John O'Keefe's niece was the first witness to take the stand at Karen Read's trial Wednesday morning.

The niece, who WBZ-TV will not identify by name, is now a high school junior. She was around 14 years old when John O'Keefe died. She has a younger brother who testified during the first trial but did not testify during the retrial.

O'Keefe's niece is his sister Kristen's daughter. Kristen died of a brain tumor in 2013, and her husband died shortly after of a heart attack. John O'Keefe then became the legal guardian for his niece and nephew, and moved in with them in Canton, Massachusetts.

No cameras, laptops, or phones were allowed in the courtroom during her testimony. WBZ's Kristina Rex was in the courtroom and took these handwritten notes.

Direct Examination: Questioned by ADA Laura McLaughlin

Niece testifies on her relationship with Karen Read

• "It was…kind of dependent on the day"
• "Some days we were more on good standards and other days we weren't on good standards at all and she would like favor my brother."
• "She would not ignore me but it felt like a coldness."
• Brother and Read: "they were pretty close."

Niece testifies about John O'Keefe and Karen Read's relationship 

• Lighthearted in the beginning
• It changed by end of 2021/beginning of 2022
• "They were fighting a lot."
• "When I saw [the fights] it was normally at my house" or on the phone
• When they would fight → KR "was very like angry, upset" and louder than O'Keefe

Niece testifies about Aruba vacation that took place over New Year's 2021-2022

• Read & O'Keefe had an argument in niece and nephew's hotel room
• O'Keefe checked on them and told nephew to get off iPad; Read defended nephew then "started yelling about like how he had kissed someone else… and she had witnessed it. It was really loud…she was very upset."

Niece testifies that the relationship changed after the Aruba trip 

• January 2022, O'Keefe and Read in the kitchen fighting while niece was in the room next door
• "Their relationship was good but it had like run its course," she says O'Keefe said to Read
• "I don't remember exactly what she said but she was upset by it"
• "He asked her to leave the house. She did not want to leave the house."
• O'Keefe saw niece in the other room and got angry that she witnessed the fight, asked Read "more aggressively" to leave then went upstairs to bedroom
• Read followed him upstairs, banged on the door
• In later days/weeks, "I could tell that there was tension," niece says
• "They were cold towards each other"
• A couple of times a week – tension & arguing
• "I heard the defendant on the phone and she was saying that me and my brother were really worried" – on one occasion when she was trying to get JOK to come home when he had left the house for a drive, niece says she wasn't actually worried.

Niece testified about the night of O'Keefe's death

• She had a rule that she had to charge her phone in O'Keefe's room at bedtime
• After her friend left before midnight she was home alone and put her phone in O'Keefe's room and went to bed
• Read came into her room at 4:30 AM shaking her awake… "told me that my uncle never came home…She was very frantic"
• Read asked niece to use her phone to call O'Keefe – no answer
• Read asked for phone numbers she didn't have including Jen McCabe
• Niece remembers things Karen said on the phone but not necessarily to whom because there were several calls, like:
• What could have happened
• "Could I have done something?"
• "Could he have been hit by a plow?"
• Here, her memory had to be refreshed with prior testimony from trial 1
• "Maybe I like… hit him"
• Niece says she had never seen Read like this
• Read came back to house with Jen McCabe and Kerry Roberts
• Jen checked on niece and was "level headed"
• Karen did not interact with niece
• At this point, niece was very nervous she says
• KR came back later that morning after the hospital with her Dad and brother 
• "She said to me and my grandfather that she felt like she was living in a nightmare."

Cross Examination: Questioned by David Yannetti

Niece testifies more about the nature of her relationship with Karen Read

• Yannetti asks, "When Karen Read spent all this time with you, you didn't call her the defendant right?" No, the niece says. "You called her Karen?" Yes
• Things Karen Read would do with niece
• Nails done once a month
• Hair done at salon
• Read attended basketball games? "Possibly but so did my uncle." Softball? Soccer? Yes.
• Helped straighten niece's hair? Maybe once a week
• Planned birthdays? 2020 scavenger hunt, yes
• You would stay with Karen at her house in Mansfield? Yes.

Yannetti questions niece on Aruba incident

• Read took kids for an Italian dinner and ice cream – niece doesn't remember
• "O'Keefe was in the room with you the whole night with KR and nephew?" Yannetti asks. She doesn't remember… she just remembers after their fight that he fell asleep in niece's bed for a few hours
• "Is it your testimony that JJ rang in the new year [asleep]?" Yannetti asks. Niece doesn't remember… "I had just gotten dumped by my 8th grade boyfriend, so it was a bit of a crisis." Chuckles heard throughout the courtroom.

Niece testifies about the relationship after Aruba

• "There was never any physical contact between the two of them, correct?" Yannetti asks. "Correct."
• Yannetti asks if Read continued to spend a lot of time at the house with the kids. "It was the same amount of time but it wasn't the same," niece says

Following the niece's testimony, Massachusetts State Trooper Zachary Clark took the stand. 

In:
• Karen Read
• Canton News