'America's happiest murder defendant' Karen Read spotted getting cozy with her married lawyer

By Germania Rodriguez Poleo, Chief U.S. Reporter For Dailymail.Com 13:44 03 Jul 2024, updated 16:10 03 Jul 2024

Karen Read was seen getting cozy with her married defense lawyer as a jury deliberated on whether she was guilty of murdering her cop boyfriend.

Read, 44, and her lawyer Alan Jackson, 59, were filmed cuddling up to each other outside the upmarket steakhouse Smith & Wollensky in Boston on June 27.

At the time of their intimate clinch, jurors were deliberating over whether Read murdered her boyfriend John O'Keefe who she is alleged to have struck with a car in the Canton area of Greater Boston in January 2022. A mistrial was declared Monday after jurors failed to reach a verdict.

The short clip shared on social media shows Read smiling as Jackson grabs her by the chest. The person who took the video said it looked 'wrong and inappropriate.'

They told The New York Post: 'It was just her attorney kinda I don't know what you would call it. It looked inappropriate for an attorney-client type situation.'

Jackson is a prominent Los Angeles attorney who secured disgraced actor Kevin Spacey's acquittal of sexual assault charges. He also represented disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein in his LA rape trial.

Jackson married LA deputy district attorney Lisa Kassabian in 2011. 

In an interview last year the California lawyer explained how he became 'intrigued' by Read's case.

'Once I heard the full story of John's death and saw some of the evidence, including the injuries on his right arm, I knew something was terribly wrong. I wanted to help,' he told Boston.com. 'I got into this business to right wrongs and there was no way I was going to walk away from this case.'

The judge ruling a mistrial on Monday marked the end of a contentious nine-week court battle where Read alleged that she was the victim of a wide-ranging plot to frame her. 

Prosecutors countered that Read ran over O'Keefe to end their toxic relationship before leaving him for dead in the snow.

On the evening of O'Keefe's death, he and Read had been drinking with a group of friends at the Waterfall Bar and Grill in Canton, around 14 miles south of Boston, and were invited to his friend Brian Albert's home for an afterparty.

Read, who prosecutors say drank several alcoholic drinks beforehand, decided to drop her boyfriend at the afterparty before she went to his home - that O'Keefe shared with his orphaned niece and nephew - to sleep at around 1am. 

Court documents revealed that the couple had been bitterly arguing for weeks beforehand, and on the night O'Keefe died, Read left him a voicemail calling him a 'f****** loser', and telling him: 'John, I f****** hate you.'

The couple had been dating for two years at the time of O'Keefe's death. He had been serving on the Boston Police Department for 16 years. 

According to Read's version of events, she woke up at 4am to find that O'Keefe never returned home, leading her to frantically drive out to try and find him.

After finding O'Keefe's body outside Albert's home, which party attendees claimed he never entered, first responders on the scene alleged that Read repeatedly told them she hit him while in a panicked state.

Vehicle data also found that Read reversed her SUV for 62 feet at 24mph near to Albert's home. O'Keefe's cause of death was listed as blunt force trauma and hypothermia, with pieces of Read's taillight found around his body, prosecutors said.

In his closing argument on Tuesday, Norfolk County Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally said the claims that Read was framed was little more than 'rampant speculation.'

Lally also pointed to hair and DNA from O'Keefe found on the rear end of Read's SUV.

The defense countered that the taillight was actually broken by Read when she left in a panic to find O'Keefe when he never returned home.

This included security video shown at trial showing Read clipping O'Keefe's vehicle as she backed out of her home to search for him.

Read claimed that attendees at the afterparty beat him to death, and her attorneys presented phone data that showed O'Keefe's phone climbed dozens of steps at the time he was allegedly struck.

Her attorney, Alan Jackson, claimed that these steps could have been the basement of Albert's home. Albert was never charged with any wrongdoing.

Read's attorneys added that although first responders claimed Read spoke of hitting O'Keefe at the scene, they claimed this evidence was falsely given at a later date and not said at the time.

A forensic engineer was brought in to evaluate the case, who testified that if O'Keefe had been struck by a vehicle at over 20mph he would expect to see more severe injuries.

When her trial began, Read received a slew of support from true crime fans who camped outside the courthouse with signs reading 'Free Karen Read.'

Many took to wearing pink as a show of support for Read, leading a judge to issue an order barring any clothing or accessories that could be perceived as encouraging, and banning them from coming within 200 feet of the courthouse.

As the trial made national headlines, some observers were turned off by Read's apparent flippant attitude during the proceedings, leading her to be nicknamed 'America's happiest murder defendant.'

She was seen winking to cameras and snacking inside the courthouse, which angered some critics.