Speaker 1: True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
Speaker 1: waters that this podcast was recorded on. Hey, True crime listeners.
Speaker 1: As you may have seen, there has been a major
Speaker 1: update in the Karen Read case, and we're going to
Speaker 1: bring you up to speed on that so you can
Speaker 1: better understand what this case is about. We are re
Speaker 1: releasing our episode featuring Jessica Lowther from the Law and
Speaker 1: Crime Network and producer of the hit podcast series Karen.
Speaker 1: After a second trial and five days of jury deliberations,
Speaker 1: Karen Reid has been found not guilty of second degree
Speaker 1: murder and leaving the scene of an accident in the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer
Speaker 1: John O'Keefe. She was convicted only of one driving offense,
Speaker 1: and that's driving under the influence, and sentenced to one
Speaker 1: year of probation. This verdict marks the end of a
Speaker 1: high profile case that captured global attention and went viral
Speaker 1: on TikTok, drawing in true crime fanatics and sparking fierce
Speaker 1: debate online. Outside the courtroom in Massachusetts, Reid thanked her supporters,
Speaker 1: but despite the legal conclusion, questions still linger about what
Speaker 1: really happened that night. In July twenty twenty four, her
Speaker 1: first trial ended in a mistrial due to a hung jury.
Speaker 1: Throughout both trials, Reid maintained her innocence, alleging she was
Speaker 1: the victim of a cover up involving local police and officials,
Speaker 1: a claim that fueled the case's viral spread and polarized
Speaker 1: a Massachusetts town. Take a listen to the episode let
Speaker 1: us know what you think.
Speaker 2: It's a blustery winter's night in Canton, Massachusetts, in January
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, and Karen Reid and John O'Keeffe are
Speaker 2: out with friends. They're drinking, bar hopping and enjoying a
Speaker 2: night on the town. John is a local cop and
Speaker 2: the plan is to move the party to one of
Speaker 2: his colleagues homes nearby. After midnight, Karen drops John at
Speaker 2: the address and heads back to his house. She starts
Speaker 2: panicking when he still isn't home in the early hours
Speaker 2: of the morning. Well that's her side of story, anyway.
Speaker 2: John's body is found outside the location of the house
Speaker 2: party at six am the next morning. Pieces from a
Speaker 2: broken tail light are found nearby. As Karen wails at
Speaker 2: the sight of her dead boyfriend, she says something that
Speaker 2: remains a point of contention either I hit him, I
Speaker 2: hit him? Or did I hit him? Did I hit him?
Speaker 2: The slight change of inference means everything. It could mean
Speaker 2: the difference between freedom and a jail cell for Karen.
Speaker 2: But this story gets even murkier because as her defense
Speaker 2: picks up the case, they start to unravel another potential
Speaker 2: series of events, one that involves a cover up, contamination
Speaker 2: by law enforcement, and the framing of Karen for murder.
Speaker 2: I'm Jemma and this is True Crime Conversations a Muma
Speaker 2: mea podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking
Speaker 2: to the people who know the most about them. Before
Speaker 2: her arrest, Karen Reid was a financial analyst and professor.
Speaker 2: She'd been dating John O'Keefe, a Boston police officer, for
Speaker 2: two years. Photos of the pair show an attractive, smiling
Speaker 2: couple in their mid forties, but despite the pretty pictures,
Speaker 2: their relationship wasn't all rosy. They'd been having some disagreements
Speaker 2: in the lead up to that January twenty twenty two evening.
Speaker 2: Ever since John's death, the town where he died has
Speaker 2: been divided, but it since snowbled into an international debate
Speaker 2: fueled by the Free Karen movement that's grown legs online.
Speaker 2: There's two very distinct camps. Was John killed by those
Speaker 2: inside the house, a house full of police and law
Speaker 2: enforcement who then proceeded to cover up his murder, or
Speaker 2: did his girlfriend Karen kill him before he even made
Speaker 2: it through the To help us unpack those theories and
Speaker 2: everything that came before it, we're joined by Jessica lalfa,
Speaker 2: producer of Karen, an in depth podcast series by the
Speaker 2: Law and Crime Network. Jessica joins us now. Jess tell
Speaker 2: us about Karen and Jones love story.
Speaker 3: So, Karen and John actually first met when they were
Speaker 3: in their twenties, shortly after college. They dated for a
Speaker 3: little while, but their careers took them on different paths.
Speaker 3: Karen became an adjunct professor at Bentley University in Massachusetts,
Speaker 3: and John O'Keeffe became a cop. He was a Boston
Speaker 3: Police officer, and in twenty twenty or you know, during
Speaker 3: the COVID era, they came across each other again on
Speaker 3: Facebook and he messaged her and was like, you know,
Speaker 3: longtime no see and she was looking at his profile
Speaker 3: and was like, oh, I noticed you have these kids
Speaker 3: with you now, like, what's going on with that? And
Speaker 3: it turns out that he has taken custody of his
Speaker 3: niece and his nephew after the really really sad story
Speaker 3: that not only did his brother in law die, but
Speaker 3: also his sister died, and so that left the kids
Speaker 3: without any parents, and so John swooped in and took
Speaker 3: them under his wing. And so he ended up taking
Speaker 3: a desk job at the Boston Police Department to have
Speaker 3: a safer job so he could take care of these kids.
Speaker 3: And from what I'd seen on their TikTok, they just
Speaker 3: had like a ton of fun together. You can tell
Speaker 3: he was the fun uncle and really loved them, and
Speaker 3: it really just seemed like a really fun house to
Speaker 3: live in. But Karen and John they rekindled and they
Speaker 3: dated for two years up until the night that this
Speaker 3: tragic incident happened.
Speaker 2: That's a little of different dynamics to navigate as someone
Speaker 2: coming into a new relationship. You've got this once single guy,
Speaker 2: no kids, who suddenly has two children to look after,
Speaker 2: he's also grieving. How did they navigate all of that?
