A murder suspect claims she was framed by her dead boyfriend’s police colleagues. Her adoring fans agree

At around 6am on Jan 29 2022, the lifeless body of John O’Keefe, a police officer, lay blanketed in snow outside a detached house in a small suburban town 15 miles south-west of Boston.

Around six hours earlier Karen Read, his girlfriend, had dropped him to an after party with his colleagues in her black Lexus SUV following a night of bar-hopping.

Prosecutors allege that later in the night she returned and intentionally reversed over her boyfriend of two years who she had been fighting with over text, leaving him for dead outside the home of Brian Albert, a retired police officer.

Ms Read, 44, who is currently on trial at Norfolk Superior Courthouse for second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and leaving the scene of a collision, insists she is innocent and being set up by the police, a view that is shared by her legions of supporters who flock to the courthouse to support her each day.

Ms Read’s lawyers have argued O’Keefe, 46, was beaten to death by someone inside the house and bitten by the homeowner’s German Shepherd before being thrown outside and left to die. They claim they then conspired to pin the death on Ms Read, a “convenient outsider”.

Now, after two months and 74 witnesses, the jury has retired to decide whether Ms Read is guilty.

“There is no case against me… after eight weeks, it’s smoke and mirrors, and it’s going through my private life and trying to contrive a motive that was never there,” Ms Read told reporters outside the court on Tuesday.

What happened that night and who killed O’Keefe has torn the sleepy town of just 24,000 apart and spawned a vast network of amateur sleuths convinced Ms Read, a former university professor, is the victim of a sophisticated cover-up involving the police and the district attorney’s office.

The prosecution has argued Ms Read struck her boyfriend while performing a three-point turn, causing “catastrophic head injuries” and leaving him for dead.

Points of contention included a broken tail light on Ms Read’s car, witness claims that Ms Read said “I hit him” after his body was found, and whether O’Keefe’s injuries are consistent with being run over.

Ms Read’s defence is that the entire prosecution case is based on lies by officers sticking together to protect themselves.

Her lawyers say the pieces of tail light and the hair were planted during the hours before the crime scene was secured. They suggested O’Keefe might have been beaten up by a federal agent he was with that night, who had flirted with Ms Read over texts, and that the men panicked before trying to cover up the crime.

Since the trial began in April, a sea of people adorned in pink “Free Karen Read” T-shirts have descended on the town of Dedham, Massachusetts, where she is on trial, to protest her innocence.

Each day, armed with placards, flags and pom-poms, they fuel themselves with freshly grilled hotdogs and set up camp outside the judge’s 200-foot buffer zone from the court.

On her way into court, Ms Read has been continually met with the adulation usually reserved for Hollywood movie stars.

The cause célèbre has fired up supporters across the world, with one British couple spending £3,000 to travel from Manchester to attend the trial in person.

After making the more than 3,000-mile journey, across the Atlantic, Tom Murphy and Jill Boothman met Ms Read outside court.

Mothers have turned up with their home-schooled children to educate them about the justice system, while others have attended with their pet budgies and dogs dressed in pink outfits.

Those who have protested Ms Read’s innocence outside court include Liz Erk, who said she felt “compelled” to get involved after reading about the case.

“I felt like Karen Read could be me,” the 47-year-old single parent told The Telegraph.

“It’s easy to brush something off and say ‘that’s crazy, this doesn’t happen’,” Ms Erk added.

“You don’t want to believe that it happens, but I think once people begin to look at the details that it’s really hard to ignore.”

As well as showing up in person, Ms Read’s supporters have pored over court documents and evidence, sharing their findings with 45,000 others in a dedicated Facebook group.

The defence has argued Ms Read was framed by the “well-connected” Albert family and Michael Proctor, the lead investigator and Massachusetts state trooper, who is a family friend.

On the stand, Mr Proctor was confronted with a series of texts in which he described Ms Read as a “wack job” and joked about not finding nude photographs of her while going through her phone.

In one text to his sister, Mr Proctor said that he wished Ms Read would “kill herself”.

Alan Jackson, Ms Read’s lawyer said in court earlier this month: “You weren’t so much as objectively investigating her as objectifying her in those moments.”

Mr Proctor denied he was looking for nude images and apologised for the language used in the messages.

Ms Read’s army of sleuths has raised over $340,000 (£268,000) selling everything from bumbags to candles to help fund her legal team led by Mr Jackson, who represented Kevin Spacey when he was cleared on sexual assault charges in 2019.

Campaigners have organised a billboard professing Ms Read’s innocence with a QR code to donate cash.

Aidan Kearney, a blogger who goes by the moniker Turtle Boy, has posted hundreds of videos speculating about the case.

Mr Kearney, who filmed himself confronting witnesses, was arrested in October and indicted on more than 15 felony charges involving witness intimidation and conspiracy.

Last year, he organised a rolling rally, in which hundreds of supporters went to the address where O’Keefe was found, to the last bar they had been at and to the homes of different witnesses.

Nick Rocco, a 29-year-old hairdresser, first heard about Ms Read’s case in April 2023 through one of Mr Kearney’s videos.

Now, he says he and his wife Jenna Rocco are “key players in the movement”.

Conspiracy or truth

He founded the Justice For Officer John O’Keefe & Karen Read Facebook page and has raised close to $200,000 by organising giveaways, Halloween parties and selling bracelets.

“It’s absolutely insane. The movement just keeps getting bigger and bigger,” he told The Telegraph.

As well as manning the online page and fundraising, the father of three goes to court every Monday and Tuesday – his days off – to support Ms Read.

He said she is “very appreciative” of the support.

“I didn’t know her before this at all, I had no idea who she was, and then it came to a point where, like, you know, she trusted me, she saw what I was doing for her,” he added.

He is “not a true crime person”, he said. “I just felt bad for this woman. I felt bad. I wanted to help her.”

Responding to claims he is promoting a conspiracy theory, he said: “Put it this way, we’ve seen many conspiracies and I don’t want to be political, but we’ve seen many conspiracies that have come true.”

Jon Silveira is the only one of the nine administrators on the Facebook page who knew Ms Read before her arrest.

The pair grew up together, and she and O’Keefe had visited him in Florida three months before her partner’s death.

Mr Silviera, 44, who works offshore on an oil tanker, has been supporting Ms Read in court throughout the trial.

The movement is “massive”, he said, with people taking time off work just to stand outside in the rain to protest.

“When you pull up in the morning, seeing everybody dressed in pink with the signs, it’s really refreshing, it’s really motivating,” he said.

Before O’Keefe’s death, Canton was like any small town, quiet and “family-oriented”, Mr Rocco said.

Now it is “very much divided. You have the ‘Karen Read is guilty’ and then you have the ‘Karen Read is innocent’,” he said.

With the 12-strong jury now deciding Ms Read’s fate, whatever the outcome, it’s going to be a rocky ride yet for that once peaceful town.