June 20, 2025 • 49 mins
Ever since the mysterious death of Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe on a snowy night in 2022, the town where he died has been deeply divided. Was he killed in a house full of law enforcement and the crime covered up, or did his girlfriend, Karen Read, strike him with her car and leave him to die?
The high-profile case gripped true crime fans worldwide, especially after Read claimed she was the victim of a corrupt cover-up. The first trial in 2024 ended in a mistrial.
In the 2025 retrial, after five days of deliberations, the jury found her not guilty of second-degree murder and leaving the scene, but convicted her of drunk driving, sentencing her to one year of probation.
Executive Producer Jessica Lowther from The Law&Crime Network and producer of the podcast series ‘Karen’’ joins Gemma Bath in this episode to dissect the case.
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Guest: Jessica Lowther from The Law&Crime Network and producer of podcast series 'Karen'
Host: Gemma Bath
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Audio Producer: Scott Stronach
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
waters that this podcast was recorded on. Hey, True crime listeners.
As you may have seen, there has been a major
update in the Karen Read case, and we're going to
bring you up to speed on that so you can
better understand what this case is about. We are re
releasing our episode featuring Jessica Lowther from the Law and
Crime Network and producer of the hit podcast series Karen.
(00:29):
After a second trial and five days of jury deliberations,
Karen Reid has been found not guilty of second degree
murder and leaving the scene of an accident in the
twenty twenty two death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer
John O'Keefe. She was convicted only of one driving offense,
and that's driving under the influence, and sentenced to one
year of probation. This verdict marks the end of a
(00:52):
high profile case that captured global attention and went viral
on TikTok, drawing in true crime fanatics and sparking fierce
debate online. Outside the courtroom in Massachusetts, Reid thanked her supporters,
but despite the legal conclusion, questions still linger about what
really happened that night. In July twenty twenty four, her
first trial ended in a mistrial due to a hung jury.
(01:15):
Throughout both trials, Reid maintained her innocence, alleging she was
the victim of a cover up involving local police and officials,
a claim that fueled the case's viral spread and polarized
a Massachusetts town. Take a listen to the episode let
us know what you think.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
It's a blustery winter's night in Canton, Massachusetts, in January
twenty twenty two, and Karen Reid and John O'Keeffe are
out with friends. They're drinking, bar hopping and enjoying a
night on the town. John is a local cop and
the plan is to move the party to one of
his colleagues homes nearby. After midnight, Karen drops John at
(01:56):
the address and heads back to his house. She starts
panicking when he still isn't home in the early hours
of the morning. Well that's her side of story, anyway.
John's body is found outside the location of the house
party at six am the next morning. Pieces from a
broken tail light are found nearby. As Karen wails at
(02:19):
the sight of her dead boyfriend, she says something that
remains a point of contention either I hit him, I
hit him? Or did I hit him? Did I hit him?
The slight change of inference means everything. It could mean
the difference between freedom and a jail cell for Karen.
But this story gets even murkier because as her defense
(02:42):
picks up the case, they start to unravel another potential
series of events, one that involves a cover up, contamination
by law enforcement, and the framing of Karen for murder.
(03:05):
I'm Jemma and this is True Crime Conversations a Muma
mea podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking
to the people who know the most about them. Before
her arrest, Karen Reid was a financial analyst and professor.
She'd been dating John O'Keefe, a Boston police officer, for
two years. Photos of the pair show an attractive, smiling
(03:27):
couple in their mid forties, but despite the pretty pictures,
their relationship wasn't all rosy. They'd been having some disagreements
in the lead up to that January twenty twenty two evening.
Ever since John's death, the town where he died has
been divided, but it since snowbled into an international debate
fueled by the Free Karen movement that's grown legs online.
(03:50):
There's two very distinct camps. Was John killed by those
inside the house, a house full of police and law
enforcement who then proceeded to cover up his murder, or
did his girlfriend Karen kill him before he even made
it through the To help us unpack those theories and
everything that came before it, we're joined by Jessica lalfa,
(04:13):
producer of Karen, an in depth podcast series by the
Law and Crime Network. Jessica joins us now. Jess tell
us about Karen and Jones love story.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
So, Karen and John actually first met when they were
in their twenties, shortly after college. They dated for a
little while, but their careers took them on different paths.
