Speaker 1: You're listening to Amma Mia podcast. Mama Mea acknowledges the
Speaker 1: traditional owners of land and waters. This podcast was recorded
Speaker 1: on It's a blustery winter's night in Canton, Massachusetts in
Speaker 1: January twenty twenty two and Karen Reid and John O'Keeffe
Speaker 1: are out with friends. They're drinking, bar hopping and enjoying
Speaker 1: a night on the town. John is a local cop
Speaker 1: and the plan is to move the party to one
Speaker 1: of his colleagues homes nearby. After midnight, Karen drops John
Speaker 1: at the address and heads back to his house. She
Speaker 1: starts panicking when he still isn't home in the early
Speaker 1: hours of the morning. Well that's her side of the
Speaker 1: story anyway. John's body is found outside the location of
Speaker 1: the house party at six am the next morning. Pieces
Speaker 1: from a broken tail light are found nearby. As Karen
Speaker 1: whales at the site of her dead boyfriend, she says
Speaker 1: something that remains a point of contention. Either I hit him,
Speaker 1: I hit him? Or did I hit him? Did I
Speaker 1: hit him? The slight change of inference means everything. It
Speaker 1: could mean the difference between freedom and a jail cell
Speaker 1: for Karen. But this story gets even murkier because as
Speaker 1: her defense picks up the case, they start to unravel
Speaker 1: another potential series of events, one that involves a cover up,
Speaker 1: contamination by law enforcement, and the framing of Karen for murder.
Speaker 1: I'm Jemma Bass and this is True Crime Conversations a
Speaker 1: Muma me a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes
Speaker 1: by speaking to the people who know the most about them.
Speaker 1: Before her arrest, Karen Read was a financial analyst and professor.
Speaker 1: She'd been dating John O'Keeffe, a Boston police officer, for
Speaker 1: two years. Photos of the pair show an attractive, smiling
Speaker 1: couple in their mid forties, but despite the pretty pictures,
Speaker 1: their relationship wasn't all rosy. They'd been having some disagreements
Speaker 1: in the lead up to that January twenty twenty two evening.
Speaker 1: Ever since John's death, the town where he died has
Speaker 1: been divided, but it since snowbled into an international debate
Speaker 1: fueled by the free Karen movement that's grown legs online.
Speaker 1: There's two very distinct camps. Was John killed by those
Speaker 1: inside the house, a house full of police and law enforcement,
Speaker 1: who then proceeded to cover up his murder, or did
Speaker 1: his girlfriend Karen kill him before he even made it
Speaker 1: through the front door. To help us unpack those theories
Speaker 1: and everything that came before it, where joined by Jessica Lalfer,
Speaker 1: producer of Karen, an in depth podcast series by the
Speaker 1: Law and Crime Network. Jessica joins us now just tell
Speaker 1: us about Karen and Jones love story.
Speaker 2: So, Karen and John actually first met when they were
Speaker 2: in their twenties, shortly after college. They dated for a
Speaker 2: little while, but their careers took them on different paths.
Speaker 2: Karen became an adjunct professor at Bentley University in Massachusetts,
Speaker 2: and John O'Keefe became a cop. He was a Boston
Speaker 2: Police officer, and in twenty twenty or you know, during
Speaker 2: the COVID era, they came across each other again on
Speaker 2: Facebook and he messaged her and was like, you know,
Speaker 2: longtime no see, And she was looking at his profile
Speaker 2: and was like, oh, I noticed you have these kids
Speaker 2: with you now, like, what's going on with that? And
Speaker 2: it turns out that he has taken custody of his
Speaker 2: niece and his nephew after the really really sad story
Speaker 2: that not only did his brother in law die, but
Speaker 2: also his sister died, and so that left the kids
Speaker 2: without any parents, and so John swooped in and took
Speaker 2: them under his wing. And so he ended up taking
Speaker 2: a desk job at the Boston Police Department to have
Speaker 2: a safer job so he could take care of these kids.
Speaker 2: And from what I had seen on their TikTok, they
Speaker 2: just had like a ton of fun together. You can
Speaker 2: tell he was the fun uncle and really loved them,
Speaker 2: and it really just seemed like a really fun house
Speaker 2: to live in. But Karen and John they rekindled and
Speaker 2: they dated for two years up until the night that
Speaker 2: this tragic incident happened.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of different dynamics to navigate as someone
Speaker 1: coming into a new relationship. You've got this once single guy,
Speaker 1: no kids, who suddenly has two children to look after.
Speaker 1: He's also grieving. How did they navigate all of that
Speaker 1: her basically adopting two step kids in this relationship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, from all accounts we've heard, Karen really really cared
Speaker 2: about the children, and she was often spending the night
Speaker 2: at John's house and helping to raise them, to take
Speaker 2: care of them. She was very invested in their futures.
Speaker 2: But Karen and John were only dating, and so there
Speaker 2: were times where she felt like she was being taken
Speaker 2: advantage of when he would go out drinking and she
Speaker 2: couldn't get a hold of him and she would be
Speaker 2: at the house with the kids. You know, She's like,
Speaker 2: I have to go back to my house. I have
Speaker 2: a job to do, and you're nowhere to be found.
Speaker 2: And so there was a lot of back and forth,
Speaker 2: it seems, between the two of them over the kids,
Speaker 2: and especially from some testimony we heard during the trial
Speaker 2: about what she was feeding the kids, it's actually kind
Speaker 2: of ironic that it's all over like Dunkin Donuts, which
Speaker 2: is very Massachusetts, very Boston of this case.
