Friday morning began like any other for the 18-person jury picked to serve for Karen Read’s second trial.
They were filed into Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, where the judge, lawyers and Read herself were waiting, and settled into their seats near the witness stand. But the jurors were quickly sent out and led into a cream-colored bus that brought them to 34 Fairview Road in Canton.
The blue home on Fairview Road is at the very center of the case: it’s the place Read’s boyfriend, John O’Keefe, was found on Jan. 29, 2022. It’s inarguable that the single-family home is the scene of the crime, though what crime exactly depends on who you ask.
As the prosecution tells it, Read backed her SUV into O’Keefe outside the home in a blizzard, knocking him backward and rendering him incapacitated after a blow to the head. Read’s lawyers have presented a different story. They say O’Keefe went in the home, where he was beaten up. They say those inside planted his body on the front lawn.
Read herself didn’t attend the view, though she received permission to do so. A trio of prosecutors and two of Read’s lawyers boarded the bus with the jury, as did Judge Beverly Cannone.
At the view, neither side was allowed to speak directly to the jury, but they could point specific things out to the group of men and women. Reporters were not allowed within 100 yards of the jury — a full football field away — instead watching the view from down the street. The street was blocked off by Massachusetts State Police on either side of the home, but only court officers interacted with the jury directly.
Special prosecutor Hank Brennan and attorney David Yannetti, who is representing Read, both appeared to make note of several landmarks at the scene to the jury, who stood in a semicircle facing the lawyers and the judge for much of the visit.
Jurors also got a look at Read’s SUV, though its right rear taillight, the condition of which is a hotly contested issue in the case, has since been removed.
The home was owned by Brian Albert, a Boston Police officer like O’Keefe, and his family on the night O’Keefe was killed. Albert has since sold it.
The house sits about halfway down a quiet, residential street in Canton, with train tracks running behind it.
A neighbor out taking a walk Friday morning stopped to observe the view with reporters. He said he has lived in the neighborhood for decades, but was fast asleep around 6 a.m. on the morning of O’Keefe’s death, when he was discovered.
“It’s bad news,” said Jim Malver, adding he never knew the Alberts when they lived in town.
While the conditions on Friday morning were nothing like the January night O’Keefe died, jurors can use whatever observations they made at the scene as evidence when it comes time for them to deliberate.
The jury was at the scene for about 15 minutes before piling back into the bus and heading back to the Dedham courthouse. There, they heard from two more witnesses before adjourning for the week.
Witness testimony in the trial resumes Monday at 9 a.m.
Karen Read murder case
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