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During Karen Read’s trial, her defense team decided to have a Boston police officer, who was working for the Canton Police Department on the day when John O’Keefe was discovered dead under a pile of snow, testify as a hostile witness.
Kelly Dever, the officer on duty at the time, was not involved in the investigation but had previously informed the FBI that she had seen two significant individuals in the case spending an unusual amount of time near Read’s SUV at Canton’s police headquarters. These individuals were ATF Agent Brian Higgins, who was having a secretive relationship with Read while O’Keefe was still alive, and the then-Canton Police Chief Kenneth Berkowitz.
They would have been placed next to the vehicle before other investigators found fragments that matched Read’s taillight at the crime scene.
The decision to call Dever to the stand was seen by retired Massachusetts Superior Court Judge and Boston College professor Jack Lu as a move driven by desperation from the defense team, even though he commended Dever for her bravery in testifying.
“She’s out of central casting, says that she has confirmed her prior memory is factually, irrefutably wrong,” he told Fox News Digital. “If they say she has damaged her future ability to testify that is laughable.”
She’s also facing blowback. Lu pointed to a Facebook group called Free Karen Read with more than 40,000 members, where a user urged others to call the police commissioner’s office if they “believe Kelly Dever should be given the axe.”
Dever could not immediately be reached for comment.
It’s up to the jurors to decide whether she was truthful on the stand or when she first made her statements to the FBI.
