John O’Keefe’s mother, Canton first responder, a State Police investigator testify in Karen Read trial. Here’s how Wednesday unfolded.

By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff

Daniel Whitley told Read lawyer David Yannetti that he learned Read suffers from MS, a chronic disease of the central nervous system.

“She asked if somebody could survive after having been found in the snow without a jacket, correct?” Yannetti said.

“For many hours, correct,” Whitley said.

He told Yannetti the hospital staffers were treating O’Keefe as if he were a hypothermia patient.

“You don’t know if your assumption [that he was suffering from the condition] was correct or not, sir,” Yannetti said.

“I guess I don’t,” Whitley said.He told Yannetti he was interviewed by police on Feb. 8, 2022.

Whitley said he told police he saw Kerry Roberts, a neighbor, at the crime scene when he arrived.

Yannetti noted that Whitley never mentioned Read’s “snarky” comment about Roberts during that February 2022 interview.

Whitley said he also helped Roberts organize neighborhood block parties.

He said his partner wrote up a patient care report for Read on the morning of Jan. 29, 2022.

The report said Read was having a “behavioral/psychiatric episode,” Whitley confirmed.

“That mentions nothing about snarkiness,” Yannetti said.

“Corrrect, no, that is my partner’s report,” Whitely said.

Yannetti noted that the report also said Read was “crying and visibly upset but cooperative.”

Cannone ended testimony for the day.

By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff

The paramedic told Read attorney David Yannetti on cross-examination that John O’Keefe’s body was no longer on the lawn when he arrived at the home.

“It was minutes, it was within the hour,” Whitley said.

He said he wasn’t sure if the police vehicles had their blue lights flashing. The cruisers weren’t hidden in any way, he said.

A fire truck also likely had its lights on, Whitley said.

“I assume it did, only because we rarely shut our lights off,” he said.

Read’s lawyers have stressed that the owners of the Fairview Road home did not leave their residence at any time despite the intensive police activity on the lawn.

“Did you ever see the homeowner come out of his house?” Yannetti asked.

“I wouldn’t have known the homeowner,” Whitley said.

By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff

Prosecutors next called Canton firefighter-paramedic Daniel Whitley to the stand.

He said he went to Fairview Road the morning O’Keefe’s body was found.

“It was snowing pretty heavily at that point,” Whitley said.

He said he spoke with Read, who was “pretty upset, crying,” and that paramedics had an order to take her to the hospital for a mental health evaluation.

“She was arguing that she really didn’t need to go to the hospital,” Whitley said. “It is not a voluntary order.”

Ultimately, Read agreed to go to the hospital, he said.

“She kept asking if there was any chance her husband could be alive,” he said of Read, who wasn’t married to O’Keefe.

Whitley said Read asked “at least three or four” times how long O’Keefe could survive in the cold without a coat.

“We were trying to give her hope. ... I was telling her those stories [of other improbable recoveries]. Just trying to give her any sort of hope that her husband would be alive.“

He said Read “kept saying, ‘I can’t take care of these kids, I can’t take care of these kids. They’re not my kids, and they’re not his kids.’”

She also asked Whitley if he knew Roberts after he told Read that she appeared to have a strong support system.

Read said anyone who knows Roberts “wouldn’t say that,” he said.

He said he replied that Roberts had just helped Read look for O’Keefe in a blizzard.

“She just rolled her eyes and put her head back down,” Whitley said.

“I thought it was just bizarre.”

Cannone struck the remark about it being bizarre when the defense objected.

By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff

Nicholas Guarino told prosecutor Hank Brennan he did not speak to any witnesses or visit the crime scene.

“I was brought ... phones from this case to have the data extracted,” Guarino said, adding that one of the devices was John O’Keefe’s, which he received on the evening of Jan. 29, 2022.

Guarino said the phone was stored in a digital forensics lab for two days until officials received the passcode.

He identified O’Keefe’s data extraction report when Brennan handed it to him. Brennan later put the report on the monitor for jurors.

Guarino said he also extracted data from Read’s phone.

He said software technology for forensics changes “constantly.”

Investigators had to wait until July 2022, when the software could guess Read’s password, before they could access the device, Guarino said.

“There were two downloads,” Guarino said. An initial partial one and a second, more exhaustive download once officials got the password.

Guarino said a different trooper in his unit performed the extraction of Kerry Roberts’s phone, and that he accessed the data “months down the road.

”Someone else also performed the extraction of Jennifer McCabe’s phone, Guarino said.