Karen became an adjunct professor at Bentley University in Massachusetts,
and John O'Keeffe became a cop. He was a Boston
(04:54):
Police officer, and in twenty twenty or you know, during
the COVID era, they came across each other again on
Facebook and he messaged her and was like, you know,
longtime no see and she was looking at his profile
and was like, oh, I noticed you have these kids
with you now, like, what's going on with that? And
(05:15):
it turns out that he has taken custody of his
niece and his nephew after the really really sad story
that not only did his brother in law die, but
also his sister died, and so that left the kids
without any parents, and so John swooped in and took
them under his wing. And so he ended up taking
(05:36):
a desk job at the Boston Police Department to have
a safer job so he could take care of these kids.
And from what I'd seen on their TikTok, they just
had like a ton of fun together. You can tell
he was the fun uncle and really loved them, and
it really just seemed like a really fun house to
live in. But Karen and John they rekindled and they
(05:59):
dated for two years up until the night that this
tragic incident happened.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
That's a little of different dynamics to navigate as someone
coming into a new relationship. You've got this once single guy,
no kids, who suddenly has two children to look after,
he's also grieving. How did they navigate all of that?
Her basically adopting two step kids in this relationship.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Yeah, From all accounts we've heard, Karen really really cared
about the children, and she was often spending the night
at John's house and helping to raise them, to take
care of them. She was very invested in their futures.
But Karen and John were only dating, and so there
were times where she felt like she was being taken
advantage of when he would go out drinking and she
(06:47):
couldn't get a hold of him and she would be
at the house with the kids. You know, She's like,
I have to go back to my house. I have
a job to do, and you're nowhere to be found.
And so there was a lot of back and forth,
it seems, between the two of them over the kids,
and especially from some testimony we heard during the trial
about what she was feed eating the kids. It's actually
(07:08):
kind of ironic that it's all over like Dunkin Donuts,
which is very Massachusetts, very Boston of this case.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
So take me through that he was upset that she
was feeding them donuts.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Yeah, so there was just one morning where instead of
making them a breakfast, she brought them Dunkin Donuts and
John was unhappy about the kids eating donuts and wanting
them to eat something healthier and they had a big
argument about it. But I'll say this, just judging from
everything we've learned about Karen and John over the course
of the past couple of years since in since and
(07:42):
it happened, it seems like it's pretty easy to get
them to fly off the handle. You know, she seems
like she has quite a temper on her and I'm
not sure about John. I haven't heard that about him.
But it takes two to start a but yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Quick to fire, by the sounds. So what was the
state of their relationship looking like in twenty twenty two?
Early twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Two, people in the group were saying that the relationship
had run its course. The niece actually had overheard John
say to Karen that this isn't healthy. And this was
one week before his death, And so there's a lot
of moving parts around this time. They're dating, she's practically
(08:26):
living with him, she's taking care of his children, but
you know, they still love each other, and so it
seems like it's very hard for them to figure out
like how to make this work. And then leading up
to the night of the twenty eighth, you can see
on surveillance footage, John and Karen and their group of friends.
They're at this bar called the Waterfall Bard Girl, and
(08:47):
they look like they're having a great time. Everybody looks
like they're getting along. Everybody's laughing. She's like holding on
to him. They're very affectionate, and it's very hard to
believe everything that happens. After this.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
They go to an after patty, which is what happens
after the night out drinking. Before we get to what happened,
can you give us some context about who was at
that afterpotty because it was a house that was owned
by a man called Brian Albert, and he's quite significant
in this story.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
He is so Brian Albert is also a Boston police officer,
so he knew John O'Keefe. He said he was a
friend of his, but they were probably just buddies. They're
also cops. They live near each other. And also John
O'Keeffe lives next door to Colin Albert, which is the
nephew of Brian Albert. So thirty four Fairview Road is
(09:36):
where all of this ends up taking place in Campton, Massachusetts.
