Separating fact from fiction in the Karen Read Lifetime movie

Entertainment

“Accused: The Karen Read Story” crams more than three years of twists and turns into a less than 90-minute runtime, taking some liberties along the way.

By Abby Patkin

January 12, 2026 | 4:13 PM

5 minutes to read

The dust from Karen Read’s high-profile acquittal hadn’t even settled before TV networks and production companies began jockeying to bring the sensational case to screen.

Lifetime became the first to debut its scripted take on the legal saga Saturday, just months after Read walked free on murder and manslaughter charges in the death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe.

With Katie Cassidy in the lead opposite Luke Humphrey as O’Keefe, the film does an admirable job recreating the bar scenes and home surveillance footage that should be familiar sights to anyone who tuned in for Read’s 2024 mistrial and 2025 retrial. 

For the uninitiated, the state’s case against Read wove a theory about a night of bar-hopping gone horribly awry. To hear prosecutors tell it, Read’s relationship with O’Keefe had begun to sour weeks before the couple met for drinks at a bar in Canton on Jan. 28, 2022. Hours later, Read backed her SUV into O’Keefe in a drunken rage while dropping him off at an afterparty sometime after midnight, prosecutors alleged. 

Yet Read and her defense team have long maintained others are to blame for O’Keefe’s death, arguing she was framed in a law enforcement coverup. After a hung jury in 2024 and a subsequent retrial, she was found not guilty of all but a drunk driving misdemeanor. 

Lifetime’s “Accused: The Karen Read Story” crams more than three years of twists and turns into a less than 90-minute runtime, taking some liberties along the way. Here are a few examples of what the film got right, where it went wrong, and what it left out entirely. 

What “Accused: The Karen Read Story” got right:

Read’s strained relationship with O’Keefe

The movie shows some of the fractures that were forming in the couple’s relationship leading up to January 2022, including a heated argument during a trip to Aruba over New Year’s Eve in 2021. As her character does in the Lifetime flick, Read reportedly accused O’Keefe of kissing a family friend during the group vacation.  

The couple is also shown arguing at O’Keefe’s home in Canton, with much of the dialogue borrowing from texts Read and O’Keefe exchanged the day before he died. 

Read’s angry voicemails

Likewise, the movie shows Read leaving O’Keefe several angry voicemails after she dropped him off at the afterparty on Fairview Road early on Jan. 29, 2022. Those voicemails included a message in which Read screams, “John, I f***ing hate you,” though Lifetime’s adaptation swaps out some of the explicit language. 

Police used red Solo cups to collect evidence

Canton police caught flak for using red Solo cups — borrowed from a deputy police chief who lived nearby — to collect blood evidence from the snow where O’Keefe had lain unresponsive outside 34 Fairview Road. Similarly, the Lifetime movie shows police scooping red slush into plastic cups. 

Read speculated about her potential role 

The film also includes a scene Read relayed in a 2024 interview with Investigation Discovery, describing one of her earliest conversations with defense attorney David Yannetti. In an interview clip shown during her 2025 retrial, Read recalled speculating about her potential involvement in O’Keefe’s death, questioning whether she could have “clipped” her boyfriend. 

“Then you would have some element of culpability,” Yannetti purportedly replied. 

Proctor’s texts

As lead investigator Michael Proctor takes the witness stand in the Lifetime adaptation, he’s made to read a series of crude and misogynistic texts he sent family, friends, and coworkers about Read. While the messages may seem cartoonishly awful, they’re true to life — the now former Massachusetts State Police trooper admitted he called Read a “wack job c**t” and “retarded,” joked about searching for nude photos on her cellphone, and told his sister he hoped Read would kill herself. 

What “Accused: The Karen Read Story” got wrong:

First, to address the elephant in the room: Yes, the Lifetime movie did appear to show a “Free Karen Read” billboard erected above the old Boston Garden, which was torn down several decades before O’Keefe’s death. 

Police department mixup

While O’Keefe was a Boston police officer, his death in Canton fell outside the Boston Police Department’s purview. However, uniformed Boston police officers can be seen in the Lifetime movie processing evidence at the crime scene and booking Read following her arrest. 

Proctor flying solo

The film also shows Proctor interviewing Read one-on-one and looking on as officers collect evidence in Solo cups outside 34 Fairview Road. In reality, however, Proctor was joined by State Police Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik during Read’s initial interview, and he testified that he didn’t visit the crime scene until Feb. 3, 2022 — days after Canton police used Solo cups while searching through the snow. 

Turtleboy

The Lifetime movie presents a watered-down version of Turtleboy blogger Aidan Kearney, portraying him as a mild-mannered cheerleader rather than a polarizing figure who fomented intense public support for Read. Known for his confrontational reporting style, Kearney was charged with witness intimidation and even spent two months in jail after authorities accused him of harassing witnesses in Read’s case. 

For his part, Kearney maintains his conduct is protected under the First Amendment. 

What the Lifetime movie left out

O’Keefe’s niece and nephew

O’Keefe took custody of his orphaned niece and nephew after his sister and brother-in-law died just months apart. While the Lifetime film references the children, they are largely left out of the narrative — an omission that’s particularly noticeable as Read is shown calling around frantically in search of O’Keefe.

In reality, O’Keefe’s then-14-year-old niece testified that she awoke on Jan. 29, 2022, to Read shaking her and telling her O’Keefe hadn’t come home. At Read’s insistence, the teen said she called and texted her uncle, then phoned family friend Jennifer McCabe, who had attended the afterparty at 34 Fairview Road. 

O’Keefe’s niece also told jurors she overheard Read “asking what could’ve happened” and questioning, “Could I have done something?” and “Could he have gotten hit by a plow?”

Defense team pared down

In the film, Read’s defense team is whittled down to attorneys Alan Jackson and David Yannetti, excluding Elizabeth Little — who worked on both of Read’s trials — and Robert Alessi, who joined the team for the retrial. 

Dancing around Read’s third-party culprit defense

Read and her defense team infamously raised a third-party culprit defense during her first trial, arguing others were responsible for killing O’Keefe. The defense even named three witnesses they alleged were to blame: Colin Albert; his uncle, Brian Albert; and another man, Brian Higgins. 

Read’s lawyers suggested Colin Albert had violent tendencies authorities should have looked into as part of the murder investigation and that Brian Higgins had motive to harm O’Keefe after Higgins exchanged flirty texts with Read in the weeks before O’Keefe’s death. Brian Albert, who owned 34 Fairview Road at the time, “had cause” to back up his friend Higgins, defense attorneys alleged. 

However, the Lifetime film omits the flirtation with Higgins entirely and offers only vague outlines of Read’s eyebrow-raising defense.

Abby Patkin is a general assignment news reporter whose work touches on public transit, crime, health, and everything in between.