How the Karen Read Case Turned a Neighborhood Bar Into a True Crime Landmark

The cheeseburger arrived just as the woman fled. It was the last Sunday night in July at the Waterfall Bar & Grille, and I was about to eat when a woman suddenly bolted from her seat, abandoning her drink. Blue lights flashed outside. Now the cops were here, and the woman was not.A few minutes earlier, the Canton Center watering hole had been quiet and uneventful. In one corner, sunburned golfers recounted their day on the links. Simone Biles, halfway through the Olympics, tumbled across a muted overhead television. The bartender, who’d grown up in Natick and had worked here for two years, made a raspberry-lime rickey. Then came the police, the woman’s hasty exit, and a reminder that now, at the Waterfall, even routine emergency calls carry a different kind of weight.

Far from nefarious, it turned out someone had rushed in off the street asking the staff to call 911. An older woman had fallen in the parking lot, the person said, and needed immediate medical attention. But when first responders showed up, they triggered something in a customer across the bar, who declared, “I can’t be here,” and abruptly left. “I was almost hesitant to call the cops,” the bartender said, piecing together the night’s events. “Because of everything that’s been going on with this place.”

If you’d never heard of the Waterfall and randomly walked into the bar, you’d have no reason to think “everything going on with the place” refers to the region’s most sensational murder trial in years. Nestled inside a pond-side condo complex in Canton’s picturesque downtown, the charming mom-and-pop business is situated beside its namesake waterfall. There’s mulch out front and a dentist’s office next door. Sure, there’s Keno and whiskey inside, but the bar is as unthreatening as a church bake sale. The bar’s over-30 championship softball team is named after a popular pet fish: They’re the Waterfall Bar & Grille Guppies.

In other words, nothing about the Waterfall screams “hot crime name of the summer,” which is how 20/20 recently billed Karen Read, the Mansfield woman accused of murdering her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe. On Friday night, January 28, 2022, Read and O’Keefe arrived here from C.F. McCarthy’s, an Irish gastropub diagonally across the street, to meet up with a group of O’Keefe’s friends. They had some laughs and drinks, then drove about 2 miles to an after-party at a fellow policeman’s home, where O’Keefe ended up dead on the officer’s lawn.

Over the past two years, the case details have been exhaustively documented: the couple’s arrival at 10:54 p.m., captured by security cameras; the one hour and 17 minutes they clocked inside; the subsequent discovery of O’Keefe’s body—making the Waterfall the last place the officer was seen on camera alive. Before long, state prosecutors accused Read of hitting O’Keefe with her SUV outside the after-party, first arresting her on manslaughter charges, then for second-degree murder. Then the chaos really began.

A prevailing counterhypothesis of what happened to O’Keefe soon emerged, courtesy of a tip received by Read’s defense attorney. Maybe O’Keefe had entered the after-party, where he’d been assaulted, attacked by a dog, or both, and maybe he’d been left wounded outside in the cold, where his injuries could circumstantially be tied to a vehicular accident. Maybe his girlfriend had been framed, and in order to give that theory any credence, at least one of Read and O’Keefe’s Waterfall cohorts would likely have been an accomplice. Suddenly, the bar had a supporting role in a labyrinthine whodunit.

To put it mildly, the Waterfall has become an unwilling player in a true-crime narrative, its name recurring in every retelling of the case. For Read and many people involved, the drawn-out legal saga has exposed deeply embarrassing details, from mortifying text messages to salacious rumors, leaving no aspect unexamined—except, perhaps, for the unassuming character of the Waterfall itself.

The bar’s role is both pivotal and peripheral—a crucial point on the timeline, but not the crime scene itself. One of its bartenders was called to testify at this summer’s trial, and now the Waterfall has been named, along with Read and C.F. McCarthy’s, in a wrongful death lawsuit brought by O’Keefe’s family that argues the bar is culpable for over-serving Read before she caused O’Keefe’s death, adding legal and financial burden to the local business.

