Karen Read trial: Dog bite 'expert' testifies, witness surprises by changing her story

The high-profile trial of Karen Read for the 2022 death of her boyfriend, police officer John O'Keefe, continues. As the first full week of the trial began, the defense called a series of key witnesses in an attempt to prove the 45-year-old Massachusetts woman's innocence.

A first attempt to settle the case last year ended up in the trash after five days of deliberation the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict. The trial was declared a mistrial and then rescheduled.

The prosecution alleges that Read ran over O'Keefe with his Lexus SUV and then left him out in the open during a snowstorm. He is said to have died that way. The defense, on the other hand, claims that their client is being framed by a group made up of police officers to protect the uniformed officers who, they say, actually killed O'Keefe.

One of the key moments of the day was the testimony of Kelly Dever, a Boston police officer. A witness called by the defense, as she took the stand she accused the defense attorney, Alan Jackson, of extorting her with persecuting her if she didn't lie. "I did not see anything," Dever asserted, promising that her earlier testimony, that she had seen a suspicious attitude from two officers, had been a mistake.

Another key appearance was that of Jonathan Diamandis, a friend of former Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor, lead investigator in the case who was fired for inappropriate conduct. In addition to consuming alcohol while on duty, the former agent shared "derogatory, defamatory, disparaging, and/or otherwise inappropriate" opinions about Read via chat.

The defense asked Diamandis to read some of the latter, to which he initially resisted: "These are not my words, I'm not really comfortable reading these." The messages said, among other insults, that Read was a "whack job." The witness said, however, that his friend had never talked about framing Read, as the defense claims.