Who is Karen Read? A look at the woman at the center of a media firestorm.

She’s a hero or a villain, a martyr or a killer. Read’s supporters come close to casting her as a saint; her family and friends say she’s a generous soul facing yet another grueling challenge in a life which has seen many. On the other hand, court records and police reports, detailing the night of the alleged murder and a previous neighborhood feud, paint a darker picture of who Karen Read might be.

During Read’s trial, which is scheduled to begin Tuesday, prosecutors will try to convince jurors that Read, after a night of heavy drinking and discord, intentionally backed her SUV into her boyfriend John O’Keefe and left him for dead during a snowstorm early on Jan. 29, 2022. The couple’s relationship had been falling apart amid allegations of cheating, prosecutors claim, and O’Keefe had been trying to break up with her.

Read, 44, who has pleaded not guilty, claims she has been framed as part of a coverup that spans multiple law-enforcement agencies. Her lawyers say O’Keefe was beaten up by people he knew, possibly bitten by a dog, and left for dead outside a property owned by a fellow Boston police officer, who’d been hosting a gathering.

Read is being defended by Boston attorney David Yannetti and high-profile Los Angeles lawyer Alan Jackson, who defended actor Kevin Spacey five years ago on Nantucket against groping allegations that were eventually dropped. A legal defense fund for Read set up by Jackson’s law firm has raised more than $271,000.

Through her attorneys, Read declined to comment for this article.

“She will fight this injustice as long as it takes, and our family and friends will be there every step of the way,” her father, William Read, wrote in an email to the Globe. “Karen will never break down and she will never lose her resolve.”

This isn’t the first major battle Read has had to fight, her father said. She spent a decade struggling with serious health problems: First, she was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease at age 25 and underwent 10 surgeries in two years, her father said. Eventually she found a measure of relief at the renowned Cleveland Clinic, where a surgeon performed major reconstructive surgery on her intestines, he said. Then at 32, Read was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, according to her father.

Now, the Reads once again are leaning on each other, their friends, and their faith, he said, as they always have. Bill Read, former dean of business at Bentley University, put up $50,000 to bail his eldest daughter out of jail, according to court records, and sits front and center at each hearing, a few yards behind her. He sometimes speaks to the media outside, reiterating his faith: in God, in the justice system, in his daughter’s innocence.

“Karen’s road to healthiness was a long ten-year battle, but she ultimately prevailed — as she will from this battle,” he told the Globe.

Catherine Quarantello, a friend who has known Read since ninth grade, said a tight network of Read’s friends and family are supporting her. Like Bill Read, they believe she’s innocent.

“We have been by her side since day one and will see it to the finish line for her and John,” Quarantello said. She said their families also have remained close; her mother attends some of Read’s hearings.

“She’s the strongest person I know,” Quarantello said of Read.

Karen Read grew up in Blacksburg, Va., and in Taunton, where her family lived on a quiet, woodsy cul-de-sac. She liked to play piano, according to her dad, and the family went to Mass regularly.

Read attended Coyle & Cassidy, a private Catholic school in Taunton that has since closed. Quarantello said Read was always “outgoing and sociable.” Both took Advanced Placement classes and were members of the National Honor Society, Quarantello said.

In the class of 1998 senior yearbook, Read quoted British writer V.S. Pritchett: “Youth is the period of assumed personalities and disguises, it is the time of the sincerely insincere.” Her ambition? “To break on through to the other side,” she wrote, channeling The Doors’ Jim Morrison.

Michael Cote taught a community service class at the high school for four decades, but Read stood out to him among his many students. He recalled her volunteering at a nursing home in Taunton as part of his class and forming a deep connection with an elderly resident who was struggling with health issues at the end of her life.

“She was a remarkable, young, mature woman who showed such compassion and sensitivity,” Cote said.

Next came Bentley University, where she graduated in three years with a degree in finance before continuing on there to get her master’s in finance in 2004, her father said.

Karen Read first met John O’Keefe when she was 24 and he was 28, and the two dated briefly, Bill Read said. But Karen Read’s work took her to Dublin, Ireland, her father said, and the young couple went their separate ways.

