America’s latest referendum on police power is coming from an unlikely place: Canton, Massachusetts, a mostly white upper middle class and pro-police suburb located just fifteen miles outside of Boston. Jury deliberations began this week in the second murder trial of Karen Read, who is accused of killing her cop boyfriend. For the past three years, the case has divided Canton, with a significant number of residents convinced that Read is being framed by the police and the wealthy local families with ties to them. While the case has all the elements of a true crime saga, its significance lies in that it is shedding a light on the deepening crisis of police legitimacy among white Americans. In addition, it is also revealing–yet again–the pernicious effects of whiteness, as seen by the inability or unwillingness of Karen Read supporters to connect her fight against a corrupt police and legal system to the current anti-ICE/police uprising.
In the early morning hours of January 29, 2022, the dead body of John O’Keefe, a 46-year-old Boston police officer was found on the snow-covered lawn of Brian Albert, a Boston police sergeant. O’Keefe’s girlfriend, Karen Read, a 42 year old financial analyst and adjunct professor has been charged with his murder. She claims that she is innocent and being framed by his cop buddies. The case has amassed a sizable online following that has spilled over into real-life, including rallies outside of the courthouse calling to “free” her. The public displays of support for Read and various conspiracies about O’Keefe’s death swirling on online platforms have also drawn in Canton residents who are openly sharing, perhaps for the first time, their disdain for the local police.
So, why are we witnessing so much outpouring of support for a middle-class white woman when thousands of less well-off people face similar, if not worse, fates? Part of the public draw to the Read case is because the allegations of police ineptitude and corruption are coming from the unlikeliest of all defendants: a privileged middle-class white woman. It begs the question that remains implicit among her supporters in the various social media posts: if Karen Read can be a victim of a police cover-up, imagine how many less privileged Americans are being framed by our “justice” system? To better understand the public support for Read and to unpack its social and political significance, I decided to take a deep dive into what has become a first-rate true crime spectacle.
The Night in Question
Did Karen Read kill her cop boyfriend or was she framed by the cops? This is the question at the heart of her murder trial, now in its second run after the first ended in a hung jury last year. John O’Keefe’s death, which medical examiners attributed to hypothermia and a blunt force trauma to the head is the only undisputed fact. The rest of the criminal case is filled with conflicting evidence and discrepancies in both eyewitness and expert testimony, which makes for fantastic courtroom drama. Here is a brief sketch of what happened, pieced together by reading various mainstream media reporting, watching Court TV coverage, the HBO docuseries and reading public interviews given by Read between 2022 and 2025.
The night of John O’Keefe’s death, he and his girlfriend Karen Read were out drinking with his fellow cop friend Brian Albert and his wife Nicole at the Waterfall Bar and Grille in downtown Canton. Also at the bar were Albert’s daughter, Caitlin Albert; Nicole’s sister, Jennifer McCabe and her husband, Matthew; Brian’s brother, Chris Albert, and Chris’s wife, Julie Albert; and Brian Albert’s friend, federal agent Brian Higgins. The Alberts invited everyone over to their house for more drinking and partying in celebration of their son’s 23rd birthday. Details revealed later showed that O’Keefe and Read had been arguing about their relationship, mostly over texts and Facebook messages. Read claimed that she drove to the Alberts’ house. And this is when conflicting accounts of what transpired next begin.
Read claims that upon arrival at 34 Fairview Road, O’Keefe got out of her car and went inside the Alberts’ home to check out the vibe. He took her cocktail glass with him, continuing the drinking binge he started earlier that evening. Read said she saw him go inside the house. Once it looked like he wasn’t coming out, however, she left him a few angry texts and voicemails and drove home drunk and pissed off. No other witnesses, including the Alberts and friends who were inside the house claim to have seen O’Keefe near or inside the house until the next morning when he was found dead outside the Alberts’ snow-covered front lawn. His death was not captured on camera, and no initial pictures were taken of his body.
Two days after O’Keefe’s death, Read was arrested on charges of manslaughter, which were upgraded four months later with charges of second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, and leaving the scene of a collision resulting in death. Canton police claim she deliberately ran him over and killed him with her Lexus SUV after an argument. She maintains that she is the victim of an elaborate cover up by the Canton and Massachusetts State Police.
The events leading up to O’Keefe’s death remain heavily disputed by both sides. But even those who may have initially believed that Read may have drunkenly run over her boyfriend were alarmed by the criminal charges, which they argue are a flagrant example of prosecutorial overreach. “They should have left it at manslaughter charges,” some quipped online. And, assuming that she actually ran over O’Keefe in a drunken accident, these exaggerated charges also explain Read’s outlandish “Hail Mary” defense. While she could have pled to vehicular manslaughter and cashed in her white privilege to receive probation or at the most serve a few years in prison before returning to her affluent life seemingly secured by generational wealth, the severity of these charges makes it so she has no choice but to fight with every weapon at her disposal. In other words, the authorities brought this on themselves.
These charges and the conflicting details of the murder case, including the gross mishandling of evidence, and weird behavior by eyewitnesses who have close ties to local law enforcement cast doubt on the mutually dependent relationship of police and prosecutors during the first trial, which are now carrying on to the second trial.
