7:37 PM
O'Keefe arrives at C.F. McCarthy's
Surveillance video captures John O'Keefe entering the Irish pub in Canton center. Karen Read joins him a little over an hour later, at 8:51 p.m.
8:58–10:22
The drinking timeline the state built
Prosecutors used receipts and footage to argue Read had several drinks over roughly 90 minutes — the foundation of their claim she was impaired later that night.
10:54 PM
The group moves to the Waterfall Bar & Grille
Read and O'Keefe cross the street and meet up with a group that includes Boston officer Brian Albert and his wife Nicole, Jennifer and Matthew McCabe, and ATF agent Brian Higgins.
AFTER MIDNIGHT · 34 FAIRVIEW ROAD
12:00 AM
Last call — an invitation to an after-party
As the Waterfall closes, the Alberts invite the group back to 34 Fairview Road, where their son is celebrating his birthday with family and friends.
12:11 AM
Read and O'Keefe leave the bar together
Security footage shows the couple leaving the Waterfall. O'Keefe rides in the passenger seat of Read's Lexus SUV; Jennifer McCabe calls at 12:14 a.m. with directions to the house.
12:24 AM
The SUV stops in front of 34 Fairview
O'Keefe's phone data shows a navigation app closing at 12:24:26 a.m. and the phone coming to rest outside the house seconds later. Witnesses reported seeing Read's car parked out front.
12:24 AM
READ'S ACCOUNT
She says she never got out of the car
By Read's account she did not want to go to the after-party and stayed in the SUV while O'Keefe walked up to the house — he was to come back or message her once he knew whether he planned to stay. She has said that was the last time she saw him.
12:24–12:32
THE DISPUTED WINDOW
Eight minutes no one agrees on
O'Keefe's phone logs no meaningful movement after ~12:25 a.m. The state says Read backed into him with her SUV and drove off, leaving him in the snow. The defense says he walked into the house and was beaten inside, then placed on the lawn. Everything downstream of this gap is contested.
12:32 AM
PROSECUTION'S RECONSTRUCTION
The state's collision theory: a 24 mph reverse
A prosecution engineer testified that data from Read's Lexus shows it pulled forward about 34 feet, then reversed roughly 53 feet reaching nearly 24 mph — consistent, he argued, with backing into O'Keefe and projecting him several feet onto the lawn. Defense experts countered that neither the SUV's damage nor O'Keefe's injuries were consistent with a car strike at all.
12:27–12:45
McCabe's unanswered texts — and Read's voicemails
Jennifer McCabe texts O'Keefe "Here?!", "Pull behind me", "Where are u" and "Hello," none answered. Having heard nothing back after he headed toward the house, Read leaves O'Keefe a string of increasingly angry voicemails — furious at being left outside with no word — before eventually driving home without him. The voicemails were later played for the jury.
~1:00 AM
READ'S ACCOUNT
She drives to O'Keefe's home and falls asleep
Believing O'Keefe had stayed on at the after-party, Read drives to his Canton home, lets herself in and falls asleep — by her account, how the night ended for her.
1:30 AM
The party winds down
The McCabes leave 34 Fairview and drop friends home. By the accounts of those inside, O'Keefe never came in at all that night.
~2:00 AM
AT CANTON PD
Higgins badges into the police station
Brian Higgins — the ATF agent from the party, who kept a federal office inside Canton police headquarters — uses his key card to enter the station in the pre-dawn hours. He testified he went only to move his government vehicle so the lot could be plowed during the blizzard. The defense pointed to his card-swipe records and station CCTV, casting the visit as unexplained movement by one of the men it named as an alternate suspect.
2:27 AM?
DISPUTED
The "hos long to die in cold" search
Jennifer McCabe's phone recorded a search for "hos long to die in cold." The defense argued it was time-stamped 2:27 a.m. — hours before O'Keefe was found — suggesting foreknowledge; the prosecution said the search was actually run around 6:24 a.m., after the body was discovered, in a browser tab that had merely been opened at 2:27 a.m.
~5:00 AM
Read wakes to an empty house
Read wakes around 5 a.m. to find O'Keefe never came home. Alarmed, she uses his niece's phone to call his friends Jennifer McCabe and Kerry Roberts, frantic that he is missing.
~5:30 AM
The three set out to search
Read drives to meet the women; Kerry Roberts then drives the three of them — Read in the back seat, insisting they try 34 Fairview first. During the search Read points out a crack in her taillight, which both women recall her flagging that morning.
6:03 AM
O'Keefe found unresponsive on the lawn
O'Keefe is found unconscious in the snow on the front lawn of 34 Fairview Road. The women who came with Read reported spotting him from the road as they arrived.
7:59 AM
Pronounced dead at the hospital
O'Keefe is declared dead at a local hospital. A later autopsy attributes his death to blunt-impact head injuries and hypothermia, with the manner of death undetermined.
MORNING
EVIDENCE COLLECTION
A leaf blower, red Solo cups and a grocery bag
With a blizzard burying the scene, the ranking Canton officer has snow cleared from the lawn with a leaf blower and frozen blood scooped into red Solo cups borrowed from a neighbor, then carried off in a Stop & Shop paper bag that was never forensically sealed. The defense would seize on the makeshift methods as an opening for contamination or tampering.
SAT · THE INVESTIGATION BEGINS
9:08 AM
Read's blood is drawn
A hospital blood draw records an ethanol reading a toxicologist would later use to estimate Read's blood-alcohol level had been well over the legal limit hours earlier.
11:00 AM
Trooper Proctor takes over
State Police Trooper Michael Proctor and Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik arrive at Fairview Road and begin interviewing witnesses — the start of an investigation the defense would spend years attacking.
4:30 PM
Read is interviewed; her car is impounded
Proctor and Bukhenik interview Read at her parents' home and seize her Lexus. Its taillight would become the single most contested piece of physical evidence in the case.
5:30 PM
The Lexus lands in the Canton sallyport
Proctor and Bukhenik tow the seized SUV to Canton Police Department — not a State Police facility — and park it in the sallyport, the station's enclosed evidence bay. The department's own surveillance clip of the arrival was later found to be mirrored, flipping the car left-for-right, and the defense pressed hard on who had access to the vehicle while it sat there.
JAN 31
The autopsy
The medical examiner attributes O'Keefe's death to blunt-impact head injuries and hypothermia. Notably, no obvious signs of a fight are recorded — a finding both sides would later read very differently.
FEB 1
Crime-lab agents inspect the SUV
Massachusetts State Police crime-lab personnel come to the Canton sallyport to examine Read's Lexus and collect evidence from it. Of all the images of the car, only this set — taken after it had sat in the bay for three days — unmistakably shows the shattered passenger taillight, a sequence the defense cast as deeply suspicious.
FEB 1–2
Read is charged and arraigned
Read is arrested and pleads not guilty in Stoughton District Court to manslaughter, motor-vehicle homicide and leaving the scene of a fatal collision.
FEB 2
The anonymous tip that reframed the case
Within hours of the arraignment, Read's attorney receives an anonymous call alleging O'Keefe was beaten inside 34 Fairview and moved to the lawn — the seed of the defense's frame-up theory that would define the trials to come.
FEB 3–18
DISPUTED
40-plus taillight pieces surface on the lawn
The morning search of the lawn on the 29th turned up no fragments of Read's taillight. Beginning February 3 — after Proctor had seized her SUV — troopers returning to 34 Fairview recovered pieces on repeated searches through February 18, more than 40 in all, which police said the melting snow had exposed. Prosecutors offered them as proof she struck O'Keefe; the defense argued their late appearance was evidence the pieces had been planted.