What to know about the new lawsuit filed against Karen Read, woman accused of murdering her boyfriend in 2022

Katie Mather
Karen Read looks toward the jurors at Norfolk Superior Court in July.
Karen Read looks toward the jurors at Norfolk Superior Court in July. (Pat Greenhouse/Boston Globe) (Boston Globe via Getty Images)

The family of John O’Keefe, the Boston police officer who was killed in January 2022, filed a wrongful death lawsuit Monday against his ex-girlfriend Karen Read and two bars in Canton, Mass.

Read, 44, has been accused of backing over O’Keefe with her car after the couple spent the night barhopping. The O’Keefe family has accused the bars — McCarthy’s and the Waterfall Bar & Grill — of overserving Read that, the family says, led to O’Keefe’s death.

O’Keefe’s brother, Paul O'Keefe, is the lead plaintiff in the civil lawsuit.

The family is seeking $500,000 in damages from Read. The lawsuit also argues that Read should be held financially responsible for O’Keefe’s next of kin, his 14-year-old niece, who lost “companionship, comfort … protection, care and advice” when O’Keefe died. O’Keefe was acting as his niece’s surrogate parent at the time of his death and she is one of the plaintiffs listed in the lawsuit.

Read was previously charged with second-degree murder, committing manslaughter under the influence of alcohol and fleeing a scene of personal injury and death. She pleaded not guilty.

On July 1, a Massachusetts judge declared a mistrial because the jury could not reach a unanimous decision on all three charges. Read is expected to stand trial again on Jan. 27, 2025.

In the civil complaint, the family claims that, for months leading up to O’Keefe’s death, Read “picked fights, experienced jealousy and had delusions of [John’s] unfaithfulness.”

The O’Keefes agree with the prosecution’s argument that on the night of Jan. 29, 2022, Read and O’Keefe were drunk and arguing after a night out when she dropped him off at a friend’s house around midnight and then intentionally backed over him with her car before driving away.

Read “knew or had a reason to know of the risk of grave injury or death to [John]” the O’Keefes said in the complaint. The family said O’Keefe’s “injuries or death resulted from defendant Read’s decision” to back the car into him.

The family also claimed that Read woke up O’Keefe’s 14-year-old niece, who lived at O’Keefe’s residence, around 4:30 a.m. and “talked about hitting [O’Keefe] with her SUV.”

Yahoo News reached out to two defense attorneys who represented Read in the criminal trial, Martin Weinberg and David Yannetti. Weinberg’s law firm told Yahoo News that he was not involved in the civil lawsuit. Yannetti could not immediately be reached for comment.

A wrongful death lawsuit is a civil action, usually filed by surviving family members or a personal representative from the deceased’s estate, that claims a person or company is liable for a death. It’s usually brought about when criminal action has failed.

Typically, a death is legally considered “wrongful” when a person's or company’s negligence results in the death of another person. However, wrongful death lawsuits can also be filed in some murder and manslaughter cases. (O.J. Simpson, for example, was found not guilty of the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman but later had to pay $25 million in damages to the families of his alleged victims following a civil suit.)

The statute of limitations in Massachusetts for wrongful death cases requires that they must be filed within three years of the event.

In Read’s case, even though she was prosecuted criminally for murder and manslaughter, the family is still allowed to sue her civilly for the same crime in a wrongful death lawsuit.

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