Speaker 1: So take me through that he was upset that she
Speaker 1: was fading them donuts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there was just one morning where instead of
Speaker 2: making them a breakfast, she brought them Dunkin Donuts and
Speaker 2: John was unhappy about the kids eating donuts and wanting
Speaker 2: them to eat something healthier, and they had a big
Speaker 2: argument about it. But I'll say this, just judging from
Speaker 2: everything we've learned about Karen and John over the course
Speaker 2: of the past couple of years since instance and it happened,
Speaker 2: it seems like it's pretty easy to get them to
Speaker 2: fly off the handle. You know, she seems like she
Speaker 2: has quite a temper on her And I'm not sure
Speaker 2: about John. I haven't heard that about him. But it
Speaker 2: takes two to start a foot, yeah.
Speaker 1: Quick to fire, by the sounds. So what was the
Speaker 1: state of their relationship looking like in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: Early twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Two, people in the group were saying that the relationship
Speaker 2: had run its course. The niece actually had overheard John
Speaker 2: say to Karen that this isn't healthy. And this was
Speaker 2: one week before his death, and so there's a lot
Speaker 2: of like moving parts around this time. They're dating, she's
Speaker 2: practically living with him, she's taking care of his children.
Speaker 2: But you know, they still love each other and so
Speaker 2: it seems like it's very hard for them to figure
Speaker 2: out like how to make this work. And then leading
Speaker 2: up to the night of the twenty eighth, you can
Speaker 2: see on surveillance footage John and Karen and their group
Speaker 2: of friends. They're at this bar called the Waterfall Bard Girl,
Speaker 2: and they look like they're having a great time. Everybody
Speaker 2: looks like they're getting along. Everybody's laughing, She's like holding
Speaker 2: on to him. They're very affectionate, and it's very hard
Speaker 2: to believe everything that happens after this.
Speaker 1: They go to an after potty, which is what happens
Speaker 1: after the night out drinking. Before we get to what happened,
Speaker 1: can you give us some context about who was at
Speaker 1: that after potty, because it was a house that was
Speaker 1: owned by a man called Brian Albert, and he's quite
Speaker 1: significant in this story.
Speaker 2: He is, so Brian Albert is also a Boston police officer,
Speaker 2: so he knew John O'Keeffe. He said he was a
Speaker 2: friend of his, but they were probably just buddies. They're
Speaker 2: also cops. They live near each other, and also John
Speaker 2: O'Keeffe lives next door to Colin Albert, which is the
Speaker 2: nephew of Brian Albert. So thirty four Fairview Road is
Speaker 2: where all of this ends up taking place. In Campton, Massachusetts,
Speaker 2: a noeters coming in, which is a huge snowstorm, the
Speaker 2: likes of which the area had not seen in years,
Speaker 2: and they were projected to get like feet and feet
Speaker 2: of snow, and so they were all just trying to
Speaker 2: get one last hurrahan before they were going to be
Speaker 2: holed in by this snow. And at the house, they're
Speaker 2: celebrating Brian Junior's birthday, party, So Brian Junior is there
Speaker 2: at the house with a bunch of his friends, while
Speaker 2: the parents in John O'Keeffe and Karen Reider at the bar.
Speaker 2: And so around twelve fifteen, everyone starts trickling from the
Speaker 2: bar to the Albert home and this is the home
Speaker 2: of Brian. And at the home with them at this
Speaker 2: point is Jennifer McCabe. So one other person that's at
Speaker 2: this party is the person that Karen Reid has been
Speaker 2: exchanging flirtatious text with and he was also at the bar.
Speaker 2: His name is Brian Higgins. There are two Brian's in
Speaker 2: this story. So Brian Higgins is not a police officer,
Speaker 2: but he's in law enforcement and he happens to have
Speaker 2: an office in the Canton Police Department, where Kevin Albert
Speaker 2: is a detective. Kevin is Brian's brother, and they have
Speaker 2: another brother named Chris, who is the Canton Selectman. So
Speaker 2: this is clearly a very well connected family in this
Speaker 2: little town. So it's easy to see where this conspiracy
Speaker 2: theory took fire because there are so many tentacles to
Speaker 2: this family and so many people involved. But at the
Speaker 2: core of it, that night, there were about ten adults
Speaker 2: and maybe a few of the kids left from the
Speaker 2: birthday celebration around twelve thirty at night.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what does Karen say happened that evening?
Speaker 2: So Karen Reid has really not said much about this
Speaker 2: case publicly, except she did an interview for Nightline back
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three before the trial took place, and
Speaker 2: I'm actually surprised her lawyers let her do this. But
Speaker 2: she says that she and John were leaving the bar
Speaker 2: and he says, we're going to go to the Alberts
Speaker 2: for the after party. She says, are we invited? I
Speaker 2: want to make sure we're invited, And so she tells
Speaker 2: him when they get there to go inside to make
Speaker 2: sure that it's okay, that they're welcome there. And this
Speaker 2: is where the details get like a little fuzzy, because
Speaker 2: she says she never saw him go in the house,
Speaker 2: but she saw him approach the door. She says she
Speaker 2: looked down at her phone and then drove off, which
Speaker 2: is kind of weird because I thought she was going
Speaker 2: to stay at the party. But there's also some times
Speaker 2: where she said that she waited for a really long
Speaker 2: time for John to come out and give her the
Speaker 2: confirmation and he wasn't answering his phone and he wasn't
Speaker 2: responding to any texts. So perhaps she was there for
Speaker 2: about ten minutes and waited for him, and then she
Speaker 2: took off and went back to his house for the
Speaker 2: night because that's where the kids were and somebody needed
Speaker 2: to be with them overnight. And over the course of
Speaker 2: this whole evening, she's blowing up his phone, she's texting him,
Speaker 2: she calls him fifty times, and she's leaving like these
Speaker 2: profanity laden voicemails. They're kind of funny if it wasn't
Speaker 2: in the middle of this extremely serious situation. So that's
Speaker 2: Karen's story, is that she wakes up around five am
Speaker 2: and she realized John never came into the house. She
Speaker 2: was sleeping on the couch and I believe the niece
Speaker 2: was with her in the living room. So she calls
Speaker 2: Jennifer McCabe, who again is the sister in law of
Speaker 2: Brian Albert, the homeowner, and she says, you know, John
Speaker 2: never came home last night. Where's John? Do you think
Speaker 2: he got hit by a plow? And it's really interesting
Speaker 2: that she's just throwing out all of these weird like
Speaker 2: what if he got hit by a plow, Like, we
Speaker 2: need to go look for him. So she, an Jennifer
Speaker 2: and this woman Carrie Roberts decide to go on this
Speaker 2: journey together to look for John. And while she's on
Speaker 2: the phone with Jennifer McCabe, Jennifer's husband, here's the conversation
Speaker 2: and Karen is saying, I left him at the waterfall.
