Updated 4/28/25 3:12 p.m.

DEDHAM, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — Day 5 of testimony has concluded in the Karen Read murder retrial at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass.

Read is accused of hitting her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, with her SUV and leaving him to die in the snow on Jan. 29, 2022. Read’s defense team has claimed she is innocent and is being framed.

U.S. Supreme Court Ruling

On Monday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Read’s appeal to have charges against her dropped. The jury in the initial trial said they reached unanimous verdicts on the second-degree murder and leaving the scene of personal injury and death charges, so her defense team hoped they could have them tossed on the grounds of double jeopardy. The retrial will continue with all three charges against Read.

Digital Forensics Expert Takes Stand

First on the stand on Monday morning was Ian Whiffin, a digital forensics examiner for Cellebrite. Whiffin testified about the timeline of Google searches on Jennifer McCabe’s phone, who was one of the people who helped Read search for O’Keefe.

The time at which McCabe searched "hos [sic] long to die in cold?" was a focal point during her testimony in the initial trial, as the defense pointed to phone data registering a timestamp hours before O’Keefe’s body was found. Whiffin put together a presentation of McCabe’s phone data, asserting that the search was not made until after the body was found.

Whiffin testified that McCabe had been using the internet to Google information about Franklin girls hockey in the early hours of Jan. 29, 2022. Since she used that same tab to look up "hos [sic] long to die in cold?" at 6:24 a.m., Whiffin said the phone data registered the initial timestamp, despite no data about the search until hours later.

“If you remove [the tab] from focus, it’s essentially going into the background, but it’s still open in its current state just in the background, versus if you close it completely and have to reload it later on,” said Whiffin. “In this particular state, the time stamp doesn’t get changed. The time stamp remains 2:27:40 [a.m.] as it was earlier.”

Later on during his testimony, Whiffin turned to another presentation he had put together on O’Keefe’s cell phone data in the early hours of Jan. 29, 2022. He showed the court a map with an aerial view of 34 Fairview Road in Canton, Mass., where O’Keefe’s body was found on the front lawn.

“If I take all of the location data between 25 minutes after midnight until 6:00 a.m., only looking at the records that report 10 meters of accuracy or better, then typically they all focus around that same location at the front of the yard [near] where the flagpole is found,” said Whiffin.

There were red dots on the map indicating the most accurate location data points, all of which were centered in the yard. Whiffin said it was “a reasonable assumption” that the high-frequency data is consistent with where they ultimately found O’Keefe’s phone. That would go against the defense’s claim that O’Keefe went inside the house at 34 Fairview Road.

“Based on the location data, the [Apple Health] data and the research that I did in the testing, I believe it is more likely that the device was in a vehicle travelling on a road going up an incline, versus the location data being incorrect and the person being walking up physical stairs,” said Whiffin.

Whiffin also testified that a phone underneath a person’s body, exposed to a snowstorm, or in a building, can impact location accuracy.

Digital Forensics Expert Cross-Examination

Defense attorney Robert Alessi handled the cross-examination of Whiffin. He questioned the cell phone data timeline that Whiffen put together, focusing mainly on the text messages O’Keefe received from McCabe and Brian Higgins after midnight on Jan. 29, 2022.

Most of Alessi’s questions tried to highlight missing information from his timeline, like who sent certain texts and which of those texts O’Keefe read.

Alessi was still conducting his cross-examination when Judge Beverly Cannone dismissed the jury for the day. . Both the prosecution and defense returned to the courtroom after a lunch break for a hearing on the defense’s crash reconstruction expert witnesses from ARCCA.

ARCCA Witnesses Voir Dire Hearing

In pretrial hearings, the prosecution had accused attorney Alan Jackson of misrepresenting the defense’s relationship with two ARCCA crash reconstruction expert witnesses. ARCCA’s Daniel Wolfe and Andrew Rentschler were first introduced to the case by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which was looking into how the case was handled by authorities.

Before the retrial got underway, Judge Cannone ruled Jackson could stay on the case, but ordered the ARCCA witnesses to return for more questioning before they were able to testify in the retrial. The defense was also barred from mentioning ARCCA in opening statements.

Wolfe was called to the stand first on Monday afternoon. It was a testy exchange in the courtroom, as Brennan questioned him about when he received clarification from the Department of Justice that he could “work with the defense on this case.”

“Not work with. We could be called on the defense’s behalf to testify, and for that matter, the Commonwealth could’ve also contacted us and utilized us at trial if they should please,” Wolfe answered.

The defense objected to Brennan’s next question, where he referred to Wolfe as “an advocate for the defense." Judge Cannone sustained, telling Brennan to rephrase the question.

“Do you feel like you’re an advocate for the defense?” said Brennan.

“No, sir,” said Wolfe.

“Are you sure about that?” said Brennan.

“Sir, I’m on the science and analysis that I’ve done. That’s the side that I’m on,” said Wolfe.

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