Kerry Roberts, a close friend of John O’Keefe’s who was with Karen Read and Jennifer McCabe the morning they found him dead in a snowstorm, admitted during cross-examination Wednesday that she did not hear the defendant ask McCabe to make a Google search about hypothermia after they found the body.

“Hos long to die in cold” is the infamous Google search, typo included, at the heart of the 45-year-old Read’s claim that she is being framed by Massachusetts police for the death of her Boston cop boyfriend three years ago.

Roberts, when asked in 2022 in front of a grand jury that would indict Read on a second-degree murder charge, testified that she heard Read ask McCabe to “Google hypothermia” while they were praying near a police car as paramedics lifted O’Keefe out of the snow.

“You painted a very, very detailed picture in front of the grand jury, didn’t you,” defense attorney Alan Jackson asked, pointing to a transcript of Roberts’ testimony behind closed doors in April 2022.

Defense attorney Alan Jackson questions witness Kerry Roberts about her grand jury testimony during the Karen Read trial in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., on Wednesday, April 23, 2025. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)

She also became close with another witness, McCabe, after O’Keefe’s death. The two women were with Read when they found him on the morning of Jan. 29, 2022, outside the home of McCabe’s in-laws, Brian and Nicole Albert. The Alberts had invited a group of people over, including Read and O’Keefe, for an after-party on the night he died.

Read’s defense has argued that she never struck O’Keefe and that something else killed him, evidence of which they allege has been concealed due to the Alberts’ ties to law enforcement.

Like O’Keefe, Albert was a Boston police officer. His brother was a member of the Canton Police Department, which was first to respond to the scene. He has another brother in politics, and a family friend, Michael Proctor, was the lead investigator.

Proctor got fired last month as a result of an internal investigation stemming from text messages he sent about the case that were revealed during Read’s first trial last year. Canton police were cleared of allegations of a conspiracy in an independent audit released three weeks ago.

“Yes,” Roberts replied.

The timing of the Google search, “Hos (sic) long to die in cold,” has been a key dispute between prosecutors, who say it came after O’Keefe’s body was discovered, and the defense, which argues that it was made hours beforehand, before the witnesses should have known he was missing or dead under the commonwealth’s timeline.

Digital forensics experts are expected to delve into phone data about the search for both sides.

The trial is expected to last six to eight weeks after taking more than two weeks to seat a jury.

Read could face a maximum of life in prison if convicted of the top charge, second-degree murder.