The New Yorker:

The trial, which ended on Monday in a deadlocked jury, became an object of obsession for offering up a mix of conspiracy, corruption, and hard-drinking oblivion.

By Jessica Winter

On the eve of a blizzard in January, 2022, Karen Read and her boyfriend, the Boston Police Department officer John O’Keefe—both in their forties, their relationship troubled—went out drinking with some friends at a couple of bars in Canton, Massachusetts. At around midnight, one of the friends invited the group back to his place on Fairview Road, a short drive away. As snow was lightly falling, Read, a trim financial analyst who allegedly consumed between four and nine drinks that evening, drove O’Keefe to the friend’s house, arriving around 12:24 a.m. By 12:37 a.m., Read had left and driven to O’Keefe’s place nearby, by herself, and left him a succinct voice mail: “John, I fucking hate you!” In another voice mail, recorded about a half hour later, Read screamed, “You fucking pervert! You’re a fucking pervert!” Seven minutes later: “You’re fucking another girl!” There was more. Read called O’Keefe fifty-three times in total that morning.

Sometime before 5 a.m., after about six inches of snow had accumulated in Canton, Read woke up at O’Keefe’s place, but he wasn’t at home. She phoned one of his friends, Kerry Roberts, who later testified that Read screamed, “John’s dead!” According to Roberts and another friend, Jennifer McCabe, Read was semi-coherent, possibly still drunk, and, at first, seemed to think she had left O’Keefe at the bar. McCabe reminded Read that her S.U.V. had been parked outside the Fairview Road house a few hours before.

Go to link