The Boston police officer who owned the property where John O’Keefe was found dead during a blizzard in January 2022 said he would have “taken a bullet” for his former colleague in a televised interview just days after jurors found the suspected killer, Karen Read, not guilty.
Brian Albert’s sister-in-law, Jennifer McCabe, woke him up after she, Read and another woman found O’Keefe unresponsive in the yard around 6 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022.
“By the time I came downstairs, the police were already in my house, John was already gone, [and] there was nobody to save,” Albert told ABC News Friday. “I would’ve taken a bullet for John O’Keefe.”
CLEARED OF MURDER HARGES, KAREN READ COULD EYE LEGAL PAYBACK AGAINST INVESTIGATORS WHO COST HER
Outside a celebratory post-verdict dinner, Read was asked if she had any word’s for O’Keefe’s family. “I fought for John O’Keefe, harder than anyone,” she said. “Harder than anyone.”
Read’s supporters have painted Albert and his family as villains, although he was not called to the stand in her second trial, her defense insinuated that O’Keefe’s fatal injuries had something to do with his dog, Chloe, and possibly a friend who was also at the house party.
Police never identified anyone but Read as a suspect, and no one else faced charges in connection with O’Keefe’s death.
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Read, O’Keefe and a group of other people had been invited back to Albert’s home just after midnight when the local bars closed.
Six hours later, O’Keefe was found dead under a layer of snow on the front lawn. Prosecutors alleged that Read hit him with her Lexus SUV and left the scene, but jurors didn’t buy the story.
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After a trial that stretched on for more than 30 days, and four days of deliberation, jurors found Read not guilty of all homicide-related charges. They convicted her only of drunken driving, for which she will serve a year on probation.
After the trial, her defense hinted that whoever did O’Keefe has eluded investigators, who were faulted for a sloppy investigation and missed protocols at trial, in an audit, and through internal reviews.
“Somebody is still out there, and it’s a shame that this investigation was not done in the proper way so that they could have gotten to the truth,” David Yannetti, one of her defense attorneys, told reporters Thursday.
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