Jurors heard a scintillating portrait of a romantic connection between murder defendant Karen Read and ATF Agent Brian Higgins with a kiss in front of victim John O’Keefe’s house two weeks before he would die.
“You’re hot,” Read texted Higgins on Jan. 12, 2022, after some flirtatious back and forth, as shown in screen captures of the pair’s text message exchange.
Higgins responded: “Are you serious or messing with me?”
“No I’m serious,” Read responded.
Higgins said, “Feeling is mutual. Is that bad? How long have you thought that???”
Sometime between 12:30 and 1 a.m. the following day, after a get-together at O’Keefe’s house, Read escorted him to his car — avoiding the Ring camera — and, Higgins testified, “The defendant kissed me … Not like a friend.”
Read, 44, of Mansfield, faces charges of second-degree murder, motor vehicle manslaughter and leaving the scene of a collision causing the death of O’Keefe, a 16-year Boston Police officer and her boyfriend of about two years when he died at age 46. Prosecutors say that after a night out drinking the pair argued and she killed him by backing her Lexus SUV into him, leaving him to die in the cold during a snowstorm.
Defense attorney Alan Jackson had just begun his cross-examination at 12:25 p.m. Friday, the 17th day of Read’s murder trial at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham.
Background
The Karen Read murder trial is underway in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham with a key witness on the stand.
While Judge Beverly Cannone and attorneys on Wednesday described the upcoming testimony as coming from “that one witness” for some reason, prosecutor Adam Lally had indicated in a prior day that Brian Higgins was coming up. All the other witnesses he said were coming up have already taken the stand.
Higgins is a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agent with keycard access to an office in the Canton Police Department, officers there have testified earlier in the Read trial.
He is also on the short list that defense attorney David Yannetti presented during a pre-trial hearing as a possible alternative killer in the defense’s third-party culpability theory. They say he, or in conjunction with the other two, beat O’Keefe to death and laid his body on the front lawn to frame their client.
This is a developing story.
