Karen Read prosecutor wants NBC, ABC interview video and defendant's mom's phone records

BOSTON — The new prosecutor in Karen Read’s murder case is now after both the defendant’s parents’ cellphone records.

“(I)t is evident from the defendant’s phone records that phone calls between the defendant and (the phone number) belonging to Janet Read, were made on January 29, 2022, during a time after the Commonwealth alleges that the defendant had struck and left the victim to die in blizzard conditions, but before the victim was located under the snow,” special prosecutor Hank Brennan wrote in an affidavit supporting his new motion for the Verizon phone records.

Brennan’s request for Janet Read’s phone records follows a similar request last month for the phone records of William Read, and with a similar supporting argument.

Brennan also filed requests for the unedited and complete footage of interviews Read sat for with ABC, broadcast on its Boston affiliate WCVB-TV, and NBC, broadcast on its Boston affiliate NBC10. It follows a similar request for materials from Boston 25 News filed last month.

It all came in a flurry of motions Brennan has filed since the sides last met in court on Wednesday for the first time since the summer.

At that meeting, Norfolk Superior Court Judge Beverly J. Cannone heard arguments to delay the trial until April, which both sides want; the prosecution’s request to perform a potentially destructive new test on the chips in Read’s Lexus SUV’s infotainment system; a prosecution request for a hearing to challenge a defense expert on dog bites; and a defense request for access to the transcripts of the private sidebar conversations during Read’s first trial, which ended with a hung jury and a declaration of mistrial.

Cannone has yet to rule on a trial date extension. She allowed transcripts of the sidebar conversations to be available to attorneys for trial preparation but did not make them public record. She scheduled a December hearing date for a “Daubert” challenge of defense expert Dr. Marie Russell. She allowed prosecution testing of the Lexus chips with defense expert monitoring.

The defense has filed a motion challenging Brennan’s request for William Read’s phone records, calling the request “a fishing expedition, and an inappropriate attempt to invade Mr. Read’s privacy.”

Brennan attempts to head off any such arguments in his new request for Janet Read’s records by stating outright that “The Commonwealth’s motion is not a fishing expedition” before pointing to the evidence of calls between the two women following Karen Read’s alleged vehicular murder of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, that early January 2022 morning.

Read, 44, of Mansfield, was charged in Norfolk Superior Court on June 9, 2022, with second-degree murder, motor vehicle manslaughter, and leaving the scene of a collision causing death.