Speaker 2: I must have left him at the waterfall, and he's like,
Speaker 2: what are you talking about? We saw you outside the house.
Speaker 2: So there are multiple people who say they saw her
Speaker 2: dark suv outside of the house. So we know that
Speaker 2: it's at least true that she pulled up to the
Speaker 2: house and dropped off John. That's true. Nobody's debating that.
Speaker 2: But what happens next is still a mystery because they're
Speaker 2: driving around the two square miles from the bar to
Speaker 2: the two houses, and as soon as they pull up
Speaker 2: in front of the house, the homeowner is Brian Albert,
Speaker 2: Boston police officer. She immediately homes in on this gigantic
Speaker 2: snow mound in between the flagpole and the fire hydrant,
Speaker 2: and she runs and she beelines to it. She's like,
Speaker 2: it's John, It's John, It's John. Nobody else sees what
Speaker 2: she's seeing. Like again, it's snowing very, very hard. There's
Speaker 2: at least two feet of snow on the ground, I
Speaker 2: believe at this point, and she runs over to him.
Speaker 2: She's pushing the snow off of him. At one point
Speaker 2: she takes her shirt off, she takes his shirt off,
Speaker 2: and she's trying to warm him up. And I believe
Speaker 2: he's still alive at this point, or you know, maybe
Speaker 2: he's just pronounced dead later. But it's really strange what
Speaker 2: you end up seeing. Of course, I've never seen his
Speaker 2: body on the scene, but he has two black eyes,
Speaker 2: a big straight abrasion on the back of his head,
Speaker 2: and he has a lot of what looked like claw
Speaker 2: marks scratches on one of his arms, and he's bleeding
Speaker 2: from the mouth and the nose and the eyes, and
Speaker 2: so they call nine one one. Multiple people have called
Speaker 2: nine one one at this point. And this is where
Speaker 2: again it gets even more complicated because a lot of
Speaker 2: people end up on this scene, the paramedics, the investigating
Speaker 2: officers from the Canton Police Department, who do not investigate homicides,
Speaker 2: let alone deaths, and so they're a little bit out
Speaker 2: of their element. It's snowing. It's a crazy scene. It's
Speaker 2: six in the morning, and Karen is screaming hysterically. Everyone
Speaker 2: keeps talking about how crazy she's going at this scene,
Speaker 2: while everyone else is very calm and they're just, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of in shock that this is even happening to
Speaker 2: their good friend John O'Keefe. And there are multiple accounts
Speaker 2: that Karen said I hit him, I hit him, I
Speaker 2: hit him, but nobody wrote it down in a single
Speaker 2: report at the time.
Speaker 1: There was also contention over the wording of that wasn't.
Speaker 2: There right, And so she maintains that she did not
Speaker 2: say I hit him. She maintains she asked did I
Speaker 2: hit him? Could I have hit him? Because she's thinking
Speaker 2: back to the night before when she dropped him off.
Speaker 2: And so this is where it gets a little fuzzy,
Speaker 2: because you you either have to believe that she doesn't
Speaker 2: remember anything about that night, or she's only remembering details,
Speaker 2: or they're coming to her over time, which could happen.
Speaker 2: But really everything about this case is really complicated by
Speaker 2: the fact that nobody secures the scene, none of the
Speaker 2: officers separate the witnesses, They never go into the home.
Speaker 2: Brian albert A police officer and a first responder never
Speaker 2: comes out of his home to see what's going on outside,
Speaker 2: and they start collecting evidence with red solo cups borrowed
Speaker 2: from a cop neighbor who lives down the street.
Speaker 1: That is a wild detile, isn't it.
Speaker 2: I know it came out in the trial. It was
Speaker 2: just like, how far away is the police department? You
Speaker 2: guys don't have sterile plastic containers, like what would take
Speaker 2: you five minutes to get there? So they're clearly out
Speaker 2: of their element by the time the afternoon rolls around.
Speaker 2: Obviously this case has been taken out of their hands
Speaker 2: and it's given to the Massachusetts State Police. And this
Speaker 2: complicates the case even more because the person assigned to
Speaker 2: investigate this is Trooper Michael Proctor, and he is also
Speaker 2: a friend of the homeowner, Brian Albert.
Speaker 1: You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me Jimmy Bath.
Speaker 1: I'm speaking with Jessica Laufa about the trial of Karen Reid.
Speaker 1: What is John's actual cause of death put down in
Speaker 1: his autopsy report?