Recapping the first trial
Karen Read’s first murder trial unfolded over eight weeks in the summer of 2024. Viewers tuned in to watch the live coverage on Court TV and followed various true crime sleuths for a blow-by-blow account on their social media accounts and Reddit subgroups dedicated to the case. The best recap of the first trial can be found on Canton Confidential, a local Boston nightly news coverage of the trial and the podcast 13th juror conspiracy in Canton. The latter is run by Brandi Churchwell, a true crime podcaster and former domestic violence victim whose twitter handle includes the motto “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Churchwell’s podcast remains the most thorough public investigation into the case, and she has recently received a bigger social media following, after revealing her own battles with cancer and domestic violence.
During the first trial, the Commonwealth prosecutor called 68 witnesses to testify to John O’Keefe’s stellar 16-year record as a police officer and Read’s impulsive behavior and her emotionally unstable personality. The case against her seemed airtight. She was drunk out of her mind and she and O’Keefe were having relationship problems. The prosecutor shared texts and Facebook messages between Karen Read and John O’Keefe which showed they were fighting in the lead up to that fateful night. The prosecutor played the audio of eight of her voicemails to O’Keefe that night, all between the hours of 12:33am and 6:03 am cursing him out and accusing him of cheating. In her voicemails, Read came across as needy, intense, insecure and jealous. But did these messages make her homicidal?
Special prosecutor Hank Brennan certainly believed so. He used her text messages and profanity-laden voicemails to paint Read as a jealous, raging lunatic girlfriend with a strong motive to kill John. Many of her online supporters took to social media to defend her on the heels of these messages becoming public. “Anyone with a brain who has also been in a relationship knows that messages like that are sent when you’re being ignored/want a response,” one Redditor argued. In response, her defense team worked hard to counter these allegations and shift the focus on to the cops themselves, raising doubts about the integrity of the criminal investigation and the police officers involved. It was time for the cops to be on the hot seat!
During the first murder trial, Read’s defense attorneys raised many doubts about how the Canton Police Department handled the investigation, even going as far as to suggest that the evidence linking her to John O’Keefe’s murder was fabricated. They point to the various examples of police incompetence during the criminal investigation, ranging from the collection of John’s coagulated blood in disposable red Solo cups (yes, you read that right!), to interviewing eyewitnesses together in groups, to the use of a leaf blower as a means of dispersing the snow to look for evidence on the ground. The whole criminal investigation feels like it was led by Chief Wiggum, a fictional cop from the animated television series The Simpsons. And just like their fictional counterparts, real life police departments are often led by incompetent officers.
Take, for example, Sergeant Michael Lank of the Canton Police Department. He was one of the first police officers to arrive on the scene at 34 Fairview Road. He immediately went inside the Alberts’ house to speak with McCabe, her husband and the Alberts, but did not search the house. During the first criminal trial, he stated that he did not have probable cause to do so. When questioned by the defense attorney, he revealed his proximity to the Albert family, including intervening in a fight in 2002 to protect one of the Alberts. In online forums and social media posts, Read supporters claim that Lank was biased. But their vitriol is mostly aimed at the lead investigator in the case, Michael Proctor, a Massachusetts state police trooper. A former prosecutor told media outlets that Proctor was the most disastrous key witness in a court case since Mark Fuhrman in the OJ Simpson trial.
(Meme on Reddit)
Baddie Proctor: the modern-day Mark Fuhrman
Fuhrman was the detective that found the bloody glove in Simpson’s estate, a key piece of evidence in the OJ murder trial back in 1995. He became one of the most controversial witnesses in the trial when the defense team led by Johnnie Cochran released tapes of Fuhrman bragging about beating up alleged gang members and using the “n” word, which he had previously denied ever saying — thus contradicting his testimony on the stand and committing perjury. A racist detective, the incompetence of the prosecution, the long shadow cast by the Rodney King riots on the deepening public mistrust of the LAPD helped deliver a not-guilty verdict for OJ Simpson. Could a similar constellation of forces help Karen Read today? My friend Jarrod Shanahan, who grew up near Canton, called the case “the OJ trial for Karens!”
Like Fuhrman, the lead detective in the Read case is accused by the defense of planting evidence and being a corrupt misogynist cop. Like the bloody glove in the OJ Simpson trial, the broken pieces of taillight belonging to Read’s car remain the strongest pieces of evidence in the trial. This is also the main evidence that the defense has relied on to construct its theory of police coverup and conspiracy. Trooper Proctor claims to have collected 46 pieces of a broken taillight belonging to Read’s SUV, tying her to the intentional and deadly hit-and-run. The defense counters that Proctor gathered the broken taillight pieces nearly 2 weeks after O’Keefe’s death, which gave Proctor plenty of time to plant the evidence, since he had unrestricted access to Read’s car and was friendly with the Alberts. On online forums, Read supporters analyze pictures of the broken taillight pieces and point to the fact that the cameras in the lot where the car was being held cut off where Proctor was hovering around her taillights.
