Karen Read in Norfolk Superior Court. / Photo by Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
The following is an excerpt from New York Times best-selling author Dave Wedge’s new true-crime book Blizzard of Lies: Karen Read, John O’Keefe, and the Shocking Unsolved Murder in Cop Town, USA, out now from BenBella Books.
Mike Camerano, whose kids were friends with Kayley and Patrick, drove over to John’s house.
Kayley and Camerano’s daughter had both received acceptance letters to Bishop Feehan High School, a private Catholic school, that morning. Camerano brought his daughter over to John’s that evening so she and Kayley could celebrate their acceptance and hang out for the night. Patrick was at a friend’s house for a sleepover.
Camerano and John had a beer and decided to hit C.F. McCarthy’s to celebrate. They called another drinking buddy, Curt Roberts—Kerry Roberts’s husband.
“I wanted to stay in, because there was a storm coming,” Curt Roberts later said. “And then [Mike Camerano] . . . called me a ‘pussy,’ and I can’t let that happen.”
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John and Camerano drove to C.F. McCarthy’s where they were joined by Roberts. John is seen on surveillance video entering the bar at 7:37 PM. Karen is seen on video arriving at 8:51 PM.
The four hung out at the bar for an hour or so. Roberts had three or four beers while Karen started pounding Tito’s vodka and sodas—her drink of choice. But the drinks were weak.
She needed more booze.
“The drinks that they were pouring me at McCarthy’s, which was where I consumed most of the alcohol, was the weakest vodka tonic,” Karen said in an interview with Investigation Discovery. “It tasted just like all soda water with lime, not that I need it to be a martini, but it might have a splash of vodka in it.”
She complained to John that the drinks were weak.
“Order a shot of vodka and pour it in,” he told her.
“So each drink was being counted as a double,” she remembered. “I would get a vodka tonic, and then I would pour a shot into it. The guys that we were with ordered a round of shots and gave me one that I didn’t drink, but I poured it in my drink.”
Karen got her first drink at 8:58 PM. A second at 9:15 PM. A third at 9:20 PM. A fourth at 9:33 PM. At 9:57 PM, she gets a fifth, plus a shot. At 10:22 pm, the bartender hands her another drink.
She and John had apparently put the fight from the morning behind them. They are seen on surveillance video being affectionate and laughing together.
Camerano said he didn’t see any arguing or fighting, nor did Curt Roberts, who made an “Irish goodbye” and left quietly without telling anyone. A short time later, Mike Camerano got a call from his wife that his son was hit in the face with a hockey stick, so he, too, had to leave.
After Camerano and Curt Roberts left C.F. McCarthy’s, John and Karen decided to head over to the Waterfall, a bar just down Canton’s main street. Karen and John are seen on video leaving McCarthy’s at 10:40 PM. Karen is carrying a drink in her hand as they exit. They are then seen on video arriving at the Waterfall at 10:54 PM, where they met up with a large group that included Brian Albert and Jen McCabe.
The snow was just starting to fall, shrouding the picturesque downtown in a blanket of white. Downtown Canton is a quintessential New England hamlet, straight out of the Saturday Evening Post. When snow falls during a big storm, the streets are silent. The falling flakes, bouncing off the streetlights, can be hypnotic. John and Karen walked through the serenity of the gentle snowfall hand in hand.
They had been at each other’s throats earlier that day, but at that moment, they were happy.
A short time before they left C.F. McCarthy’s, Brian Albert swung his car into the parking lot behind the Waterfall and walked in. He spotted his wife at a high-top table in the center of the pub, along with their daughter, Kaitlin; his brother Chris and his wife, Julie; and his brother-in-law Matt McCabe and his wife, Jen. Jen McCabe was the sister of Brian Albert’s wife.
A live band played cover songs and the drinks flowed. Everyone was in a jovial mood, getting their drinks in before the storm started outside.
A half hour later—around 11 PM—ATF agent Brian Higgins, a friend of Brian Albert, showed up.
“I knew John O’Keefe, but not well,” Brian Albert would later say. “I had met him two times prior to that night. I knew of him and I knew some things about him. I knew he was a Boston police officer.”
What he knew about John was that his family had experienced devastating losses.
