Minutes after Karen Read allegedly rammed her SUV into her boyfriend in a snowstorm in the front yard of a friend’s Canton home, she called his cellphone and left an angry voicemail saying: “John I [expletive] hate you.”
Read and John O’Keefe had argued before she intentionally hit him with her SUV on Jan. 29, 2022, after a night of heavy drinking, and she left the message at 12:37 a.m. as O’Keefe lay dying on Fairview Road, prosecutors said in court Thursday.
While prosecutors had previously alluded to the contents and tone of the voicemails in court documents, Thursday’s testimony was the first time jurors heard Read’s voice for themselves over the course of the eight weeks Read has been on trial on second-degree murder and other charges.
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Read’s seething anger and accusatory tone were captured in eight voicemails investigators recovered from O’Keefe’s phone and prosecutors played for jurors in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham. The evidence was introduced a few days after jurors were presented with angry text messages sent by O’Keefe, a Boston police officer, and Read, giving a rare look into the couple’s relationship.
At 12:59 a.m., Read said: “Nobody knows where the [expletive] you are, you [expletive] pervert.”
At 1:18 a.m., Read’s voicemail said, “It’s 1 a.m. I’m with your niece and nephew. You’re a [expletive] pervert. ... You [expletive] loser. [Expletive] yourself.”
State Police Trooper Nicholas Guarino said that between 12:30 a.m. and 6 a.m., Read called O’Keefe more than 50 times. There was no indication that O’Keefe answered any of those calls, Guarino said.
Witnesses have testified that Read, who had consumed nine alcoholic drinks, did not remember driving O’Keefe to Fairview Road. But witnesses have also testified that Read pointed to O’Keefe’s snow-covered body before the two women she was with saw anything, suggesting she already knew he was there.
Guarino said location data on O’Keefe’s phone showed that he left the Waterfall bar in Canton at 12:12 a.m. and arrived at Fairview around 12:24 a.m.
Data from Read’s phone showed that at 12:36 a.m., it “auto connected” to the password-protected Wi-fi network in O’Keefe’s home.
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Earlier this week, jurors were presented with text-message exchanges between Read and O’Keefe, hours before he died, suggesting their rocky relationship had taken its toll, and O’Keefe was tiring of it.
An argument on the morning of Jan. 28, 2022, spilled over into their afternoon texts.
Read texted that she felt set up to “fail,” while O’Keefe said he was tired of being the “bad guy.”
“You really hurt me” and “said terrible things,” Read texted. O’Keefe told her he had apologized and that things had been difficult between them for “a while.”
“Sick of always arguing and fighting,” O’Keefe wrote. “It’s been weekly for several months now.”
After Read called him over a dozen times, he wrote, “Omg!! Stop calling.”
Prosecutors have alleged that the couple’s relationship was strained and that Read, 44, was drunk when she dropped O’Keefe off at an after-party on Fairview Road. They allege that she intentionally backed her Lexus SUV into O’Keefe while making a three-point turn and left him for dead as a blizzard set in.
Read, of Mansfield, has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter, second-degree murder, and other charges.
Attorneys for Read insist she’s being framed and that O’Keefe entered the Fairview Road home, owned at the time by a fellow Boston officer who had been out drinking with the couple and others. They assert that O’Keefe was fatally beaten inside the home before his body was left on the lawn in freezing temperatures.
Under cross-examination, Trooper Guarino explained that if a phone’s health data registers steps taken, it doesn’t necessarily mean physical steps were taken.
Guarino testified that the health data on O’Keefe’s phone showed he was “traveling and taking steps,” when he was in fact in Read’s vehicle a half-mile away from Fairview Road.
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The discrepancy is important because Read’s defense has said the data showed O’Keefe moving up and down the stairs inside the home.
Users don’t have to be “physically” moving for steps to register on the health data, Guarino said.
Witnesses have testified that his phone was found under his body.
Dr. Renee Stonebridge, director of cardiac and neuropathology at the state’s Chief Medical Examiner’s office, told jurors that O’Keefe’s injuries included a subarachnoid hemorrhage and contusions in the front of the brain.
She said the brain injuries were “due to some type of trauma” and “some kind of force” that “could be” consistent with being struck by a vehicle.
A second specialist from the state’s medical examiner’s office, Dr. Irini Scordi-Bello, said she performed an autopsy on O’Keefe’s body. She said she concluded that O’Keefe’s cause of death was “blunt impact injuries of head and hypothermia” and that the manner of death “could not be determined.”
She said there were “multiple” fractures in “multiple chambers and parts of the skull.”
O’Keefe’s toxicology report showed his alcohol level was 0.21 at the time of the test and was higher when he died, Scordi-Bello said.
Testimony resumes Friday.
Tonya Alanez can be reached at tonya.alanez@globe.com. Follow her @talanez. Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com.