(Red Solo cup earrings being sold in Etsy)
(Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor opens an evidence box to show the jury the broken taillight while testifying, Monday, June 10, 2024 during the first Karen Read trial. Kayla Bartkowski/The Boston Globe via AP, Pool)
On the stand, the broken taillight took a backseat to Proctor’s misogyny. When grilled by the defense, he was forced to admit that he sent inappropriate texts about Read from his personal phone, many of them sexual in nature, to his friends, family and fellow investigators. For example, when a friend asked him about the investigation, he replied with: “From all accounts, he didn’t do anything wrong. She’s a whack-job,” and then proceeded to call her “a cunt.” In other text messages, Proctor went on to say: “Yes, she’s a babe. Weird Fall River accent, though. No ass.” The text messages were read out loud in the courtroom, and Proctor had no choice but to admit to having sent them. The defense was able to show that Proctor was a brash misogynistic cop who objectified Read. And if that wasn’t enough, he too had connections to the Alberts. On the stand Proctor also admitted to being very close with his sister, Courtney, who is friends with Julie Albert, who is married to Brian Albert and a key witness in the case. Proctor’s sister texted him that she spoke to Julie Albert and “When this is all over, she wants to get you a thank you gift.”
Read supporters were furious and pointed to Proctor as the symbol of all that was wrong with Massachusetts police. One Reddit user said that Proctor’s obscene comments made Fuhrman look “like a boy scout.” Someone else chimed in with “another banner day for MA State police.” And a female Reddit user stated: “This man needs to be fired. The lack of trust in law enforcement is bad enough. With his phone records it’s been proven why. As a woman, I don’t want this guy anywhere near me.”
Proctor’s cross examination, which forced him to acknowledge and apologize for sending offensive texts about Read to his family, friends and fellow state troopers during the investigation, was a turning point in the trial. As a direct result, Proctor was dismissed from his job without pay and is facing disciplinary action over these allegations. Read supporters rightfully hailed this as an important victory. After all, when does a cop ever get disciplined?
Loose Threads
Putting Proctor’s open misogyny and careless collection of evidence aside for a moment, other unanswered questions remain. For instance, what to make of the distinct markings on John O’Keefe’s arms? During the first trial, the defense made a big deal out of the fact that no injuries were found on John’s lower body, which is weird given that he was allegedly hit by a moving vehicle. The defense team also brought in experts to testify that the marks found on John’s body were dog bites. The prosecution denies these claims, but online, Read supporters are convinced that John was attacked by the Alberts’ dog and then left to die on the lawn. The Alberts’ choice to rehome their beloved dog of seven years just a couple of months after John’s death only fuels this theory.
But perhaps the weirdest details surrounding John’s murder unfolded during the testimony of the witnesses present that fateful evening. During the first trial, everyone remained adamant that they had not heard or seen John O’Keefe enter. They encountered his dead body the next morning in the snow only after Read showed up screaming. Brian Albert claims he was asleep when police cars showed up outside his house to respond to the 911 call. Jen McCabe allegedly conducted a Google search “hos long to die in the cold” at 2:27am. Around the same time, Brian Albert was receiving phone calls from his pal ATF detective Brian Higgins, also a dear friend of O’Keefe. Albert claims that these were butt dials, but one phone call lasted 22 seconds.
On the stand, Brian Higgins, a burly man, came undone. He admitted to flirting via text with Read (over 50 text messages) and subsequently destroying his phone’s SIM card by throwing the phone away near a military base. This set off a lot of suspicion among Read supporters about his motive to fight O’Keefe and even perhaps to kill him. Echoing the defense’s arguments, some online sleuths argue that perhaps O’Keefe got into a drunken fight inside the Albert home and stumbled outside, fell on the snow, passed out drunk and died.
These loose threads had the effect the defense intended: despite all the evidence that the prosecutor presented, the jury was not convinced that Read was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The jurors were unanimous in deciding Read was not guilty of second-degree murder and leaving the scene, but they were split on the manslaughter charge. Therefore, they were unable to come to a unanimous decision on Karen’s culpability, leading the judge to declare a mistrial.
One of the alternate jurors, Victoria George, a former lawyer, was transformed by the trial. Early on, she was a supporter of the police, identified as a rule-follower, and had even snitched to the judge about a new billboard that #FreeKarenRead supporters had sponsored along the highway, questioning its legality given how close it was to the courthouse. But by the end of the trial, she was an unabashed Read supporter. “It is the Read case itself — and the fact that it is still being brought — that has left many in Massachusetts wary, distrustful, and scared of our system,” she recently told Boston local news.
“Cop Killer or Cover Up?”: Watch Live on Court TV
From the onset, the Karen Read case was transformed into a public spectacle and true-crime media sensation. While local newspapers broke the news story in 2022, it was the involvement of a no-holds-barred reactionary blogger from Worcester, Massachusetts and true crime social media sleuths that transformed the case into a true crime spectacle. The case has attracted attention from Redditors, TikTokers, YouTubers and all kinds of online sleuths. It has led to numerous podcasts, episodes on Dateline and NBC, a newly released docuseries on HBO and countless public interviews by Read, including an extensive two-part interview in Vanity Fair last year.
Aidan Kearny–or “Turtleboy” as he calls himself– is a far-right blogger and “truth” teller. Other residents beg to differ, and say he is “a festering tumor on the City of Worcester,” known for his bullying antics. He was previously a full-time history teacher at a local high school who also blogged in his free time, usually long rants against liberal views on gender, education and sports, especially if they were held by local politicians. He claims he quit his teaching job because of “woke” culture, but Worcester residents say otherwise. Some say he was fired due to misconduct allegations involving a student, while others say he was caught drunk on camera at a sports event, all conduct unbecoming of an educator. Regardless, Kearny’s transformation from a cheerleader for anyone waving a badge into public enemy number one for much of Massachusetts law enforcement is one of the many surprising twists this case has taken. He even faced criminal charges in October 2023 for intimidating witnesses. Two months later, he was indicted on 16 new charges, also all related to witness intimidation. He did 60 days in jail after refusing a plea deal because, as he argued “sometimes, principles matter more.”