Guarino told Brennan he created a report for all the calls between O’Keefe and Read for a period of time, as well as a document showing the text messages they exchanged.

He said he also created reports for O’Keefe’s texts with Roberts and McCabe.

“I would wait for a request,” Guarino said. “My knowledge of most of the cases is very, very limited.”

Guarino stepped down without cross-examination, though Brennan said he intends to call him back to the stand later.

By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff

Once the jury came back in, prosecutor Hank Brennan played Read’s first interview clip on the monitor.

“I could sense from her that she was [regarding] me very warily,” Read said of Peggy O’Keefe.

Brennan called then the next witness, State Police Trooper Nicholas Guarino, an investigator on the case.

Guarino told Brennan that he’s a cellphone forensic investigator, having received training on digital extractions.

He told Brennan that once a phone’s contents are downloaded onto a server, any later altering of the data would leave a digital trace.

Guarino said in many cases, “people want PDFs of the information,” or sometimes the raw data. He said he extracted data from “multiple phones” in the Read case.

By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff

Judge Beverly J. Cannone sent jurors out briefly around 2:10 p.m. to hear arguments over whether prosecutors can play another clip of Read telling a TV interviewer that she felt John O’Keefe’s mother was suspicious of her when she arrived at her son’s house with her father and brother, and that they left quickly as a result.

“They stay at the house for less than an hour,” prosecutor Hank Brennan told Cannone. “This is a family that’s grieving the loss of her son. Less than an hour. They go back outside, [and] instead of leaving in the one car, they take the alleged murder weapon, they get into two cars, and they drive away and remove the Lexus with the broken taillight from the scene. That is clear consciousness of guilt.”

Read lawyer Alan Jackson said he doesn’t agree but he has no objection to the clip being played.

Brennan played a second clip of Read telling the interviewer that Peggy O’Keefe told her at her son’s house that “he looks like he got hit by a car.”

That would contradict Peggy O’Keefe, who testified Wednesday that she did not have a conversation with Read at the house, Jackson said.

“How does that relate to consciousness of guilt? It doesn’t,” Jackson said.

Brennan countered that prosecutors aren’t trying to impeach Peggy O’Keefe.

“Just because it’s incriminating, just because it’s difficult for the defense, is not a basis to preclude it,” Brennan said.

Cannone took the matter under advisement and said she would rule on the second clip in the morning.

By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff

Peggy O’Keefe said her son John decided to raise his niece and nephew, with her watching the children on weekends “so he could have a break.” Other relatives also chipped in, she said.

“He was wonderful with the kids,” she said. “He was their number one, and they called him JJ.”

She identified her son in a photo, briefly struggling to maintain her composure.

On the morning of her son’s death, she was at home with her husband in Braintree. Kerry Roberts called her that morning around 6:15, she said.

“She said ‘John was found in a snowbank,’ and I didn’t understand,” O’Keefe said. “I said, ‘what do you mean, found in a snowbank?’ She said ‘they found him in the snow. They don’t know what happened.’”

At the hospital, O’Keefe said, she encountered Read as she was going to see her son.

“I hear Karen Read yell, ‘Peg, is he dead?’” O’Keefe testified. “I just kept walking.”

She said Read told her earlier she “just left” O’Keefe at a party the night before.

At the hospital, Read “was just loud,” O’Keefe said. She said she asked a nurse why Read was at the hospital, and the staffer said Read was receiving a psychiatric evaluation.

After they left the hospital and returned to John O’Keefe’s house to comfort the children, she said, Read arrived with her father and brother.

She said they asked if they could go upstairs to grab some things.

”I never should have let them go up there," O’Keefe said.

“But at the time it was, I just couldn’t think straight. ... So I don’t know what they got up there.”

O’Keefe said she did not interact with Read at the house.

Were there “any hugs or condolences?” Brennan asked.

“No,” O’Keefe said, adding that she did not see Read exit, nor did she see her Lexus in the driveway.

O’Keefe wasn’t asked any questions under cross-examination.

Read attorney Alan Jackson told O’Keefe he was “very sorry for your loss.”

“I have no questions for you,” Jackson added.

O’Keefe stepped down.

By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff

Prosecutors next called O’Keefe’s mother, Peggy O’Keefe, to the stand.

“My name’s Margaret O’Keefe,” she told jurors. “I am John O’Keefe’s mother.”

Asked how long she and her husband have been married, she said, “for too long,” prompting laughter from the spectators before she clarified that she has been married for 53 years.

