You mean the niece? Doubtful. I asked like a kazillion times about it in here and was basically ignored, I figured because her testimony did not fit the KR innocent theme. And figured at a point no one was watching the actual trial. I get that, sometimes I can't either but still I go back or see what I can. I finally went and found it for myself. Whether I linked it or not, I couldn't tell you. So I wouldn't spend a lot of time trying to find it, guarantee you no one else ever linked it.
Yeah and that behavior lends to an intentional act imo. She was already done.
Her using reverse for that distance and at that speed and immediately leaving and continuing to behave like a raving lunatic is what proves to me that it was intentional.
It is so clear through so many things that she is a jealous controlling shrew/stalker. Then if one has seen all of the texts with Higgins she is trying to get him to meet which he resists lucky for him imo and she acts as if she's not like that. REALLY interesting that the relationship with the boy was better than with the niece. Sounds like KR. In no sense of the word, was she even these kids' stepmom and even if you are one, you do not take on the role of mother nor take a stance over the parent of them or caretaker so her stepping in for the nephew was out of line. Against John.BTW i have found a link showing what the niece said. I will find and post but my adblocker would not let me read it. If anyone can get in, please copy pasta. Did they interview the niece and nephew in the first trial? I just got time to read that the niece said they were always arguing, then I got chucked out.
Hey bingo! This morning it let me in so I copied the whole article.
Link below
John O'Keefe's niece testifies about "tension," arguments between him and Karen Read before his death
John O'Keefe's niece was the first witness to take the stand at Karen Read's trial Wednesday morning.www.cbsnews.com
"John O'Keefe's niece was the first witness to take the stand at Karen Read's trial Wednesday morning.
The niece, who WBZ-TV will not identify by name, is now a high school junior. She was around 14 years old when John O'Keefe died. She has a younger brother who testified during the first trial but did not testify during the retrial.
O'Keefe's niece is his sister Kristen's daughter. Kristen died of a brain tumor in 2013, and her husband died shortly after of a heart attack. John O'Keefe then became the legal guardian for his niece and nephew, and moved in with them in Canton, Massachusetts.
No cameras, laptops, or phones were allowed in the courtroom during her testimony. WBZ's Kristina Rex was in the courtroom and took these handwritten notes.
Direct Examination: Questioned by ADA Laura McLaughlin
Niece testifies on her relationship with Karen Read
Niece testifies about John O'Keefe and Karen Read's relationship
- "It was…kind of dependent on the day"
- "Some days we were more on good standards and other days we weren't on good standards at all and she would like favor my brother."
- "She would not ignore me but it felt like a coldness."
- Brother and Read: "they were pretty close."
- Lighthearted in the beginning
- It changed by end of 2021/beginning of 2022
- "They were fighting a lot."
- "When I saw [the fights] it was normally at my house" or on the phone
- When they would fight → KR "was very like angry, upset" and louder than O'Keefe
Niece testifies about Aruba vacation that took place over New Year's 2021-2022
- Read & O'Keefe had an argument in niece and nephew's hotel room
- O'Keefe checked on them and told nephew to get off iPad; Read defended nephew then "started yelling about like how he had kissed someone else… and she had witnessed it. It was really loud…she was very upset."
Niece testifies that the relationship changed after the Aruba trip
- January 2022, O'Keefe and Read in the kitchen fighting while niece was in the room next door
- "Their relationship was good but it had like run its course," she says O'Keefe said to Read
- "I don't remember exactly what she said but she was upset by it"
- "He asked her to leave the house. She did not want to leave the house."
- O'Keefe saw niece in the other room and got angry that she witnessed the fight, asked Read "more aggressively" to leave then went upstairs to bedroom
- Read followed him upstairs, banged on the door
- In later days/weeks, "I could tell that there was tension," niece says
- "They were cold towards each other"
- A couple of times a week – tension & arguing
- "I heard the defendant on the phone and she was saying that me and my brother were really worried" – on one occasion when she was trying to get JOK to come home when he had left the house for a drive, niece says she wasn't actually worried.
