Why Are We Obsessed with the Karen Read Murder Case?
With her retrial set to start, LAW’s Shira Diner says “a white woman of means” charged with murder but out on bail is driving the public fascination
Karen Read supporters are known for wearing pink, a color that Read supposedly chose herself. Photo via AP/Charles Krupa
Why Are We Obsessed with the Karen Read Murder Case?
With her retrial set to start, LAW’s Shira Diner says “a white woman of means” charged with murder but out on bail is driving the public fascination
On the night of January 28, 2022, Mansfield resident Karen Read went to a bar with her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe. A little after midnight, on January 29, she dropped O’Keefe off at a friend’s Canton home—where he was found dead in the snow six hours later. That tragic chain of events kick-started one of the most closely followed—and divisive—Massachusetts court cases in recent history.
The case has captured international attention, fueled by a fervent TikTok following convinced of conspiracy theories, public displays of support with “Free Karen Read” signs, and a separate legal case involving a blogger who goes by the nickname Turtleboy—who now faces his own charges of witness intimidation.
Now, over a year after her initial trial ended in a hung jury, Read is being retried in Norfolk Superior Court. She has pleaded not guilty—again—to charges of second-degree murder and other charges. Opening statements in the retrial are expected to start as early as the week of April 14. And the circus atmosphere is expected to be even greater than it was the first time around.
But why?
BU Today spoke with Shira Diner, a BU School of Law lecturer and a clinical instructor in LAW’s Defender Clinic, to unpack why this particular murder case has become such a media phenomenon.
Q&A
with Shira Diner
BU Today: What do you think it is about the case that has fascinated the public so much? Why can’t people turn away from it?
Diner: There are multiple layers there. I think that we’re not used to seeing white women of means at the center of the criminal system. Obviously, most of the people involved in the criminal legal system, most people who are charged with second-degree murder, are not white women with money, and so I think people are always fascinated by that dynamic.
[This is] someone of means. The defendant in the case is not held pretrial on bail. Most people, especially those charged with serious crimes like that, are held pretrial. They don’t have money to post their bail, and so they’re in jail waiting for their trial. And that means they are not able to be out in the public garnering support and being in the public eye, and making documentaries, and doing 60 Minutes interviews.
And so I think that is a huge piece of this, that the defendant and the defense team have been able to really build a lot of conversation about this case in a way that I just don’t believe would be possible if this person weren’t a person of some amount of privilege.
BU Today: Do you think the defense and the prosecution strategies will change in this retrial?
Diner: I think they have to. I mean, sort of ultimately, the goal is the same, right? The prosecution still has to prove the elements of the offense, and the defense has to convince a jury that the commonwealth hasn’t proven those elements. I think part of what was so interesting about the first trial was the testimony that came out about the biases of some of the people who were investigating the case, those text messages that were pretty offensive. I think the defense was able to use that as part of the theory of their case.
You know, that still exists. But its “shock value” is less now. And so I think that’s an area where they’re going to have to think differently. I think anytime you are doing a retrial of the case, it’s a tough position, because you’re trying to figure out what you could have done differently.
I think we will see different strategies. I don’t know exactly what it’s going to look like. But I do think that the dynamics are already different, because I don’t think there’s going to be as much surprise that comes out, and there’s not going to be this kind of “Aha!” moment in the testimony, which we had a few times in the last trial.
BU Today: How do you go about picking a jury in a case like this, where most people hear about it every day in the news?
Diner: At this point, because of the publicity, they’re not looking for jurors who don’t know the case; that is impossible. They’re looking for jurors whom the judge and the parties believe, despite knowing about it, will be able to go in with an open mind. You can know about something, but not have opinions about it, or you can know about something and have opinions, and those opinions could be very strong, or those opinions could be modest and open to change. And I think that is what they’re looking for.
It’s people who don’t already have opinions on the case, or people who have opinions, but are not deeply committed to their opinions. I think those are the jurors that both sides are going to be looking for.
BU Today: What kind of questions might you ask those jurors?
I’m guessing the defense team has many questions that they’re asking. I probably would want to get at people’s biases in some other context. So not specifically about the case, but [asking], “Do you tend to believe police officers more than you believe other people?” That’s a question that I would want to know the answer to, because anyone who says yes is going to be someone who it’s hard for me to convince that the police did something improperly. So that’s an area I might want to explore. You know, you might want to ask someone, “Can you think of a time where you felt really strongly about something, and then were convinced otherwise?”
The bottom line is that the jury selection process is incredibly imperfect. It’s better than many other systems out there, but it’s really hard to get into people’s heads, because people don’t like to admit their biases out loud.
It’s a real challenge in every case, for sure. But obviously, this one is more complicated because of all the publicity.
BU Today: What impact does the mistrial for the first trial have on the teams’ strategies?
The first time you try a case, you don’t necessarily know what the demeanor of the witnesses is going to be. [That] can be a huge part of the case, because it’s all about if the jury believes this witness. And so, if they come across as mean [for instance], the jury might not like them. If they come across as pretty straightforward and matter-of-fact, they may be more likely to believe them. And so when you’re doing a trial for the first time, you probably don’t really know what the demeanor is going to be of the witnesses the second time. You never know what’s going to happen. People change. There may be some other witnesses who are newer to the case. But generally speaking, you have a sense of what some of the main witnesses are going to be like on the stand. So I think that’s the biggest difference in terms of strategy.
BU Today: Anything else about this case that particularly interests you?
I’ve been talking a lot about this case over the last year. And it really strikes me every time I talk about this case how the criminal legal system is flawed in so many ways. The racial inequities in the criminal legal system just can’t be understated. The economic issues in the criminal legal system can’t be understated. And so I always have a little twinge of: why does everyone care so much about this case when there are hundreds of people who are sitting awaiting trial on a case in Massachusetts, on just as serious a charge, who don’t have a team of six lawyers and who don’t have multiple millions of dollars and GoFundMe pages and all of those resources? And so I always feel like I need to acknowledge that every time I talk about this case, because I think it really matters if we’re thinking about our system as a whole, and not just this one little case.
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