Given that, it’s probably safe to assume everyone at the Waterfall would love to move past that horrible winter night. But with Read’s new trial now set for April 1, 2025 following an initial mistrial, it doesn’t seem likely anytime soon: In the wake of all the national attention, the bar has quietly become a destination for true-crime hobbyists and Read supporters. Some patrons, for instance, have scribbled “Free Karen Read” on menus, the bartender told me. “The other big one is people will come in and be like, ‘Where’d she sit?’”

Despite its newfound notoriety, life at the Waterfall goes on. On summer weekend afternoons, dads in shorts knock back hard seltzers. Weeknights find the regulars, baseball caps pulled low, hunched over bottled beers as they watch silent sports broadcasts. Fridays and Saturdays bring out South Shore professionals looking to blow off steam with live music and cold drinks.

Through the windows, blue police lights flashed as paramedics guided a stretcher toward a waiting ambulance. That January night cast a shadow that still lingers, O’Keefe’s death now woven permanently into the bar’s story. Between that tragedy and the pending lawsuit, it’s hard not to wonder: What will become of the Waterfall?

The Waterfall is the kind of place that’s easy to miss. You can punch its Washington Street address into Waze, be looking for the place, and easily drive right past. When you finally see it, set back in a residential building, the first thing you notice is its striped awnings and namesake sign, rendered in chubby, red-and-white cursive. A plaque outside the main entrance bids, “Céad Míle Fáilte,” an Irish Gaelic phrase someone has additionally translated, in the tiny text of a labeler: “100 thousand welcomes.” I took this symbolically to mean: “Come on in, but stop asking.”

Gerard “Gerry” and Brigid Meehan, longtime Canton residents, opened the Waterfall Bar & Grille in November 2014. They aimed to create a space that was Irish, as they told Boston Voyager in 2017, “without overtly being an ‘Irish pub.’” An early advertisement described the menu offering as “fresh casual food with a bit of an Irish twist.” What that meant in practice: Guinness paraphernalia, Hibernian décor accents, and menu items like “Irish sushi” (corned beef and mashed potato rolled in cabbage) and “mashed potato stuffed sliders,” alongside more-traditional pub fare. In 2015, the Boston Globe dining section praised the Waterfall’s PEI mussels appetizer as “almost three dozen of the pristine bivalves in a lemon and white-wine broth.” That review still hangs on the wall.

Over its 10-year existence, the Waterfall’s most conspicuous feature was being harmlessly benign—it hosted flower-arranging classes and holiday-sweater parties. The décor could best be described as modern farmhouse meets Irish Americana, with neutral walls, wood floors, and American flags planted out front. Heavy window blinds descend as closing time approaches. It’s the kind of place where friends meet before Xfinity Center concerts. Three summers ago, a Canton couple even held a gender-reveal party on the outside patio, pouring pink drinks from an opaque tumbler into shot glasses while spectators wooed.

The first time I went to the Waterfall, it was a Saturday in June, and the Read trial was heading down its final stretch. The previous week in court had been particularly memorable: two days of testimony from the lead investigator on the case, Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor, who’d texted friends and family crude things about the defendant in the immediate aftermath of O’Keefe’s death, including: “She’s a wack job [expletive]. Yes, she’s a babe. Weird Fall River accent, though. No ass”; “She’s fucked”; “Hopefully she kills herself.”

Even Governor Maura Healey weighed in: “I am disgusted.” (Proctor remains on unpaid leave as he awaits the outcome of an internal affairs investigation.)

The Waterfall, for its part, seemed unfazed. It was one of those beautiful summer days, mid-70s and short-sleeved. On the outdoor patio overlooking Forge Pond, women in florals sat under Guinness umbrellas. The waterfall burbled gently nearby. The seasonal drinks menu promised, “Come as strangers, leave as friends.”