A Norraters coming in, which is a huge snowstorm, the
likes of which the area had not seen in years,
and they were projected to get like feet and feet
of snow, and so they were all just trying to
get one last hurrah before they were going to be
holed in by this snow. And at the house, they're
(10:00):
celebrating Brian Junior's birthday party. So Brian Junior is there
at the house with a bunch of his friends, while
the parents in John O'Keeffe and Karen Reider at the bar.
And so around twelve fifteen, everyone starts trickling from the
bar to the Albert home and this is the home
of Brian Albert. And at the home with them at
(10:23):
this point is Jennifer McCabe. So one other person that's
at this party is the person that Karen Reid has
been exchanging flirtatious text with and he was also at
the bar. His name is Brian Higgins. There are two
Brian's in this story. So Brian Higgins is not a
police officer, but he's in law enforcement and he happens
(10:46):
to have an office in the Canton Police Department, where
Kevin Albert is a detective. Kevin is Brian's brother, and
they have another brother named Chris, who is the Canton Selectman.
So this is clearly a very well connected family in
this little town. So it's easy to see where this
(11:09):
conspiracy theory took fire because there are so many tentacles
to this family and so many people involved. But at
the core of it, that night, there were about ten
adults and maybe a few of the kids left from
the birthday celebration around twelve thirty at night.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Okay, so what does Karen say happened that evening?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
So Karen Reid has really not said much about this
case publicly, except she did an interview for Nightline back
in twenty twenty three before the trial took place, and
I'm actually surprised her lawyers let her do this. But
she says that she and John were leaving the bar
(11:57):
and he says, we're going to go to the Alberts
for the after party. She says, are we invited? I
want to make sure we're invited, And so she tells
him when they get there to go inside to make
sure that it's okay, that they're welcome there. And this
is where the details get like a little fuzzy, because
(12:17):
she says she never saw him go in the house,
but she saw him approach the door, she says she
looked down at her phone and then drove off, which
is kind of weird because I thought she was going
to stay at the party. But there's also some times
where she said that she waited for a really long
time for John to come out and give her the confirmation,
(12:38):
and he wasn't answering his phone and he wasn't responding
to any texts. So perhaps she was there for about
ten minutes and waited for him, and then she took
off and went back to his house for the night
because that's where the kids were and somebody needed to
be with them overnight. And over the course of this
whole evening, she's blowing up his phone, she's texting him,
(13:03):
she calls him fifty times, and she's leaving like these
profanity laden voicemails. They're kind of funny if it wasn't
in the middle of this extremely serious situation. So that's
Karen's story, is that she wakes up around five am
and she realizes John never came into the house. She
was sleeping on the couch and I believe the niece
(13:24):
was with her in the living room, So she calls
Jennifer McCabe, who again is the sister in law of
Brian Albert, the homeowner, and she says, you know, John
never came home last night. Where's John? Do you think
he got hit by a plow? And it's really interesting
that she's just throwing out all of these weird like
(13:45):
what if he got hit by a plow? Like we
need to go look for him. So she and Jennifer
and this woman Carrie Roberts decide to go on this
journey together to look for John. And while she's on
the phone with Jennifer McCabe, Jennifer's husband hears the conversation
and Karen is saying, I left him at the waterfall.
(14:07):
I must have left him at the waterfall, and he's like,
what are you talking about? We saw you outside the house.
So there are multiple people who say they saw her
dark suv outside of the house. So we know that
it's at least true that she pulled up to the
house and dropped off John. That's true. Nobody's debating that.
(14:28):
But what happens next is still a mystery because they're
driving around the two square miles from the bar to
the two houses, and as soon as they pull up
in front of the house. The homeowner is Brian Albert,
Boston police officer. She immediately homes in on this gigantic
(14:49):
snow mound in between the flagpole and the fire hydrant,
and she runs and she bee lines to it. She's like,
it's John, it's John, it's John. Nobody else sees what
she's seeing. Like again, it's snowing, very, very hard. There's
at least two feet of snow on the ground, I
believe at this point, and she runs over to him.
