A law enforcement agent testified that Karen Read sent him “flirty” text messages before she allegedly killed her boyfriend.
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent Brian Higgins told the jury that Ms Read sent him a message in January 2022 in which she told him “You’re hot.”
“Are you serious or messing with me?” Mr Higgins replied. “No I’m serious,” Ms Read said in her message.
Ms Read is accused of hitting and killing her Boston police officer boyfriend John O’Keefe with her SUV and leaving him to die in the snow outside a Massachusetts home in 2022.
Her defense claims she has been framed for the killing and that it involves a supposed law enforcement cover-up. Her lawyers have suggested Mr Higgins as one of three possible suspects for the killing rather than Ms Read.
Mr Higgins told the court that after watching a New England Patriot game at O’Keefe’s house in January 2022 Ms Read “planted a kiss” on him, reported CBS Boston.
“Not like a friend,” Mr Higgins testified. “Lip to lip.”
In another text message, Ms Read told Mr Higgins that her relationship with O’Keefe had been made more difficult by his looking after his niece and nephew.
In one message, Mr Higgins told Ms Read that he thought he had been happy in her relationship with O’Keefe.
“I was. But things have deteriorated,” she replied.
Mr Higgins told the court that he was “not proud of those text messages.”
“It is what it is, I take responsibility for them. But John was a friend at the same time ... If they were at the end of their relationship, they were at the end of their relationship,” he said.
“But I wasn’t going to have somebody utilize me and weaponize me against someone that I liked. It was just a weird experience.”