You could say the opposite happened here the night O’Keefe and Read met O’Keefe’s friends, a group of professionals and parents with deeply embedded roots in Canton’s municipal and social structures. Brothers Brian and Chris Albert, another Boston cop and a town selectman, respectively, and their wives, Nicole and Julie. Jennifer McCabe, one of the wives’ sisters, and her husband, Matthew. Brian Higgins, an ATF agent who had arrived at the Waterfall after spending time at the Hillside Pub—or “the Hilly,” as Read called it—and with whom she had recently struck up a flirtatious text exchange. “The vibes were good,” Read told NBC’s Dateline about the Waterfall that night, an appraisal everyone there echoed.

It’s unclear exactly who consumed what drinks, but Canton native Rebecca Trayers, a bartender that evening, closed out O’Keefe’s $16.58 bar tab (a Bud Lite, a Miller Lite, and a Tito’s) on which he left a $10 tip. O’Keefe walked out with a cocktail glass in hand, a detail captured on video that became more significant with the discovery of a broken cocktail glass near his body.

At the trial, the Waterfall was an omnipresent figure, as relevant to the proceedings as the court stenographer. Witness after witness recounted, in excruciatingly mundane detail, the topography of its high-top tables and front-room floor plan, as well as the vibe, the surveillance video, the live band, and the circumstances that brought them there that night.

Meanwhile, the Waterfall became a regular destination for Read supporters. Some stopped in after a day of protesting outside Norfolk Superior Court. They wore “FREE KAREN READ” shirts and the color pink (at Read’s public suggestion), posed by the restaurant’s signs, and shared their experiences on Facebook: “My sister and I ended with going to Waterfall bar, for a bite to eat. The food was awesome, and the place was very welcoming,” wrote a woman from Milford. “Stopped by Waterfall wearing my Karen Read pink,” read another. One group of Read supporters even brought a homemade board game dubbed “The Canton Cover-Up” that featured the bar as a demarcated space, proudly unfurling it on a patio table.

Brandi Churchwell, a true-crime podcaster whose 13th Juror show has devoted more than 30 episodes to the Read case, often receives listener dispatches from the Waterfall, even though she lives in Florida. “People who live in the area, or within a few hours, go to Waterfall and take pictures and send them to me through my website and my DMs,” she says. “People will tell me their story with Waterfall, their history, or that they saw Brian Albert there,” she continues. “Now, months after the trial has ended, I still get at least two or three a week.”

In “Justice for Officer John O’Keefe & Karen Read,” the 56,000-member-plus Facebook group overseen by activist blogger and Read defender Aidan “Turtleboy” Kearney, not everyone agrees this sort of crime-tourism is appropriate. “Looking to get a group together,” posted a real estate agent from Rhode Island in July after the mistrial was declared, hoping to orchestrate a mini pub crawl of relevant Canton bars after the next case-status hearing. “Meet up at the Hillside, go to McCarthys end at Waterfall and [discuss] where the prosecution actually takes this. Who wants to join?!”

“OMG. It’s becoming a cult on here,” responded a Needham mom who’s since left the group.

“What time are you thinking for Waterfall?” asked a woman named Amy. “I might be able to meet for a drink at the end.”

“I don’t feel right following John’s last few hours,” read another of the 64 comments. “I’ll pass.”

It’s tough to judge people for visiting a place linked to a sensationalized
death when dark tourism is already a rich local industry. Visitors to Salem, for instance, generated $31.2 million in state and local tax revenue in 2022. The Lizzie Borden House in Fall River charges more than $300 a night to sleep in the bedroom where Lizzie’s stepmom was murdered. But what draws people to the Waterfall doesn’t seem to be its proximity to death or real-life horror, but its role in an unsolved whodunit.

Why are so many people compelled to come here? Some surely visit to witness it firsthand—to measure reality against the surveillance footage reproduction, where, as a friend noted, everything looked larger than in real life. Others probably to understand better who these people really are—you can tell a lot about a person by their regular haunts. But I suspect there’s something else pulling people here, something maybe even wistful. “At Waterfall, everything was good,” Churchwell points out. “After Waterfall ended, everything went to chaos. Those last few moments, where everything was okay, were all caught on video in this quaint little restaurant.”

Maybe people come to see the last place in Canton where everything seemed okay before it wasn’t.

