By Dakin Andone, Jean Casarez and Lauren del Valle

(CNN) — A key witness in the retrial of Karen Read returned to the stand Wednesday for a second day of testimony, as she recounts the hours leading up to the death of Read’s boyfriend John O’Keefe – and the moment the off-duty Boston police officer’s body was found lying in the snow.

Jennifer McCabe, a self-described “typical” small-town mother to four daughters, is a central figure – to both the prosecution and the defense – in the case against Read, who is accused of striking O’Keefe with her vehicle and leaving him to die outside a Canton, Massachusetts, home in January 2022.

McCabe was present for nearly every key moment the night of O’Keefe’s death: first, the gathering of family and friends at a local bar ahead of a snowstorm; then, the after-party at McCabe’s sister’s home; and finally, the search for O’Keefe early the following morning, when his body was found on her sister’s lawn.

For prosecutors, McCabe offers a firsthand account of these events, and a window into Read’s “hysterical” behavior that morning. But defense attorneys are sure to use McCabe on cross-examination to raise the specter of wrongdoing by individuals within her sister’s home at 34 Fairview Road.

Read’s defense claims she is the victim of a vast cover-up, and they have accused off-duty law enforcement officers inside the home of killing O’Keefe and framing Read. Her first trial ended with a deadlocked jury. She has again pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and leaving the scene of a collision resulting in death.

No one other than Read has been charged in O’Keefe’s death. Indeed, McCabe testified Tuesday that O’Keefe never entered the home, though she saw what she believed to be Read’s SUV parked outside. When McCabe texted O’Keefe to ask whether he and Read were coming inside, he never responded, she said.

“He never texted me again.”

A ‘celebratory’ night out

The commonwealth called McCabe to the stand Tuesday, having her testify to the events of January 28, 2022, as a looming storm dashed her usual weekend plans: ferrying her four athlete girls from one game to the next.

That evening, McCabe and her husband met McCabe’s sister, Nicole Albert, and other friends and family at The Waterfall Bar and Grille in Canton. More people joined as the night went on, including McCabe’s brother-in-law and a friend of his.

O’Keefe and Read arrived around 11 p.m., McCabe said, and she was happy to see them. O’Keefe was a “very good friend” who had taken custody of his niece and nephew after the deaths of his sister and brother-in-law. O’Keefe’s niece often came over to McCabe’s home for sleepovers, McCabe said.

Around midnight, the group moved to the Albert home at 34 Fairview Road, McCabe said. She spoke with O’Keefe twice by phone as he sought directions there, and she later saw a dark SUV, believed to be Read’s, parked outside.

McCabe testified she saw the vehicle several times, and that it moved, first from directly in front of the home’s front door, and then up near a flagpole in the Alberts’ yard. It’s the prosecution’s theory that, after pulling up to the front of the house, Read drove the car forward 35 feet, put the car in reverse and accelerated backward about 70 feet, hitting O’Keefe, who had gotten out of the vehicle.

McCabe said O’Keefe never responded to her final text, and the vehicle eventually left.

The search for John O’Keefe

McCabe and her husband went home around 1:30 a.m., she said. Before she went to bed, she used her iPhone to make several Google searches related to her daughters’ sports teams.

Around 5 a.m., McCabe was woken by a phone call from O’Keefe’s niece, McCabe said. She could hear Read screaming in the background: According to McCabe, Read said she and O’Keefe had gotten into a fight, and that she left him at The Waterfall and he never came home.

McCabe told Read she had seen her vehicle outside her sister’s home hours earlier, McCabe said.

“And then she told me she didn’t remember being there,” McCabe said, “and then she went on to say – she started saying, ‘Could I have hit him? Did I hit him?’” The defendant also told McCabe that she had cracked her taillight, McCabe said.

Around 5:30 a.m., Read arrived at McCabe’s home, she said. At the same time, another woman, Kerry Roberts – whom McCabe only vaguely knew - also arrived. While Read wanted to go to the home on Fairview Road, the three women instead went to O’Keefe’s home to look for him.

