Karen Read owes more than $5 million in legal fees, Vanity Fair says

BOSTON — Karen Read owes more than $5 million in legal fees, a debt that will continue to climb with her anticipated retrial in late January, but the defendant says she’s “not backing down now,” in a new interview.

Vanity Fair highlighted the amount Read owes her defense team in deferred fees in an article released on Tuesday. The second of the two-part series comes out on Wednesday.

Read welcomed a magazine reporter to her Mansfield home for three days in August, without any lawyers present or conversation parameters, to learn her side of the story, which continues to fascinate true crime fans across the United States.

“There’s nothing we’re afraid of,” Read told Vanity Fair. “Any question you have, I have answers for.”

“I’m not backing down now,” Read later told the reporter. “As scary as a potential conviction is, I will go to jail for something I didn’t do before I plea out.”

Since her Boston police officer boyfriend John O’Keefe died the morning of Jan. 29, 2022, Read has lost her jobs as an equity analyst and adjunct professor at Bentley University, life savings, health insurance and car.

Read, 44, is accused of striking O’Keefe, her boyfriend of two years, with her car and leaving him to die in a major snowstorm on the front lawn of 34 Fairview Rd., in Canton — a property that O’Keefe’s BPD colleague Brian Albert owned at the time.

O’Keefe died at the age of 46.

Her defense attorneys counter that outside actors killed O’Keefe and conspired with state and local police to frame Read for his murder.

“Now Read is living off what remains of her 401(k)” the Vanity Fair article reads.

Read’s Mansfield home, listed at $849,900, is under contract and set to be sold, to help her legal expenses.

Defense attorney David Yannetti has been fighting for Read’s innocence since February 2022, when his client was charged with manslaughter, motor vehicle homicide, and leaving the scene of a personal injury or death.

But four months after her initial arrest, Massachusetts State Police arrested Read on a second-degree murder charge – something neither she nor Yannetti were aware of ahead of time.

“It was so dirty and underhanded that they would go behind my back,” Yannetti told Vanity Fair.

“The day after I’m upcharged, David’s like, ‘Listen, I know this is the worst time to have this conversation, but my fees double for murder,’” Read told the magazine. “David and I realized this is (expletive) dirty. … This is intentional. They’re framing me.”

Read has pleaded not guilty and awaits retrial on charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence and leaving the scene of a fatal accident. Her two-month criminal trial ended in July when the judge declared a mistrial.

In a video Tuesday, Julie Miller, Vanity Fair’s Hollywood correspondent behind the stories, described how Read “has gone to some extreme lengths to prove her innocence.”

Read has been paying for a temperature-controlled storage unit to store a carpet that was taken out of 34 Fairview Rd., after the Alberts had sold it in April 2023, Miller said. The defendant hopes to swab the rug for DNA or blood – an expense that would cost $5,000 per try, she added.

“Everything is a game of calculus in terms of where she puts her expenses,” Miller said.

Roughly $500,000 that supporters raised in a justice fund was spent on the first trial, Read’s sister Kelly Read posted in a Facebook group dedicated to her innocence and justice for O’Keefe.

“Now that you have seen a little of what Karen’s situation is really like,” the sister wrote on Tuesday, “I hope you each understand a little better why we are doing everything we can to help raise money so she can continue to fight on.”

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