The year before he took up the Read case, Kearny spent a lot of time covering local pro Blue Lives Matter rallies, and attacking any individual or group who opposed them, earning him the nickname “the Matt Drudge of Massachusetts politics.” But in April 2023, he published a blog alleging a police cover-up in the Read case. A month later, during the pre-trial hearing, Read’s defense attorneys laid out a similar argument about a coverup by law enforcement. Outside the courthouse, Read spoke with the press, insisting on a police coverup. “We know who did it. We know. And we know who spearheaded this coverup. You all know,” she told reporters. This moment ushered in regular public media appearances where Read told her side of the story to eager journalists and pushed the narrative that she is being framed by law enforcement.
With Turtleboy’s help, online support for Read took off. It seemed that overnight countless sub threads were created on Reddit devoted to unpacking the details of the case. At the same time, #FreeKarenRead support groups popped up on Facebook where people, mostly white women, defended her against internet trolls. Soon, the online support spilled into real life. A small number of loyal supporters tailgated at her first murder trial. Outside of the courthouse they faced off with Blue Lives Matter crowds–the very people Turtleboy once marched with–who were seeking justice for John O’Keefe. The protests and the animosity between the two groups pushed Judge Beverly Cannone to place a buffer zone around the courthouse for the second trial, which she ended up walking back on just a few weeks ago. But the main reason that so many ordinary people are plugged into the details of the case is because the trial is airing on Court TV, the cable and streaming channel which focuses on legal news and trials. Anyone can tune in to Court TV’s live feed of the trial proceedings and catch up with social media accounts which give a blow-by-blow account of what happened and offer their own hot takes of what it all means.
For the past 25 years, Court TV has covered high-profile cases, beginning with the 1991 trial of Pamela Smart, a 22-year-old teacher who convinced her 15-year-old lover and student to kill her husband. The details of the case garnered a lot of media attention and led to renewed debate about broadcasting trials. A 1946 law bans broadcasting criminal trials in federal cases but not for state cases. The Supreme Court has ruled that states may permit cameras in their courtrooms only if the defendant’s rights to due process and a fair trial are protected. Ultimately, a mix of factors, including the type of case, the court’s rules and the judge’s discretion, dictate whether the case will be live-streamed or not.
Two years after the Smart trial, an even more well-known case was live streamed, one that spoke to the racial divisions of the US in the wake of the Rodney King riots. I remember the OJ case very vividly because my family had just immigrated to the US, and it was my entry point into understanding race and whiteness. My white teachers had very strong opinions of OJ. I will never forget my 5th grade science teacher, a middle-aged white woman, wheeling out the television set so that we could watch his murder trial together as a class. “What a bizarre country,” I remember thinking to myself.
The OJ trial became “the media event of the century” with an estimated 150 million people tuning in to watch the Simpson verdict. Due to the grisly details of the case, and the fact that the victim was a white woman, many mainstream media outlets were reluctant to cover the trial. But Court TV and CNN did not hesitate. They had already witnessed media coverage of courtroom dramas like the case of the Menendez brothers, which increased their ratings. For many journalists, like Dan Abrams, coverage of the OJ Simpson trial catapulted their careers. Abrams left a position at a law firm to be a courtroom reporter for Court TV and cover the trial. His coverage doubled the station’s ratings, turning a tragedy into a public spectacle, and most importantly into a microcosm of racial tensions in America at the time.
When asked about Court TV’s success, its founder, lawyer and journalist Steven Brill responded: “It’s natural drama, there’s a beginning, middle and end, and people want to know what happens.” And like all good courtroom drama, the Karen Read murder trial is filled with plenty of twists and turns to entice viewers and keep them begging for more.
True Crime
While human interest in true crime goes back to the 16th century, when the invention of the printing press fueled writing and dissemination of stories about murders and other heinous forms of interpersonal violence, the genre has recently experienced a cultural renaissance due to the popularity of crime dramas and digital media. In the early aughts, crime dramas like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Dexter, Sherlock Holmes, Criminal Minds, and True Detectives became very popular among viewers.
These shows and many others depicted a complex and often dysfunctional criminal justice system that moved beyond “the good cop vs the bad guy” narrative and challenged conventional liberal understandings of morality and justice. True Detective, for instance, depicts flawed police officers and detectives who are grappling with their own shortcomings and that of the system to which they are bound. In Dexter, one of my favorite crime shows, the protagonist is a forensic technician specializing in bloodstain pattern analysis for the fictional Miami Metro Police. Outside the lab, he is a serial killer who hunts down murderers that the criminal legal system has been unable to prosecute due to its own inadequacies or legal technicalities. Then there is CSI, a procedural drama about a team of forensic investigators who solve crimes using improbably advanced scientific techniques and technology.