The next decade or so saw the onset of Read’s health issues, which Quarantello said included use of a colostomy bag and temporary blindness. When Read returned to Boston, she worked at Fidelity Investments and began teaching finance classes as an adjunct professor at Bentley, working in the same college where her father taught accounting. She worked at both from the late 2000s up until she was charged in O’Keefe’s death.

A former colleague at Fidelity described Read as generous and funny. One year shortly before the pandemic, an end-of-summer party for the interns fell through, so Read stepped up, paying for one at the restaurant atop the Prudential Center, he said.

Not everyone had the same pleasant interactions, according to police reports. Shortly before the pandemic, Read moved out of Boston to Mansfield and began to clash with her next-door neighbors. One afternoon in April 2020, she called the police on the 63-year-old couple who lived next door, complaining they were too loud while she was trying to teach an online class.

When police arrived, the neighbors weren’t making noise, police wrote.

In November 2020, it was the neighbors who called police on Read. Their dog had been barking while they were vacuuming and mowing the lawn, they told police. Read came to their house, “yelling and screaming,” according to the report.

Then, Read said, according to the report: “Wait and see. You’ll be sorry.”

Read didn’t answer the door when police rang her bell and the officers left without speaking to her. The department did not have a record of any further calls between Read and her neighbors, and, according to her lawyers, she did not have a criminal record before O’Keefe’s death.

It was during the pandemic that Read reconnected with O’Keefe.

Read told ABC News in an interview in August that O’Keefe reconnected with her on social media and they started talking about their lives, and about how O’Keefe had adopted his niece and nephew whose parents had died.

“I admired that. I thought that was amazing,” she told the network.

The pair started dating, and she spent a lot of time with the children, she said.

But the two had a big argument on New Year’s Eve at the end of 2021, she said. O’Keefe got drunk and then didn’t come back until 3 a.m., she said, and she was left to take care of the kids that night.

“I felt very much taken advantage of,” she said in the interview. But, she said, she loved them all, and O’Keefe was “the patron saint of Canton.”

Prosecutors tell a different story about the latter days of the relationship, when they say a “continuing animosity” grew between the two after Read accused O’Keefe of cheating on her with a friend’s sister while they were vacationing in Aruba. They cite furious voicemails Read had left O’Keefe around the time of his death, with Read swearing at him, and continuing to accuse him of cheating in Aruba. The prosecution has said O’Keefe repeatedly tried to break up with Read in the days before his death.

O’Keefe’s friends and relatives have said they’re convinced Read is responsible for his death.

“No one planted anything in our heads,” said his brother, Paul O’Keefe. “No one brainwashed us.”

When police responded to the 911 call at 6 a.m. from Read’s friend after she and Read had reportedly discovered the body in the snow at 34 Fairview Road, they found a frantic Read trying to perform CPR, her face covered in his blood from attempts to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, according to police reports. Canton police wrote that she told them she couldn’t remember being at the home in Canton the previous night.

The case began to receive more attention after news blogger Aidan Kearney, also known as Turtleboy, began covering it and championing claims of Read’s innocence, holding rallies to support her and protest those he and the defense accused of framing her. Kearney, who prosecutors say has been in close contact with Read for months, is charged with multiple counts of witness intimidation. He has pleaded not guilty.

The case also prompted a separate federal probe into the investigation, though little is known about the focus of that investigation and it has not resulted in any criminal charges.

As for Read, her house on a moderately busy road in Mansfield now has cameras pointing in every direction. Signs reading “360 degree video surveillance” dot the perimeter of her property.

Outside the courthouse, multiple demonstrators preparing for what could be a six-week trial said they’re drawn to Read because they can see themselves in her place.

“She’s this petite little woman fighting against these higher powers,” said Jessica Svedine, who had come from Cape Cod to wave an American flag outside the courthouse during a recent hearing. “We’re here to help her get through this.”

Shelley Murphy of the Globe staff contributed to this report.

Sean Cotter can be reached at sean.cotter@globe.com. Follow him @cotterreporter.