New docuseries lets Karen Read tell her side of the story ahead of retrial

Before she returns to the courtroom next month, a new documentary series is giving Karen Read the opportunity to tell the American public her side of what happened the night her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, died in January 2022.

“Doing this film is my testimony,” Read says in A Body in the Snow: The Trial of Karen Read, the first episode of which will air on Investigation Discovery starting March 17. “I know the events of that morning, I know what I said and I didn’t say, and I haven’t been able to say it. It’s incredibly frustrating. I want to say what happened exactly as it happened.”

Read is accused of intentionally backing over O’Keefe with her car after a night of drinking. She was charged with second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter and leaving the scene of a collision that caused injury and death. If convicted, she faces a possible sentence of life in prison, with an additional maximum of 20 years for manslaughter and up to 10 years for leaving the scene of a fatal accident.

The three-part series, which will also be available to stream on Max, was filmed over the course of 11 weeks in Boston during Read’s high-profile first trial, which ended in a mistrial in July 2024. The premiere comes two weeks before her retrial is set to begin, on April 1, in Dedham’s Norfolk County Superior Court.

Never heard of the case? Read a breakdown from Yahoo News: What to know about the Karen Read murder trial

Director Terry Dunn Meurer told Yahoo News that she and her crew were embedded with Read and her legal team throughout the first trial, even staying at the same hotel as them in Boston.

“I have never had this unprecedented access that a defendant and defense team would give to a crew to just be with them the whole time,” Meurer said.

Meurer insisted that Read and her legal team were not involved in the production of the series, noting that they will see the final product for the first time when it airs this week. Though some of O’Keefe’s friends are featured in the series, his parents and last remaining siblings were not interviewed, nor was anyone from the prosecution team.

The series, instead, features extensive interviews with Read and her attorneys, giving them the chance to lay out their case — outside the courtroom — that Read was the victim of a coverup by the Boston Police Department.

“I took one look at one of the autopsy photos of John O’Keefe, and I saw his arm, and I said, ‘Are you kidding me? He was hit by a car?’” Read’s attorney, Alan Jackson, says in one interview, challenging the photo used in evidence that Read ran over O’Keefe. “Something doesn’t sound right about that. None of the evidence fits.”

Jackson, who previously represented actor Kevin Spacey, and other members of Read’s high profile legal team, argue that something happened inside the house where Read is accused of running over O’Keefe, which belongs to another member of the Boston Police Department, and that Read is being framed.

The series also examines how the case, which drew national attention during the televised trial, sowed division in the suburban Boston community where Read and O’Keefe lived.

Much of the courtroom and police camera footage shown in the series will be familiar to those who followed the case closely. What is new, however, are the interviews with Read, who did not testify in her first trial.

“I just want to go away and be alone, I don’t want any more court clothes or any more experts,” Read says at the beginning of the final episode. “I just want to be done.”