The prosecution has argued Read struck her boyfriend while performing a three-point turn, causing “catastrophic head injuries” and leaving him for dead.

Points of contention included a broken tail light on Read’s car, witness claims that Read said “I hit him” after his body was found, and whether O’Keefe’s injuries are consistent with being run over.

Read’s defence is that the entire prosecution case is based on lies by officers sticking together to protect themselves.

Her lawyers say the pieces of tail light and the hair were planted during the hours before the crime scene was secured. They suggested O’Keefe might have been beaten up by a federal agent he was with that night, who had flirted with Read over texts, and that the men panicked before trying to cover up the crime.

Since the trial began in April, a sea of people adorned in pink “Free Karen Read” T-shirts have descended on the town of Dedham, Massachusetts, where she is on trial, to protest her innocence.

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Each day, armed with placards, flags and pom-poms, they fuel themselves with freshly grilled hot dogs and set up camp outside the judge’s 200-foot buffer zone from the court.

On her way into court, Read has been continually met with the adulation usually reserved for Hollywood movie stars.

The cause célèbre has fired up supporters across the world, with one British couple spending £3000 ($5700) to travel from Manchester to attend the trial in person.

After making the 5000-kilometre journey across the Atlantic, Tom Murphy and Jill Boothman met Read outside court.

Mothers have turned up with their home-schooled children to educate them about the justice system, while others have attended with their pet budgies and dogs dressed in pink outfits.

Those who have protested Read’s innocence outside court include Liz Erk, who said she felt “compelled” to get involved after reading about the case.

“I felt like Karen Read could be me,” the 47-year-old single parent said.

“It’s easy to brush something off and say, ‘T hat’s crazy, this doesn’t happen’,” Erk added.

“You don’t want to believe that it happens, but I think once people begin to look at the details that it’s really hard to ignore.”

As well as showing up in person, Read’s supporters have pored over court documents and evidence, sharing their findings with 45,000 others in a dedicated Facebook group.

The defence has argued Read was framed by the “well-connected” Albert family and Michael Proctor, the lead investigator and Massachusetts state trooper, who is a family friend.

On the stand, Proctor was confronted with a series of texts in which he described Read as a “wack job” and joked about not finding nude photographs of her while going through her phone.

In one text to his sister, Proctor said that he wished Read would “kill herself”.

Read’s lawyer, Alan Jackson, said in court earlier this month: “You weren’t so much as objectively investigating her as objectifying her in those moments.”

Proctor denied he was looking for nude images and apologised for the language used in the messages.

Read’s army of sleuths has raised over $US340,000 ($511,000) selling everything from bum bags to candles to help fund her legal team led by Jackson, who represented Kevin Spacey when he was cleared on sexual assault charges in 2019.

Campaigners have organised a billboard professing Read’s innocence with a QR code to donate cash.

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Aidan Kearney, a blogger who goes by the moniker Turtle Boy, has posted hundreds of videos speculating about the case.

Kearney, who filmed himself confronting witnesses, was arrested in October and indicted on more than 15 felony charges involving witness intimidation and conspiracy.

Last year, he organised a rolling rally, in which hundreds of supporters went to the address where O’Keefe was found, to the last bar they had been at and to the homes of different witnesses.

Nick Rocco, a 29-year-old hairdresser, first heard about Read’s case in April 2023 through one of Kearney’s videos.

Now, he says he and his wife Jenna Rocco are “key players in the movement”.

He founded the Justice For Officer John O’Keefe & Karen Read Facebook page and has raised close to $200,000 by organising giveaways, Halloween parties and selling bracelets.

“It’s absolutely insane. The movement just keeps getting bigger and bigger,” he said.

As well as manning the online page and fundraising, the father of three goes to court every Monday and Tuesday – his days off – to support Read.

He said she is “very appreciative” of the support.

“I didn’t know her before this at all, I had no idea who she was, and then it came to a point where, like, you know, she trusted me, she saw what I was doing for her,” he added.

He is “not a true crime person”, he said. “I just felt bad for this woman. I felt bad. I wanted to help her.”

Responding to claims he is promoting a conspiracy theory, he said: “Put it this way, we’ve seen many conspiracies and I don’t want to be political, but we’ve seen many conspiracies that have come true.”

Jon Silveira is the only one of the nine administrators on the Facebook page who knew Read before her arrest.

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The pair grew up together, and she and O’Keefe had visited him in Florida three months before her partner’s death.

Silviera, 44, who works offshore on an oil tanker, has been supporting Read in court throughout the trial.

The movement is “massive”, he said, with people taking time off work just to stand outside in the rain to protest.

“When you pull up in the morning, seeing everybody dressed in pink with the signs, it’s really refreshing, it’s really motivating,” he said.

Before O’Keefe’s death, Canton was like any small town, quiet and “family-oriented”, Rocco said.

Now it is “very much divided. You have the ‘Karen Read is guilty’ and then you have the ‘Karen Read is innocent’,” he said.

With the 12-strong jury now deciding Read’s fate, whatever the outcome, it’s going to be a rocky ride yet for that once peaceful town.

The Telegraph, London