Speaker 2: Her basically adopting two step kids in this relationship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, From all accounts we've heard, Karen really really cared
Speaker 3: about the children, and she was often spending the night
Speaker 3: at John's house and helping to raise them, to take
Speaker 3: care of them. She was very invested in their futures.
Speaker 3: But Karen and John were only dating, and so there
Speaker 3: were times where she felt like she was being taken
Speaker 3: advantage of when he would go out drinking and she
Speaker 3: couldn't get a hold of him and she would be
Speaker 3: at the house with the kids. You know, She's like,
Speaker 3: I have to go back to my house. I have
Speaker 3: a job to do, and you're nowhere to be found.
Speaker 3: And so there was a lot of back and forth,
Speaker 3: it seems, between the two of them over the kids,
Speaker 3: and especially from some testimony we heard during the trial
Speaker 3: about what she was feed eating the kids. It's actually
Speaker 3: kind of ironic that it's all over like Dunkin Donuts,
Speaker 3: which is very Massachusetts, very Boston of this case.
Speaker 2: So take me through that he was upset that she
Speaker 2: was feeding them donuts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there was just one morning where instead of
Speaker 3: making them a breakfast, she brought them Dunkin Donuts and
Speaker 3: John was unhappy about the kids eating donuts and wanting
Speaker 3: them to eat something healthier and they had a big
Speaker 3: argument about it. But I'll say this, just judging from
Speaker 3: everything we've learned about Karen and John over the course
Speaker 3: of the past couple of years since in since and
Speaker 3: it happened, it seems like it's pretty easy to get
Speaker 3: them to fly off the handle. You know, she seems
Speaker 3: like she has quite a temper on her and I'm
Speaker 3: not sure about John. I haven't heard that about him.
Speaker 3: But it takes two to start a but yeah.
Speaker 2: Quick to fire, by the sounds. So what was the
Speaker 2: state of their relationship looking like in twenty twenty two?
Speaker 2: Early twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Two, people in the group were saying that the relationship
Speaker 3: had run its course. The niece actually had overheard John
Speaker 3: say to Karen that this isn't healthy. And this was
Speaker 3: one week before his death, And so there's a lot
Speaker 3: of moving parts around this time. They're dating, she's practically
Speaker 3: living with him, she's taking care of his children, but
Speaker 3: you know, they still love each other, and so it
Speaker 3: seems like it's very hard for them to figure out
Speaker 3: like how to make this work. And then leading up
Speaker 3: to the night of the twenty eighth, you can see
Speaker 3: on surveillance footage, John and Karen and their group of friends.
Speaker 3: They're at this bar called the Waterfall Bard Girl, and
Speaker 3: they look like they're having a great time. Everybody looks
Speaker 3: like they're getting along. Everybody's laughing. She's like holding on
Speaker 3: to him. They're very affectionate, and it's very hard to
Speaker 3: believe everything that happens. After this.
Speaker 2: They go to an after patty, which is what happens
Speaker 2: after the night out drinking. Before we get to what happened,
Speaker 2: can you give us some context about who was at
Speaker 2: that afterpotty because it was a house that was owned
Speaker 2: by a man called Brian Albert, and he's quite significant
Speaker 2: in this story.
Speaker 3: He is so Brian Albert is also a Boston police officer,
Speaker 3: so he knew John O'Keefe. He said he was a
Speaker 3: friend of his, but they were probably just buddies. They're
Speaker 3: also cops. They live near each other. And also John
Speaker 3: O'Keeffe lives next door to Colin Albert, which is the
Speaker 3: nephew of Brian Albert. So thirty four Fairview Road is
Speaker 3: where all of this ends up taking place in Campton, Massachusetts.
Speaker 3: A Norraters coming in, which is a huge snowstorm, the
Speaker 3: likes of which the area had not seen in years,
Speaker 3: and they were projected to get like feet and feet
Speaker 3: of snow, and so they were all just trying to
Speaker 3: get one last hurrah before they were going to be
Speaker 3: holed in by this snow. And at the house, they're
Speaker 3: celebrating Brian Junior's birthday party. So Brian Junior is there
Speaker 3: at the house with a bunch of his friends, while
Speaker 3: the parents in John O'Keeffe and Karen Reider at the bar.
Speaker 3: And so around twelve fifteen, everyone starts trickling from the
Speaker 3: bar to the Albert home and this is the home
Speaker 3: of Brian Albert. And at the home with them at
Speaker 3: this point is Jennifer McCabe. So one other person that's
Speaker 3: at this party is the person that Karen Reid has
Speaker 3: been exchanging flirtatious text with and he was also at
Speaker 3: the bar. His name is Brian Higgins. There are two
Speaker 3: Brian's in this story. So Brian Higgins is not a
Speaker 3: police officer, but he's in law enforcement and he happens
Speaker 3: to have an office in the Canton Police Department, where
Speaker 3: Kevin Albert is a detective. Kevin is Brian's brother, and
Speaker 3: they have another brother named Chris, who is the Canton Selectman.
Speaker 3: So this is clearly a very well connected family in
Speaker 3: this little town. So it's easy to see where this
Speaker 3: conspiracy theory took fire because there are so many tentacles
Speaker 3: to this family and so many people involved. But at
Speaker 3: the core of it, that night, there were about ten
Speaker 3: adults and maybe a few of the kids left from
Speaker 3: the birthday celebration around twelve thirty at night.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what does Karen say happened that evening?