She teared up when she told jurors her daughter Kristen had died in November 2013 from cancer, and her son-in-law died months later from a heart attack.

She said her daughter’s children, now 17 and 14, were 3 and 6 when their parents died. John O’Keefe later took them in, she said.

“My son decided to be the head guardian,” she said.

By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff

Roberts told prosecutor Hank Brennan that she and Jennifer McCabe took off their shoes when they first entered John O’Keefe’s house to search for him before they later discovered his body on Fairview Road.

“John was a neat freak” and did not allow guests to wear shoes inside, Roberts said.

“Did the defendant take her shoes off?” Brennan asked.

“She did not,” Roberts said.

Brennan asked if she had ever seen any security video of Read showing Roberts her broken taillight in O’Keefe’s driveway.

“No,” Roberts said.

Brennan then moved to play another video clip from the driveway, but the defense objected, prompting a brief sidebar conference.

Read lawyer Alan Jackson later on recross stressed that Roberts was asked during the grand jury proceedings what she heard Read say in the car at the crime scene.

“I obviously got the question wrong [in the grand jury] because I did not hear anybody ask about a Google search” in the car, Roberts said.

In the grand jury session, Jackson continued, “you said ‘at one point she asked her to Google hypothermia, and how long.’ Then you corrected yourself and finished with ‘Google hypothermia.’ What did you mean by ‘how long,’ what were you about to say?”

”I don’t recall," Roberts said.

“Had someone told you something about a phrase that started with ‘how long?‘’ Jackson asked.

“I don’t recall,” Roberts said.

“Like, for instance, how long to die in cold?” Jackson asked.

“I don’t recall,” Roberts replied.

Brennan also played a video clip of Read discussing her taillight in a media interview.

“When my car was seized, there was [sic] a few small pieces of taillight missing that I had picked out at John’s at quarter to six, before we drove over to Fairview,” Read said in the clip. “I’m showing Jen and Kerry, ‘look what I just did to my light.”

The clip bolstered Roberts’s testimony that Read showed her and McCabe the broken taillight in O’Keefe’s driveway, before they found his body on the lawn of the Canton home.

“I’m worried that there’s going to be some kind of electric short circuit,” Read said in the media interview. “The bulb is showing, and some of the red plastic’s missing, so I picked pieces out of the light housing that had kind of collapsed within the light and dropped them in John’s driveway.”

Judge Cannone called the lunch recess shortly before 1 p.m.

By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff

Roberts told Read attorney Alan Jackson she was “in shock” when investigators interviewed her at her home on Jan. 29, 2022.

The second interview took place Feb. 1 at Jennifer McCabe’s home, Roberts said.

She said the two women, who were with Read when she discovered John O’Keefe’s body, “were putting a timeline together at the request of Mrs. O’Keefe” at the time.

”It’s a combination of your memory and Jennifer McCabe’s memory," Jackson said.“Yes,” Roberts said.

Asked if the purpose of the timeline was to “help her” with the interview, Roberts said no and that she just happened to be at McCabe’s house when investigators arrived to interview McCabe.

McCabe’s sister lived at the Canton home where O’Keefe’s body was found.

Roberts told Jackson she wasn’t aware of text messages McCabe sent to others in a group chat while Roberts spoke to investigators.

“I don’t think she could listen in,” Roberts said.

She said she also spoke by phone on Feb. 1 with Michael Proctor, a State Police investigator who later lost his job.

“I think he was on the phone with Jen and I asked to speak with him,” Roberts said.

On Feb. 2, Roberts signed a consent form to allow law enforcement to access her phone. McCabe did the same, she said.

Roberts said she last spoke to McCabe on Wednesday morning but the two did not discuss her testimony.

“She called to wish me good luck today,” Roberts said, adding that she’d previously spoken with McCabe “maybe a couple days ago.”

Jackson also showed Roberts phone records and again asked if she recalled textingMcCabe that the troopers were arriving to interview her on Jan. 29.

“No,” Roberts said.“Did you in fact call Ms. McCabe right after the interview and talk to her?” Jackson asked.

“I don’t know,” Roberts said.Returning to the account of Read asking her and McCabe to pray at the crime scene, Jackson asked if Roberts previously indicated that Read also asked McCabe to “Google hypothermia” at that time.

“I’ve never said that,” Roberts replied.

(McCabe has said her time-stamped 2:27 a.m. dying in the cold search on her phone was actually done hours later at the crime scene when Read asked her to Google the information.)

