BOSTON (AP) — Karen Read’s months-long murder case left her in “purgatory” and ”stressed every day,” she said in an interview set to air Friday night.
Read, 44, is accused of ramming into her Boston police officer boyfriend John O’Keefe with her SUV and leaving him for dead in a January 2022 snowstorm. Her two-month trial ended in July when jurors declared they were hopelessly deadlocked and a judge declared a mistrial on the fifth day of deliberations.
“This is no life. I’m not in prison, but this is no life. I’m stressed every day. I’m waiting for the next shoe to drop,” Read said in her interview on ABC’s “20/20” ahead of her trial. “It just feels like a kind of purgatory.”
Last month, Judge Beverly Cannone rejected a defense motion to dismiss several charges, meaning the case can move forward to a new trial set to begin Jan. 27, 2025.
Prosecutors said Read, a former adjunct professor at Bentley College, and O’Keefe, a 16-year member of the Boston police, had been drinking heavily before she dropped him off at a party at the home of Brian Albert, a fellow Boston officer. They said she hit him with her SUV before driving away. An autopsy found O’Keefe died of hypothermia and blunt force trauma.