Speaker 3: So Karen Reid has really not said much about this
Speaker 3: case publicly, except she did an interview for Nightline back
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty three before the trial took place, and
Speaker 3: I'm actually surprised her lawyers let her do this. But
Speaker 3: she says that she and John were leaving the bar
Speaker 3: and he says, we're going to go to the Alberts
Speaker 3: for the after party. She says, are we invited? I
Speaker 3: want to make sure we're invited, And so she tells
Speaker 3: him when they get there to go inside to make
Speaker 3: sure that it's okay, that they're welcome there. And this
Speaker 3: is where the details get like a little fuzzy, because
Speaker 3: she says she never saw him go in the house,
Speaker 3: but she saw him approach the door, she says she
Speaker 3: looked down at her phone and then drove off, which
Speaker 3: is kind of weird because I thought she was going
Speaker 3: to stay at the party. But there's also some times
Speaker 3: where she said that she waited for a really long
Speaker 3: time for John to come out and give her the confirmation,
Speaker 3: and he wasn't answering his phone and he wasn't responding
Speaker 3: to any texts. So perhaps she was there for about
Speaker 3: ten minutes and waited for him, and then she took
Speaker 3: off and went back to his house for the night
Speaker 3: because that's where the kids were and somebody needed to
Speaker 3: be with them overnight. And over the course of this
Speaker 3: whole evening, she's blowing up his phone, she's texting him,
Speaker 3: she calls him fifty times, and she's leaving like these
Speaker 3: profanity laden voicemails. They're kind of funny if it wasn't
Speaker 3: in the middle of this extremely serious situation. So that's
Speaker 3: Karen's story, is that she wakes up around five am
Speaker 3: and she realizes John never came into the house. She
Speaker 3: was sleeping on the couch and I believe the niece
Speaker 3: was with her in the living room, So she calls
Speaker 3: Jennifer McCabe, who again is the sister in law of
Speaker 3: Brian Albert, the homeowner, and she says, you know, John
Speaker 3: never came home last night. Where's John? Do you think
Speaker 3: he got hit by a plow? And it's really interesting
Speaker 3: that she's just throwing out all of these weird like
Speaker 3: what if he got hit by a plow? Like we
Speaker 3: need to go look for him. So she and Jennifer
Speaker 3: and this woman Carrie Roberts decide to go on this
Speaker 3: journey together to look for John. And while she's on
Speaker 3: the phone with Jennifer McCabe, Jennifer's husband hears the conversation
Speaker 3: and Karen is saying, I left him at the waterfall.
Speaker 3: I must have left him at the waterfall, and he's like,
Speaker 3: what are you talking about? We saw you outside the house.
Speaker 3: So there are multiple people who say they saw her
Speaker 3: dark suv outside of the house. So we know that
Speaker 3: it's at least true that she pulled up to the
Speaker 3: house and dropped off John. That's true. Nobody's debating that.
Speaker 3: But what happens next is still a mystery because they're
Speaker 3: driving around the two square miles from the bar to
Speaker 3: the two houses, and as soon as they pull up
Speaker 3: in front of the house. The homeowner is Brian Albert,
Speaker 3: Boston police officer. She immediately homes in on this gigantic
Speaker 3: snow mound in between the flagpole and the fire hydrant,
Speaker 3: and she runs and she bee lines to it. She's like,
Speaker 3: it's John, it's John, it's John. Nobody else sees what
Speaker 3: she's seeing. Like again, it's snowing, very, very hard. There's
Speaker 3: at least two feet of snow on the ground, I
Speaker 3: believe at this point, and she runs over to him.
Speaker 3: She's pushing the snow off of him. At one point
Speaker 3: she takes her shirt off, she takes his shirt off,
Speaker 3: and she's trying to warm him up. And I believe
Speaker 3: he's still alive at this point, or you know, maybe
Speaker 3: he's just pronounced dead later. But it's really strange what
Speaker 3: you end up seeing. Of course, I've never seen his
Speaker 3: body on the scene, but he has two black eyes,
Speaker 3: a big straight abrasion on the back of his head,
Speaker 3: and he has a lot of what looked like claw
Speaker 3: marks scratches on one of his arms, and he's bleeding
Speaker 3: from the mouth and the nose and the eyes, and
Speaker 3: so they call nine one one. Multiple people have called
Speaker 3: nine one one at this point, and this is where
Speaker 3: again it gets even more complicated because a lot of
Speaker 3: people end up on this scene, the paramedics, the investigating
Speaker 3: officers from the Canton Police Department, who do not investigate homicides,
Speaker 3: let alone deaths, and so they're a little bit out
Speaker 3: of their element. It's snowing, it's a crazy scene. It's
Speaker 3: six in the morning, and Karen is screaming hysterically. Everyone
Speaker 3: keeps talking about how crazy she's going at this scene,
Speaker 3: while everyone else is very calm and they're just, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of in shock that this is even happening to
Speaker 3: their good friend John O'Keefe. And there are multiple accounts
Speaker 3: that Karen said I hit him, I hit him, I
Speaker 3: hit him, but nobody wrote it down in a single
Speaker 3: report at the time.
Speaker 2: There was also contention over the wording of that wasn't.
Speaker 3: There right, And so she maintains that she did not
Speaker 3: say I hit him. She maintains she asked did I
Speaker 3: hit him? Could I have hit him? Because she's thinking
Speaker 3: back to the night before when she dropped him off.
Speaker 3: And so this is where it gets a little fuzzy,
Speaker 3: because you either have to believe that she doesn't remember
Speaker 3: anything about that night, or she's only remembering details, or
Speaker 3: they're coming to her over time, which could happen. But
Speaker 3: really everything about this case is really complicated by the
Speaker 3: fact that nobody secures the scene. None of the officers
Speaker 3: separate the witnesses. They never go into the home. Brian Albert,
Speaker 3: a police officer and a first responder, never comes out
Speaker 3: of his home to see what's going on outside. And
Speaker 3: they start collecting evidence with red solo cups borrowed from
Speaker 3: a cop neighbor who lives down the street.
Speaker 2: That is a wild detile, isn't it.
