Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe’s ex-girlfriend has kindled a friendship with his accused killer Karen Read as she believes the allegations against the defendant don’t add up.
NBC’s ‘The Night of the Nor’easter’ Dateline special Friday night highlighted O’Keefe’s previous girlfriend Lindsay Higgins and Read’s friendship.
Higgins and O’Keefe met through mutual friends in 2018 and dated for about six months.
“He was like a magnet,” Higgins said of O’Keefe. “Everybody wanted to be around him and hang out with him. He was just very friendly, very generous, always the first to pick up a bill or help somebody out.”
Higgins recounted checking into an Airbnb in Florida, with her phone “ringing nonstop” before she learned through a friend that O’Keefe had died the morning of Jan. 29, 2022.
Read, 44, of Mansfield, is accused of striking O’Keefe, her boyfriend of two years and a 16-year Boston Police officer, with her car and leaving him to die in a major snowstorm on the front lawn of 34 Fairview Rd., in Canton — a property that O’Keefe’s BPD colleague Brian Albert owned at the time.
After attending O’Keefe’s funeral and following developments on the case, Higgins said she received copies of court documents to understand more about what happened.
“I read everything … and I’m like ‘Nothing is making sense here,’” Higgins said
“I’m thinking of all of these allegations that she attacked him,” she added. “I’m just picturing it, I’m playing the scene in my head over and over again. … Nothing was adding up.”
Defense attorneys counter that outside actors killed O’Keefe and conspired with state and local police to frame Read for his murder.
Read has pleaded not guilty and a trial on the charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence and leaving the scene of a fatal accident ended in mistrial when jurors indicated they were deadlocked.
Her attorneys are appealing to have only the manslaughter charge remain in the fresh trial in January.
Higgins said she wrote a message to Read on Facebook, introducing herself, noting how she used to date O’Keefe, believes Read didn’t kill O’Keefe, and that she supports her.
“I’ve thought about you a lot over the last year and my heart breaks for you,” read part of the message included on the Dateline special. “I’ve tried to put myself in your shoes and can’t even imagine the pain, sadness, loneliness, anger & abandonment you must feel. I just want to give you the biggest hug!”
“She wrote me back,” Higgins said of Read. “Ever since then, we’ve become closer and closer.”
In an interview with Dateline, Read recounted how she dropped O’Keefe off at 34 Fairview Rd. in Canton for a house party after a night of drinking with his police friends. She said she saw him enter the home while waiting outside in her SUV in case O’Keefe came back and told her to go in.
“He didn’t come back,” Read said in the interview, “and it pissed me off, because one, I didn’t want to be there, and two, I had to go to the bathroom.”
Read says she eventually decided to leave and when she returned to O’Keefe’s home, she called him roughly 50 times but he never called back. Hours later, Read woke up around 4 a.m. and O’Keefe wasn’t home.
“I didn’t know what the hell happened,” Read said. “How did the night end up like this?”
After frantically finding O’Keefe unconscious outside 34 Fairview Rd., around 6 a.m., Read detailed how she was “put under a psychiatric watch just two vestibules down from where they’re working on John’s body” at Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton.
Medical personnel pronounced O’Keefe dead around 7:50 that morning, with a medical examiner later ruling the cause of death as “blunt impact injuries of the head and hypothermia.”
“Then eventually, just before noon, my father comes into the room that I’m in. And I said, ‘Dad … how is he? And he said, ‘He’s gone. John’s gone, Karen.’ And I just collapsed on the floor.”
Higgins highlighted how she’s attended Read’s hearings. Her first appearance to support Read came in May 2023.
“I tried to save his life,” Read told reporters on the courthouse steps after that hearing. “I tried to save his life at 6 in the morning. I was covered in his blood. I was the only one trying to save his life.”