Speaker 2: This is what's crazy, is that his cause of death
Speaker 2: is blunt force trauma mixed with hypothermia. So if it happened.
Speaker 2: How the prosecution says it happened is that Karen Reid
Speaker 2: backed up into John O'Keefe hit him with her car,
Speaker 2: and he laid there for six hours until someone found him.
Speaker 2: And it was freezing cold, wind whipping, snow piling up.
Speaker 2: But what's so strange about that is that there were
Speaker 2: a lot of people coming and going from this party
Speaker 2: all night. And even the plow driver who came through
Speaker 2: at two thirty in the morning has his light shining
Speaker 2: and says he never sees anything in that front lawn,
Speaker 2: and he would have noticed it because he drives this
Speaker 2: route all the time. And they never determined his manner
Speaker 2: of death, which is curious that you would try to
Speaker 2: put someone on trial for murder without a determined manner
Speaker 2: of death.
Speaker 1: And there were, as you were saying before, quite bizarre
Speaker 1: injuries on him if you consider that the prosecution thinks
Speaker 1: that he was backed into, but he had bruises on
Speaker 1: his eyes and he had weird mocks on his arms.
Speaker 2: And that's the thing is that the prosecution has an
Speaker 2: expert that testifies that these injuries are consistent with being
Speaker 2: hit by a car, But the defense has an expert
Speaker 2: that goes on and says or not this is consistent
Speaker 2: with either a fight or an attack by an animal.
Speaker 1: And there was an animal there wasn't there?
Speaker 2: There was an animal there? And is if this story
Speaker 2: is not crazy enough. Now a dog named Chloe becomes
Speaker 2: a suspect. There's a German shepherd that's been living with
Speaker 2: the Alberts for seven years, their beloved pet dog. And curiously,
Speaker 2: they rehome this dog within months of John o'keeith's death.
Speaker 2: And not only do they rehome the dog, they rehome themselves.
Speaker 2: They buy a new home, even after they had just
Speaker 2: renovated their entire basement. So a lot of curious things
Speaker 2: going on, a lot of strange coincidences, I suppose. But
Speaker 2: on the final day of the trial, before closing arguments,
Speaker 2: they have an expert go up there and say, these
Speaker 2: marks on John O'Keefe's arms are consistent with that of
Speaker 2: dog claw marks and bites, and if you look at
Speaker 2: the photos or look at other photos of dog attacks,
Speaker 2: they look exactly the same. Nobody ever examined the dog.
Speaker 2: The dog was living in Vermont, and they say that
Speaker 2: they offered up the address of the dog if they
Speaker 2: wanted to go interview her, But yeah, no one ever
Speaker 2: really followed up with this lead, and because really the
Speaker 2: crux of the story is is that they honed in
Speaker 2: on Karen Reid from day one and they wanted someone
Speaker 2: to blame this on, and they blamed it on her.
Speaker 1: Well, she was arrested in early feb initially not charged
Speaker 1: with murder, but quite quickly upgraded to murder two, which
Speaker 1: frozsies is kind of like manslaughter. On what evidence was
Speaker 1: that charge made? You've said that the prosecution claims that
Speaker 1: the car backed into John, but what was the evidence
Speaker 1: that that happened.
Speaker 2: The evidence that they claim that proves Karen Reid hit
Speaker 2: John O'Keeffe with her SUV is that there were microscopic
Speaker 2: tail light pieces found on him, and there were tail
Speaker 2: light pieces that were found around the scene underneath the snow.
Speaker 2: So after they use the leaf blower to push all
Speaker 2: the snow away, the state police finally come in with
Speaker 2: shovels and find tail light pieces underneath the snow. And
Speaker 2: so that's one of the contentious points of this case
Speaker 2: is that nobody saw any tail light pieces until the
Speaker 2: state police came in. And when you have an investigator
Speaker 2: assigned to this case, who has as much history as
Speaker 2: Trooper Proctor does. This is when the conspiracy starts to
Speaker 2: really really boil to the surface.
Speaker 1: Was there anything that directly challenged that version of events.
Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of debate about that tail light evidence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the tail light evidence is really kind of crazy
Speaker 2: because even at the trial, the plastic bag that the
Speaker 2: tail light pieces are in multiply over time, like the
Speaker 2: pieces multiply, and so at one point there's only three,
Speaker 2: then there's five, And even over the course of the
Speaker 2: investigation of this case, they found tailight pieces near his body,
Speaker 2: then they found the microscopic pieces on him. But when
Speaker 2: you see pictures of Karen's suv, the taillight did not
Speaker 2: look as broken when they brought the car in as
Speaker 2: it did when it left there. And so there's this
Speaker 2: surveillance footage of the quote Sally Port that the Massachusetts
Speaker 2: State Police brought her suv to search it to give
Speaker 2: it a very thorough look through. And one thing that
Speaker 2: the defense notices right away is that this video appears
Speaker 2: to be inverted, and so what looks to be the
Speaker 2: passenger side is actually the driver side, and what looks
Speaker 2: to be the driver side is actually the passenger side,
Speaker 2: and supposedly it's the right rear tail light, so on
Speaker 2: the passenger side that's broken, and on the video you
Speaker 2: see two people walk by and appear to be fiddling
Speaker 2: with something. But because this looks like it might be
Speaker 2: the driver's side, nobody's really thinking anything of it until
Speaker 2: it's pointed out in the trial that no, this video
Speaker 2: is inverted. They see the number on the wall, the
Speaker 2: four is backwards on the police cruiser is backwards, and
Speaker 2: so it's very, very, very complicated. What they're implying through
Speaker 2: all of this is that Trooper Procter planted evidence and
Speaker 2: purposely broke the tail light and brought the tail light
Speaker 2: pieces back to the scene to plant in the snow
Speaker 2: to frame Karen Read for this murder.
