Karen Read's defense takes the wheel, vying to convince jury she didn't kill John O'Keefe

Dr. Marie Russell listens to Judge Beverly Cannone during Karen Read's retrial on murder charges in the death of Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe. (Pool)

Judge Beverly Cannone called an end to the day a few minutes early as Karen Read's defense team repeatedly objected to special prosecutor Hank Brennan's questioning of their dog bite expert.

Dr. Marie Russell, who has Massachusetts roots but lives and works in Los Angeles, testified that victim John O'Keefe had dog-bite injuries on his arm -- not scratches from a taillight.

"In fact, when you first testified, you weren't consistently even saying that it was a dog or as you say today, dog attack, you were saying in your opinion, they were the result of animal bites or scratches," Brennan said. "That was what you originally opined, isn't it?"

"We just went through that," she replied. "Yes. Yea."

Brennan sought to undermine her credibility and her departure from the findings of prosecution witnesses.

Russell learned about the case from a news article and reached out to a Los Angeles prosecutor -- the office where defense attorney Alan Jackson started his career and famously prosecuted music producer Phil Spector for murder.

The case piqued her interest, she said, and she offered to interpret the evidence.

"So, Dr. Russell, from your perspective, as far as you know, you are the only person in the entire United States of America who was qualified to look at a photograph and make a determination whether the wound was derived from a dog bite?" Brennan asked.

"No, I, am one of -- I'm the only physician that I know of that can do that.   There may be, you know, a few others out there. There may be, but, but I don't know of any other physicians that can do that."

She is expected to return to the witness stand Tuesday morning.

A photo show on screen in court showing a hole in John O'Keefe's hoodie. (Pool)

A forensic pathologist and former emergency room doctor testified that in addition to signs of dog-bite wounds on John O'Keefe's right arm, she sees holes in his shirt sleeve that she believes came from a dog's tooth.

“I believe that this hole was made by a canine tooth, with the tooth going into the shirt, reaching the skin, and then coming out of the shirt, pulling out some fabric with it,” Dr. Marie Russell testified Monday afternoon.

Russell did not examine the shirt of O'Keefe directly, but she testified that it is not uncommon for experts in her field to examine autopsy photos and offer an opinion.

Karen Read sits with her defense team, from left, Robert Alessi, Elizabeth Little, Alan Jackson, and David Yannetti during her murder retrial in Norfolk Superior Court, in Dedham, Mass., Monday June 2, 2025. (Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via AP, Pool)

Although sultry and obscene text messages from former Massachusetts State Trooper Michael Proctor have made headlines throughout Karen Read's two trials in the death of John O'Keefe -- there was another item he mentioned that could be damaging to the prosecution's case, experts tell Fox News Digital.

According to text messages read with Proctor's friend John Diamandis on the stand, Proctor called Read a "c---," a "babe" and said she had "no a--" and mocked her over a medical condition, texts read in court show.

But he also discussed the investigation with friends hours after O'Keefe had been found dead -- days before the autopsy and when charges would be filed against Read.

"She waffled him," Proctor texted a group of friends around 11 p.m. on Jan 29. 2022. "I looked at his body at the hospital."

O'Keefe had been found around 6 a.m. that same day.

"I thought he was drunk," a friend wrote about O'Keefe. "Did he get beat up?"

"Nope," Proctor replied.

A few minutes later, a friend asked, "So the owner of the house was a woman cop that beat him?"

"That's what I initially thought after talking to [a] Canton paramedic," Proctor replied. "Then I saw the guy."

A friend asked him to explain the "waffled" comment.

"She hit him with her car," Proctor wrote.

Dr. Irini Scordi-Bello would later rule O'Keefe's cause of death blunt trauma to the head and hypothermia -- but she left the manner undetermined, as opposed to homicide or accidental.

"He is not qualified to say that," Mark Bederow, a New York-based criminal defense lawyer who is following the case, told Fox News Digital about Proctor's early conclusion. "There is an abundance of evidence of Proctor’s investigative tunnel vision and bias, but I think it would have been more effective to force Proctor to read his messages, many of which were vile."

However, he said, the decision to have Proctor's group chat friends read the texts rather than call him to the stand could be a strategic more from the defense.

"Based on fact they called his friend, that strongly suggests they do not intend on calling Proctor and instead will emphasize to jury in summation that the DA didn't even call the lead investigator," he said.

Proctor's testimony at Read's first trial led to an internal investigation and his firing from the Massachusetts State Police. The FBI also launched a federal probe but closed it without filing any charges.

