Commonwealth v. Read — Trial ArchiveRichard Green
Testimony Impact
Richard Green is a digital forensics expert retained by the defense who testified in Trial 1 Day 29. He analyzed cell phone and digital data central to the defense's theory, including John O'Keefe's location data, Jennifer McCabe's Google search history, and deleted call records on McCabe's phone. His testimony placed the McCabe search at 2:27 a.m. — hours before O'Keefe's body was officially discovered — and concluded that call records on McCabe's phone had been manually deleted.
Notable Quotes From The Record
“We found a Google search that happened — first of all, the search was 'how's long to die in cold,' and it happened at or before 2:27 a.m.”
Core defense claim about the timing of McCabe's search, placing it hours before O'Keefe's body was officially discovered.
“That that would have happened at or before January 29th, 2022 at 2:27:40 a.m. in the morning.”
Green's formal expert opinion on the search timing, delivered to a reasonable degree of certainty.
“Yeah, so we found no live data. So 100% of them have been deleted.”
Establishes that every call record on McCabe's phone before 8:50 a.m. was deleted while all later calls were preserved intact.
“No sir. I know what the individual words mean, but in relation to digital forensics I'm not familiar with that term.”
Green rejects the concept of 'spontaneous deletion' that the prosecution had previously used to explain the missing records.
“Those would have been manually deleted.”
Green's opinion that the deletions were not automatic — someone deliberately removed the call records.
“That is correct.”
Green's direct admission undermines reliability of his other conclusions
“Yeah — and I know that's different from my affidavit from about a year and a half ago, in all fairness, but that's entirely different.”
Green acknowledges his sworn affidavit contained an incorrect conclusion about the 'how long to digest food' search
Key Moments
- Green testified that Jennifer McCabe's Google search for 'how long to die in cold' occurred at or before 2:27:40 a.m. on January 29, 2022 — a conclusion that, if accepted, would place the search hours before O'Keefe's body was found and before any public knowledge of his condition.
- Green established that 100% of call records on McCabe's phone before 8:50 a.m. had been deleted, while all calls after 8:59 a.m. remained intact, and that the deletions were manual rather than automatic — directly contradicting the prosecution's earlier 'spontaneous deletion' explanation.
- On cross-examination, Green was forced to acknowledge that his sworn affidavit from roughly eighteen months earlier contained an incorrect conclusion about a 'how long to digest food' search, and that subsequent testing had proven him wrong — an admission that the prosecution used to challenge the reliability of his other findings.
- Prosecution established that two other digital forensics experts — Hyde and Whiffin — both disagreed with Green's interpretation of the McCabe search timestamp, and that Green lacked Cellebrite certifications despite his analysis relying heavily on Cellebrite data.