After Roberts reviewed transcripts of grand jury testimony, she said, “Yep, I testified, I didn’t hear it, but I was told that she was asked to Google it.”

Jackson asked if she recalled being asked in the grand jury specifically what she heard Read say.

“And in response to that question, you stated, ‘at one point she asked her to Google hypothermia and how long. Google hypothermia.’ Correct?” Jackson asked.

“Yes,” Roberts said, adding that she thought that occurred around the time paramedics lifted O’Keefe on the stretcher but she wasn’t sure.

“I did not hear her ask that,” Roberts said. “I was told she was asked that. ... Nobody told me to say it.”

She said she learned about the request during her timeline exercise with McCabe.

The timeline “influenced your testimony, to testify in front of the grand jurors to a statement that you never heard, correct?” Jackson asked.

“Yes,” Roberts said.

“What you told them was you ‘did not hear Karen ask Jennifer McCabe” to Google anything, “is that correct?” Jackson asked.

She said it was, and Jackson said that means her grand jury testimony was inaccurate.

“I misunderstood [the prosecutor’s] question” in the grand jury, Roberts said.

Brennan asked her on redirect if she was trying to “fool” the grand jury and she said no.

She also reiterated to Brennan that she voluntarily gave her phone to investigators to review.

By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff

Roberts told Read attorney Alan Jackson that the O’Keefe family later replaced the security camera he had installed on his garage.

She told Jackson that Canton Police Sgt. Michael Lank, an investigator on the case, has a daughter who’s friends with hers, but said she was not aware that Lank was also close to the Albert family, who owned the Fairview Road home at the time.

“I said ‘Mike is that you,’ he said ‘yes,’ and that was it,” Roberts said of her conversation with Lank at the crime scene.

The day of O’Keefe’s death, Roberts said, she drove her daughter to Lank’s house to be with her friend. McCabe was with Roberts at the time, she said, because she was dropping McCabe off at home as well.

Roberts said she was outside the Lank residence for about 45 minutes and stayed in her car, talking with Lank’s wife for a time. McCabe entered the house to use the bathroom, she said.

She told Jackson that McCabe asked her “maybe like four” times to relay questions to investigators, and that she would relay their responses.

She said she spoke to two state troopers in her dining room on Jan. 29, 2022, in the early evening following O’Keefe’s death.

Roberts said she “spoke to Jen McCabe the entire day.”

“Including just before that interview” by phone, Jackson said.

“I don’t know,” Roberts said.

“Did you tell Jen McCabe that you were about to be interviewed?” Jackson asked.

“No,” Roberts said.

“Did you text her and tell her that the officers had arrived?” Jackson asked.

“I don’t think so,” Roberts said.

By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff

Roberts told Read attorney Alan Jackson on cross-examination that she wasn’t shown anything during her meeting with the government last week, other than the video clip of her prior testimony.

She said prosecutor Hank Brennan just asked her to recount “what happened” at the time of John O’Keefe’s death.

Roberts and Read were close to O’Keefe’s body when police arrived, Roberts said, as Jennifer McCabe called 911.

“At some point she did take over doing chest compressions because I asked her to,” Roberts said of McCabe.

Jackson asked Roberts if McCabe was actually in a vehicle when she called 911, and she said “that is not true, she was outside. ... the back of the SUV was open, she was standing there.”

Roberts said she didn’t recall Read telling a responding officer words to the effect of, “my boyfriend, I left him, he never came home.”

Jackson then played video footage of the crime scene in which Read’s muffled voice could be heard.

“Did it sound like she said ‘my boyfriend, I dropped him off, and he never came home?’” Jackson asked.

“No,” Roberts said. Jackson asked if Roberts had noticed a smaller laceration to the left side of O’Keefe’s nose.

“I don’t recall,” Roberts said. “I know there was blood coming from [that area], but I don’t know if it was coming from inside his nose or from a laceration.”

Roberts also said she noticed the “scratches” on O’Keefe’s arm.

Shifting back to the encounter around 5 a.m. in O’Keefe’s driveway, Jackson said Roberts previously testified that Read pulled into the driveway and began calling attention to her taillight as she cleared snow off the back of her SUV and also wondered aloud, “Do you think I hit him?”

Jackson played video footage of the women arriving in the driveway; no such conversation appears to transpire before they enter the house.

Roberts said the conversation actually happened as they left the house, not before they entered as she previously stated.

“So your memory was faulty about that part of the incident that you testified to with the grand jury?” Jackson asked.