Speaker 1: Which is a huge thing to accuse local law enforcement
Speaker 1: of doing right.
Speaker 2: It's not unheard of. There's a history in this area
Speaker 2: of not trusting lawn. A lot of people don't trust authority,
Speaker 2: a lot of people don't trust the police, and so
Speaker 2: you have like two sides forming do you trust the
Speaker 2: police investigating this case, or do you believe that this
Speaker 2: woman is being railroaded in the death of her cop
Speaker 2: boyfriend but it's not unheard of for this area to
Speaker 2: be suspicious of these investigators, and turns out a lot
Speaker 2: of them were right based on what happens after the trial.
Speaker 1: But what reason would these cops have to frame her?
Speaker 1: What do they say happened? The defense to John.
Speaker 2: The defens's theory of what happened that night is that
Speaker 2: Karen drops John O'Keeffe off at the Alberts. He goes
Speaker 2: into the house and is immediately confronted by people in
Speaker 2: the basement of the Albut at home, there's a weight
Speaker 2: room down there, and they think that a fight broke
Speaker 2: out pretty quickly. Someone may have hit John O'Keeffe with
Speaker 2: a dumbbell on the back of the head, maybe punched
Speaker 2: him in the face, and then maybe perhaps he fought
Speaker 2: back and the dog intervened and the dog attacked him.
Speaker 2: And I don't think anyone intended for John o'keef to die. Now,
Speaker 2: this is all alleged. This is a house full of
Speaker 2: law enforcement, so they have to spend the next few
Speaker 2: hours trying to figure out what to do, and their
Speaker 2: theory is that they bring the body out through this
Speaker 2: back set of stairs from the basement to the backyard
Speaker 2: and bring the body around to the front yard and
Speaker 2: lay him there with his phone underneath him.
Speaker 1: Up next, we delve deeper into the trial well that
Speaker 1: captivated the world and the text messages that put a
Speaker 1: lead investigator on notice.
Speaker 2: And he lies there until Karen finds him at six
Speaker 2: in the morning. And so how does this turn into
Speaker 2: a big cover up? Is that Trooper Proctor again is
Speaker 2: friends with Brian Albert. There is a thin blue line
Speaker 2: cops protect other cops, and cops don't get in trouble
Speaker 2: for these types of things, and we don't investigate other cops,
Speaker 2: and especially not our friends. And so Trooper Proctor obviously
Speaker 2: knew when he was pulling up to this house that
Speaker 2: this was the house of his friend, Brian Albert. He
Speaker 2: chose not to go in and interview, he chose not
Speaker 2: to lock down the crime scene, he chose not to
Speaker 2: separate the witnesses, and there were a lot of missteps,
Speaker 2: and all of this is captured in his own text
Speaker 2: messages that he embarrassingly has to read on the stand
Speaker 2: in front of the world, where he admits that he's
Speaker 2: gonna make this case cut and dried and pin it
Speaker 2: on the girl, and the girl is Karen read, and
Speaker 2: then there's a lot of horrible text messages where he's
Speaker 2: talking about her body and how hot she is and
Speaker 2: how he hates her accent, and he calls her the
Speaker 2: C word, and you know, there's just a lot of
Speaker 2: really disgusting things said by this man to his superiors.
Speaker 2: So you can tell this is kind of a culture, right,
Speaker 2: a culture in this department, in this law enforcement community,
Speaker 2: that they can do anything and get away with it,
Speaker 2: and even so far as to say no nudes yet
Speaker 2: because he was going through Karen's phone, Oh my gosh. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So all of this combined it makes it look like
Speaker 2: a cover up. It makes it look from the beginning that,
Speaker 2: you know what, this was Brian's house. We can't have
Speaker 2: this on Brian. Let's just pin it on the girl, like,
Speaker 2: let's just put it on her. And this didn't even
Speaker 2: have to be a murder case. This didn't even have
Speaker 2: to go to trial when you really think about it,
Speaker 2: this could have just been an accident. I don't know
Speaker 2: if the defensis theory is correct. I don't know if
Speaker 2: this was planned from the beginning to pin it on
Speaker 2: Karen or whether it just happened naturally after she supposedly
Speaker 2: said I hit him at the scene. It all starts
Speaker 2: to build and build and build to make for a
Speaker 2: very very interesting case with a trial that riveted thousands
Speaker 2: and took over TikTok for like an entire week. While
Speaker 2: Trooper Proctor is reading these text messages on the stand,
Speaker 2: apparently to the horrified jurors. We spoke to a reporter.
Speaker 2: He said that the jurors were just disgusted visibly by
Speaker 2: these text messages and by Trooper Proctor. And one interesting
Speaker 2: thing to note is that the jurors, who are a
Speaker 2: very important element of this case, they were not allowed
Speaker 2: to be aware that Trooper Proctor was under investigation at
Speaker 2: this time for his behavior on this case. They're not
Speaker 2: allowed to know that, and they're not supposed to be
Speaker 2: looking up information about the case after they leave. They're
Speaker 2: not sequestered, so it's not like they're staying in a
Speaker 2: hotel with no TV, no phone, no news. They're just
Speaker 2: not supposed to be talking about it, and they're not
Speaker 2: supposed to be looking up in information about it. So
Speaker 2: not having that information is pretty interesting. But I think
Speaker 2: he kind of you said it all himself on the stand.
Speaker 1: Before we get more into the trial. I think it's
Speaker 1: worth backtracking a bit to TikTok because, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: this case exploded. People might have heard of book talk.
