Karen Read, the Massachusetts woman accused of mowing her cop boyfriend down with her SUV, has broken her silence — as she detailed what she claims unfolded the night he was found dead.

Read, 44, dressed in a blue dress with red and black floral patterns, spoke out for the first time for an interview with ABC’s “20/20” — which is set to air Friday night — following the January 2022 death of her Boston police officer beau, John O’Keefe.

The alleged killer, who is accused of running O’Keefe, 46, down and leaving him for dead in a blizzard, professed her innocence and accused law enforcement of a cover-up tied to his death, according to a clip from the full interview.

Read, who admitted the pair had been arguing prior, recalled the moment she and two friends laid eyes on O’Keefe lying on the ground the night of Jan. 28, 2022.

“I jumped out the passenger side, and I fell into the street. His eyes were shut, and he had spots of blood in different areas on his face, and he was still — not stiff, but still,” Read said.  

“It was cold. I felt cold, but I didn’t feel dangerously cold and it was just an odd feeling to know that ‘I’m OK. I’m not dying, but he’s here with me, and he’s dying, and I can’t warm him up.’”

She said she noticed her cracked tail light when she went to look for O’Keefe that early morning, and spoke about it to the two women who accompanied her on the drive. 

“I said, I just hit my car on top of everything, but I didn’t look at the damage,” Read said.

Read said she spent that night under psychiatric care, and when she was released the next day, she and her dad went to see O’Keefe’s family at his house. 

“I showed my dad my light,” Read said. “It was cracked.”

She said that O’Keefe’s mother seemed to keep her distance. 

What to know about the Karen Read murder case

• Karen Read, 44, was charged with second-degree murder for allegedly mowing down her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, as she was dropping him off to meet friends in Canton, Mass., on Jan. 29, 2022.
• The night of O’Keefe’s death, the couple had been out on a bar crawl, with Read allegedly consuming seven drinks in just 90 minutes, according to reports.
• Prosecutors claim that after Read drunkenly ran over her boyfriend, she drove off and left O’Keefe to die outside as a snowstorm was set to sweep in.
• Read’s lawyers argued she was framed in a sweeping law enforcement cover-up and that O’Keefe actually died after getting into an altercation with his officer friends.
• On July 1, 2024, Judge Beverly Cannone declared a mistrial in the case since the jury was not able to reach a unanimous verdict after five days of deliberations.
• On April 22, 2025, Read will stand trial for the second time, facing the same charges despite her lawyers’ failed plea attempt to the top Mass. court to drop the murder and hit-and-run charges.
• Read faced up to life in prison if she had been convicted on the top count of murder.

“They had pulled into the driveway before me,” Read said. “I was presuming she saw my cracked taillight and was thinking, ‘Did you hit my son?’

She added that she “could sense from her that she was looking at me very warily.”

“When we were driving home, I said to my father, ‘I gotta get an attorney.’”

Meanwhile, Read also alleged investigators were covering up the true nature of O’Keefe’s death.

Read and her boyfriend had been bar-hopping earlier that night before she dropped him off outside the home of a fellow cop, where his body was later found, her defense team has previously argued.

Her lawyers have claimed O’Keefe was killed inside the home and that those involved chose to frame her because she was a “convenient outsider.”

Asked why there would be a possible cover-up, Read told 20/20: “Because he’s dead.”

ABC’s Matt Guttman, who interviewed Read for the special, pressed her as to whether she could have possibly hit him due to allegations that she was intoxicated. 

“Is it possible that you might have hit him unwittingly, in your admittedly very large SUV?” Guttman asked.

“No, not possible,” Read replied.

She also denied suggestions that she and O’Keefe’s relationship was on the fritz.

According to prosecutors, Read’s blood alcohol content was between .07 and .08 when she was tested at the hospital, about nine hours after she and O’Keefe had left the Waterfall bar.

Guttman also interviewed Read’s attorney Alan Jackson.

Jackson said that the fact that Read called him several times after she went home, and left volatile messages, is further evidence that she did not kill him. 

Guttman pressed him, saying perhaps she did it as a “clever” strategy, to which Jackson, laughingly replied, “I have never met anyone that clever.”

The interview comes after Read’s sensational two-month criminal trial ended in July when the judge declared a mistrial after jurors said they were deadlocked. 

The dramatic proceedings sparked a rabid turnout of Read supporters fascinated by the possibility that she could be a scapegoat in a clandestine law enforcement conspiracy — and caused chaos in the town of Dedham when they descended upon the County Superior Court for the trial.

O’Keefe’s family and friends said they were harassed by her supporters, bizarrely referred to them as “cop killers,” and said they had been “brainwashed.” 

The intensity reached a boiling point, and they needed an escort, the family said.

The accused killer oddly compared her backers to Vietnam War protesters on Monday, urging some who gathered on the side of a Dedham highway to continue their efforts as she faces a retrial next year.

“Thank you. I hope I meet all of you one day, and I don’t know you but I love you,” Read said.

“You’re brave. You would’ve protested the Vietnam War and ended it. And this is the modern equivalent to that, so thank you all,” she said in footage obtained by WCVB.

Nearly 60,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese were killed during the conflict.

Read, who has pleaded not guilty, is now awaiting a Jan. 27 retrial on charges of second-degree murder, and manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence and leaving the scene of a fatal accident.