A key witness in the Karen Read murder trial broke down in tears on the stand Wednesday, recounting alleged harassment she and her family have received throughout the case.
Colin Albert is one of three people who the defense, in pre-trial hearings, has accused of beating John O’Keefe to death inside 34 Fairview Road in Canton in the early morning of Jan. 29, 2022.
But Allison McCabe testified during Day 12 of the trial that there was no backing to the defense’s claim.
“Colin wasn’t at the house when John was there … I drove him home,” McCabe said. “People are harassing him saying that he was at the house when it’s not true.”
Read, 44, of Mansfield, faces charges of second-degree murder, motor vehicle manslaughter and leaving the scene of a collision causing the death of O’Keefe, a 16-year Boston Police officer and her boyfriend of about two years when he died at age 46.
Prosecutors say that after a night out drinking, Read and O’Keefe argued, and she killed him by backing her Lexus SUV into him at high speed, leaving him to die in the cold during a major snowstorm.
The defense has developed a third-party killer theory and has alleged a massive frame-up job used to ensnare their client. Brian Albert and Brian Higgins, a friend of Albert’s who allegedly had a romantic connection with Read, are the two others the defense has targeted.
Albert, Colin’s uncle and a retired Boston Police sergeant, had owned 34 Fairview Road at the time of the incident with his wife Nicole. He has testified that O’Keefe, who he considered a “co-worker,” never entered the home that night.
Emotion poured out when McCabe confirmed investigators questioned her last year after the defense and supporters alleged Colin Albert played a part in O’Keefe’s death.
McCabe also testified she provided investigators screenshots of messages she and Albert exchanged regarding the ride home, between 11:54 p.m. and 12:10 a.m., when Albert was picked up.
“What if anything else has your family or Colin Albert and his family undergone over the course of … this case,” prosecutor Adam Lally asked McCabe to which she responded, “Harassment.”
“Harassment, by whom,” Lally asked. “Bloggers, people online,” McCabe responded.
“People showing up at our house, people emailing my school,” McCabe said as she started to shed tears. “Just like a lot of … harassment.”
McCabe is the daughter of Matthew and Jennifer McCabe, Brian Albert’s sister-in-law and one of the three women who flagged down Canton Police Officer Steven Saraf around 6 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, outside 34 Fairview Road where O’Keefe’s body was found.
Jennifer McCabe was joined by Kerry Roberts and Read, herself. Other local officers and Canton Fire Department paramedics, who testified in the first week, would come soon after.
An FBI examiner has found that Jennifer McCabe made a Google search for “ho[w] long to die in cold” before O’Keefe’s body was found.
Allison McCabe, who just finished her sophom*ore year at Ithaca College, said she got back to her parents’ home around 12:30 a.m., a time that defense attorney David Yannetti disputed as he said data from locator app Life360 indicated she had traveled between the McCabes’ and Canton High School several times between 12:26 a.m. and 1:32 a.m.
Day 12 came to an end with Colin Albert, who just wrapped his sophom*ore year at Bridgewater State, on the stand after testifying.
Albert testified that he went to 34 Fairview Road to celebrate his cousin Brian Albert Jr.’s 23rd birthday around 10:30 p.m. after drinking beers at his friend Mike’s house for a few hours. He recalled going only to the bathroom at his cousin’s and not upstairs or downstairs, where the defense alleges the attack occurred.
Albert said he knew of O’Keefe as he and his family lived two houses down and recalled O’Keefe being “a nice guy, a good guy.”
“I would drive by every now and then,” Albert said of O’Keefe. “He would be outside and I would wave, he’d wave back. That’s pretty much it.”
Albert said he was aware Read had been dating O’Keefe but he never saw the two inside or outside of 34 Fairview Road that night or morning.
Dog bite theory
Playing into the defense’s theory is Chloe, a 70-pound German shepherd mix the Alberts owned for “six or seven” years before re-homing the dog just months after O’Keefe died.
Defense attorneys have suggested that wounds on O’Keefe’s arms could be dog bites and that the dog — who both Albert and his wife said was rehomed after biting a woman — participated in an attack on O’Keefe in the home’s basem*nt.
But during Wednesday’s full-day session, Teri Kun, a forensic scientist at Davis Veterinary Lab in California, said testing of DNA swabs pulled from a shirt O’Keefe wore that night revealed “absolutely no canine DNA.”
Kun explained that pig DNA, however, did show up during the testing, indicating it may have come from food.
“That would be speculation on my part,” she said. “It is a sensitive test, I can tell you.”
More on ‘black blob’
Ryan Nagel, brother of Julie Nagel who testified Tuesday she saw a “black blob” on the front lawn while leaving 34 Fairview Road in the early morning, also testified Wednesday.
He rehashed how a black SUV was parked in front of the truck he and his friend Ricky D’Antuono and girlfriend at the time, Heather Maxon, had been driving, with the SUV pulling forward twice while he waited for his sister to come out.
That’s an inconsistency from Julie Nagel’s testimony when she said Tuesday the SUV was not in front of the home at the time he talked to her brother and decided to go back inside to continue partying.
Federal probe alert
Ryan Nagel made the first direct reference of the federal probe into the murder investigation during the trial. He said he remembered talking with the feds last May about the case.
Nagel said he did not notice any damage to the SUV nor a man on the front lawn as snow started to coat the property.
“I’m not there to look at a car and be like ‘Oh, is there damage to that vehicle?’ It’s 12:30 at night,” he said. “I obviously had a few drinks. I’m not looking for that. I just noticed the brake lights were on.”