She's pushing the snow off of him. At one point
(15:09):
she takes her shirt off, she takes his shirt off,
and she's trying to warm him up. And I believe
he's still alive at this point, or you know, maybe
he's just pronounced dead later. But it's really strange what
you end up seeing. Of course, I've never seen his
(15:31):
body on the scene, but he has two black eyes,
a big straight abrasion on the back of his head,
and he has a lot of what looked like claw
marks scratches on one of his arms, and he's bleeding
from the mouth and the nose and the eyes, and
so they call nine one one. Multiple people have called
(15:52):
nine one one at this point, and this is where
again it gets even more complicated because a lot of
people end up on this scene, the paramedics, the investigating
officers from the Canton Police Department, who do not investigate homicides,
let alone deaths, and so they're a little bit out
of their element. It's snowing, it's a crazy scene. It's
(16:13):
six in the morning, and Karen is screaming hysterically. Everyone
keeps talking about how crazy she's going at this scene,
while everyone else is very calm and they're just, you know,
kind of in shock that this is even happening to
their good friend John O'Keefe. And there are multiple accounts
(16:34):
that Karen said I hit him, I hit him, I
hit him, but nobody wrote it down in a single
report at the time.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
There was also contention over the wording of that wasn't.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
There right, And so she maintains that she did not
say I hit him. She maintains she asked did I
hit him? Could I have hit him? Because she's thinking
back to the night before when she dropped him off.
And so this is where it gets a little fuzzy,
because you either have to believe that she doesn't remember
(17:11):
anything about that night, or she's only remembering details, or
they're coming to her over time, which could happen. But
really everything about this case is really complicated by the
fact that nobody secures the scene. None of the officers
separate the witnesses. They never go into the home. Brian Albert,
(17:34):
a police officer and a first responder, never comes out
of his home to see what's going on outside. And
they start collecting evidence with red solo cups borrowed from
a cop neighbor who lives down the street.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
That is a wild detile, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
I know it came out in the trial. It was
just like, how far away is the police department? You
guys don't have sterile plastic containers? What would take you
five minutes to get there? So they're clearly out of
their element. By the time the afternoon rolls around. Obviously
this case has been taken out of their hands and
it's given to the Massachusetts State Police. And this complicates
the case even more because the person assigned to investigate
(18:19):
this is Trooper Michael Proctor, and he is also a
friend of the homeowner. Brian Albert.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
You're listening to true crime conversations with me Jim A.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Bath.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
I'm speaking with Jessica Lautha about the trial of Karen Reid.
What is John's actual cause of death put down in
his autopsy report.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
This is what's crazy, is that his cause of death
is blunt force trauma mixed with hypothermia. So if it
happened how the prosecution says it happened, is that Karen
Reid back up into John O'Keefe hit him with her
car and he laid there for six hours until someone
(19:12):
found him, and it was freezing cold, wind whipping snow
piling up. But what's so strange about that is that
there were a lot of people coming and going from
this party all night, and even the plow driver who
came through at two thirty in the morning has his
(19:33):
light shining and says he never sees anything in that
front lawn, and he would have noticed it because he
drives this route all the time. And they never determined
his manner of death, which is curious that you would
try to put someone on trial for murder without a
determined manner of death.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
And there were, as you were saying before, quite bizarre
injuries on him. If you consider that, the prosecution thinks
that he was backed into. But he had bruises on
his eyes, and he had weird mocks on his arms.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
And that's the thing, is that the prosecution has an
expert that testifies that these injuries are consistent with being
hit by a car, but the defense has an expert
that goes on and says they're not. This is consistent
with either a fight or an attack by an animal.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
And there was an animal there wasn't there.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
There was an animal there, and is if this story
is not crazy enough. Now a dog named Chloe becomes
a suspect. There's a German shepherd that's been living with
the Alberts for seven years, their beloved pet dog. And curiously,
they rehome this dog within months of John o'keeith's death.