Speaker 3: I know it came out in the trial. It was
Speaker 3: just like, how far away is the police department? You
Speaker 3: guys don't have sterile plastic containers? What would take you
Speaker 3: five minutes to get there? So they're clearly out of
Speaker 3: their element. By the time the afternoon rolls around. Obviously
Speaker 3: this case has been taken out of their hands and
Speaker 3: it's given to the Massachusetts State Police. And this complicates
Speaker 3: the case even more because the person assigned to investigate
Speaker 3: this is Trooper Michael Proctor, and he is also a
Speaker 3: friend of the homeowner. Brian Albert.
Speaker 2: You're listening to true crime conversations with me Jim A.
Speaker 1: Bath.
Speaker 2: I'm speaking with Jessica Lautha about the trial of Karen Reid.
Speaker 2: What is John's actual cause of death put down in
Speaker 2: his autopsy report.
Speaker 3: This is what's crazy, is that his cause of death
Speaker 3: is blunt force trauma mixed with hypothermia. So if it
Speaker 3: happened how the prosecution says it happened, is that Karen
Speaker 3: Reid back up into John O'Keefe hit him with her
Speaker 3: car and he laid there for six hours until someone
Speaker 3: found him, and it was freezing cold, wind whipping snow
Speaker 3: piling up. But what's so strange about that is that
Speaker 3: there were a lot of people coming and going from
Speaker 3: this party all night, and even the plow driver who
Speaker 3: came through at two thirty in the morning has his
Speaker 3: light shining and says he never sees anything in that
Speaker 3: front lawn, and he would have noticed it because he
Speaker 3: drives this route all the time. And they never determined
Speaker 3: his manner of death, which is curious that you would
Speaker 3: try to put someone on trial for murder without a
Speaker 3: determined manner of death.
Speaker 2: And there were, as you were saying before, quite bizarre
Speaker 2: injuries on him. If you consider that, the prosecution thinks
Speaker 2: that he was backed into. But he had bruises on
Speaker 2: his eyes, and he had weird mocks on his arms.
Speaker 3: And that's the thing, is that the prosecution has an
Speaker 3: expert that testifies that these injuries are consistent with being
Speaker 3: hit by a car, but the defense has an expert
Speaker 3: that goes on and says they're not. This is consistent
Speaker 3: with either a fight or an attack by an animal.
Speaker 2: And there was an animal there wasn't there.
Speaker 3: There was an animal there, and is if this story
Speaker 3: is not crazy enough. Now a dog named Chloe becomes
Speaker 3: a suspect. There's a German shepherd that's been living with
Speaker 3: the Alberts for seven years, their beloved pet dog. And curiously,
Speaker 3: they rehome this dog within months of John o'keeith's death.
Speaker 3: And not only do they rehome the dog, they rehome themselves.
Speaker 3: They buy a new home, even after they had just
Speaker 3: renovated their entire basement. So a lot of curious things
Speaker 3: going on, a lot of strange coincidences, I suppose. But
Speaker 3: on the final day of the trial, before closing arguments,
Speaker 3: they have an expert go up there and say, these
Speaker 3: marks on John O'Keefe's arms are consistent with that of
Speaker 3: dog claw marks and bites, and if you look at
Speaker 3: the photos or look at other photos of dog attacks,
Speaker 3: they look exactly the same. Nobody ever examined the dog.
Speaker 3: The dog was living in Vermont, and they say that
Speaker 3: they offered up the address of the dog if they
Speaker 3: wanted to go interview her. But yeah, no one ever
Speaker 3: really followed up with this lead. And because really the
Speaker 3: crux of the story is is that they honed in
Speaker 3: on Karen Reid from day one and they wanted someone
Speaker 3: to blame this on, and they blamed it on her.
Speaker 2: Well, she was arrested in early feb initially not charged
Speaker 2: with murder, but quite quickly upgraded to murder two, which Frozzies,
Speaker 2: is kind of like manslaughter. On what evidence was that
Speaker 2: charge made? You've said that the prosecution claims that the
Speaker 2: car backed into John, but what was the evidence that
Speaker 2: that happened.
Speaker 3: The evidence that they claim that proves Karen Reid hit
Speaker 3: John O'Keefe with her SUV is that there were microscopic
Speaker 3: tail light pieces found on him, and there were tail
Speaker 3: light pieces that were found around the scene underneath the snow.
Speaker 3: So after they use the leaf blower to push all
Speaker 3: the snow away, the State Police finally come in with
Speaker 3: shovels and find tail light pieces underneath the snow. And
Speaker 3: so that's one of the contentious points of this case
Speaker 3: is that nobody saw any tail light pieces until the
Speaker 3: state police came in. And when you have an investigator
Speaker 3: assigned to this case who has as much history as
Speaker 3: Trooper Proctor does, this is when the conspiracy starts to
Speaker 3: really really boil to the surface.
Speaker 2: Was there anything that directly challenged that version of events?
Speaker 2: I've said a lot of debate about that tilelight evidence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the tailight evidence is really kind of crazy because
Speaker 3: even at the trial, the plastic bag that the tailight
Speaker 3: pieces are in multiply over time, like the pieces multiply,
Speaker 3: and so at one point there's only three, then there's five.