Niece testified about the night of O'Keefe's death
- She had a rule that she had to charge her phone in O'Keefe's room at bedtime
- After her friend left before midnight she was home alone and put her phone in O'Keefe's room and went to bed
- Read came into her room at 4:30 AM shaking her awake… "told me that my uncle never came home…She was very frantic"
- Read asked niece to use her phone to call O'Keefe – no answer
- Read asked for phone numbers she didn't have including Jen McCabe
- What could have happened
- "Could I have done something?"
- "Could he have been hit by a plow?"
- Here, her memory had to be refreshed with prior testimony from trial 1
- "Maybe I like… hit him"
- Niece says she had never seen Read like this
- Jen checked on niece and was "level headed"
- Karen did not interact with niece
- At this point, niece was very nervous she says
- KR came back later that morning after the hospital with her Dad and brother
- "She said to me and my grandfather that she felt like she was living in a nightmare."
Cross Examination: Questioned by David Yannetti
Niece testifies more about the nature of her relationship with Karen Read
- Yannetti asks, "When Karen Read spent all this time with you, you didn't call her the defendant right?" No, the niece says. "You called her Karen?" Yes
- Nails done once a month
- Hair done at salon
- Read attended basketball games? "Possibly but so did my uncle." Softball? Soccer? Yes.
- Helped straighten niece's hair? Maybe once a week
- Planned birthdays? 2020 scavenger hunt, yes
- You would stay with Karen at her house in Mansfield? Yes.
Yannetti questions niece on Aruba incident
- Read took kids for an Italian dinner and ice cream – niece doesn't remember
- "O'Keefe was in the room with you the whole night with KR and nephew?" Yannetti asks. She doesn't remember… she just remembers after their fight that he fell asleep in niece's bed for a few hours
- "Is it your testimony that JJ rang in the new year [asleep]?" Yannetti asks. Niece doesn't remember… "I had just gotten dumped by my 8th grade boyfriend, so it was a bit of a crisis." Chuckles heard throughout the courtroom.
Niece testifies about the relationship after Aruba
- "There was never any physical contact between the two of them, correct?" Yannetti asks. "Correct."
- Yannetti asks if Read continued to spend a lot of time at the house with the kids. "It was the same amount of time but it wasn't the same," niece says
Following the niece's testimony, Massachusetts State Trooper Zachary Clark took the stand."
More from CBS News
Karen Read trial jury shown graphic photos of John O'Keefe's injuries
Karen Read trial testimony focuses on forensic evidence after John O'Keefe's niece testifies
Kristina Rex
Kristina Rex is a reporter for WBZ-TV News.
© 2025 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
I too am convinced it was absolutely intentional in a drunken rage. I do think that charge is harder to prove though.
Just for the record, I was watching the trial all along, I was just discouraged from posting because (I could tell that) nobody else was.
She was like it all day long too in the texts. And she was sober then, presumably.
Yeah, the man who John went out with that night said Read didn't want other women around John.
John was family oriented and his life was centered around those kids and that narcissistic bitch never wanted kids and so I think she's (also) a phoney who only used the kids as a way to be in John's life.
I know. I'm watching as well, and no one was even posting to the thread about the trial or even a recap so I tried to give one and that's about it. I'd think one would want threads kind of up to date, not a knock, I know all are busy but not a soul even making a remark on it. The last trial there were more remarks but still seemed no one was actually watching any of it.
Correction: Read said she'd have to remember the bad times.
Good point and very true.
I missed maybe 2 days of trial, have seen most of the rest.
Oh we are SO on the same page in this case. You got it. Yet she also resented the kids imo and resented being stuck with them if he was out and was NOT okay with that. I'd say she was also trying to come between them, interfering when it came to the boy in an example given above.
What happened on Fairview could have happend in Aruba except that what happened in Aruba took place in a hotel lobby.
Exactly. The CW has created 100% of all my reasonable doubt all by themselves with what they did and what they didn't do that would be expected of even an entry level hire.
I hope you're wrong. JO needs justice and i hope this jury will see the obvious evidence linking her to his death. It just is so obvious to me. Her manic behaviour even when she is sober is making me wonder if she is an alcoholic. I mean who knocks back 8 vodkas and drives these days?
www.cbsnews.com