These shows and others like them offer a skewed public perception of how criminal investigations unfold–-namely the speed, effectiveness and accuracy of forensic science investigations to solve crime. They also obscure the class bias of crime investigation, as the murders of poor, non-white people are depicted as complex dragnets equipped with cutting edge technology and endless police manpower. Scholars call this exaggerated portrayal of forensic science, “the CSI effect.” Every semester I have students who want to pursue careers in criminal justice because they think they will be able to solve crimes the way they do it on CSI. But as the real-life murder trial of Karen Read demonstrates, crime scenes are routinely mishandled, and errors often occur during collection, processing, or interpretation of evidence.
While crime dramas certainly opened the door for wider public interest in real life shocking stories of crime and murder, ultimately it was the rise of streaming and digital media that cemented true crime as a popular form of entertainment. On-demand streaming services democratized the genre and brought into focus local stories, like that of Karen Read (now streaming on HBO). But it’s not just streaming companies that are cashing in on our collective obsession with true crime. Podcasts have become the perfect medium for true crime. Unlike on-demand streaming which requires our visual attention, podcasts can be listened to while driving, walking, or doing other mundane life activities. Their narrative structure is more like a paperback novel and listeners are drawn in by the mystery, the storytelling and the opportunity to solve a case in the time that it takes you to clean your apartment.
The Serial podcast, a spinoff of the public radio show “This American Life”, is often credited with kicking off our contemporary true crime obsession. The first season of Serial which aired on October 3, 2014, began with an investigation into the case of Adnan Syed, who had been serving a life sentence for the 1999 murder of his high school classmate and former girlfriend, Hae Min Lee. The series soon became the world’s most popular podcast and was downloaded 80 million times. In 2022, due to the public attention and awareness that the podcast series brought to the case, his defense attorney was able to secure a new trial which ultimately helped to overturn Syed’s conviction.
Today, a third of American podcast listeners admit they listen to true crime and the majority do so mostly for entertainment. Public interest in true crime created an army of amateur “citizen sleuths,” satirized by the Misty and Walter characters on Showtime’s Yellowjackets, who spend their time scouring the internet and finding clues that can contribute to solving cases or raising awareness about them. They connect online on platforms like Websleuths (which predates the explosion of true crime media) as well as Reddit, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. They are also increasingly part of a larger IRL community that attends yearly in-person gatherings such as crime cons and crime cruises that cover topics such as “what to do if your loved ones go missing,” to engaging in conversations with crime reporters, journalists and even attending live podcast tapings. In some instances, like the Read case, they also spill into real life rallies and court support. But what’s most fascinating to me about the popularity of the true crime genre is the viewership, 80% of which are women.
(Poster for HBO’s series on Karen Read murder case)
Why do so many women watch true crime?
I first came to know about Karen Read’s case from an undergraduate student in my “Women and Criminal Justice” class. We were discussing the popularity of the true crime genre, especially among female viewers. “Why are so many women interested in a genre that so readily exploits female victimization?” I asked my students, most of whom are young women majoring in criminal justice. Some responded that for them true crime was purely about the entertainment value. They were drawn in by the element of mystery, the psychological puzzles and the deep dive into the darker side of human nature. They took pleasure in playing “armchair detective,” trying to solve the case by sifting through the various clues. Others argued that it helped them think about what they would do if they were put in similar situations. It validated their fears and made them feel that they were not foolish for exercising caution in the world. They could process their fears and traumas in the safe setting of their dormrooms. And a handful of students said that it helped them understand how unjust our legal system is.
Different from some television shows that are steeped in copaganda, and which portray the police as heroes, true crime podcasts and television series often depict the police as totally useless in protecting victims, especially when they are women. In fact, as one Vulture cultural critic argues, these newer shows have flipped the script about policing in America: it’s not just about “ a few bad apples, but a dismal search for a single good one.” As a class, we discussed how a new wave of true crime series has focused on police misconduct, which is a welcome antidote to shows like COPS, Dateline and the First 48, which amount to essentially free PR for police. In fact, an important difference between reality shows like COPS and true crime podcasts is that police departments and their PR arms have yet to be able to infiltrate the podcast genre.
Within this context, one of my students brought up the Karen Read murder trial. “It’s about a woman who is accused of killing her boyfriend, a Boston police officer. Some argue she is being framed by the police. I am interested in what you have to say about it, professor,” she told me. So, I heeded her advice and spent a weekend watching the docuseries, “A Body in the Snow: The Trial of Karen Read,” now streaming on HBO Max, which is a chronological retelling of events starting with Read’s arrest and arraignment to her indictment on second-degree murder charges and then her trial, which began in April 2024. I binged all five episodes and supplemented my curiosity by reading countless articles about the case, followed and chatted with #FreeKarenRead supporters on social media, and discussed the case with friends. I found that most people were drawn to the true crime saga because of its focus on police corruption, which many ordinary Americans, including many white people, can sympathize with, especially if the victim is also a white woman.
Canton, MA: “It’s become a civil war”
Back in Canton, neighbors are bitterly divided between those who believe Read is innocent and the victim of a police cover-up and those who believe she is guilty of murdering John O’Keefe. During the first trial, Jennifer McCabe, one of the key witnesses for the prosecution described the harassment and intimidation that she and her family received from Read supporters, including letters to her daughter’s college. According to news media channels, members of the #FreeKarenRead movement have been accused of doxing, harassing and even making personal threats against witnesses.
