Karen Read's Lexus: Jurors get look at SUV she is accused of using against cop boyfriend

Editor's note: This page contains a summary of updates on the Karen Read retrial for Wednesday, May 14. For the latest updates on the Karen Read trial, visit USA TODAY's coverage for Thursday, May 15.
Shards of glass sticking from the rear bumper. The passenger side taillight smashed. Scratches, chipped paint, dents and what appeared to be human hair.
Photos shared on Wednesday at the trial of Karen Read, a former finance professor accused of hitting Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe, 46, with her SUV and leaving him for dead, show the damaged state her vehicle was in then. Prosecutors say Read, 45, hit her boyfriend of about two years with her black Lexus in a drunken rage. Read's lawyers say she was framed for the death which happened in January 2022 outside the Canton, Massachusetts home of a fellow cop.
Jurors on Wednesday – the 15th day of testimony – saw the closest picture yet of the condition Read's vehicle was in after O'Keefe's death. Maureen Hartnett, a forensic scientist with the Massachusetts State Police Crime Laboratory called to the stand by prosecutors, testified about her examination of Read's vehicle just days after O'Keefe's death on January 29.
Read's lawyers grilled the forensic scientist over whether she found blood or biological material under the SUV— Hartnett testified that she did not.
Hartnett's testimony comes after weeks of testimony in which jurors have heard about Read's drinking the night before O'Keefe died, a bombshell admission that Read made to a star witness and cryptic text messages between witnesses for the prosecution.
Testimony in the case out of Dedham, Massachusetts comes after Judge Beverly Cannone abruptly called for a break in court proceedings Tuesday. Cannone apologized to jurors, stating that "sometimes during trials things come up that are completely unavoidable." She did not confirm what led to the break.
The Norfolk County case is Read's second trial over O'Keefe's death. A trial in 2024 ended in a hung jury. The years-long whodunnit legal saga has garnered massive intrigue from true-crime fans across the country, spurring an array of podcasts, movies and television shows.
Here's what you missed on Day 15 of the trial.
Maureen Hartnett, a forensic scientist with the Massachusetts State Police Crime Laboratory, walked jurors through her examination of Read's SUV on Feb. 1, 2022.
Crime photos from that day show the rear passenger taillight of Read's car smashed, with much of the red cover missing. Shards littered the back bumper. White scratches, chipped paint and dents were visible above the right rear taillight. Hartnett said she found what appeared to be a piece of hair on the vehicle, too.
She sliced open a cardboard evidence box sealed with red tape, put on black gloves and lifted the damaged taillight from Read's car for the jury to see.
Later, during cross examination, Read's defense attorney questioned Hartnett about whether she tested for blood, or other biological materials underneath Read's car. She said she did not find blood, or anything of note, underneath the vehicle.
Read's defense attorney, Robert Alessi, further pressed about the bloody snow found beneath O'Keefe that police officers collected in red solo cups. Hartnett said she did not believe DNA analysis was conducted on swabs she collected from the red and brown stained cups.
Alessi then tried to cast doubt on the reliability of evidence collected from the back of Read's car that had remained in place for several days after the car was seized by police. Hartnett confirmed during questioning that taillight shards were found resting on the bumper and not 'embedded' into it. Alessi questioned whether the small pieces would have stayed in place during the roughly 45-minute drive from Canton to Dighton, Massachusetts, where police collected it as evidence.
Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Zacharay Clark said he arrived at the Canton Police Department around 9 a.m. the morning of January 29, 2022, to help investigate O'Keefe's death. He testified about his process for photographing Read's Lexus SUV.
He said a test of Read's front tires for friction ridge impressions, the imprints created by the skin pattern on hands and feet, found 'no useable impressions."
A second state trooper, Sgt. Evan Brent, said he witnessed Proctor and other Canton Police officers on Feb. 3, 2022, uncover items from the snow on the lawn where O'Keefe's body was found. Brent traveled with Proctor to O'Keefe's home on Meadows Road, where he photographed a Chevy Traverse in the driveway and the garage doors, neither of which he said had visible damage.
Read's defense attorney emphasized that Brent's visit to O'Keefe's home occurred five days after O'Keefe's body was found and asked Brent to confirm that he 'didn't know who had access to that Traverse during those five days.' Brent responded, "Correct."
Prosecutors called O'Keefe's niece to the stand. O'Keefe became the guardian of his niece and nephew after his sister and brother-in-law died. No audio or video recording of her testimony is allowed because she is under 18.
Prosecutors played two clips of interviews with Read conducted in 2024. In the first, from her sit-down with NBC's Dateline, Read said that she and O'Keefe would not have broken up if he had not died.
In the second, from an ID docuseries, Read said that O'Keefe likely did not know about her text exchange with Brian Higgins, an agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives - who was at a restaurant where the couple went drinking the night before O'Keefe died and the home where O'Keefe was found in the snow. If O'Keefe had known about the texts, she said the couple likely would have broken up.
CourtTV has been covering the case against Read and the criminal investigation since early 2022, when O'Keefe's body was found outside a Canton, Massachusetts home.
You can watch CourtTV's live feed of the Read trial proceedings from Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Massachusetts. Proceedings begin at 9 a.m. ET.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What to know about SUV Karen Read allegedly used to hit boyfriend

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