“I’d heard his name mentioned. I knew he had a couple horrible tragedies in his family and that he stepped up to take care of his niece and nephew when they tragically lost their parents,” Albert said. “Although I didn’t know him well, I considered him to be a friend. Our relationship was cordial. I considered him to be someone I could hang out with and have a good time with.”
He had only met Karen once, a week earlier, at The Hillside Pub in Canton. They didn’t talk much but he knew Karen was John’s girlfriend.
When John and Karen walked in, they walked over to Matt and Jen McCabe and started chatting with them. Karen knew Jen from seeing her at sports and school events. They weren’t close friends but they saw each other pretty regularly at school drop-offs and pickups.
John was a bit intimidated by Brian Albert, as John was a patrolman and Albert was a sergeant who was pretty well known in the department. Brian was also an alpha dog—a serious dude with a serious air about him and a reputation that preceded him.
When Brian struck up a conversation with John, John was more than eager to talk. Not surprisingly, they talked about work. With both living in Canton, there were few people around who understood the daily dangers and challenges faced by big-city cops, so it was refreshing for John to be able to have a frank chat with a fellow BPD officer.
“We had some conversation,” Brian Albert recalled. “We were talking mostly about work. He let me know that the sergeant in his unit was leaving or had been transferred. He was jokingly saying that I should get a job over where he works.”
“Everyone was in a great mood. It seemed like a great night,” he added.
Karina Kolokithas and her husband, Nicholas, were among the revelers there that night. Karina described Karen and John as “quite lovey-dovey” at the bar that night. It was her first time meeting Karen.
“She started by saying how much she admired him, how much he did for the children, just how she looked up to him for that,” Karina Kolokithas said in court testimony. “How he unconditionally puts all his time and effort into the kids, how she admired him for that, and how she also wished that some of the family members would step up and help out a little bit more, because he took all the burden on himself.”
She recalled John going over to Karen and throwing his arm around her in loving fashion. Karina’s husband, Nicholas, also noticed how happy John and Karen seemed that night.
“They were affectionate toward each other, loving toward each other, to the point where my wife even made a comment, ‘Why are you not like that with me?’” Nicholas testified in court.
At 11:32 PM, Higgins sent Karen an ominous text.
“Ummmmmm,” he wrote. “Well.”
The band wrapped up their set around midnight, and people in their group started to leave. As people grabbed their coats, Chris Albert suggested they go across the street to his sub shop, D & E Pizza & Subs.
“I’ll whip up some pizzas,” he said.
No one was really hungry. Brian and Nicole Albert mentioned that it was their son’s twenty-third birthday, and there was a party going on back at their house on Fairview Road. As Brian, Nicole, and Kaitlin got ready to leave, they invited the group to stop by. Before leaving, Brian Albert and Brian Higgins shadowboxed and grappled playfully, like two teenagers pretending to fight.
At one point, Higgins pointed toward John and Karen. A few minutes later, Jen McCabe invited John and Karen to the after-party.
“You’re coming with me,” Jen McCabe said, putting her arm around Karen.
“Where are we going?” Karen asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jen McCabe said. “It’ll be a surprise.”
John had lived in Canton for several years, but this was the first time he had been invited to hang out with Brian Albert and his friends. He was a bit intimidated, but that night he felt like he belonged and was welcome. He was excited to go hang out with the Alberts and their crew.
Karen was not. She’d had at least seven drinks and was having digestive issues from her Crohn’s disease. She was tired, not feeling well, and wanted to go home.
“Let’s just go check it out,” John told her.
Karen reluctantly agreed. She walked out of the Waterfall at 12:10 AM with Jen McCabe.
Still inside the bar, John grabbed a glass and took a slug. He picked up the glass and walked outside where he met Karen.
Back at John’s house, Kayley’s friend had left around midnight and Kayley went to bed, alone in the house.
John and Karen walked together to her Lexus, which was parked on Washington Street, and they drove toward 34 Fairview Road.
It was a decision that would change countless lives.
Dave Wedge has previously authored seven books, including the New York Times bestsellers 12: The Inside Story of Tom Brady’s Fight for Redemption, written with Casey Sherman, and The Last Days of John Lennon, with James Patterson and Sherman. His 2015 book, Boston Strong, was adapted for the film Patriots Day, starring Mark Wahlberg.
