Kerry Roberts, a close friend of John O’Keefe’s who was with Karen Read and Jennifer McCabe the morning they found him dead in a snowstorm, admitted during cross-examination Wednesday that she did not hear the defendant ask McCabe to make a Google search about hypothermia after they found the body.
“Hos long to die in cold” is the infamous Google search, typo included, at the heart of the 45-year-old Read’s claim that she is being framed by Massachusetts police for the death of her Boston cop boyfriend three years ago.
Roberts, when asked in 2022 in front of a grand jury that would indict Read on a second-degree murder charge, testified that she heard Read ask McCabe to “Google hypothermia” while they were praying near a police car as paramedics lifted O’Keefe out of the snow.
“You painted a very, very detailed picture in front of the grand jury, didn’t you,” defense attorney Alan Jackson asked, pointing to a transcript of Roberts’ testimony behind closed doors in April 2022.
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Witness Kerry Roberts emotionally describes the injuries to John O’Keefe she saw in the hospital during the Karen Read trial in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., on Wednesday, April 23, 2025. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)
“Yeah,” she said.
“Except it’s not true, is it?” Jackson followed up.
“I did not hear her ask that,” Roberts said.
Roberts testified that she did not intentionally lie but rather misunderstood the question when she appeared before the grand jury.
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Karen Read appears in court for her trial at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., on Wednesday, April 23, 2025. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)
“That’s bad,” said Paul Mauro, a former NYPD inspector who has been following the case.
Experts say the admission could damage her credibility in front of the jury.
“She lied,” said Grace Edwards, a Massachusetts trial attorney who works in nearby Essex County. “She committed perjury in her grand jury testimony. Nothing she says is credible.”
She had a lot to say over two days.
Roberts grew up with O’Keefe but testified that they grew closer as adults, once he adopted the orphaned children of his sister and her husband. O’Keefe’s nephew is a close friend of her son, she testified, and the two played sports and went to school together.
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Defense attorney Alan Jackson questions witness Kerry Roberts about her grand jury testimony during the Karen Read trial in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., on Wednesday, April 23, 2025. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)
She also became close with another witness, McCabe, after O’Keefe’s death. The two women were with Read when they found him on the morning of Jan. 29, 2022, outside the home of McCabe’s in-laws, Brian and Nicole Albert. The Alberts had invited a group of people over, including Read and O’Keefe, for an after-party on the night he died.
Read’s defense has argued that she never struck O’Keefe and that something else killed him, evidence of which they allege has been concealed due to the Alberts’ ties to law enforcement.
Like O’Keefe, Albert was a Boston police officer. His brother was a member of the Canton Police Department, which was first to respond to the scene. He has another brother in politics, and a family friend, Michael Proctor, was the lead investigator.
Proctor got fired last month as a result of an internal investigation stemming from text messages he sent about the case that were revealed during Read’s first trial last year. Canton police were cleared of allegations of a conspiracy in an independent audit released three weeks ago.
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John O’Keefe (Boston Police Department)
Roberts had not faced cross-examination in Read’s first trial, which ended in a deadlocked jury.
This time, Jackson questioned Roberts about whether she had concocted a version of events with McCabe beforehand, asking about a meeting she had with McCabe and her sister where they were putting together a “timeline” on the case. During that meeting, Roberts said, police arrived to speak with McCabe and wound up separating them and speaking to them both.
Jackson asked if she was aware that McCabe had texted a group chat about listening in on Roberts’ interview with state police. Roberts said she was not.
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Prosecutor Hank Brennan arrives for the trial of Karen Read at Norfolk Superior Court, April 22, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
“It looks like she’s been coached by Jennifer McCabe,” Edwards told Fox News Digital.
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Roberts also testified that she had spoken with McCabe the morning before her latest testimony, where she wished her “good luck.” She also sat alongside another childhood friend for a televised interview between her first day of testimony Tuesday and returning to the stand Wednesday.
Edwards told Fox News Digital that the “timeline” Roberts and McCabe put together in 2022 stood out to her as problematic.
“Witnesses are not supposed to talk to each other about the case,” she said.
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Karen Read’s father, William, and mother, Janet, listen to testimony in their daughter’s murder trial at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., on Wednesday, April 23, 2025. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)
During cross-examination, Roberts confirmed she was with McCabe and working on a timeline of events when investigators arrived at McCabe’s house to interview the latter. Roberts said they were putting it together at the request of O’Keefe’s mother, Margaret “Peggy” O’Keefe.
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Judge Beverly Cannone interrupted a line of questioning about whether Roberts was aware that McCabe had allegedly texted others about eavesdropping on her own interview, which was supposed to be happening in a different room, after special prosecutor Hank Brennan raised objections.
Roberts revealed she never actually heard Read ask McCabe to perform the Google search, despite providing testimony to a grand jury claiming she had.
“The timeline you wrote with Jennifer McCabe’s help influenced your testimony to testify in front of the grand jurors to a statement that you never heard, correct?” Jackson asked.
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“Yes,” Roberts replied.
The timing of the Google search, “Hos (sic) long to die in cold,” has been a key dispute between prosecutors, who say it came after O’Keefe’s body was discovered, and the defense, which argues that it was made hours beforehand, before the witnesses should have known he was missing or dead under the commonwealth’s timeline.
Digital forensics experts are expected to delve into phone data about the search for both sides.
The trial is expected to last six to eight weeks after taking more than two weeks to seat a jury.
Read could face a maximum of life in prison if convicted of the top charge, second-degree murder.
