiated an independent audit, and controversies erupted over the way the investigation was being conducted. The lead investigator was dismissed, appealed, and investigated again after his texts were released. The verdict was publicly termed as a miscarriage of justice by friends of John O’Keefe. In the meantime, the case attracted a wave of media attention that kept the case in the memory of the people, being discussed on podcasts, documentaries, and TV specials, and not forgotten, like another lost case.

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