Speaker 3: And even over the course of the investigation of this case,
Speaker 3: they found tailight pieces near his body. Then they found
Speaker 3: the microscopic pieces on him. But when you see pictures
Speaker 3: of Karen's SUV, the taillight did not look as broken
Speaker 3: when they brought the car in as it did when
Speaker 3: it left there. And so there's this surveillance footage of
Speaker 3: the quote Sally Port that the Massachusetts State Police brought
Speaker 3: her suv to search it to give it a very
Speaker 3: thorough look through. And one thing that the defense notices
Speaker 3: right away is that this video appears to be inverted,
Speaker 3: and so what looks to be the passenger side is
Speaker 3: actually the driver side, and what looks to be the
Speaker 3: driver side is actually the passenger side, and supposedly it's
Speaker 3: the right rear tail light, so on the passenger side
Speaker 3: that's broken, and on the video you see two people
Speaker 3: walk by and appear to be fiddling with something. But
Speaker 3: because this looks like it might be the driver's side,
Speaker 3: nobody's really thinking anything of it until it's pointed out
Speaker 3: in the trial that no, this video is inverted. They
Speaker 3: see the number on the wall, the floor is backwards,
Speaker 3: on the police cruiser is backwards, and so it's very, very,
Speaker 3: very complicated. What they're implying through all of this is
Speaker 3: that Trooper Procter planted evidence and purposely broke the tail
Speaker 3: light and brought the tail light pieces back to the
Speaker 3: scene to plant in the snow to frame kar and
Speaker 3: read this murder.
Speaker 2: Which is a huge thing to accuse local law enforcement
Speaker 2: of doing.
Speaker 3: Right m it's not unheard of. There's a history in
Speaker 3: this area of not trusting law enforcement. A lot of
Speaker 3: people don't trust authority, A lot of people don't trust
Speaker 3: the police, And so you have like two sides forming
Speaker 3: do you trust the police investigating this case or do
Speaker 3: you believe that this woman is being railroaded in the
Speaker 3: death of her cop boyfriend. But it's not unheard of
Speaker 3: for this area to be suspicious of these investigators, and
Speaker 3: turns out a lot of them were right based on
Speaker 3: what happens after the trial.
Speaker 2: But what reason would these cops have to frame her?
Speaker 2: What do they say happened? The defense to John.
Speaker 3: The defensive theory of what happened that night is that
Speaker 3: Karen drops John O'Keeffe off at the Alberts. He goes
Speaker 3: into the house and is immediately confronted by people in
Speaker 3: the basement of the albert home. There's a weight room
Speaker 3: down there, and they think that a fight broke out
Speaker 3: pretty quickly. Someone may have hit John O'Keefe with a
Speaker 3: dumbbell on the back of the head, maybe punched him
Speaker 3: in the face, and then maybe perhaps he fought back
Speaker 3: and the dog intervened and the dog attacked him. And
Speaker 3: I don't think anyone intended for John O'Keefe to die.
Speaker 3: Now this is all alleged. This is a house full
Speaker 3: of law enforcement, so they have to spend the next
Speaker 3: few hours trying to figure out what to do. And
Speaker 3: their theory is that they bring the body out through
Speaker 3: this back set of stars from the base to the
Speaker 3: backyard and bring the body around to the front yard
Speaker 3: and lay him there with his phone underneath him.
Speaker 2: Up next, we delve deeper into the trial that captivated
Speaker 2: the world and the text messages that put a lead
Speaker 2: investigator on notice.
Speaker 3: And he lies there until Karen finds him at six
Speaker 3: in the morning. And so how does this turn into
Speaker 3: a big cover up? Is that Trooper Proctor again is
Speaker 3: friends with Brian Albert. There is a thin blue line
Speaker 3: cops protect other cops, and cops don't get in trouble
Speaker 3: for these types of things, and we don't investigate other
Speaker 3: cops and especially not our friends. And so Truect obviously
Speaker 3: knew when he was pulling up to this house that
Speaker 3: this was the house of his friend Brian Albert. He
Speaker 3: chose not to go in and interview, he chose not
Speaker 3: to lock down the crime scene, he chose not to
Speaker 3: separate the witnesses, and there were a lot of missteps,
Speaker 3: and all of this is captured in his own text
Speaker 3: messages that he embarrassingly has to read on the stand
Speaker 3: in front of the world, where he admits that he's
Speaker 3: gonna make this case cut and dried and pin it
Speaker 3: on the girl, and the girl is Karen Reid, And
Speaker 3: then there's a lot of horrible text messages where he's
Speaker 3: talking about her body and how hot she is and
Speaker 3: how he hates her accent, and he calls her the
Speaker 3: C word, and you know, there's just a lot of
Speaker 3: really disgusting things said by this man to his superiors.
Speaker 3: So you can tell this is kind of a culture, right,
Speaker 3: a culture in this department, in this lawn or smith community,
Speaker 3: that they can do anything and get away with it,
Speaker 3: and even so far as to say no nudes yet
Speaker 3: because he was going through Karen's phone, Oh my gosh. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So all of this combined it makes it look like
Speaker 3: a cover up. It makes it look from the beginning that,
Speaker 3: you know what, this was Brian's house. We can't have
Speaker 3: this on Brian. Let's just pin it on the girl, like,
Speaker 3: let's just put it on her. And this didn't even
Speaker 3: have to be a murder case. This didn't even have
Speaker 3: to go to trial. When you really think about it,
Speaker 3: this could have just been an accident. I don't know
Speaker 3: if the defensis theory is correct. I don't know if
Speaker 3: this was planned from the beginning to pin it on Karen,
Speaker 3: or whether it just happened naturally after she supposedly said
Speaker 3: I hit him at the scene. It all starts to
Speaker 3: build and build and build to make for a very
Speaker 3: very interesting case with a trial that riveted thousands and
Speaker 3: hook over TikTok for like an entire week while Trooper
Speaker 3: Proctors reading these text messages on the stand, apparently to
Speaker 3: the horrified jurors we spoke to. Our reporter said that
Speaker 3: the jurors were just disgusted visibly by these text messages
Speaker 3: and by Trooper Proctor. And one interesting thing to note
Speaker 3: is that the jurors, who are a very important element
Speaker 3: of this case, they were not allowed to be aware
Speaker 3: that Trooper Proctor was under investigation at this time for
Speaker 3: his behavior on this case. They're not allowed to know that,
Speaker 3: and they're not supposed to be looking up information about
Speaker 3: the case after they leave. They're not sequestered, so it's
Speaker 3: not like they're staying in a hotel with no TV.