Speaker 1: There's also crime talk out there, and this was one
Speaker 1: of those cases that just captivated the internet. And I
Speaker 1: need to bring in Total Books because he's one of
Speaker 1: the nine reasons for that. Who on earth is Total
Speaker 1: Boy and why is he kind of the one that
Speaker 1: helped fuel all of this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Aidan Kearney is his real name, and he
Speaker 2: goes by Turtle Boy. He's a local Massachusetts blogger. He's
Speaker 2: had this blog for over ten years and he's really
Speaker 2: known for his bravado and his kind of like take
Speaker 2: no shit attitude. He's credited with bringing the Reed trial
Speaker 2: to the public's attention and mobilizing the quote free Karen
Speaker 2: Reid movement that ended up resulting in crowds and crowds
Speaker 2: of people forming outside of the courthouse wearing these pink
Speaker 2: shirts and solidarity with Kiaren with their signs, and it
Speaker 2: really kind of took on the air of like a
Speaker 2: celebrity trial for this tiny little town in Massachusetts. And
Speaker 2: that's all because of Aiden Kearney, and he through our podcast,
Speaker 2: which is just you know, affectually called Karen. We found
Speaker 2: that Aidan Kearney was actually pretty heavily involved with the
Speaker 2: defense before this case went to trial. He fed them
Speaker 2: a lot of information about the Alberts and the mccabs,
Speaker 2: and he found a lot of this through his own
Speaker 2: investigative work. Now he has been charged with witness intimidation
Speaker 2: and so you know, he's not a perfect person to
Speaker 2: be aligned with as a defense attorney. But at the
Speaker 2: same time, he really exposed the police cover up and
Speaker 2: the corruption in this town and the conspiracy surrounding this case.
Speaker 2: In particular.
Speaker 1: He was also quite involved with Karen Rott mm hm.
Speaker 2: So it turns out that Turtle Boy and Karen were
Speaker 2: talking a lot. They talked a lot on the phone.
Speaker 2: There was dozens and dozens of phone calls between the
Speaker 2: two of them. She would feed him information, he would
Speaker 2: feed her information, And yeah, they were pretty chummy there
Speaker 2: at the beginning. And I don't necessarily think this is
Speaker 2: a bad thing as long as you know he has
Speaker 2: sources to back up like what he's saying. But the
Speaker 2: defense was basically given a gift in Aiden Kearney to
Speaker 2: really bolster this this conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: Let's get to the trial, because it was a very
Speaker 1: long trial went for nine ten weeks, which is huge
Speaker 1: for something like this. Was there anything that stood out
Speaker 1: to you? Obviously we knew all of this web that
Speaker 1: had been built beforehand, all of these players. How did
Speaker 1: you find the trial?
Speaker 2: The trial was super entertaining and long and maybe a
Speaker 2: bit in the weeds more than people really want to experience.
Speaker 2: You know, in your regular courtroom drama that you're watching,
Speaker 2: you only get the fiery good stuff, which there was
Speaker 2: a ton of that in this trial. There was a
Speaker 2: lot of funny moments on the stand, a lot of
Speaker 2: people who maybe could have view some better prep before
Speaker 2: they went on the stand to testify. But in the end,
Speaker 2: this was a very emotional, very heated, very caustic trial
Speaker 2: with really great defenders of Karen Reid. Her defense attorneys
Speaker 2: were top notch. They gave great performances in front of
Speaker 2: this jury, and the prosecution in turn ended up looking
Speaker 2: a little silly because they brought all of these witnesses
Speaker 2: who basically have nothing to say. They all agree that
Speaker 2: John O'Keefe never entered the house. They quote the guy
Speaker 2: never went in the house. And the thing about that
Speaker 2: is is that they're all on text messages together like
Speaker 2: a text chain, kind of looking like they're trying to
Speaker 2: get their story straight. And so all these people are
Speaker 2: on the stand being grilled about these text messages. And
Speaker 2: that's the other thing. When you're a witness in a
Speaker 2: case like this, you have to turn over your phone,
Speaker 2: and everyone did except for Brian Albert and Brian Higgins,
Speaker 2: because their phones were destroyed right before the police were
Speaker 2: able to collect them.
Speaker 1: What which ends.
Speaker 2: Up becoming a pretty huge part of Brian Higgins's testimony
Speaker 2: so far, This is the standout moment to me, besides
Speaker 2: the Trooper Proctor stuff, which was absolutely insane and at
Speaker 2: least mildly entertaining Brian Higgins. It meant to destroying his phone,
Speaker 2: not backing it up, and taking the SIM card out
Speaker 2: of his phone and driving to a military base to
Speaker 2: dispose of it in a bag along with his phone.
Speaker 2: And the only thing that he saved were his texts
Speaker 2: between Karen and John.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, this is the Brian that was
Speaker 1: sharing flirtatious text messages with correct Okay, I want to
Speaker 1: bring in a search term used by Karen either before
Speaker 1: or after she found Jill because it's also a really
Speaker 1: important thing to bring in the text or the search
Speaker 1: is how long to die in cold? Why was that
Speaker 1: so heavily scrutinized.
Speaker 2: Jennifer McCabe is the prosecution's star witness, or so they think,
Speaker 2: and they put her on the stand. She's very confident
Speaker 2: on her first day on the stand against some pretty
Speaker 2: tough cross examination. But there's this Google search that happened
Speaker 2: at around six point thirty in the morning, six twenty
Speaker 2: two and six twenty three am, where she says that
Speaker 2: Karen told her to google how long does it take
Speaker 2: for a person to die in the cold, And because
Speaker 2: it's such a chaotic scene it's so cold, she mistypes
Speaker 2: it and ends up being like, has slung to die
Speaker 2: in cold? And cold's misspelled? And how's misspelled? And the
Speaker 2: search is done twice. But when this data is analyzed
Speaker 2: by this company called Celebrate, it turns out that the
Speaker 2: first time this was searched was at two twenty seven am.