The Read case has also revealed long standing tensions in Canton, and neighbors are taking to social media to air out their grievances against the good ol’ boys’ network that they argue really runs the town. Read’s trial has forced a public debate about just how much the police get away with in Canton. One Reddit user shared: “It is a little worrying that our small-town cops find someone to charge 94% of the time, while the national average is only 50%. Either they are amazing detectives on par with Sherlock Holmes, or they are actually railroading a whole lot of innocent people.”
The subreddit r/justiceforkarenread, has become an online safe space for Canton residents to come together to unload about the widespread corruption in the Canton PD. They argue that the Read case demonstrates the power of local families like the Alberts and McCabes who have been in town for decades and have a lot of political pull. Many Canton residents (like the ones below) have posted on subreddit r/KarenReadTrial about the connections that the Alberts and McCabes (sometimes combined as McAlberts) have to the local police department and political figures in the town.
In November 2023, months after the pre-trial proceedings where Read’s attorneys introduced their allegations of a police cover up, fed up Canton residents turned out to vote on an independent audit of the Canton Police Department and its handling of John O’Keefe’s death. The case allowed Canton residents to openly question the Canton police department, unimaginable before this case. A Pandora’s box was finally pried open, and it’s all thanks to Karen Read.
The votes tallied 900 to 803 in favor of an audit, which was released in late April, coinciding with the start of the second trial. Upon its release, an information session was held at a local high school to present the findings. While the audit does critique the Canton police’s handling of the investigation, such as ranging from not photographing O’Keefe in the spot where he was first found, or interviewing the eyewitnesses right away, they argue that none of this is evidence of police corruption or tampering of evidence.
But not even an independent police audit has satisfied Canton residents who remain skeptical of the police. Some Reddit users, for example, have pointed out that this audit only applies to the local police, not the Massachusetts State Police. Also, furthermore, they ask: Why would a police cover-up be documented in an audit?
On Reddit, many Canton residents also brought up the drinking culture that envelops the Canton Police Department. It’s worth reflecting on how, the night leading up to John’s mysterious death, everyone was drunk out of their mind and driving around in a blizzard to drink some more. These are people well into their 40s, with kids, driving drunk and partying into late night hours, as if they were a bunch of college students on spring break. And in places without mass public transit, where everyone must drive everywhere to do every single life activity, the mixture of alcohol and the 6,000 pound tanks everyone drives nowadays has become totally normal, just as the myriad health effects of cars — for those inside and outside of them — are accepted or simply ignored. To wit, one popular form of protest has been the “rolling rally,” where protesters drive around to various sites relevant to the criminal case–in their cars.
The fact that most of the revelers were off duty cops makes it all more embarrassing, but not surprising to anyone familiar with cop subculture. Being a cop sucks and this, alongside the general culture of masculinity, makes it so that alcohol becomes the main way to self-medicate. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Karen discussed how her boyfriend turned to drinking to tune out his feelings. “I think that’s part of his stock,” Read told Vanity Fair, “this Irish Catholic, south-of-Boston, rub-some-dirt-on-it, drink-through-your-problems mindset.” The Karen Read case offers a fascinating and depressing account of what the people who wield power in towns like Canton actually do with it: drink in corny strip mall bars, drive around drunk, and try to keep on acting like they’re still teenagers.
“Karen Read could be any one of us, and it has to stop”: Inside the #FreeKarenRead Movement
While there is some public sympathy for John O’Keefe, a Boston cop with 16 years on the force, a family man who adopted his young niece and nephew after his sister and brother in law suddenly died, it has not been enough to stop the Free Karen Read movement from claiming her innocence. The movement started as an online phenomenon and quickly crossed over to real life when thousands of her supporters, mostly white women, traveled long distances to tailgate at her first murder trial. They gathered on the sidewalks outside the criminal courthouse, waiting for Karen’s black SUV to arrive, to cheer her on as she walked inside the courthouse, to give her flowers, small gifts, a hug or to just vocalize their support. They wore pink shirts with the message “Free Karen Read” emblazoned across the front, shared snacks with each other and held homemade protest signs that stood in stark contrast to the mass-produced Blue Lives Matter flags of the opposition.
Rain or shine, her supporters gathered outside of the courthouse wearing pink to distinguish themselves from the “back the blue” crowd, holding homemade placards that read “Free Karen Read.” Some of her supporters were also vocal about seeking justice for John O’Keefe–not completely breaking with the Blue Lives Matter crowd, and oftentimes blending the color pink with thin blue line flags such as the one pictured here. “It could be any of us that this happens to,” Jay Carney of Canton said in an interview with local news during the first trial proceedings.
As her first trial ended, her supporters huddled outside the courthouse around their laptops, televisions sets and smartphones to hear closing statements, nodding in agreement with her defense attorney’s impassioned speech and fully convinced that the jurors would deliver a not guilty verdict. But to their dismay, jury deliberations took a few days, and the trial finally ended in a hung jury. The jury was not fully convinced that Read was simply not guilty, as her supporters insist.
Now a year later, in preparation for the second trial, the sentiment among her supporters remains the same. To drum up energy for the second go around, her supporters have created a website which lists the various rallies unfolding across the country in her support, reaching beyond Massachusetts and as far as Florida. Already various protests have been planned throughout Massachusetts, including Canton, Dedham, New Bedford, Randolph and Worcester. Speaking to a Boston local news station, Diana Warchal said: “”Karen Read could be any one of us, and it has to stop. This is our opportunity to change the way things are. The police need to be accountable for the wrongful things that they do.”