(20:48):
And not only do they rehome the dog, they rehome themselves.
They buy a new home, even after they had just
renovated their entire basement. So a lot of curious things
going on, a lot of strange coincidences, I suppose. But
on the final day of the trial, before closing arguments,
(21:09):
they have an expert go up there and say, these
marks on John O'Keefe's arms are consistent with that of
dog claw marks and bites, and if you look at
the photos or look at other photos of dog attacks,
they look exactly the same. Nobody ever examined the dog.
The dog was living in Vermont, and they say that
(21:31):
they offered up the address of the dog if they
wanted to go interview her. But yeah, no one ever
really followed up with this lead. And because really the
crux of the story is is that they honed in
on Karen Reid from day one and they wanted someone
to blame this on, and they blamed it on her.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Well, she was arrested in early feb initially not charged
with murder, but quite quickly upgraded to murder two, which Frozzies,
is kind of like manslaughter. On what evidence was that
charge made? You've said that the prosecution claims that the
car backed into John, but what was the evidence that
(22:14):
that happened.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
The evidence that they claim that proves Karen Reid hit
John O'Keefe with her SUV is that there were microscopic
tail light pieces found on him, and there were tail
light pieces that were found around the scene underneath the snow.
So after they use the leaf blower to push all
(22:38):
the snow away, the State Police finally come in with
shovels and find tail light pieces underneath the snow. And
so that's one of the contentious points of this case
is that nobody saw any tail light pieces until the
state police came in. And when you have an investigator
assigned to this case who has as much history as
(22:59):
Trooper Proctor does, this is when the conspiracy starts to
really really boil to the surface.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Was there anything that directly challenged that version of events?
I've said a lot of debate about that tilelight evidence.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Yeah, the tailight evidence is really kind of crazy because
even at the trial, the plastic bag that the tailight
pieces are in multiply over time, like the pieces multiply,
and so at one point there's only three, then there's five.
And even over the course of the investigation of this case,
(23:35):
they found tailight pieces near his body. Then they found
the microscopic pieces on him. But when you see pictures
of Karen's SUV, the taillight did not look as broken
when they brought the car in as it did when
it left there. And so there's this surveillance footage of
(23:55):
the quote Sally Port that the Massachusetts State Police brought
her suv to search it to give it a very
thorough look through. And one thing that the defense notices
right away is that this video appears to be inverted,
and so what looks to be the passenger side is
actually the driver side, and what looks to be the
(24:17):
driver side is actually the passenger side, and supposedly it's
the right rear tail light, so on the passenger side
that's broken, and on the video you see two people
walk by and appear to be fiddling with something. But
because this looks like it might be the driver's side,
(24:38):
nobody's really thinking anything of it until it's pointed out
in the trial that no, this video is inverted. They
see the number on the wall, the floor is backwards,
on the police cruiser is backwards, and so it's very, very,
very complicated. What they're implying through all of this is
that Trooper Procter planted evidence and purposely broke the tail
(24:59):
light and brought the tail light pieces back to the
scene to plant in the snow to frame kar and
read this murder.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Which is a huge thing to accuse local law enforcement
of doing.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Right m it's not unheard of. There's a history in
this area of not trusting law enforcement. A lot of
people don't trust authority, A lot of people don't trust
the police, And so you have like two sides forming
do you trust the police investigating this case or do
(25:34):
you believe that this woman is being railroaded in the
death of her cop boyfriend. But it's not unheard of
for this area to be suspicious of these investigators, and
turns out a lot of them were right based on
what happens after the trial.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
But what reason would these cops have to frame her?
What do they say happened? The defense to John.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
The defensive theory of what happened that night is that
Karen drops John O'Keeffe off at the Alberts. He goes
into the house and is immediately confronted by people in
the basement of the albert home. There's a weight room
down there, and they think that a fight broke out
(26:25):
pretty quickly. Someone may have hit John O'Keefe with a
dumbbell on the back of the head, maybe punched him
in the face, and then maybe perhaps he fought back
and the dog intervened and the dog attacked him. And
I don't think anyone intended for John O'Keefe to die.
(26:48):
Now this is all alleged. This is a house full
of law enforcement, so they have to spend the next
few hours trying to figure out what to do. And
their theory is that they bring the body out through
this back set of stars from the base to the
backyard and bring the body around to the front yard
(27:10):
and lay him there with his phone underneath him.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Up next, we delve deeper into the trial that captivated
the world and the text messages that put a lead
investigator on notice.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
And he lies there until Karen finds him at six
in the morning. And so how does this turn into
a big cover up? Is that Trooper Proctor again is
friends with Brian Albert. There is a thin blue line
cops protect other cops, and cops don't get in trouble
(27:59):
for these types of things, and we don't investigate other
cops and especially not our friends. And so Truect obviously
knew when he was pulling up to this house that
this was the house of his friend Brian Albert. He
chose not to go in and interview, he chose not
to lock down the crime scene, he chose not to
separate the witnesses, and there were a lot of missteps,
(28:21):
and all of this is captured in his own text
messages that he embarrassingly has to read on the stand
in front of the world, where he admits that he's
gonna make this case cut and dried and pin it
on the girl, and the girl is Karen Reid, And
then there's a lot of horrible text messages where he's
(28:43):
talking about her body and how hot she is and
how he hates her accent, and he calls her the
C word, and you know, there's just a lot of
really disgusting things said by this man to his superiors.
So you can tell this is kind of a culture, right,
a culture in this department, in this lawn or smith community,
(29:07):
that they can do anything and get away with it,
and even so far as to say no nudes yet
because he was going through Karen's phone, Oh my gosh. Yeah,
So all of this combined it makes it look like
a cover up. It makes it look from the beginning that,
you know what, this was Brian's house. We can't have
(29:30):
this on Brian. Let's just pin it on the girl, like,
let's just put it on her. And this didn't even
have to be a murder case. This didn't even have
to go to trial. When you really think about it,
this could have just been an accident. I don't know
if the defensis theory is correct. I don't know if
this was planned from the beginning to pin it on Karen,
or whether it just happened naturally after she supposedly said
(29:53):
I hit him at the scene. It all starts to
build and build and build to make for a very
very interesting case with a trial that riveted thousands and
hook over TikTok for like an entire week while Trooper
Proctors reading these text messages on the stand, apparently to
the horrified jurors we spoke to. Our reporter said that
(30:16):
the jurors were just disgusted visibly by these text messages
and by Trooper Proctor. And one interesting thing to note
is that the jurors, who are a very important element
of this case, they were not allowed to be aware
that Trooper Proctor was under investigation at this time for
his behavior on this case. They're not allowed to know that,
(30:39):
and they're not supposed to be looking up information about
the case after they leave. They're not sequestered, so it's
not like they're staying in a hotel with no TV.
No phone, no news. They're just not supposed to be
talking about it and they're not supposed to be looking
up in information about it. So not having that information
is pretty interesting. But I think he kind of you
(30:59):
said it all himself on the stand before.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
We get more into the trial. I think it's worth
tracking a bit to TikTok because, as you mentioned, this
case exploded. People might have heard of book talk. There's
also crime talk out there, and this was one of
those cases that just captivated the internet. And I need
to bring in Turtle Boy because he's one of the
main reasons for that. Who on earth is Turtle Boy
(31:24):
and why is he kind of the one that helped
fuel all of this?