The official reason for his termination was that he improperly shared "sensitive or confidential" law enforcement information with his friends.

"The messages prove one thing, and that Michael is human – not corrupt, not incompetent in his role as a homicide detective, and certainly not unfit to continue to be a Massachusetts State Trooper," his sister, Courtney Proctor, previously told Fox News Digital.

The court is back in session after lunch.

Defense attorney Robert Alessi continues questioning of Dr. Marie Russell.

A photo shown in court included injuries to John O'Keefe's arm documented at autopsy. (Pool)

Dr. Marie Russell, an expert on dog bites who worked as both an emergency room physician and a forensic pathologist, testified in Karen Read's trial Monday that she used a pattern analysis to form an opinion on the injuries found on John O'Keefe's arm on Jan. 29. 2022.

“Those wounds were inflicted as the result of a dog attack,” she testified.

She pointed to groupings on his upper arm, near the elbow and on his forearm.

“They, in my opinion, were inflicted by the teeth and claws of a dog,” she said.

Through either the action of the dog or O’Keefe pulling away, the teeth scratched the flesh from the front toward the back of his upper arm, she testified.

The elbow injuries are more difficult to describe, she said, because the exact position of O’Keefe’s arm is unknown. But they possibly included punctures from the lower teeth as well, she said.

Russell explained that the back of the arm, when the palms are facing forward, is called the "posterior."

That's the same part of the arm where John O'Keefe showed a number of injuries during his autopsy in 2022.

Injuries to the posterior of a person's arm often indicates that the person raised their arms defensively, she testified.

Although the Los Angeles-based Russell has ties to Massachusetts, she went to school and previously worked as a police officer in a different part of the state, she said. However, she had a subscription to the Boston Globe and came across an article about the case that piqued her interest.

As an expert on dog bites, she saw the dueling claims that O'Keefe's arm injuries came from a vehicle or a dog bite. On top of that, she is a former police officer herself and saw that the victim was a member of the Boston Police Department.

Defense attorney Robert Alessi questioned Russell until Cannone called a lunch break at around 1 p.m.

Dr. Russell explained the difference between civilian dog bites and trained police K9 bites.

She testified that K9 bites would typically be more severe, with injuries to tissue beneath skin, including to muscles and blood vessels.

Russell revealed that before going to medical school, she was a police officer for seven years in the City of Malden, Massachusetts. She was attending Northeastern University part time.

After a contentious morning of testimony in Karen Read's murder trial Monday, her defense team called dog bite expert Dr. Marie Russell to the witness stand.

The defense has suggested that injuries to John O'Keefe's right arm were suffered in a possible dog attack, and not inflicted by the defendant's SUV.

Dr. Judson Welcher, and accident reconstruction expert for the prosecution, played jurors a reenactment showing how a Lexus SUV like Read's could have hit a person on the arm and hand in the same places where injuries were recorded in O'Keefe's autopsy.

Karen Read arrives at Norfolk County Superior Court with her attorney, Victoria George, Monday, June 2, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. Read is charged with killing her Boston police officer boyfriend by intentionally driving her SUV into him. (Richard Beetham for Fox News Digital)

“My entire job revolves around what I say on the stand right now," Boston Police Officer Kelly Dever told special prosecutor Hank Brennan. "If I was to lie, I lose my job. I lose everything. I’m here to tell the truth. I cannot lie while sitting on this stand.”

Dever worked for the Canton Police Department at the time of John O'Keefe's death, on Jan. 29, 2022.

During an interview with an outside agency, she told investigators that she saw Brian Higgins and Canton Police Chief Kenneth Berkowitz in the sallyport with Read's vehicle for a "wildly long time."

But she immediately retracted the statement, she testified, after being shown she left work that day well before Karen Read's vehicle arrived.

However, she said that Read's defense team threatened to "charge" her with perjury if she didn't testify to the retracted statement under oath.

While defense attorneys can't "charge" people with crimes, she testified that the implication was she would face retaliation if she didn't cooperate. She said she later received advice that she could not perjure herself by sticking to the truth.

Dever's testimony ended shortly before 11 a.m., when Judge Beverly Cannone called a morning recess.

Boston Police Officer Kelly Dever on the witness stand. (Pool)

Karen Read defense attorney Alan Jackson calls Boston Police Officer Kelly Dever as the next witness -- and after a contentious exchange she told jurors that he had threatened to go after her for perjury if she didn't "lie on the stand."

Dever, who worked for Canton police a the time, was scheduled to be on patrol the morning John O'Keefe's remains were discovered but was reassigned to dispatch on the fly as other officers responded to the scene.

