Floats and a marching band parading down High Street in front of Dedham Superior Court on June 16 would not have been out of place with the jovial atmosphere of the mostly pink-clad crowd loosely corralled behind barricades awaiting a verdict in the Karen Read murder retrial.
Read, 45, is accused of killing her boyfriend, Braintree native and Boston police officer John O’Keefe outside a Canton home in January 2022. Read’s first trial on second-degree murder and other charges in O’Keefe’s death ended in a mistrial in July.
The jury began deliberating in Read‘s second murder trial on Friday, June 13.
More: A broken taillight, a dead cop, a bombshell admission: Karen Read trial in hands of jury
While out in force Monday, police kept mostly to themselves, with some Dedham officers on bikes gathered casually by the library near the hub of side streets spoked with orange and white barrels to prevent parking.
Across from the courthouse. a handful of state police troopers on the street side of the barricades talked to each other in a small circle a few feet out from sidewalks that became increasingly impassable nearing lunchtime Monday with reporters delivering their noontime updates encircled by onlookers.
Hundreds gather outside Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Massachsuetts, to wait for a verdict in the Karen Read retrial on Monday, June 16, 2025.
A pedestrian in the midst of the Pink Sea on High Street who had stepped on to the street to continue towards Washington told the troopers he had to walk around the barriers to get by.
“Yeah, it’s brutal,” is all one trooper said.
While the trial and the daily crowd it continues to draw may be a headache for residents and passers by, it has been a clear, albeit morbid, boon to businesses in the immediate area like the Dedham House of Pizza on Washington Street.
Read’s presence there was inescapable on Monday, with the restaurant’s large door-facing flatscreen was set to Court TV, and Court TV was focused on the trial. The business knows its customers, as the majority of the dozen or so people both ordering and eating there in the lead-up to lunchtime wore the signature Karen Read pink on its own or pink with slogans and images supporting her, and the people seated who weren’t in pink, it should be noted, were all with those who were.
In the time it takes to eat a slice of pepperoni pizza, it could be safely said that perhaps the only thing more on the mind of the courthouse customers than the trial was their place inline for the bathroom key.
In speaking to people outside the courthouse, some of whom had attended both trials on a nearly daily basis, the feeling of a good-time vibe better suited to a carnival than court was not what continued to call them to Dedham – and what will continue to until a verdict is reached.
Debbie Kelly, of Canton, is among those who has followed the case from the start. She, like many other Read supporters, said she believes the investigation and the investigators were both flawed.
Debbie Kelly, of Canton, waves to Karen Read as she leaves the Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Massachusetts, to wait for a verdict in murder retrial on Monday, June 16, 2025.
“It was clear from the beginning they were going on with it,” she said. “The investigation was not thorough enough.”
While specific details and allegations of the case can be dissected and endlessly argued, Kelly said she believes the reason she and others have devoted so much of their time to supporting Read is not complicated.”
“It may be obvious or sound simple, but I think myself and others just don’t think she is guilty, and what they’ve done to her just isn’t right,” she said.
This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Jurors deliberate verdict in Karen Read second-degree murder retrial