Karen Read murder case: Norfolk DA appoints longtime Whitey Bulger attorney as special prosecutor in retrial

BOSTON — Karen Read will face a new prosecutor when she is retried for murder in January.

Norfolk County District Attorney Michael Morrissey on Wednesday announced he had appointed Hank Brennan, who served for years as a defense attorney for notorious Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, as a special prosecutor for the case.

“Attorney Brennan is a highly respected and skilled former prosecutor and long-time defense attorney with over 25 years of experience in state and federal courts and has expertise handling complex law enforcement matters,” Morrissey said in a statement. “I look forward to Attorney Brennan working in concert with the trial team of Assistant District Attorneys Adam Lally, Laura McLaughlin, and Caleb Schillinger.”

Lally has been the primary prosecutor since the beginning of the case, having arraigned Read on initial charges at Stoughton District Court just days after he said Read struck Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, her boyfriend, with her SUV and left him to freeze and die on a Canton front yard amid a major snowstorm. He also served as the prosecutor in Read’s trial earlier this year, which Norfolk Superior Court Judge Beverly J. Cannone would ultimately declare a mistrial.

Brennan in his own statement said that he assumes the “full responsibility and all obligations for prosecuting this case and will do so meticulously, ethically, and zealously, without compromise.”

“I have two core obligations. The first is to make certain that Karen Read receives a fair trial. Ms. Read will receive the dignity and fairness that every defendant deserves in our criminal justice system,” Brennan continued. “The second is to ensure that the facts surrounding John O’Keefe’s death are fully and fairly aired in the courtroom without outside influence. I guarantee that I will work tirelessly with the trial team to prepare this case for trial in January of 2025.”

The case

Read, 44, of Mansfield, was charged in Norfolk Superior Court on June 9, 2022, with second-degree murder, motor vehicle manslaughter and leaving the scene of a collision causing death. It wouldn’t be until April 29, 2024, that Read’s case would actually go to trial. During that nearly two-year gap, her attorney David Yannetti brought on famed Los Angeles-based attorney Alan Jackson and the pair developed a third-party killer theory that would be the basis of Read’s defense.

Prosecutors say Read and O’Keefe enjoyed the evening of Jan. 28, 2022, out at two Canton bars, during which Read drank as many as nine drinks over just a few hours. Read and O’Keefe would leave the second bar, The Waterfall, at around midnight and head over to the home of Boston Police Sgt. Brian Albert at the invitation of the family, who had also been at the second bar. The prosecution’s witnesses would all testify they never saw O’Keefe enter the home but many of them saw a black SUV at the edge of the property which prosecutors assert was Read’s Lexus. Read and two other women would discover O’Keefe, dead or dying, on the Albert’s front lawn at around 6 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022. A number of first responders testified that Read said things along the line of “I hit him” at the scene.

But Read’s defense attorneys say those were the cries of a woman who was an emotional wreck and uttered as a way to explain in any way this sudden and horrifying loss. Instead, the defense claims that O’Keefe did enter that house and was killed inside by outside actors, which they say could have included Albert himself, and then dragged outside to stage a cover-up. They say the Albert family is a powerful local family and worked with police to frame Read.

Since the mistrial, the defense has claimed jurors told them they were hung on only one of the charges, motor vehicle manslaughter, and were ready to acquit on murder and leaving the scene of a collision. They pressed Cannone to drop the two charges in the upcoming trial, which she declined. They have since appealed to the state’s highest court. The O’Keefe family has also filed a civil lawsuit against Read.

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