"I was already in the parking lot of the Canton police while this took place," she said. "So I was already at the station."

Jackson grilled her about security cameras in the department's sallyport, where Read's vehicle was eventually towed.

Visibly frustrated when asked if she wanted to be in court Monday, she told Jackson that she had no connection to the case and didn't know why she had been called to the stand.

Jackson grilled her about a comment she made to "certain" law enforcement officers during an interview in August 2023.

"Did you tell those law enforcement agents on August 9th, 2023, that you saw Brian Higgins and Chief Berkowitz go into the sallyport together and alone with the SUV for a 'wildly long time'?" Jackson asked her.

"That was my recollection at the time," she replied.

However, she accused Jackson of threatening her on a phone call prior to Read's first trial.

"You threatened to charge me with perjury during our phone call prior to the first trial if I didn't lie on the stand right now," she alleged form the witness stand. "I'm telling you, I did not see anything. Factually, I been provided evidence by a timeline that it is not correct."

Dever told special prosecutor Hank Brennan that the agents who interviewed her showed her evidence that she left work on Jan. 29, 2022 well before the car arrived in the sallyport.

She said she immediately retracted her statement, which had been made in “good faith” more than 18 months after the incident.“They were looking for me to say that I saw Higgins and Berkowitz in the garage with the car,” Dever testified.

She angered the defense, she claimed, when she said her initial statement had been incorrect and she would not testify to it. Then the alleged perjury threat came.

John Diamandis, a friend of fired state trooper Michael Proctor, reads the former investigator's text messages on the stand. (Pool)

Karen Read defense lawyer David Yannetti calls Jonathan Diamandis, a friend of former Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor to the witness stand.

Her legal team is expected to use inappropriate text messages about the investigation that got Proctor fired to skewer police credibility and illustrate alleged bias against their client from the start of the investigation.

Proctor lost his job in March after an internal investigation into the texts began following Read's first trial last year.

Diamandis, a friend of Proctor for 30 years, has been on a group text with him for more than a decade, he testified.

Special prosecutor Hank Brennan had Diamandis read more of Proctor's texts, in which he discussed details of the case and how he ruled out that O'Keefe had been beaten after seeing his body in the hospital.

Proctor wrote that Read "waffled" the victim, and that "there will be some serious charges brought on the girl."

At one point, Diamandis said he felt uncomfortable reading texts that he hadn't written because they contained "uncomfortable words."

Read's first trial revealed that some of Proctor's texts included lewd and vulgar messages about her.

Diamandis said he did not condone the words, and Brennan said he would read them himself and ask if the witness could confirm that they were in the text chain.

"'From all accounts, he didn't do anything wrong,'" Brennan read, quoting one of Proctor's texts. "'She's a whack job and...' and then uses the C-word."

Proctor then used obscene language in an apparent reference to a medical condition.

However, Diamandis also testified that Proctor never dicussed framing Read or planting evidence, as the defense has suggested.

Karen Read waves to supporters outside the courthouse in Dedham, Massachusetts, where she is facing murder and other charges in the death of her former boyfriend John O'Keefe. (Hans Pennink for Fox News Digital)

The first full week of Karen Read’s defense begins today more than a month after jury selection began in her retrial on murder and other charges in the death of her former boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe.

The 45 -year-old Read’s first trial ended with a deadlocked jury last year.She is accused of striking O’Keefe, 46, with a Lexus SUV in a drunken fight, then driving away and leaving him to die in the cold during a blizzard.

Read’s lawyers -- partially paid for after she sold her home and tapped into her retirement fund , deny that she struck him at all, however, over the first five weeks of trial, witnesses for the prosecution testified that O’Keefe suffered a head injury consistent with falling backward after a glancing vehicular strike and that plastic fragments consistent with Read’s broken taillight were recovered from his clothes.

Special prosecutor Hank Brennan rested the commonwealth’s case Thursday.

The first defense witness was an accident reconstruction expert named Matt DiSogra, who said that only three out of nearly 30 possible scenarios based on phone and vehicle data align with the prosecution’s timeline.

Twenty-five of them suggest O’Keefe’s last interaction with his cellphone was a conscious button-press made after Read took her SUV out of reverse, he said.

However, under cross-examination, he could not rule out a collision.

"Sir, are you trying to offer an opinion suggesting that Miss Read's Lexus never hit John O'Keefe on January 29th, 2022?" Brennan asked. "Is that your opinion?"

"No sir,” DiSogra replied.