Speaker 2: So if Jennifer McCabe, the sister in law of the homeowner,
Speaker 2: was searching how long to die in the cold at
Speaker 2: two twenty seven am, this exonerates Karen one hundred percent
Speaker 2: because clearly someone in that house knew that someone was
Speaker 2: outside dying and they did nothing about it. However, the
Speaker 2: Celebrate expert that the prosecution uses says this search did
Speaker 2: not take place at twenty seven in the morning. She
Speaker 2: had a browser opened at two twenty seven in the morning,
Speaker 2: and when she went to go Google it at six
Speaker 2: point twenty two in the morning, it made it look
Speaker 2: like because she had just used the same browser that
Speaker 2: she was using at two thirty am looking up basketball
Speaker 2: stuff for her daughter, it made it look like the
Speaker 2: search was actually performed then, but that's just when the
Speaker 2: browser was last used. However, the defense argues the opposite,
Speaker 2: that they have a newer version of the Celebrate data
Speaker 2: and that proves that the search was conducted at two
Speaker 2: twenty seven am and also again when instructed by Karen
Speaker 2: Reid to perform the search. So, I mean, ultimately, if
Speaker 2: the search did not happen at two twenty seven am,
Speaker 2: this evidence is completely like moot. It doesn't matter. But
Speaker 2: this is like three days of the trial is going
Speaker 2: over this search term.
Speaker 1: Well, this just gives you a taste of just how
Speaker 1: confusing this tist becomes and how complicated all of these
Speaker 1: moving pots are, I don't envy the jury? How did
Speaker 1: that go with it?
Speaker 2: So the jury deliberated for over twenty hours over the
Speaker 2: course of five days and lawng Crime. We live streamed
Speaker 2: the entire trial. We had forty thousand people watching. I
Speaker 2: think like at the most there was like fifty thousand
Speaker 2: people in the live stream at the highest peak. And
Speaker 2: it was a Friday afternoon. Everyone thought, we're going to
Speaker 2: get a verdict. The jurors surely want to be done
Speaker 2: with this, right. Well, no, they decide they want to
Speaker 2: take the weekend to think about it, and they come
Speaker 2: back on Monday and they say they're deadlocked. They say
Speaker 2: they cannot come to a unanimous decision and that if
Speaker 2: they were to continue deliberating, it would only result in
Speaker 2: one of them having to compromise on their beliefs, and
Speaker 2: they didn't feel like they were going to be able
Speaker 2: to do that, and so they deliver this super eloquent
Speaker 2: message to the judge. The judge accepts it and declares
Speaker 2: a mistrial, which did not surprise a lot of the
Speaker 2: legal analysts and reporters watching this case, because, as you
Speaker 2: can tell, everything we've talked about, this was pretty complicated.
Speaker 2: You know, in essence, it's a he said, she said
Speaker 2: with a lot of the evidence, like they say this
Speaker 2: tail light evidence was there, and the other side says
Speaker 2: it wasn't. And so that's basically like the Google search,
Speaker 2: the tail light, the body itself, everything has two sides
Speaker 2: to it, and so it's no surprise that these jurors
Speaker 2: weren't unable to come to a unanimous decision. In my opinion, Well.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, all you have to
Speaker 1: do is prove that there is reasonable doubt.
Speaker 2: Well exactly, and so a lot of people that we
Speaker 2: talked to for the podcast actually said that that was
Speaker 2: an interesting position for Alan Jackson and David Ynetti to take,
Speaker 2: was to come up with this third culprit theory. And
Speaker 2: you know, they fought in pre trial hearings to even
Speaker 2: be able to bring this into the trial, because the
Speaker 2: American legal is absolutely insane. You have to like have
Speaker 2: a bajillion pre trial hearings in order to present anything
Speaker 2: that you basically want to say, and so they had
Speaker 2: to get permission to be able to say if she
Speaker 2: didn't do it, someone else did, and we want to
Speaker 2: say there's a third party culprit, and we want to
Speaker 2: explain how we think it happened, And so a lot
Speaker 2: of people said there was enough reasonable doubt without even
Speaker 2: this theory that he was beat up in the home,
Speaker 2: dragged out of the back the basement, left there to
Speaker 2: die by this group of people, and that fifty people
Speaker 2: in the end end up agreeing to this one story
Speaker 2: to protect themselves and blame it all on this one woman.
Speaker 2: Was that even necessary, because if you strip all that away,
Speaker 2: there is so much reasonable doubt even with the story
Speaker 2: the prosecution wanted the jury to believe. So if this
Speaker 2: case does end up going to a new trial, with
Speaker 2: which the prosecution has said that they intend to retry
Speaker 2: the case, Karen's team says that they are ready for
Speaker 2: the fight. But there was a motion to dismiss in
Speaker 2: early August, and the judge is still considering that motion
Speaker 2: as we speak now, and the new trials already set
Speaker 2: for late January.
Speaker 1: Twenty five five. A few things did happen not long
Speaker 1: after that mistrial, which is not that long ago from
Speaker 1: when we're having this conversation Michael Procter. He was relieved
Speaker 1: of his duty then suspended without pay. Was that surprising,
Speaker 1: not at all?
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people were suspecting that they
Speaker 2: wanted to relieve him of his duties during the trial,
Speaker 2: but they didn't want to complicate matters or mess up
Speaker 2: the case for the prosecution. So yeah, he was relieved
Speaker 2: of his duties. And then it's revealed that there are
Speaker 2: two more people from the state police that are being
Speaker 2: investigated for their actions in this case. So that's three
Speaker 2: investigators compromised. And that's a problem for the prosecution because
Speaker 2: if you really are going to want to bring this
Speaker 2: case a trial, you have three poison apples who are
Speaker 2: supposed to be your line of protection, Like these are
Speaker 2: the people that were supposed to trust their the authority.
Speaker 2: We're supposed to be able to believe everything that they
Speaker 2: say on the stand because they're the ones investigating. And
Speaker 2: what do you do after that?
Speaker 1: Do you honestly think, after digging so deep into this
Speaker 1: case that we could see a different result if this
Speaker 1: goes to trial again.
Speaker 2: It's hard to say. I mean, I do wonder how
Speaker 2: the defense would maybe change course, if they're going to
Speaker 2: still stick with this third party culprit defense, or if
Speaker 2: they are just going to allow the prosecution to dig
Speaker 2: their own graves, so to speak, and just allow the
Speaker 2: reasonable doubt to shine, because there really is no solid
Speaker 2: proof that Karen Reid killed John O'Keefe, and murder too
Speaker 2: is manslaughter, but there's also no intent there. And does
Speaker 2: this woman deserve to spend upwards of twenty plus years
Speaker 2: in prison for an accident? You know, obviously this family
Speaker 2: deserves justice, and they are very upset with how famous
Speaker 2: this case has become and how Karen Reid's popularity has
Speaker 2: grown over this, and they deserve some kind of closure.
Speaker 2: But I just don't know if any closure will come
Speaker 2: from another trial unless new evidence is uncovered.
Speaker 1: The other thing to come out after the mistrial was
Speaker 1: the jurors actually coming forward and speaking, which I'm not
Speaker 1: sure is completely legal, but what did they actually say?
Speaker 2: So after the mistrial was declared and Trooper Proctor was
Speaker 2: fired from the Massachusetts State Police, a lot of jurors,
Speaker 2: forgers to be exact, came forward pretty quickly, and they
Speaker 2: went to Alan Jackson and David Yanetti first, and they said,
Speaker 2: we reached two unanimous decisions. Out of the three charges,
Speaker 2: we reached unanimous decisions on two of the charges. There
Speaker 2: was only one we couldn't agree on, which this was
Speaker 2: actually a big part of the arguments on the defensive
Speaker 2: side during the trial is that the jury instructions were
Speaker 2: very confusing, and they felt that they were purposely confusing,
Speaker 2: and that the judge didn't write them out correctly or
Speaker 2: didn't explain them correctly, and so it could lead to
Speaker 2: something like this happening. And a bunch of jurors then
Speaker 2: went to the district attorney's office and said the same thing.
Speaker 2: And the reason why this is important is because in
Speaker 2: the United States of America, there's this rule called double jeopardy,
Speaker 2: and you cannot be prosecuted again for the same charges
Speaker 2: if a jury found you innocent of them. And so
Speaker 2: the only one they couldn't come to a conclusion on
Speaker 2: was the one that had to do with the vehicle.
Speaker 1: So they agreed on the murder charge. Well, the manslaughter
Speaker 1: of charge.
Speaker 2: Yes, the jury was unanimous in finding Read not guilty
Speaker 2: of second degree murder and leaving the scene of personal
Speaker 2: injury and death. They found her unanimously innocent not guilty
Speaker 2: of these charges on manslaughter and the lesser included charges.
Speaker 2: The juror said. The jury's final vote was a quote
Speaker 2: soft nine to three, with nine voting guilty. So This
Speaker 2: is something that the judge is really going to have
Speaker 2: to consider very seriously, and that's why I'm not surprised
Speaker 2: that it's taking her quite a long time to come
Speaker 2: to this decision.
Speaker 1: With all of that in mind, I'm going to ask
Speaker 1: one final question. Do you think the Internet and the
Speaker 1: Free Karen movement, given all of this stuff that's come
Speaker 1: out since the mistrial, do you think this is just
Speaker 1: going to keep exploding?
Speaker 2: I do, and I think that Turtle Boy's going to
Speaker 2: have a lot to do with that. You know, he
Speaker 2: got a lot of fame from this. He says that
Speaker 2: he's received a podcast and movie deal, and the TikTok
Speaker 2: In Couch detectives are still at it with exposing what
Speaker 2: they think are important details that, of course, you can't
Speaker 2: prove in any courtroom. And I think that the Internet
Speaker 2: is a perfect place for a conspiracy theory to grow
Speaker 2: and grow and grow and grow. And if the judge
Speaker 2: comes back and says we're not going to try this
Speaker 2: case again, I think it would die out eventually. But
Speaker 2: if she says no, we're going back to trial, this
Speaker 2: is never going to die. It's going to get even
Speaker 2: more attention because there's a Netflix documentary coming out. You know,
Speaker 2: our podcast is out. Your podcast is going to be
Speaker 2: coming out. Every true crime podcast is talking about this,
Speaker 2: and so there's going to be probably like ten times
Speaker 2: the amount of ears and eyeballs on this than there
Speaker 2: was in the first place. And so, unfortunately, conspiracy theories
Speaker 2: and really interesting cases like this are just bound to
Speaker 2: grow and grow and grow until someone says, Okay, here's
Speaker 2: your closure.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Jessica for assisting us to tell this story.
Speaker 1: True Crime Conversations is a Muma mea podcast hosted and
Speaker 1: produced by me Jemma Buff with audio design by Scott Stronik.
Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Crystal corn Nielssen. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation