BOSTON — An attorney for the O’Keefe family has apologized in court for misinterpreting a remark he believed Karen Read made to Aidan Kearney, also known as "Turtleboy," saying she never said, “I’m dead. I’m (expletive) dead.”

“I also want to acknowledge to this court and to Ms. Read that I was mistaken when I interpreted her words to say, ‘I’m dead, I’m (expletive) dead,’” Attorney Marc Diller told a judge during a hearing in the O’Keefes’ wrongful death lawsuit against Read.

Diller apologized after he withdrew a motion that looked to block the Norfolk DA’s Office from returning Read’s phones to her. He added that the sides have agreed to work together on a deal that will eventually allow Read to recover her two devices.

“We have agreed that we will continue to work in good faith towards that end,” Diller said during the hearing at Plymouth Superior Court on Friday.

The O’Keefe family filed a motion late last month seeking an emergency temporary restraining order in the case to prevent Read from accessing her phones, which the Norfolk DA’s office has had for over two years.

The O’Keefes are fighting to secure a full digital record of Read’s phones before they are returned to her. They argue that the devices may contain evidence that supports their claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Just days before, Read’s defense team asked a Dedham court to order the phones to be returned over an argument that prosecutors did not have a warrant to search the defendant’s devices as they investigated her for alleged witness intimidation.

One of Read’s civil attorneys, Aaron Rosenberg, said in court Friday that Diller’s characterization of the agreement is “generally” correct.

“The one clarification that I would provide is that we are going to work in an expedited fashion to come up with an agreement for how the phones are going to be accessed and searched,” Rosenberg said, “but that is expressly through our office, through Ms. Read’s counsel.”

“Plaintiff’s counsel,” he added, “is going to propose to us what they believe we should do to review and produce those documents, and we are going to try to agree on that kind of protocol.”

In the motion for the temporary restraining order, Diller cited an alleged quote that Read said to Turtleboy, during a phone call. Read allegedly said, “I’m dead. I’m (expletive) dead. Do you have any clue what’s on the phone that they took?”

Kearney has been charged with several counts of witness intimidation connected to the case. The independent journalist has covered the court process extensively since April 2023 from a pro-Read lens.

Diller further wrote in his motion, “Read’s own admission supports Plaintiffs’ belief that the subject cell phone(s) contains discoverable information materially relevant to Plaintiffs’ claims and harmful to Read.”

The O’Keefes are suing Read for the death of her Boston cop boyfriend in Canton during a blizzard in 2022. Read was acquitted of all major criminal charges last year.

Read’s civil team pushed back against Diller’s motion, asserting that she never said the quote to Turtleboy — and arguing that the O’Keefe family lawyer’s filing is “completely inaccurate.”

“The words placed in quotation marks — ‘I’m dead. I’m (expletive) dead’ — were not spoken by Ms. Read, ever,” Rosenberg wrote in a filing. “The actual recording reflects a different statement entirely. Because the Court referenced the misquotation in a subsequent order, we believed it was necessary to correct the record immediately.”

Rosenberg added, “In the illegal recording (which Plaintiffs’ counsel troublingly attempted to leverage to his advantage) Ms. Read merely emphasized her frustration that Mr. Kearney placed her in such a position ‘Again. A-(expletive)-gain.’”

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