Diana’s words and my desire to get a better sense of her supporters pushed me to join various #FreeKarenRead Facebook support group pages. One of the Facebook groups I joined and posted in had 24.6K members. I identified myself as a professor of criminal justice who was interested in talking with some Read supporters about the case. The first replies were skeptical of my request: one white woman pointed to the fact that when she Googled me, “nothing came up.” A flurry of replies to my thread called me out for being a fake profile. Someone called me a troll and a debate ensued about my identity and interest in the case which felt disproportionate to my initial query, but made sense given that these support pages are full of actual trolls who post misogynistic comments about Read and her supporters.
But a handful of supporters replied to my initial message and two even messaged me privately. One woman’s message read: “I am a Karen Read supporter. What questions do you want to ask?” We started chatting and she told me she heard about the case from the news and then ended up watching the trial online. “I support her 1000% after seeing all the inconsistencies and misinformation,” she messaged me. “It means we will see just how blind the law really is or if being part of the good old boys is more important to people. She also represents a woman who could be my neighbor or a family member.”
Other women also mentioned that they sympathized with Read for similar reasons. “As a mother of a daughter and a crew of nieces I know if it was me or anyone in my family we would be sitting in jail right now,” another responded. These replies were indicative of a larger trend I observed in these online groups: many white women saw themselves in her, a woman that was fighting for her life in a justice system that is set up to fail female victims and which blindly supports law enforcement. Read could have very well been a “badge bunny” who cheated on her Boston cop boyfriend with Brian Higgins, an ATF agent. But this doesn’t matter to her supporters who see her as a victim of police corruption.
But just when I am sympathetic to white women who perhaps may have endured abuse at the hands of their cop boyfriends or husbands, their whiteness quickly shows up. Read’s case, they argue, has nothing to do with her race. Many white women were vehemently opposed to “the race card” whenever anyone brought it up. On online forums, any person raising the issue is immediately deemed a troll, as Read’s army of supporters argue that her case was instead about “justice,” vaguely defined. Yet, in the same Facebook group, others (mostly white men and women) posted about how if they were accused of killing a cop, they would probably be hauled off to jail with no national attention and media scrutiny. A Reddit user stated: “Imagine if Karen Reed was poor? She’d be in jail right now.” So, clearly the issue of class struck a chord. So close, yet, so far.
Of course, Karen Read’s race has everything to do with why so many white women are sympathizing with her. Pop culture critics have argued that the true crime genre tends to draw in a very large white female viewership due to the fact that the plotlines of many of the criminal cases featured disproportionately focus on white female victims, oftentimes overlooking the victimization of women of color. Recent cases like the murder of 22-year-old travel vlogger Gabby Petito are a case in point. Petito’s case became a prominent example of this “Missing White Woman Syndrome” (MWWS) highlighting the disproportionate attention given to missing white women when compared to missing women of color. Her disappearance in 2022 while on a cross-country trip with her fiancé, Brian Laundrie, sparked intense media coverage and public discussion. Two days after Gabby Petito’s mother reported her missing, her fiancé also went missing. Gabby’s body was found about a week later and Laundrie was still missing. As the police investigated Petito’s murder and her fiancé’s disappearance, people showed up at his parents’ home in Northport, Florida, where the couple lived before her disappearance, to protest. They even threw laundry baskets and yelled “dirty laundry” at the residence. Yet in the same remote part of Wyoming’s Bridger–Teton National Forest where Gabby Petito’s body was found, 700 indigenous people, mostly women, have gone missing with little to no media attention nor public outcry.
But not all white women fit the criteria of “the perfect” white victim. For example, sex workers who go missing or are murdered do not receive the same media coverage due to the misguided and sexist perception that they aren’t “innocent” white women. For instance, it took thirteen years for the police to find the murderer of the missing sex workers on New York’s Gilgo Beach, located on the southern shore of Long Island. No one suspected Rex Heuermann, a local architect, to be the killer. He was, after all, a successful white middle-class married man with two children. All the while, from 2010 to 2011, the remains of nearly a dozen women, most of whom were sex workers, were found near the beach.
The case gained notoriety because of the persistence of one of the mothers, who year after year sought justice about her daughter’s disappearance. Despite widespread public outcry, the police overlooked a lot of details, including a key eyewitness account. Back in September 2010 when the bodies were first uncovered on the beach, Dave Schaller, a housemate of one Gilgo Beach victim, Amber Lynn Costello, shared his description of the man he believed to be her abductor. That man was Heuermann. Schaller told cops that he witnessed Heuermann arguing with her and even provided a physical description of Heuermann and of his vehicle. But the police did not take Schaller seriously, taking another decade before they were able to finally apprehend and charge Heuermann in the murders.
The myth of the perfect victim has been challenged by feminists for falling into the trap of victim blaming and for suggesting that victims have to fit into an often-unrealistic image to be seen as credible by the justice system. Karen Read’s charges render her outside the boundaries of a “perfect victim” even though she is a white middle-class woman. When I asked the Facebook group about why they thought she was innocent, one woman responded: “Blame it on the girl, who is an outsider.” When I prodded about whether this meant an outsider to the town or the cop culture, one supporter responded “both.”
What can come of the #FreeKarenRead movement?