Speaker 3: No phone, no news. They're just not supposed to be
Speaker 3: talking about it and they're not supposed to be looking
Speaker 3: up in information about it. So not having that information
Speaker 3: is pretty interesting. But I think he kind of you
Speaker 3: said it all himself on the stand before.
Speaker 2: We get more into the trial. I think it's worth
Speaker 2: tracking a bit to TikTok because, as you mentioned, this
Speaker 2: case exploded. People might have heard of book talk. There's
Speaker 2: also crime talk out there, and this was one of
Speaker 2: those cases that just captivated the internet. And I need
Speaker 2: to bring in Turtle Boy because he's one of the
Speaker 2: main reasons for that. Who on earth is Turtle Boy
Speaker 2: and why is he kind of the one that helped
Speaker 2: fuel all of this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Aidan Kearney is his real name, and he
Speaker 3: goes by Turtle Boy. He's a local Massachusetts blogger. He's
Speaker 3: had this blog for over ten years, and he's really
Speaker 3: known for his bravado and his kind of like take
Speaker 3: no shit attitude. He's credited with bringing the Reed trial
Speaker 3: to the public's attention and mobilizing the quote Free Karen
Speaker 3: Reid movement that ended up resulting in crowds and crowds
Speaker 3: of people forming outside of the courthouse wearing these pink
Speaker 3: shirts and solidarity with Karen with their signs, and it
Speaker 3: really kind of took on the air of like a
Speaker 3: celebrity trial for this tiny little town in Massachusetts. And
Speaker 3: that's all because of Aiden Kearney and he through our podcast,
Speaker 3: which is just you know, affectually called Karen, we found
Speaker 3: that Aiden Kearney was actually pretty heavily involved with the
Speaker 3: defense before this case went to trial. He fed them
Speaker 3: a lot of information about the Alberts and the mccabs
Speaker 3: and he found a lot of this through his own
Speaker 3: investigative work. Now he has been charged with witness intimidation
Speaker 3: and so you know, he's not a perfect person to
Speaker 3: be aligned with as a defense attorney. But at the
Speaker 3: same time, he really exposed the police cover up and
Speaker 3: the corruption in this town and the conspiracy surrounding this
Speaker 3: case in particular.
Speaker 2: He was also quite involved with Karen Rott.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. So it turns out that Turtle Boy and
Speaker 3: Karen were talking a lot. They talked a lot on
Speaker 3: the phone. There was dozens and dozens of phone calls
Speaker 3: between the two of them. She would feed him information,
Speaker 3: he would feed her information, and yeah, they were pretty
Speaker 3: chummy there at the beginning, and I don't necessarily think
Speaker 3: this is a bad thing as long as you know
Speaker 3: he has sources to back up like what he's saying.
Speaker 3: But the defense was basically given a gift in aiding
Speaker 3: Kearney to really bolster this conspiracy theory.
Speaker 2: Let's get to the trial, because it was a very
Speaker 2: long trial went for nine ten weeks, which is huge
Speaker 2: for something like this. Was there anything that stood out
Speaker 2: to you? Obviously we knew all of this web that
Speaker 2: had been built beforehand, all of these players. How did
Speaker 2: you find the trial?
Speaker 3: The trial was super entertaining and long and maybe a
Speaker 3: bit in the weeds more than people really want to experience.
Speaker 3: You know, in your regular courtroom drama that you're watching,
Speaker 3: you only get the fiery good stuff, which there was
Speaker 3: a ton of that in this trial. There was a
Speaker 3: lot of funny moments on the stand, a lot of
Speaker 3: people who maybe could have used some better prep before
Speaker 3: they went on the stand to testify. But in the end,
Speaker 3: this was a very emotional, very heated, very caustic trial
Speaker 3: with really great defenders of Karen Reid. Her defense attorneys
Speaker 3: were top notch. They gave great performances in front of
Speaker 3: this jury, and the prosecution in turn ended up looking
Speaker 3: a little silly because they brought all of these witnesses
Speaker 3: who basically have nothing to say. They all agree that
Speaker 3: John O'Keeffe never entered the house. They quote the guy
Speaker 3: never went in the house. And the thing about that
Speaker 3: is is that they're all on text messages together like
Speaker 3: a text chain, kind of looking like they're trying to
Speaker 3: get their story straight. And so all these people are
Speaker 3: on the stand being grilled about these text messages. And
Speaker 3: that's the other thing. When you're a witness in a
Speaker 3: case like this, you have to turn over your phones,
Speaker 3: and everyone did except for Brian Albert and Brian Higgins,
Speaker 3: because their phones were destroyed right before the police were
Speaker 3: able to collect them, which ends up becoming a pretty
Speaker 3: huge part of Brian Higgins's testimony so far. This is
Speaker 3: the standout moment to me, besides the Trooper Proctor stuff,
Speaker 3: which was absolutely insane and at least mildly entertaining. Brian
Speaker 3: Higgins admits to destroying his phone, not backing it up,
Speaker 3: and taking the SIM card out of his phone and
Speaker 3: driving to a military base to dispose of it in
Speaker 3: a bag along with his phone, and the only thing
Speaker 3: that he saved were his text between Karen and John.
Speaker 2: And to be clear, this is the Brian that was
Speaker 2: sharing flirtatious text messages with correct. Okay, I want to
Speaker 2: bring in a search term used by Karen, either before
Speaker 2: or after she found John's body, because it's also a
Speaker 2: really important thing to bring in. The text or the
Speaker 2: search is how long to die in cold? Why was
Speaker 2: that so heavily scrutinized.
Speaker 3: Jennifer McCabe is the prosecution's star witness, or so they think,
Speaker 3: and they put her on the stand. She's very confident
Speaker 3: on her first day on the stand against some pretty
Speaker 3: tough cross examination. But there's this Google search that happened
Speaker 3: at around six point thirty in the morning, six twenty
Speaker 3: two and six twenty three am, where she says that
Speaker 3: Karen told her to google how long does it take
Speaker 3: for a person to die in the cold, And because
Speaker 3: it's such a chaotic scene, it's so cool, she mistypes
Speaker 3: it and ends up being like how slung to die
Speaker 3: in cold? And colds? Misspelled? And how's misspelled? And the
Speaker 3: search is done twice. But when this data is analyzed
Speaker 3: by this company called Celebrate, it turns out that the
Speaker 3: first time this was searched was at two twenty seven am.
Speaker 3: So if Jennifer McCabe, the sister in law of the homeowner,
Speaker 3: was searching how long to die in the cold at
Speaker 3: two twenty seven am, this exonerates Karen because clearly someone
Speaker 3: in that house knew that someone was outside dying and
Speaker 3: they did nothing about it. However, the Celebrate expert that
Speaker 3: the prosecution uses says this search did not take place
Speaker 3: at two twenty seven in the morning. She had a
Speaker 3: browse are opened at twenty seven in the morning, and
Speaker 3: when she went to go Google it at six twenty
Speaker 3: two in the morning, it made it look like because
Speaker 3: she had just used the same browser that she was
Speaker 3: using at two thirty am looking up basketball stuff for
Speaker 3: her daughter, it made it look like the search was
Speaker 3: actually performed then, but that's just when the browser was
Speaker 3: last used. However, the defense argues the opposite that they
Speaker 3: have a newer version of the Celebrate data and that
Speaker 3: proves that the search was conducted at two twenty seven
Speaker 3: am and also again when instructed by Karen Reid to
Speaker 3: perform the search. So I mean, ultimately, if the search
Speaker 3: did not happen at two twenty seven am, this evidence
Speaker 3: is completely like moot, it doesn't matter. But this is
Speaker 3: like three days of the trial is going over this
Speaker 3: search term.
Speaker 2: Well, this just gives you a taste of just how
Speaker 2: confusing this hest becomes and how complicated all of these
Speaker 2: moving parts are. I don't envy the jury. How did
Speaker 2: that go with it?
Speaker 3: So the jury deliberated for over twenty hours over the
Speaker 3: course of five days and lawng Crime. We live streamed
Speaker 3: the entire trial. We had forty thousand people watching. I
Speaker 3: think like at the most there was like fifty thousand
Speaker 3: people on the live stream at the highest peak. And
Speaker 3: it was a Friday afternoon. Everyone thought, we're going to
Speaker 3: get a verdict. The jurors surely want to be done
Speaker 3: with this, right, Well, no, they decide they want to
Speaker 3: take the weekend to think about it, and they come
Speaker 3: back on Monday and they say they're deadlocked. They say
Speaker 3: they cannot come to a unanimous decision and that if
Speaker 3: they were to continue deliberating, it would only result in
Speaker 3: one of them having to compromise on their beliefs, and
Speaker 3: they didn't feel like they were going to be able
Speaker 3: to do that, And so they deliver this super eloquent
Speaker 3: message to the judge. The judge accepts it and declares
Speaker 3: a mistrial, which did not surprise a lot of the
Speaker 3: legal analysts and reporters watching this case, because, as you
Speaker 3: can tell everything we've talked about, this was pretty complicated.
Speaker 3: You know, in essence, it's a he said, she said
Speaker 3: with a lot of the evidence, like they say this
Speaker 3: tail light evidence was there, and the other side says
Speaker 3: it wasn't. And so that's basically like the Google search,
Speaker 3: the tail light, the body itself, everything has two sides
Speaker 3: to it, and so it's no surprise that these jurors
Speaker 3: weren't unable to come to a unanimous decision. In my opinion, Well,
Speaker 3: at the.
Speaker 2: End of the day, all you have to do is
Speaker 2: prove that there is reasonable doubt.
Speaker 3: Well exactly, and so a lot of people that we
Speaker 3: talked to for the podcast actually said that that was
Speaker 3: an interesting position for Alan Jackson and David Ynetti to take,
Speaker 3: was to come up with this third culprit theory. And
Speaker 3: you know, they fought in pre trial hearings to even
Speaker 3: be able to bring this into the trial because the
Speaker 3: American legal system is absolutely insane. You have to like
Speaker 3: have a bajillion pre trial hearings in order to present
Speaker 3: anything that you basically want to say, And so they
Speaker 3: had to get permission to be able to say, if
Speaker 3: she didn't do it, someone else did, and we want
Speaker 3: to say there's a third party culprit, and we want
Speaker 3: to explain how we think it happened. And so a
Speaker 3: lot of people said there was enough reasonable doubt without
Speaker 3: even this theory that he was beat up in the home,
Speaker 3: dragged out of the back the basement, left there to
Speaker 3: die by this group of people, and that fifty people
Speaker 3: in the end end up agreeing to this one story
Speaker 3: to protect themselves and blame it all on this one woman.
Speaker 3: Was that even necessary, because if you strip all that away,
Speaker 3: there is so much reasonable doubt even with the story
Speaker 3: the prosecution wanted the jury to believe. So if this
Speaker 3: case does end up going to a new trial, which
Speaker 3: the prosecution has said that they intend to retry the case,
Speaker 3: Karen's team says that they are ready for the fight.
Speaker 3: But there was a motion to dismiss in early August,
Speaker 3: and the judge is still considering that motion as we
Speaker 3: speak now, and the new trials already set for late
Speaker 3: January five five.
