Recap: Takeaways from Dateline's Karen Read episode, ‘Canton Confidential'

Read's attorney and a family member of O'Keefe told Dateline their reactions to the mistrial.

"We were deflated," said Beth, who believes Read is guilty. "We had that hope that this is going to come to an end and we're going to be able to basically move on, and then there's the thought of 'Oh god, we have to do this again.'"

"That switch was thrown. It was done," said defense attorney Alan Jackson. "It means that the prosecution didn't win, that's a win for the defense -- to a certain degree. It wasn't the win that we were looking for, though."

Multiple people testified in the trial that Read said after discovering O'Keefe's body, "I hit him, I hit him."

Read gave her own account of that moment in her interview with Dateline, which preceded the trial.

"I said, could I have hit him? Did I hit him?" Read said.

Murphy replied, "How could that have been?"

"I don't know what else could have been," Read said. "I thought, 'Did he somehow try to flag me down, and maybe tripped and I ran over his foot and then he passed out drunk?' I mean I didn't think I hit him hit him."

NBC10 Boston's own Sue O'Connell tells Dateline why she thinks this case attracted so much attention.

"I think all the questions to this are what make it really intriguing," she said. "Is it a romance that went wrong? Is it a night of partying that went wrong? Or did something else happen?"

Read said attorney Alan Jackson's past representation of actor Kevin Spacey led her to bring him on to her legal team.

After cold-calling local law professors, one gave her a piece of advice.

"He said one case that made some headway and was able to get charges dismissed was Kevin Spacey in Nantucket," Read said. "The cell data was key."

Read and Yannetti told Dateline about a tipster who, they said, revealed to them early in the legal case that authorities were covering up who really killed O'Keefe, and that they should look at one of the homeowners.

In a distinctive, gravely voice, the private eye who used to work for law enforcement said, "I want you to know your client is innocent," according to Yannetti.

He allegedly outlined some of the details that would be key parts of the Read team's allegations in the lead-up to the trial, though the tipster "was coy about" how he knew.

In fact, he later recanted, claiming he actually got the information from them, Read's team said.

But the information meant "we were off and running," Yannetti said. According to Read, "he crystalized and confirmed our suspicions."

Beth, a family member of O'Keefe who declined to give her last name, described how she felt when Read was arrested.

"Relief. If she did this, she's going to be held responsible for it," she said. "And at this point, we didn't think that it was necessarily on purpose, we just know something happened. She hit him and she left."

She talked about how quickly things developed that week.

"Johnny died on Saturday, and then Karen is arrested on Tuesday night, and they're in court on Wednesday. There is zero time to grieve."

David Yannetti, a familiar face from the trial as one of Read's two main lawyers, described to Dateline when Read first called him — she sounded much younger than she was, he said.

"My first thought was, this is a teenager, I'm going to have to talk to the parents. But then as she started to tell me the situation she was in, I was thinking that she's probably going to need some help," Yannetti said.

Read was arrested two days later — she described eight to 10 police officers "flooding my house."

Read recalled the moment she spotted O'Keefe as she was searching for him.

"We turn a corner, and I see him immediately. I see his body. Immediately," she said. "I ran over to him, and his eyes were swollen shut, he had blood dripping out of his nose."

Dennis Murphy asked if he was alive.

"He seemed like he could be," she said.

Much of the trial focused on whether O'Keefe went inside the house on Fairview Road outside of which O'Keefe's body was found. Read told Dateline she saw him go inside.

In fact, she waited outside the home in her SUV for him to come back out to tell her if she would have a good time inside, but he didn't.

"I waited for him to reemerge," she said. "He didn't come back, and it pissed me off, because one, I didn't want to be there, and two, I had to go to the bathroom."

Read didn't know the Alberts well, and was mad he wasn't telling her whether or not to come inside, she said, and eventually decided to leave, though she "kind of slow-rolled it off the street," hoping he would see her going and call after her.

When she got back to his house, Read acknowledged calling him something like 50 times — prosecutors detailed the contents of those calls in court.

We didn't hear from Read herself in court during her first trial, but in the interview with Dateline — recorded before the trial — she goes through her recollection of the night of Jan. 28-29, 2022.

Out at the bar with other Canton residents that night, "the vibes were good," she said.

Part of the charges against Read are that she was driving drunk, and she acknowledged drinking to Dateline, but said she didn't feel impaired: "I had several, but I felt fine."

Read went on to describe what happened when she dropped O'Keefe off at the Albert house for an after-party...

If you have questions about the case as you watch, email us — we'll continue to cover it as it unfolds. Reach us at canton.confidential@nbcuni.com.

"A Boston police officer left to die in the snow. Was he killed by his lover, or his friends?" NBC's Lester Holt asked at the start of "Dateline: The Night of the Nor'easter."

As tonight's Dateline special will no doubt highlight, it can be tough to keep track of all the people involved in the Karen Read case, and when key events happened.

Here are some resources that we've put together to help you understand the allegations and counter-allegations surrounding the killing of John O'Keefe, and how the trial unfolded over weeks and weeks:

• Who's who in the Karen Read trial (interactive chart)
• Karen Read case timeline: John O'Keefe's death and the murder investigation
• Watch every day of the controversial Karen Read murder trial

The Karen Read case has attracted people who are deeply fascinated by whether or not she is guilty of the killing she's been accused of — if you're reading this, you probably feel similarly.

What's the allure of true crime? We asked experts:

"We know the narrative, it is intriguing to us, and it can be exciting if it is happening in real time, in a trial for example," said Boston University professor of Film and Television Studies Deborah Jaramillo. "We can turn it off, we can walk away, we can say we came close to it, but thankfully we haven't experienced it."

Here's more of Eli Rosenberg's reporting on the phenomenon: Why the Karen Read murder trial is must-see TV for so many

With Karen Read appearing on Dateline tonight, NBC10 Boston brought you a special edition of Canton Confidential.

We discussed what we learned from that interview, the upcoming Supreme Judicial Court hearing on the defense's effort to dismiss charges, the taxpayer cost of Read's first trial, and other news surrounding the case.

Watch the full episode right here or at the top of this live blog.

...but we're publishing more Karen Read reporting tonight, and we'll be sharing live updates as Dateline airs tonight at 9 p.m.

While you wait, have you subscribed to the podcast version of our show? It's an easy way to keep up to date with the latest from "Canton Confidential" while you're on the go, and it's available for free wherever you get podcasts. Click the Subscribe button below for links, or search "Canton Confidential" on the podcast platform you use.

Massachusetts' top court, the Supreme Judicial Court, is set to hear arguments Nov. 6 in Read's appeal to have two charges against her dropped.

"The court will allow all three charges to stand," Coyne predicted, but that they'll offer more guidance for Massachusetts' judges to check if deadlocked juries have any places of agreement.

As for the Dateline episode airing soon, NBC10 Boston analyst Sue O'Connell, who was in court for the trial and appears in the episode, urged people to approach it with an open mind and reconsider some of their pre-conceived notions about the case.

The Dateline interview being shown Friday was recorded before Karen Read's first trial, in which she didn't testify, and asked if she should be concerned whether she should be concerned that the revelations would be used in her retrial, NBC10 Boston legal analyst Michael Coyne said simply, "Yes, she should be."

NBC10 Boston anchor Cory Smith pointed out that prosecutors already filed on Friday to get access to an interview another local TV station did with Read's father, to use in the case.

Andrea Canning, one of the two Dateline correspondents who reported Friday's special on Karen Read, "The Night of the Nor'easter," shared with NBC10 Boston's JC Monahan some insights on the making of the episode.

She said Dateline got interested in the case when her team started alleging there was a cover-up, and that the most intriguing part of Friday's episode is "Karen in her own words," when she takes viewers "moment by moment" through what happened to her.

What's been the allure of the case? Canning said, "It's like everyone has a different opinion about what happened, or how they interpret the clues. … It's so hard to cut through all of the material and really have a solid answer about what actually happened."

She also noted that their interview with a family member of O'Keefe's, named Beth, revealed that "they felt vilified at times when it was their loved one that died," because, Canning said, "they don't buy the cover-up."

The ACLU filed a legal brief with Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial this week in support of Karen Read's argument that what jurors have said after a mistrial was declared means she should be able to

On "Canton Confidential," ACLU of Massachusetts Legal Director Jessie Rossman explained that they filed the brief on behalf of all criminal defendants in the state, not just Read.

In Read's case, the organization wants to hear "what the jury actually decided," calling it an issue that gets to the heart of Americans' right not to face double jeopardy.

Given the high cost for security and more of the monthslong first Karen Read trial, we wondered how long experts think the retrial, to be led by a different prosecutor brought in especially for the case, will take.

"I think it's going to be still pretty long but I don't think as long," said Morjietta Derisier, a criminal defense attorney.

It will likely be more condensed, with more storytelling, she said.

Just in, shortly before the start of "Canton Confidential": Det. Lt. Brian Tully, the officer who oversaw the Massachusetts State Police unit that investigated Karen Read, has been transferred out, and the unit will get a new leader.

Here's the story:

Here's how Dateline has been promoting Friday's episode on Karen Read, "The Night of the Nor'easter":

Dateline NBC will air an all-new, two-hour special on Friday, October 18, at 9 p.m. ET/8 p.m. CT, covering the latest developments in the high-profile murder trial of Karen Read. Read is accused of killing her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, by reversing her car into him after a night of drinking. 
 
The broadcast, reported by correspondents Andrea Canning and Dennis Murphy, features an interview with Read, where she describes what she says happened that night and recounts the harrowing moment she found John O’Keefe’s body. “I couldn't see his face or his hair, but I knew it was him. I knew it was something that didn't belong on that lawn,” she says.
 
Also featured—an interview with Read’s high-profile attorney, Alan Jackson, who provides an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look into the defense’s strategy meetings detailing their theory that Read was framed by police.
 
The broadcast gives viewers a front-row seat inside the tense courtroom where dramatic moments that captivated the nation played out. The episode also includes interviews with John O’Keefe’s friends and family and explores the toll that his death and the trial have taken on them, including harassment they endured from Read’s supporters outside the courthouse.  
 
Read is set to stand trial again after a mistrial was declared earlier this year. She has pleaded not guilty.

NBC10 Boston is back with another live episode of "Canton Confidential" tonight. Here is some of what we'll cover:

• JC Monahan is talking with Dateline correspondent Andrea Canning on the making of tonight's episode, "The Night of the Nor'easter."
• We'll talk with a representative of the ACLU of Massachusetts about why they weighed in on Read's appeal to have two charges brought against her dropped because of what jurors have said after a mistrial was declared.
• Analysis on the latest in the case from Michael Coyne.
• Experts on what has fueled the deep and continued interest in the Karen Read case.
• What we've learned in the last day about how much it cost Massachusetts State Police to maintain security outside Norfolk Superior Court during the first trial.

Here's our initial reporting on the trial cost:

The Karen Read case attracted a circus-like atmosphere in Massachusetts with daily demonstrations eventually requiring police to maintain a buffer zone around the Dedham courthouse where the trial was held.

Keeping the peace cost the state nearly $210,000 in overtime, according to Massachusetts State Police, who provided data about the trial's cost Thursday in response to a records request.

There was a new filing in the Karen Read court case Friday — the new prosecutor is asking for a local television station's footage from an interview with her father in the hopes of using it in court.