“Yes,” Roberts said. She also told Jackson that she did not mention anything about a cracked taillight when she spoke to police the night after O’Keefe died.

“I didn’t want to accuse anybody,” Roberts said.

She said she told authorities about the taillight when she was interviewed a second time days later.

During that conversation, Jackson said, Roberts told officials there was a piece missing in the middle of the taillight.

“Then you described today that a square piece was missing,” Jackson said.

“Yes, that’s the piece I was referring to,” Roberts said.

By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff

Roberts told Read attorney Alan Jackson on cross-examination that she has likely spoken to authorities dozens of times about the case since O’Keefe’s death.

Roberts said the government’s victim witness advocate gave her “very broad answers” to questions she asked, sometimes at Jennifer McCabe’s prompting.

She said she has also met with Hank Brennan and the other prosecutors in recent weeks, along with the victim witness advocate and investigators.

The most recent meeting occurred last week, Roberts said.

She said she went over her testimony with the officials and watched a video of her prior testimony. Judge Cannone then called the lawyers to a sidebar.

By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff

Roberts identified herself in video footage at the crime scene.“I think I was picking up the phone [of O’Keefe] and the blankets at that point,” Roberts said.

She identified herself retrieving the blanket and said that was the moment she also placed O’Keefe’s cell phone in her pocket, after he had been carried away on a stretcher.

Roberts said she’s later seen on the footage “cleaning off my car” during heavy snowfall.

At one point, Read asked her and McCabe to say a prayer for O’Keefe, which they did together.

She also identified Read, McCabe, and her getting back into her vehicle at 6:26 a.m. Prosecutor Hank Brennan asked Roberts if she still had O’Keefe’s cell phone at this point.

“I don’t know,” Roberts said. “I could have handed it to a first responder at this point, or it could still be in my pocket.”

Roberts also identified herself in video footage speaking on her cell phone while McCabe spoke to a group of police officers.

Brennan asked Roberts if she recalled who she was talking with at the time, and she said she did not.

Judge Beverly J. Cannone called a brief morning recess shortly after 10:30 a.m.

By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff

Kerry Roberts said she later left the hospital with John O’Keefe’s father, dropping him off at his home. She said O’Keefe had a blue rubber bracelet on his right wrist at the hospital that he wore in memory of his sister, who died from cancer.

“Mrs. O’Keefe still wears it to this day,” Roberts said of the bracelet, when asked if she had retrieved a bracelet from his body.

Roberts said she and Jennifer McCabe spoke frequently about the tragedy following O’Keefe’s death, though the women hadn’t been close before.

“We bonded over it,” Roberts said, adding that she at one point wrote down a list of things that had occurred when O’Keefe died to help her remember what transpired.

Roberts said that the day after O’Keefe’s death, she went to the home of one of the investigators, Canton police Sgt. Michael Lank, whose daughter is friends with hers.

Her daughter had asked her for a ride to Lank’s house, Roberts said.

Prosecutor Hank Brennan asked if Roberts tried to “get information, inside information about this case” during the visit, when she said she spoke only with Lank’s wife in her car outside.

”No," Roberts said.

By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff

Roberts said she “spun out” while driving to O’Keefe’s parents home in Braintree, owing to the weather.

The O’Keefes were waiting for her when she arrived, Roberts said.

She said O’Keefe’s father mentioned something about a doctor trying to “warm John up.”

At one point in the car, Roberts said, O’Keefe’s father said to his wife, “‘he’s gone, Peg.’ And he slammed his hands on the dashboard, but they didn’t know if he was actually gone yet.”

She said Read also spoke to O’Keefe’s mother by phone en route to the hospital.

“Mrs. O’Keefe said ‘Karen, what happened?’” Roberts said. “And she said, ‘I left him at a party,’ and Mrs. O’Keefe said ‘you just left him?’ And Mr. O’Keefe said ‘alright, that’s enough. She’s been through enough.’ Then we hung up with her.”

At the hospital, Roberts said, John O’Keefe’s face looked even worse.

“This time, both eyes were filled with blood,” she said. “They looked like raccoons. That’s the only way to describe it. ... When I brushed the snow off his face [at the crime scene] his left eye was fine. It had an ice cube on it that I pulled off, but the right eye was out to here, like a golf ball.”

By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff

Kerry Roberts said that once the paramedics arrived, Read was running around saying ‘Did I hit him? Did I hit him?‘" and “‘Is he dead? Is he dead?’”

