Karen Read Is Suing the Massachusetts State Police

By

Angelina Chapin,

a features writer for The Cut who covers gender, crime, and culture.

She was previously an enterprise reporter at HuffPost, where she traveled to the border and reported on Trump's family separation policy. She has also written for The Guardian and MEL magazine.

Karen Read, who was acquitted of murder charges last year after the 2022 death of her police-officer boyfriend, John O’Keefe, filed a lawsuit claiming her case was rife with misconduct and negligence. Read is suing the Massachusetts State Police and the town of Canton for allegedly mishandling the investigation into O’Keefe’s death and fostering a “culture of bigotry, misogyny, systemic failures, and institutional rot at the very core of both organizations.” The lawsuit claims police failed to properly search the home outside of which O’Keefe was found.