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Yeah, So Aidan Kearney is his real name, and he
goes by Turtle Boy. He's a local Massachusetts blogger. He's
had this blog for over ten years, and he's really
known for his bravado and his kind of like take
no shit attitude. He's credited with bringing the Reed trial
to the public's attention and mobilizing the quote Free Karen
(31:50):
Reid movement that ended up resulting in crowds and crowds
of people forming outside of the courthouse wearing these pink
shirts and solidarity with Karen with their signs, and it
really kind of took on the air of like a
celebrity trial for this tiny little town in Massachusetts. And
that's all because of Aiden Kearney and he through our podcast,
(32:13):
which is just you know, affectually called Karen, we found
that Aiden Kearney was actually pretty heavily involved with the
defense before this case went to trial. He fed them
a lot of information about the Alberts and the mccabs
and he found a lot of this through his own
(32:34):
investigative work. Now he has been charged with witness intimidation
and so you know, he's not a perfect person to
be aligned with as a defense attorney. But at the
same time, he really exposed the police cover up and
the corruption in this town and the conspiracy surrounding this
case in particular.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
He was also quite involved with Karen Rott.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Mm hmm. So it turns out that Turtle Boy and
Karen were talking a lot. They talked a lot on
the phone. There was dozens and dozens of phone calls
between the two of them. She would feed him information,
he would feed her information, and yeah, they were pretty
chummy there at the beginning, and I don't necessarily think
(33:20):
this is a bad thing as long as you know
he has sources to back up like what he's saying.
But the defense was basically given a gift in aiding
Kearney to really bolster this conspiracy theory.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Let's get to the trial, because it was a very
long trial went for nine ten weeks, which is huge
for something like this. Was there anything that stood out
to you? Obviously we knew all of this web that
had been built beforehand, all of these players. How did
you find the trial?
Speaker 3 (33:55):
The trial was super entertaining and long and maybe a
bit in the weeds more than people really want to experience.
You know, in your regular courtroom drama that you're watching,
you only get the fiery good stuff, which there was
a ton of that in this trial. There was a
lot of funny moments on the stand, a lot of
(34:18):
people who maybe could have used some better prep before
they went on the stand to testify. But in the end,
this was a very emotional, very heated, very caustic trial
with really great defenders of Karen Reid. Her defense attorneys
were top notch. They gave great performances in front of
(34:43):
this jury, and the prosecution in turn ended up looking
a little silly because they brought all of these witnesses
who basically have nothing to say. They all agree that
John O'Keeffe never entered the house. They quote the guy
never went in the house. And the thing about that
is is that they're all on text messages together like
(35:05):
a text chain, kind of looking like they're trying to
get their story straight. And so all these people are
on the stand being grilled about these text messages. And
that's the other thing. When you're a witness in a
case like this, you have to turn over your phones,
and everyone did except for Brian Albert and Brian Higgins,
(35:25):
because their phones were destroyed right before the police were
able to collect them, which ends up becoming a pretty
huge part of Brian Higgins's testimony so far. This is
the standout moment to me, besides the Trooper Proctor stuff,
which was absolutely insane and at least mildly entertaining. Brian
Higgins admits to destroying his phone, not backing it up,
(35:49):
and taking the SIM card out of his phone and
driving to a military base to dispose of it in
a bag along with his phone, and the only thing
that he saved were his text between Karen and John.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
And to be clear, this is the Brian that was
sharing flirtatious text messages with correct. Okay, I want to
bring in a search term used by Karen, either before
or after she found John's body, because it's also a
really important thing to bring in. The text or the
search is how long to die in cold? Why was
(36:28):
that so heavily scrutinized.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Jennifer McCabe is the prosecution's star witness, or so they think,
and they put her on the stand. She's very confident
on her first day on the stand against some pretty
tough cross examination. But there's this Google search that happened
at around six point thirty in the morning, six twenty
(36:53):
two and six twenty three am, where she says that
Karen told her to google how long does it take
for a person to die in the cold, And because
it's such a chaotic scene, it's so cool, she mistypes
it and ends up being like how slung to die
in cold? And colds? Misspelled? And how's misspelled? And the
(37:14):
search is done twice. But when this data is analyzed
by this company called Celebrate, it turns out that the
first time this was searched was at two twenty seven am.
