PLYMOUTH, Mass. (Court TV) — Hitting “reply all” by accident can be embarrassing — but now it’s created a new legal headache for Karen Read.
Karen Read talks with her defense team before the start of court and the jury is seated during her retrial in Norfolk Superior Court, Wednesday, June 11, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)
Read stood trial twice on charges that she murdered her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe. The first trial ended with a deadlocked jury; Read was convicted of driving under the influence at her second trial but acquitted of all other charges. While prosecutors said that Read hit O’Keefe with her car and left him to die in the snow outside of a friend’s house, Read’s defense maintained that the people inside that house killed O’Keefe and tried to frame her.
While the criminal case is over, two civil cases are progressing: O’Keefe’s family has filed a lawsuit against Read and the bars where the couple was drinking before the victim’s death, while Read has filed her own lawsuit against those whom she says are the true killers, as well as the police who investigated the case.
MORE | Dueling Karen Read lawsuits result in confusion, delays
On Dec. 16, 2025, one of Read’s attorneys responded to an email chain with the O’Keefe family’s counsel and BCC-ed Read on the thread. That email denied allegations from the O’Keefe family that Read’s team “leaked evidence that now appears inconsistent with the under oath answer signed by Ms. Read.”
Less than an hour after that email was sent, Read responded to the email. But when she did so, she hit “reply all.”
In a motion Read’s attorneys filed with the court, they maintain that Read did not realize that she had been BCC-ed on the initial email and thought she was replying only to her own attorneys. Immediately after realizing the error, her team reached out to the plaintiffs, asking them to delete the message and disregard it.
MORE | Judge weighing whether Karen Read’s accidental email can be used
But the O’Keefe family’s attorneys say they don’t want to disregard it, and they shouldn’t have to, because they maintain it contains “factual allegations that are relevant” to the case and that they read it before realizing that it had been sent inadvertently.
Read’s attorneys are now asking the Court to intervene and demand that the errant email be deleted and not brought into the record or used as evidence, saying that the email is shielded by attorney-client privilege. In their response, the O’Keefe family maintains privilege was waived when Read hit “reply all.”
The contents of the email that Karen sent were not included with any of the filings; a footnote offered to make it available for the judge to review in camera, meaning in his chambers and out of the view of cameras.