Roberts said she called O’Keefe’s mother and told her that her son had been in an accident.

“She screamed, ‘I can’t do this again,’” Roberts said, an apparent reference to the prior death of one of her other adult children.

Roberts said she saw no signs of life from O’Keefe’s body at the scene.

She said she and Read left the crime scene together in Roberts’s vehicle, and Read told her she would kill herself if anything happened to O’Keefe.

Police later called Roberts and asked her to bring her back to the Fairview Road scene because her parents feared she was suicidal. Read was later taken to the same hospital as O’Keefe as a precaution.

“When they lifted him up, there was grass underneath him,” Roberts said of O’Keefe’s body, adding that she picked up O’Keefe’s phone that had been underneath him and gave it to a first responder. She said she didn’t recall how long she had O’Keefe’s phone in her possession.

By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff

Roberts returned to the stand shortly before 9:30 a.m., and prosecutor Hank Brennan played video footage from O’Keefe’s home security camera when she, Read, and McCabe returned to his driveway to look for him shortly after 5 a.m.

Roberts said Read’s right taillight had a piece “missing,” and “one of the pieces was sort of sticking out.”

“I only remember it because I thought, ‘If someone walks by that, they’re going to catch their jacket on it,’” she said.

Roberts then identified a photo of Read’s damaged taillight that Brennan put on the monitor.

“She said, ‘Do you think I hit him? Do you think I hit him?’” Roberts said of Read.

She said the women later drove from O’Keefe’s home back to the Fairview Road residence where his body was discovered.

During that drive, Roberts said, “Karen was frantic” and yelling.

“I told her to shut up several times because I was trying to drive,” Roberts said. “You couldn’t control her, and I was trying to drive in a blizzard.”

She said Read “ran over” to O’Keefe’s location on the front lawn.

Roberts said she “began to dig his head out of the snow.”

She said O’Keefe’s left eye was “fine” but “his right eye looked like it was huge, like he had something happen to it.”

Roberts said she didn’t realize it was O’Keefe until she cleared the snow off his face. His skin “was cold, like he had been there in the elements for a while,” she said.

“He had blood coming out of his nose and his mouth,” Roberts said.

“I don’t think [the blood] was running. It was not gushing.”

She told Brennan she never felt any pieces of glass sticking out of O’Keefe’s face while his body was on the lawn.

By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff

Before jurors came into the courthouse Wednesday, special prosecutor Hank Brennan told Judge Beverly J. Cannone that the government is prepared to introduce evidence about Jennifer McCabe’s heart rate at the time of John O’Keefe’s death if the defense tries to link her to a murder conspiracy.

Phone records show McCabe, whose sister lived at the Canton home where O’Keefe’s body was found, Googled “hos [sic] long to die in cold” on her phone at 2:27 a.m. on the morning of O’Keefe’s death.

Prosecutors have said the timestamp is inaccurate. Brennan said healthcare data from McCabe’s watch at the time shows her heart rate was “inconsistent with being in a criminal conspiracy” during the predawn hours.

By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff

Testimony resumes Wednesday morning, with Read’s former friend Kerry Roberts returning to the stand to finish questioning from prosecutors before the defense begins its cross-examination.

On Tuesday, Roberts told jurors in Norfolk Superior Court that she was with Read and another woman, Jennifer McCabe, when they returned to the Canton home and found John O’Keefe’s snow-covered body on the front lawn around 6 a.m.

As they approached the home, Read shouted, “There he is,” but the other two women couldn’t see anything in the stormy conditions, Roberts said.

Jurors also heard Tuesday from Canton firefighter-paramedic Timothy Nuttall, who testified that he “distinctly” recalled Read saying “I hit him” three consecutive times.

He acknowledged on cross-examination that he had previously said Read told him that twice. Nuttall also acknowledged that his prior statement that O’Keefe was wearing a puffy jacket when he was discovered was inaccurate. O’Keefe was found without a winter coat on.

By Globe Staff

The trial began Tuesday with opening statements and the testimony of a paramedic, one of the first responders on scene, and a friend of Read’s who was with her when she found O’Keefe’s snow-covered body in the winter of 2022.

Special prosecutor Hank Brennan, a seasoned defense attorney brought in to lead the Norfolk district attorney’s case after Read’s first trial ended with a hung jury last year, told jurors that Read and O’Keefe’s relationship was “unraveling” leading up to the night of O’Keefe’s death, and that Read had seven alcoholic drinks less than two hours before she allegedly backed into him with her SUV.

READ MORE