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Read was found guilty of only drunken driving and sentenced to a year of probation.
Read now has a civil case as the criminal one winds its way through the legal system. O’Keefe’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against her and the two bars they visited the night they fought.
Defense Accuses Corruption and Cover-Up
Read’s lawyers disputed the entire case, alleging she was set up by a frame job from a cabal of officers protecting one of their own. The defense said there was no evidence she hit O’Keefe with her SUV, which weighed 6,000 pounds (2,700 kilograms). Instead, they claimed that he had been beaten at the party and dumped outside in a blizzard.
One key player was Michael Proctor, an investigator who would later be fired for misconduct. He knew people who were at the party and in unbecoming text messages about Read, he called her a “whack job” and predicted she’d face serious charges at the beginning of the investigation.
One of the federal agents was Brian Higgins, who falsely claimed to have destroyed his phone’s and SIM card’s following the party and tossed them in two different dumpsters on a military base.
Testimony also referred to potential witness pressure — one former officer first testified that she saw Higgins and the local police chief around the SUV, then changed her story. She was questioned in court about the “blue wall of silence,” a phrase commonly used to refer to police loyalty to one another which makes them reluctant to report wrongdoing.
Questions of evidence and reasonable doubt
Evidence used in the prosecution was made in part on a shard of a broken taillight from Read’s truck, fragments of which were later discovered at the scene. They also cited her alleged statements, including “I hit him,” which witnesses said she kept repeating. They said the couple’s turbulent relationship and alcohol use were evidence in favor of the theory that a lethal argument turned deadly.
However, the defense argued that the evidence was faulty. They also claimed the shards of the taillight could have been planted and that the damage to the SUV could have been caused later when Read struck O’Keefe’s vehicle as she pulled out of her house.
The meats were dry and bloodless, the tissue absent. A hair from O’Keefe was discovered in the rear of the SUV, but defense lawyers raised doubt about how it could have survived in the blizzard.
Defense medical witnesses said O’Keefe’s injuries were inconsistent with being struck by a vehicle. They also floated the notion that injuries on his arm were dog bites, bolstering the claim that he was attacked in the house. Other injuries, such as the cut over the eye and the trauma to the back of the head, appeared more likely to have resulted from a physical altercation and a fall.
Importantly, the home was never processed as a crime scene, nor was anyone inside treated as a suspect. The defense asserted that this was a central failing of the investigation. They said Read’s statements were not confessions, but emotional comments from someone in shock and grieve-stricken.
Unanswered Questions Remain
While the defense didn’t get to the point of proving that someone else had killed O’Keefe, they raised enough doubt to sway jurors. Higgins had messaged Read with flirty messages, despite knowing she was already in a relationship.
Then at the party that night, he texted her “Umm, well?” shortly before he was observed “play fighting” with the homeowner, Brian Albert, a retired officer. O’Keefe later turned up outside Albert’s home.
A group text from that morning had emerged in which someone had suggested that everyone agreed O’Keefe never actually went into the house. Albert replied “Exactly.” The defense argued that he never came outside after the body was found, subsequently sold the house, got rid of the family’s dog, and switched phones.
Read’s sister-in-law, Jennifer McCabe, who was with Read when O’Keefe was discovered, was asked about a late-night web search — “hos long to die in cold.”
The defense maintained she searched it before the body was found, while prosecutors said that it occurred after Read asked her to do it.
McCabe never actually went inside the home after finding the body.
The defense implied this was because she already knew it was safe inside. No one from the home came out as the police and medics arrived, they said.
Given these ambiguities and absences in the investigation, jurors simply were not persuaded to a firm belief, beyond a reasonable doubt, in Read's guilt.
