Separately, O’Keefe’s family filed suit a wrongful death lawsuit against Read in August. While she pushed to delay the civil case until after her murder trial, a lawyer for the O’Keefe family says they have good reason to “block” Read’s testimony without delay, saying Read is trying to “poison the jury” . with her regular communications” with the media.

Read on The retrial is scheduled for January.

Her legions of supporters, who believe Read is the victim of a law enforcement conspiracy, have donated a significant sum to her killer. defense, which includes a team of lawyers that has grown over time. Read was initially represented by Boston attorney David Yannetti and later added Los Angeles counsel Alan JacksonWHO represented Hollywood star Kevin Spacey in a case on Nantucket. A third attorney, Elizabeth Little, is also on the trial team, and prominent Boston attorney Martin G. Weinberg has been retained for appellate matters.

An online fundraiser, which lists one of the law firms representing Read as the organizer, has raised more than $518,000 as of Thursday. toward a stated goal of $2 million. Almost 5,900 people contributed.

“I wish I had 5 million. I would give you everything. Prayers from Canada xoxo,” one woman wrote Wednesday while donating $10.

“Dear Karen, he followed your case here in England,” wrote another donor with his $50 contribution. “Regardless of the result, you keep your head up. (sic) your innocent in the great majority of people’s opinions.”

But according to the Vanity Fair story, the fund is currently “exhausted” and Read still owes more than $5 million in “overdue” legal bills. (The status of the fund was not immediately clear Thursday; Read spoke to Vanity Fair in August.)

All “surplus proceeds” will be donated to the New England Innocence Project in Cambridge, the fundraising appeal states. A spokesman for the project, which fights wrongful convictions, declined to comment.

With Jackson and Little on the West Coast, Read paid for the defense team to stay in a hotel “throughout the trial so they could maximize preparation time,” the magazine reported. That cost, plus legal fees before and during the eight-week trial, cost her $1.2 million.

Read told the magazine that the first trial was carried out “on a budget” and that she handled some of the support functions herself, negotiating fares with two Uber drivers to get the team to and from court, for example.

Read, a former equity analyst and adjunct professor at Bentley University who lost both of her jobs after her arrest, has some income streams, including what’s left of her 401(k), Vanity Fair reported. She also recently sold her Mansfield home, fittingly Zillow’s listingwhich said the asking price was $849,900. City records say the property is currently assessed at $598,800.

Read’s case generated widespread media attention, and she was featured on “Dateline NBC” and “20/20.” Netflix has it too announced a planned three-part documentary on the case, and the streaming giant sometimes makes financial arrangements with interview subjects.

A Netflix spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Read’s litigation team also could not be reached for comment.

A conviction wouldn’t necessarily stop Read from selling his story. A so-called Son of Sam law, named after infamous New York serial killer David Berkowitz, that prohibited people from profiting from their crimes was stuck in Massachusetts by the state’s highest court in 2002 on First Amendment grounds, according to state officials.

The state Supreme Court wrote in a piece of advice to the state Senate that year that the Legislature’s proposed revision of the original law, which was repealed in the early 1990s, “still violates” the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights.

“There are other less cumbersome and more accurate methods of compensating victims and preventing notorious criminals from making a financial gain from their notoriety,” the court ruled. “Conditions of probation specifically designed to address the defendant’s future income and obligations may be imposed.”

Victims can also file lawsuits against perpetrators in an effort to claim “assets or earnings derived from” the sale of their story, the court ruled.

Under current state law, a provision against a person who has been convicted of a crime selling their story can only be enforced “during the probationary period,” said Jack Lu, a retired state Superior Court judge.

“Beyond that, it is patently unconstitutional,” Lu said via email. “In my opinion, there has been a generational shift of many punishments as excessive,” including the Son of Sam statutes.

Attorneys for the O’Keefe family hinted at her potential profits in motions for the wrongful-death lawsuit, while Read’s civil attorneys argued that allowing the trial to proceed while the criminal case is pending could violate the rights them of the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination.

“By actively participating in public discourse and potentially profiting from media engagements, Read effectively waives any claim to Fifth Amendment protection,” O’Keefe’s lawyers wrote. “Karen Read’s choice to speak out flatly belies any suggestion that she is concerned with self-incrimination. Now Read comes here asking the Court to let him have it both ways.”

This report used material from previous Globe stories.

Travis Andersen can be reached at [email protected].