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Prosecutors in Karen Read’s Massachusetts retrial dressed an expert witness up as her boyfriend while a reenacting his alleged murder for jurors Wednesday — and Read openly mocked the
scenario outside court.
Accident reconstructionist Judson Welcher donned the exact same outfit 46-year-old Boston cop John O’Keefe was wearing when he died in January 2022 — down to the correct sneaker model and
color he had on — during a video reenactment that showed him getting struck by the same model Lexus that Read was driving that night.
Welcher told jurors he was a similar height and build to O’Keefe, so he used his own body to recreate a the scenario of 45-year-old Read fatally backing into him and leaving him to die in
the snow that fateful night, according to Boston.com.
That’s what prosecutors argue happened on the drunken night that ended in O’Keefe’s death.
The video showed Welcher painting the Lexus SUV’s taillight that O’Keefe was allegedly struck by, and then knocking himself and his arm against it to demonstrate how the late Boston cop
could have been hit and left with scrapes up his forearm.
“We don’t know exactly how he was struck,” Welcher said — explaining that he even had the Lexus back into him at low speeds to explore ways O’Keefe’s body could have been thrown — but
ultimately concluded O’Keefe was likely struck by the car and thrown to the ground.
“With a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, that is what happened,” Welcher said.
But Read was unimpressed with the expert’s immersive demonstration.
“So he tried to dress identically to John, but didn’t do anything else to mimic what the Commonwealth is accusing me of,” Read told reporters outside the court, according to Fox News.
“The speed, the positioning. Recreate that for us,” she added.
“Back up into a crash test dummy at 24.2 mph in the arm and see what happens. That’s what I would want to see if I were you.”
Read’s defense also took issue with the demonstration, arguing it was irrelevant because nobody knew where O’Keefe actually was when his arm was injured the night of his death.
“You don’t have the information necessary to conclude with any certainty that Mr. O’Keefe, at the time of impact, had a level of his head in an upright such that it hit that spoiler. You
don’t have that information, correct?” defense attorney Robert Alessi asked Welcher, referring to a head injury O’Keefe suffered that the simulation also explored.
“We don’t have that level of certainty. We have that the height and geometry matches,” Welcher replied.
Read’s new trial for second-degree murder and manslaughter is in its sixth week.
Deliberations in Read’s first trial ended in a mistrial last summer after jurors couldn’t reach an agreement.
Prosecutors insist Read struck O’Keefe with her car and left him to die in a blizzard after a night of drunken arguing, but her defense claims he was killed by a group of cop buddies who
then tried to pin the death on her.