Why so many butt dials? Who called who and when in the Karen Read case

After 18 days of testimony, the jury in the Karen Read murder trial has been presented with an enormous amount of information.

Prosecutors say Read dropped her boyfriend John O’Keefe, a Boston police officer, off at a house party hosted by a fellow officer, Brian Albert, in January 2022, struck him with her SUV and then drove away. But her defense team says she was framed and O’Keefe was beaten inside the home and left outside.

One question about the case that we keep hearing from viewers is who called who and when?

Here's our breakdown of that testimony so far.

So far, three witnesses called by the prosecution have testified they either placed a call or answered one but didn't mean to.

They are Albert, Jennifer McCabe and Brian Higgins -- three key players in this trial. All of them described the calls as "butt dials."

Phone records provided by the defense show there are a total of nine calls unaccounted for.

Let's start with Albert. He was the first to use the term "butt dial."

Albert testified that he had his phone with him in bed on the night of O'Keefe's death and admits he was awake at the time.

The defense, comparing call logs, asked him about a one second call placed on his phone to Higgins at 2:22 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, just hours before O'Keefe's body was found in Albert's yard.

"I butt dial people often and make inadvertent calls," Albert testified. "I could have hit a last call from him by accident."

Albert was shown previous testimony where he gave a possible explanation for the butt dial given what was happening at the time. He said that he was in bed and involved in an intimate situation with his wife.

Higgins would go on to testify that he didn't answer that inadvertent call from Albert. But that's not the only unexplained call between the two.

The defense pointed to a second call made just 17 seconds after the first. That call came from Higgins' phone and lasted 22 seconds. When asked about that call, Higgins also mentioned a butt dial.

Again, the defense brought up Higgins' testimony from a prior hearing, where his answer about making that second call was different. He said he did call Albert back, but they didn't have a conversation.

Albert was also asked to explain that call from Higgins that he said he didn't answer.

"My wife was in the room with me and we were hanging out and I never got the second call from him," he said.

Phone records show more calls were made between them. The defense asked Albert about the phone calls he made after O'Keefe's body was found in his front yard. The first call he made was to Higgins.

"I informed him about what was going on at my house," Albert testified.

Now to McCabe, who also testified she placed some inadvertent calls -- seven in total -- to O'Keefe's phone.

At 12:14 and 12:18 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, she testified that she and O'Keefe spoke by phone. But the next series of calls are unaccounted for -- seven calls between 12:29 and 12:50 a.m.

"I don't remember making any of those calls, so my assumption is I put my phone in my back pocket and that was it," she testified.

Records of those missed calls came from an extraction of O'Keefe's phone. The records of those calls appeared to have been deleted from McCabe's phone.

Once more the defense pushed back, leaving jurors to infer a possible explanation for the flurry of calls McCabe denies making. They raised the possibility that the series of seven calls might have been made in an attempt to find O'Keefe's phone.

There is no testimony in the Read trial for the remainder of the week. A full day of testimony is expected on Monday when the case resumes.