Jennifer McCabe took the witness stand for a third day in Karen Read‘s murder trial in Norfolk Superior Court on Friday, where she continued to spar with defense attorney Alan Jackson over details of the discovery of John O’Keefe’s body in front of her sister’s Canton home. They also disputed the nature of text messages that Jackson asserted show collusion between her and other witnesses.
McCabe was with Read and another woman, Kerry Roberts, when they searched for O’Keefe during a snowy early morning on Jan. 29, 2022, and found his snow-covered body on the front lawn of the Fairview Road home.
Read had dropped off O’Keefe, who was her boyfriend and a Boston police officer, at the home the previous night after they went out drinking with friends, some of whom, including McCabe, were gathering at the home for an after-party. The home was owned at the time by Brian Albert, a now-retired Boston police officer and McCabe‘s brother-in-law.
Read is accused of backing her SUV into O’Keefe and leaving him for dead on the front lawn. Her attorneys, however, say she is being framed and that O’Keefe went into the home and was fatally beaten and possibly bitten by a dog before his body was placed outside.
A jury was deadlocked during an initial trial last summer. Prosecutors are trying the case again.
In a testy exchange on Friday, Jackson pressed McCabe with questions about why she chose not to go into her sister’s house after O’Keefe’s body was found outside. McCabe said she tried calling her sister, Nicole, but she did not answer.
“They were sound asleep,’’ McCabe said of her sister and brother-in-law.
“Did you think your sister might have been in peril?’’ Jackson asked. “Did you think to go inside the house and check that they’re OK?’’
“I had no reason to think that they weren’t OK,’’ McCabe said.
“You had no reason to believe they weren’t OK?’’ Jackson said. “A man was dead or dying on their lawn and your sister’s not answering the phone. And nobody is coming out to the chaos of Karen Read screaming on the front lawn. You didn’t think there was some reason to believe they could have been in peril?’’
“I didn’t because your client was screaming she hit him,’’ McCabe said. “She had a cracked taillight.’’
“You had solved the crime right then and there,’’ Jackson said in jest.
McCabe said O’Keefe did not come into the house the previous night, “so I had no concern for anyone’s safety inside the house.’’
“You knew better,’’’ Jackson said. “You knew [your sister] wasn’t in peril. You knew Brian Albert wasn’t in peril. You weren’t worried at all about them, were you?’’
“I was not worried at all because something happened on the front lawn that had nothing to do with anything inside that house,’’ McCabe said.
Jackson also grilled McCabe over a series of text messages in a group chat with her family in the aftermath of O’Keefe’s death. He asked McCabe if she and her family were “coordinating’’ their stories and conducting “damage control’’ in the days after O’Keefe’s death, which McCabe denied.
“We were all still trying to figure out what had happened,’’ McCabe said.
McCabe identified one such chat between herself and Nicole Albert, her sister, in the hours after O’Keefe’s death.
Some of those texts were later placed on the monitor for jurors to view.
“Kerry [Roberts] talked to cops and kept simple,’’ McCabe wrote to her sister at 7:54 p.m. on Jan. 29, 2022.
Later during her testimony on Friday, McCabe told special prosecutor Hank Brennan that when she told her sister that Roberts had “kept it simple’’ when she spoke to police, she meant Roberts “had a long day and had been drinking some wine, so she just made it’’ concise.
During his questioning, Jackson turned to a later thread McCabe had on Feb. 1, 2022, with her husband, Matt McCabe, as well as Brian and Nicole Albert, in which Brian said he’d heard a TV news station was at a Canton sub shop owned by Chris Albert, another relative.
“Ask Chris to ask some questions,’’ Matt McCabe responded in the text group. “Tell them the guy never went into the house.’’
Jennifer McCabe said her husband was suggesting that Chris Albert ask questions of the reporters to see what they knew, since everyone was trying to figure out what happened.
Brennan also asked McCabe about her texts with friends and relatives. And he read aloud text messages that McCabe had sent to O’Keefe’s phone around 5 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, asking him to “please answer’’ and telling him that “Karen is worried. We need to find you.’’
Later in the afternoon on Jan. 29, 2022, Brennan said, Kerry Roberts texted McCabe, “I can’t stop seeing him in the snow. Jen, this is awful.’’ McCabe later texted Roberts, “every time I close my eyes it’s all I see. I feel like I’m going to vomit.’’
Brennan asked if the texts reflected a plot by McCabe and Roberts to “collude’’ with one another, and she said they did not.
Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com.
Nick Stoico can be reached at nick.stoico@globe.com.