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Karen Read woke up in a panic when she realized her boyfriend, Boston police officer John OKeefe, wasnt at home in the early hours of Saturday, Jan. 29, 2022. She made frantic phone calls and enlisted two women to help her retrace their steps to a house in Canton, Massachusetts, where the couple had been invited to join friends for drinks after leaving a local bar. It was around 6 a.m. when she spotted OKeefes snow-covered body in front of the home, leapt screaming from her friends car, and tried desperately to warm him as she began performing CPR.

The medical examiner who performed the autopsy would later report that OKeefe, 46, had suffered multiple skull fractures that caused bleeding in the brain, and that hypothermia was a contributing factor in his death. Investigators reviewed evidence at the scene and spoke to Read and the couples friends, with prosecutors ultimately alleging that OKeefe got out of Reads black Lexus SUV after they argued. Read was accused of hitting him while making a three-point turn, then returning home to leave him to die in the snow. She was charged with second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and leaving the scene of a collision.

The case has also become known as the taillight murder, a reference to the broken right taillight of Reads SUV. Authorities said it was damaged when she struck OKeefe, and that they had discovered pieces of plastic near where OKeefe was found consistent with those missing from the SUV. Her defense attorneys claim, however, that Ring footage from OKeefes house shows Read striking his car, on her right rear side, as she backed out of the garage early Saturday morning to go search for him.