Everything seems okay tonight at the Waterfall, where a polite troubadour doesn’t seem to notice the irony of covering “Piano Man” on acoustic guitar. It’s an October Friday night, and some 15 customers are here, including two Boomer-age couples at adjacent high-tops. A hand-drawn raccoon holding a pumpkin and a beer playfully urges patrons to “Drink Up Witches” from a nearby wall, where the chalkboard menu touts “buff chicken + mac & cheese eggrolls” as the night’s specials.

In an alcove near the entrance, the singer starts crooning Bryan Adams’s “Summer of ’69.” To my left, a burly, bearded man wearing black sips a rum and Coke, alternating between Candy Crush on his phone and mouthing out the chorus: “Those were the best days of my life!” Ten televisions glow around the bar, their screens a patchwork of content: five show sports (baseball and professional poker), three display Keno, and two broadcast the conservative channel Newsmax, where closed-caption commercials for doomsday-prepper supplies—emergency food kits and “less-lethal” CO2-powered “self-defense” pistols—punctuate pundit segments with titles like “Who’s the Fascist?” The station was on last Friday, too.

“It’s a quiet night,” observes a surprised customer as she settles in. “Not sure why,” says the bartender, raising her eyebrows and sipping from her Stanley.

In fact, sitting here, serenaded by live cover songs, you’d never know a two-hour Dateline special featuring Waterfall footage is airing at this very minute. The spot where Mr. Candy Crush sits is being broadcast to 2 million viewers, yet no one inside the bar acknowledges the public gaze.

Sitting here, you’d never know a two-hour Dateline special featuring waterfall footage is airing at this very minute.

There’s an insularity to the Waterfall’s atmosphere that could be interpreted as hostility to outsiders, but it could also be seen as a preemptive guard against such gauche rubbernecking. “Can I ask you a question?” is a sentence that makes the bartenders visibly wince. As one customer told a Globe reporter who showed up to ask patrons about the Read case, “You’re brave.”

Meanwhile, the Waterfall is the target of that civil lawsuit alleging the bar, Read, and C.F. McCarthy’s hold responsibility in O’Keefe’s death. Filed in Plymouth County Superior Court in late August, the complaint states that Read entered the Waterfall carrying a drink from C.F. McCarthy’s that night. The lawsuit also claims Read was served a shot and a mixed drink within an hour, and that the Waterfall served her “when she was already intoxicated” and kept serving her “well after it knew [she] was visibly intoxicated.” As a result of the bar’s negligence, the O’Keefe family contends, Read drove drunk and caused O’Keefe’s death.

The burden of proof for a civil case is more lenient than a criminal court—civil plaintiffs must only prove the “preponderance of evidence” supports their claims rather than “beyond a reasonable doubt.” However, the evidence against the Waterfall in the civil case appears weak: 10 trial witnesses testified that Read was not visibly drunk at the Waterfall. The surveillance footage seems to corroborate these accounts.

Attorneys for Read, the Waterfall, and C.F. McCarthy’s all filed motions to delay the civil case while the criminal trial is pending. The O’Keefe family opposes any delay, arguing that Read’s frequent media appearances and communications with reporters and bloggers are attempts to “poison the jury pool.” A judge recently ruled that Read will not have to provide deposition until her criminal trial concludes, and denied a delay for the rest of the case. (Attorneys for the Waterfall and the O’Keefe family did not respond to inquiries about the suit.)

Meanwhile, at least one local business owner has rallied behind the embattled plaintiffs, recognizing how drawn-out litigation can devastate small restaurants. “I feel badly for these two establishments,” wrote Erika Madden, owner of East Taunton’s Star Drive-In and someone who has closely followed the Read case, in a call to action on Facebook. “Frivolous lawsuits can easily destroy a small local business’s reputation and lead to closure, jobs lost and financial ruin. It would be great if everyone could try to support C.F. McCarthy’s and the Waterfall Bar & Grille.”

Just please don’t ask where Read sat.

Camille Dodero can be reached at cdodero@bostonmagazine.com.