Speaker 2: A few things did happen not long after that mistrial,
Speaker 2: which is not that long ago from when we're having
Speaker 2: this conversation Michael Procter. He was relieved of his duty
Speaker 2: then suspended without pay. Was that surprising, not at all.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people were suspecting that they
Speaker 3: wanted to relieve him of his duties during the trial,
Speaker 3: but they didn't want to complicate matters or mess up
Speaker 3: the case for the prosecution. So, yeah, he was relieved
Speaker 3: of his duties. And then it's revealed that there are
Speaker 3: two more people from the state Police that are being
Speaker 3: investigated for their actions in this case. So that's three
Speaker 3: investigators compromised. And that's a problem for the prosecution because
Speaker 3: if you really are going to want to bring this
Speaker 3: case to trial, you have three poison apples who are
Speaker 3: supposed to be your line of protection, Like these are
Speaker 3: the people that were supposed to trust or the authority.
Speaker 3: We're supposed to be able to believe everything that they
Speaker 3: say on the stand because they're the ones investigating. And
Speaker 3: what do you do after that?
Speaker 2: Do you honestly think, after digging so deep into this
Speaker 2: case that we could see a different result if this
Speaker 2: goes to trial again?
Speaker 3: It's hard to say. I mean, I do wonder how
Speaker 3: the defense would maybe change course, if they're going to
Speaker 3: still stick with this third party call brit Defense, or
Speaker 3: if they are just going to allow the prosecution to
Speaker 3: dig their own graves, so to speak, and just allow
Speaker 3: the reasonable doubt to shine, because there really is no
Speaker 3: solid proof that Karen Reid killed John O'Keefe, and murder
Speaker 3: too is manslaughter, but there's also no intent there. And
Speaker 3: does this woman deserve to spend upwards of twenty plus
Speaker 3: years in prison for an accident? You know, obviously this
Speaker 3: family deserves justice, and they are very upset with how
Speaker 3: famous this case has become and how Karen Reid's popularity
Speaker 3: has grown over this, and they deserve some kind of closure.
Speaker 3: But I just don't know if any closure will come
Speaker 3: from another trial unless new evidence is uncovered.
Speaker 2: The other thing to come out after the mistrial was
Speaker 2: the RS actually coming forward and speaking, which I'm not
Speaker 2: sure is completely legal, but what did they actually say?
Speaker 3: So after the mistrial was declared and Trooper Proctor was
Speaker 3: fired from the Massachusetts State Police, a lot of jurors,
Speaker 3: forgers to be exact, came forward pretty quickly, and they
Speaker 3: went to Alan Jackson and David Ynetti first, and they said,
Speaker 3: we reached two unanimous decisions. Out of the three charges.
Speaker 3: We reached unanimous decisions on two of the charges. There
Speaker 3: was only one we couldn't agree on, which this was
Speaker 3: actually a big part of the arguments on the defensive
Speaker 3: side during the trial is that the jury instructions were
Speaker 3: very confusing, and they felt that they were purposely confusing,
Speaker 3: and that the judge didn't write them out correctly or
Speaker 3: didn't explain them correctly, and so it could lead to
Speaker 3: something like this happening. And a bunch of jurors then
Speaker 3: went to the District attorney's office and said this thing.
Speaker 3: And the reason why this is important is because in
Speaker 3: the United States of America, there's this rule called double jeopardy,
Speaker 3: and you cannot be prosecuted again for the same charges
Speaker 3: if a jury found you innocent of them. And so
Speaker 3: the only one they couldn't come to a conclusion on
Speaker 3: was the one that had to do with the vehicle.
Speaker 2: So they agreed on the murder charge. Well, the manslaugh
Speaker 2: to of charge.
Speaker 3: Yes, the jury was unanimous in finding read not guilty
Speaker 3: of second degree murder and leaving the scene of personal
Speaker 3: injury and death. They found her unanimously innocent, not guilty
Speaker 3: of these charges on manslaughter and the lesser included charges.
Speaker 3: The juror said the jury's final vote was a quote
Speaker 3: soft nine to three, with nine voting guilty. So this
Speaker 3: is something that the judge is really going to have
Speaker 3: to consider very seriously, and that's why I'm not surprised
Speaker 3: that it's taking her quite a long time to come
Speaker 3: to this decision.
Speaker 2: With all of that in mind, I'm going to ask
Speaker 2: one final question. Do you think the Internet and the
Speaker 2: Free Karen movement, given all of this stuff that's come
Speaker 2: out since the mistrial, do you think this is just
Speaker 2: going to keep exploding?
Speaker 3: I do, and I think that Turtle Boy's going to
Speaker 3: have a lot to do with that. You know, he
Speaker 3: got a lot of fame from this. He says that
Speaker 3: he's received a podcast and movie deal, and the TikTok
Speaker 3: In Couch detectives are still at it with exposing what
Speaker 3: they think are important details that, of course, you can't
Speaker 3: prove in any courtroom. And I think that the Internet
Speaker 3: is a perfect place for a conspiracy theory to grow
Speaker 3: and grow and grow and grow. And if the judge
Speaker 3: comes back and says we're not going to try this
Speaker 3: case again. I think it would die out eventually, but
Speaker 3: if she says no, we're going back to trial, this
Speaker 3: is never going to die. It's going to get even
Speaker 3: more attention because there's a Netflix documentary coming out. You know,
Speaker 3: our podcast is out. Your podcast is going to be
Speaker 3: coming out. Every true crime podcast is talking about this,
Speaker 3: and so there's going to be probably like ten times
Speaker 3: the amount of ears and eyeballs on this then there
Speaker 3: was in the first place. And so, unfortunately, conspiracy theories
Speaker 3: and really interesting cases like this are just bound to
Speaker 3: grow and grow and grow until someone says, Okay, here's
Speaker 3: your closure.
Speaker 2: Thanks to Jessica for assisting us to tell this story.
Speaker 2: True Crime Conversations is Amma Ma a podcast hosted and
Speaker 2: produced by Jemma Bath with audio design by Scott Stronik.
Speaker 2: Our senior producer is Crystal kor Nielssen. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2: I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation.