The jury foreman in the Karen Read murder retrial said Tuesday he thought the former police officer’s girlfriend was always “an innocent woman.”
“Karen Read is innocent and she didn’t do this crime,” Juror No. 1, who declined to give his name, said in a TODAY show interview. “No one could prove that she did this crime, so I looked at her from Day 1 as an innocent woman that needed to be proven guilty and I don’t think any of that was shown in this process.”
After a previous mistrial and two months of testimony at the retrial, Read was acquitted last week of second-degree murder, motor vehicle manslaughter while driving under the influence, and leaving the scene of a collision in the 2022 death of her former boyfriend, Boston Police officer John O’Keefe.
The jury did convict Read of operating under the influence of liquor, and she was sentenced to one year of probation.
When asked on Tuesday if he initially knew how high-profile the case was, the jury foreman said, “I was just going to go with whatever the evidence showed us.”
“Everyone felt good about the decision that we all collectively came together with,” he said, referring to the jury.
Prosecutors accused Read, 45, of reversing her SUV into O’Keefe and leaving him for dead on Jan. 29, 2022. The government said the killing was fueled by a night of drinking and anger over the pair’s beleaguered relationship.
Read’s attorneys, however, argued she was the victim of a corrupt police investigation that did not produce other suspects.
When asked who he thought killed O’Keefe, the jury foreman said, “that’s not my job.”
“Something did happen to Mr. O’Keefe and it’s foul play or whatever you want to say, but there was no evidence to even — through multiple witnesses and testimony by his autopsy and everything — no one said to solid evidence that there was a collision or that he got hit by a car,” the juror said.
The jury foreman said that if prosecutors look into O’Keefe’s case further for a potential killer, they will run into the “same complications” as Read’s retrial.
“It’s just hard. To put a mother through that and father and a brother and the whole family through that again — it’s a lot,” he said, referring to O’Keefe’s family. “Even me being there for eight weeks … and just sitting and watching the videos and seeing the tape and everything. It’s a lot to see your loved one go through that.”
On Monday, the prosecutor who tried Read, Hank Brennan, broke his silence on the acquittal.
“I am disappointed in the verdict and the fact that we could not achieve justice for John O’Keefe and his family,” he said.