Karen Read may have been cleared on criminal murder charges Wednesday — but she isn’t legally off the hook yet as still faces a civil wrongful death case brought by the family of her deceased cop boyfriend, John O’Keefe.
The 2024 lawsuit against Read, 45, has been on hold pending the outcome of her criminal case.
But after she was acquitted in the Boston police officer’s death Wednesday — and was sentenced to a year probation for drunk driving, the only charge she was found guilty of — the civil case is presumably free to go forward.
The Aug. 26 case was brought by O’Keefe’s parents, brother and niece nearly two months after the first trial against Read ended in mistrial.
The family claimed Read, of Mansfield, Mass., intentionally hit O’Keefe with her Lexus SUV while she was drunk and then left him to die in a snowstorm.
The relatives also blamed two bars — C.F. McCarthy’s and Waterfall Bar & Grille — for allegedly over-serving Read when she and O’Keefe, 46, went out bar hopping in the hours before his death on Jan. 29, 2022.
Read — a financial analyst — allegedly had nine drinks the night of Jan. 28 before she drove O’Keefe from the Waterfall Bar to his retired cop buddy’s afterparty in Canton, Mass., the suit claimed.
Read inflicted emotional distress on the family members who were forced to endure the investigation into O’Keefe’s death, the suit said.
And Read traumatized O’Keefe’s then-14-year-old niece — for whom he was the caretaker when he died — when Read woke the teen up at 4:30 a.m., ranting about what might have happened to her boyfriend, the suit claimed.
Then Read left the niece at home alone when she went in search of O’Keefe, the filing said.
The suit is seeking at least $50,000 in damages.
Legal expert Randolph Rice, who has been following the Read case, noted that the burden of proof to find Read liable in O’Keefe’s death is much lower than a criminal proceeding.
“In the civil case, there’s a preponderance of the evidence which is a much lower standard,” than the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal cases, the Maryland-based lawyer explained.
Proving claims in a civil case is “much easier for a plaintiff,” Rice said.
“She’s not out of the woods civilly.”
Rice said now that the criminal case is behind her, she doesn’t have a legal reason to not sit in for a deposition.
“Her lawyers will certainly try to keep things out during a deposition but depositions are wide open,” he said. “If it’s even remotely relevant to the cause of action the plaintiff’s attorneys get to ask it and she’s got to answer it.”
Read has maintained all along that she was framed in a sweeping law enforcement cover-up and that O’Keefe was actually killed when he got in a fight with his buddies at the afterparty.
Read’s defense arguments have won her a cult-like following of supporters of her innocence who have donated over $1 million to her legal defense, and who showed up in droves outside court throughout both trials.
When the verdict was read out in court Wednesday — and broadcast on a livestream — roars from crowds of excited Read fans outside could be heard penetrating the courtroom walls.
Lawyers for C.F. McCarthy’s declined to comment. The attorneys for all the other parties didn’t immediately return requests for comment Thursday.
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