McCabe took off her shoes before entering the home, because O’Keefe would be upset if they tracked snow inside, she said. But Read did not take her shoes off, which McCabe thought “was strange.”

The group then decided to take Roberts’ car to 34 Fairview Road. Around this time, Roberts pointed out Read’s broken taillight, concerned someone would catch their coat on it, McCabe said.

On the way to the house, Read was “continuously screaming,” McCabe said, describing her behavior as a “bit erratic.” The weather by this time was getting worse, with poor visibility because of the snow, McCabe said.

As they pulled up to 34 Fairview, Read began screaming something like, “There he is, let me out,” and got out of the vehicle, McCabe said. The two other women followed, McCabe said, and as she walked up to the flagpole, she said she saw Roberts removing the snow from O’Keefe’s face.

“I was frozen. I was shocked,” McCabe said. “I couldn’t believe that was him just lying there.”

She called 911, she said. “But I think I knew in that moment that John … that John, you know, was dead.”

‘I hit him, I hit him, I hit him’

In court, prosecutors played a recording of McCabe’s 911 call, in which she told operators the women were doing CPR on O’Keefe. A woman is heard, frantic, in the background of the call.

First responders arrived, and McCabe spoke to police. In the meantime, she said, Read was “doing a lot of screaming, a lot of repetitive, ‘Is he dead? Is he dead? Is he dead? Could I have hit him? Did I hit him?”

In the back of a police vehicle, McCabe tried to comfort Read, she said: They held hands and prayed. As EMTs moved O’Keefe to the ambulance, Read got out of the car and began “yelling and pulling on me to Google ‘hypothermia’ and ‘how long it takes for somebody to die in the cold,’” McCabe said. Because of the weather and McCabe’s multiple sclerosis, she had lost sensation in her fingers, making it difficult to type on her phone.

It was the first time McCabe made such a search, she said – an effort by the prosecution to rebut in advance what will likely be a central focus of cross-examination.

While McCabe testified Read directed her to make that search upon finding the body, the defense has asserted McCabe searched the phrase hours earlier. They have cited cellphone data placing the search “hos (sic) long to die in the cold” at 2:27 a.m., long before O’Keefe’s body was found. The prosecution called an expert witness this week who testified that data is incorrect.

McCabe also recalled Read telling a first responder, “I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.” McCabe was “startled” by that statement, she said, because she believed the defendant was “just talking crazy.”

Defense highlights witness ties to police

On cross-examination, attorney Alan Jackson worked to solicit testimony that would support the defense’s theory of a cover-up.

Jackson initially highlighted McCabe’s own numerous familial ties with members of law enforcement, including her brother-in-law Brian Albert, a Boston police officer who owned the home at 34 Fairview Road.

Jackson pressed McCabe to acknowledge that after O’Keefe’s body was found, law enforcement did not separate potential witnesses before taking their statements. McCabe testified she saw no reason for the individuals, gathered inside the Albert home, to be separated, noting most of them were family.

Later that day, when McCabe was interviewed by Massachusetts State Police at her home, Brian Albert was present, she said.

Five phone calls in 10 minutes

Jackson also questioned McCabe about an encounter she had in April 2023 with members of an unnamed law enforcement agency that was neither Canton police nor Massachusetts State Police. At the time, there was a federal probe into the handling of the case.

McCabe confirmed that, when the officers contacted her, she told them she needed 10 minutes to prepare. The officers came to her home for a formal interview, which McCabe eventually suspended, she said, because she felt uncomfortable.

Before they left, the officers asked whether McCabe had spoken to anyone in the 10 minutes before they arrived, and McCabe testified that she told them she called her husband and Roberts.

McCabe intended to ask Roberts if she had been contacted by the same officers, but Jackson accused McCabe of working to coordinate her account with Roberts – an allegation McCabe denied. The two women, she said, have been bonded by this experience, and “call each other about everything.”

When those officers asked McCabe if she called anyone else, she said no. But she acknowledged on the stand Wednesday she had called other people, including her witness advocate at the district attorney’s office, O’Keefe’s mother and Brian Albert.

McCabe later called the officers back to inform them she had “forgotten” to mention the other phone calls, she said.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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