(Mike Connolly, a State Representative from Cambridge posing with Karen Read supporters)
I must admit that I was initially skeptical of Read’s innocence. I definitely believed that she probably ran him over in a drunken rage and then blanked out. Then there was her boss girl energy which I initially found annoying. The moment that won me over to her was the Vanity Fair interview, where she welcomed the journalist into her home for three days to answer all questions related to the case, knowing that it could be used as testimony against her in the retrial. Now, that takes real courage! There is an element to her fight against a corrupt legal system that is appealing to her supporters. On many online forums, they argue that the police pinned it on her believing she would not have the resources to fight back. While she has more economic resources and social capital than most people ensnared by our legal system, a case of this magnitude necessitates a lot of personal sacrifice and money. She has upended her entire former life, quit her job, cashed out her 401K plan and is facing down 5 million dollars in legal fees. She is facing life in prison and not going out without a fight, or at least taking down a crooked cop or two. She is doing all of this while battling multiple sclerosis, which her supporters claim only adds to the stress that she is dealing with day in and day out. But can support for Karen Read translate into any kind of meaningful political commitment for real justice, against the police and the legal system, even if the victim is not a middle-class white woman?
(Karen Read posing with her supporters in 2024)
Historically, white women have weaponized their victimhood to protect their own self-interest and uphold the status quo, not to indict the entire justice system. The sense of irony that a woman named Karen has gone from an entitled white woman who calls the cops on her neighbors, to an alleged cop-killer, is not lost on any of us who have not been living under a rock for the past years. Karen is a pejorative name used to describe entitled (usually suburban but not always) white women who are perceived as being excessively demanding.
First used as a “can I speak to your manager” meme, the name was also popularized on Black Twitter to describe a white woman who calls the police on Black people who are minding their own business. In the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, the Karen meme became a symbol of white women lashing out for not getting their way–a weaponizing of white victimhood with a long history in American daily life. Yet, the case of Karen Read complicates the “Karen effect.” She is a middle-class white woman who is publicly weaponizing her victimhood to go after an entire police department. And hers is not the only case rocking the pro-cop town of Canton, Massachusetts.
Some weeks after a mistrial was declared in her first case, more allegations of police misconduct surfaced. This time around, a former Canton police detective, Matthew Farwell, was charged in the 2021 death of a 23-year-old newly pregnant woman, Sandra Birchmore. She and Farwell met in the local Police Explorer Program when she was 15 years old. Farwell, who was 27 years old at the time, was the instructor and was alleged to have sexually assaulted and groomed her in the years leading up to her becoming pregnant with their child. He was also the last person to have seen Sandra alive and is believed to have staged the scene as a suicide to cover up the years of abuse, their relationship and her pregnancy. These two criminal cases have put the spotlight on Canton, leading residents of an otherwise pro-cop town to call and pay for the audit of their local police department to assess the level of corruption and wrongdoing.
The divisions in Canton are important to take note of, but whether they will lead to a politically significant antisystem stance remains to be seen. I have seen little evidence for people linking what is happening to Karen Read, for instance, to the recent case of Rodney Hinton Jr, a 38-year-old Black man accused of intentionally hitting and killing an Ohio Sheriff’s Deputy with his car after his son was fatally shot by police. Hinton Jr has not received the same public attention. In fact, at the behest of the Ohio Attorney General, GoFundMe removed online fundraisers for Rodney Hinton Jr’s legal support. Race of course has a big role to play. Whiteness and its pernicious stubbornness among many white women often prevent them from making these connections, including the most recent anti-ICE/police protests rocking America.
A more recent event, geographically closer to home, did not even register in the online bubble of Read supporters. Less than an hour away from the Read trial, in Worcester, a routine ICE raid pushed local residents to action. A sizable group of neighbors followed ICE agents to stop them from arresting a local mom, a Brazilian immigrant whose husband was arrested just the previous day. The video recording of police involvement and violence, which included ripping a child from the mother’s arms, sent shock waves on social media. Yet there was no word from Read supporters, who instead elected to recap the Court TV livestream coverage of the trial. What gives?
White people, as Noel Ignatiev boldly argued in 2016 amid enduring Black Lives Matter protests, are also victims of police violence. What about white people, he asked. On the heels of the George Floyd Rebellion of 2020, some of us argued that this was fair game. While many white people became race traitors (and others more hardened right wingers), most white people, we argued, remain unable or unwilling to see police violence and by extension state violence as personally affecting them. This is why I have been so fascinated with the #FreeKarenRead movement. It is giving us a glimpse of white women coming to grips with victimization and a corrupt legal system. ‘If it can happen to Karen Read, it can happen to any of us’ can be perhaps just one more crack in the system, this time coming from self-interested white Americans who are participating in protests perhaps for the first time in their lives.
This week the jury is deciding Karen Read’s future against a backdrop of growing anti-ICE/police protests. In Boston, an estimated one million people took part in converging pride and No King demonstrations that countered Trump’s birthday celebrations. Many of the protestors held anti-fascist signs. Yet, unfortunately, Read’s white supporters remain mired in their own myopia–they are empathetic to her plight which they are taking up as their own, but are not moved at all by what’s happening around Massachusetts and the rest of the country. Call it cognitive dissonance, call it whiteness. So, what will it take for them to make the leap? A guilty verdict? We shall see.