So if Jennifer McCabe, the sister in law of the homeowner,
(37:34):
was searching how long to die in the cold at
two twenty seven am, this exonerates Karen because clearly someone
in that house knew that someone was outside dying and
they did nothing about it. However, the Celebrate expert that
(37:54):
the prosecution uses says this search did not take place
at two twenty seven in the morning. She had a
browse are opened at twenty seven in the morning, and
when she went to go Google it at six twenty
two in the morning, it made it look like because
(38:16):
she had just used the same browser that she was
using at two thirty am looking up basketball stuff for
her daughter, it made it look like the search was
actually performed then, but that's just when the browser was
last used. However, the defense argues the opposite that they
have a newer version of the Celebrate data and that
(38:38):
proves that the search was conducted at two twenty seven
am and also again when instructed by Karen Reid to
perform the search. So I mean, ultimately, if the search
did not happen at two twenty seven am, this evidence
is completely like moot, it doesn't matter. But this is
like three days of the trial is going over this
(39:01):
search term.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Well, this just gives you a taste of just how
confusing this hest becomes and how complicated all of these
moving parts are. I don't envy the jury. How did
that go with it?
Speaker 3 (39:16):
So the jury deliberated for over twenty hours over the
course of five days and lawng Crime. We live streamed
the entire trial. We had forty thousand people watching. I
think like at the most there was like fifty thousand
people on the live stream at the highest peak. And
it was a Friday afternoon. Everyone thought, we're going to
(39:38):
get a verdict. The jurors surely want to be done
with this, right, Well, no, they decide they want to
take the weekend to think about it, and they come
back on Monday and they say they're deadlocked. They say
they cannot come to a unanimous decision and that if
they were to continue deliberating, it would only result in
(40:01):
one of them having to compromise on their beliefs, and
they didn't feel like they were going to be able
to do that, And so they deliver this super eloquent
message to the judge. The judge accepts it and declares
a mistrial, which did not surprise a lot of the
legal analysts and reporters watching this case, because, as you
(40:24):
can tell everything we've talked about, this was pretty complicated.
You know, in essence, it's a he said, she said
with a lot of the evidence, like they say this
tail light evidence was there, and the other side says
it wasn't. And so that's basically like the Google search,
the tail light, the body itself, everything has two sides
(40:44):
to it, and so it's no surprise that these jurors
weren't unable to come to a unanimous decision. In my opinion, Well,
at the.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
End of the day, all you have to do is
prove that there is reasonable doubt.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Well exactly, and so a lot of people that we
talked to for the podcast actually said that that was
an interesting position for Alan Jackson and David Ynetti to take,
was to come up with this third culprit theory. And
you know, they fought in pre trial hearings to even
be able to bring this into the trial because the
(41:19):
American legal system is absolutely insane. You have to like
have a bajillion pre trial hearings in order to present
anything that you basically want to say, And so they
had to get permission to be able to say, if
she didn't do it, someone else did, and we want
to say there's a third party culprit, and we want
(41:40):
to explain how we think it happened. And so a
lot of people said there was enough reasonable doubt without
even this theory that he was beat up in the home,
dragged out of the back the basement, left there to
die by this group of people, and that fifty people
in the end end up agreeing to this one story
(42:01):
to protect themselves and blame it all on this one woman.
Was that even necessary, because if you strip all that away,
there is so much reasonable doubt even with the story
the prosecution wanted the jury to believe. So if this
case does end up going to a new trial, which
the prosecution has said that they intend to retry the case,
(42:24):
Karen's team says that they are ready for the fight.
But there was a motion to dismiss in early August,
and the judge is still considering that motion as we
speak now, and the new trials already set for late
January five five.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
A few things did happen not long after that mistrial,
which is not that long ago from when we're having
this conversation Michael Procter. He was relieved of his duty
then suspended without pay. Was that surprising, not at all.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
I think a lot of people were suspecting that they
wanted to relieve him of his duties during the trial,
but they didn't want to complicate matters or mess up
the case for the prosecution. So, yeah, he was relieved
of his duties. And then it's revealed that there are
two more people from the state Police that are being
(43:15):
investigated for their actions in this case. So that's three
investigators compromised. And that's a problem for the prosecution because
if you really are going to want to bring this
case to trial, you have three poison apples who are
supposed to be your line of protection, Like these are
(43:37):
the people that were supposed to trust or the authority.
We're supposed to be able to believe everything that they
say on the stand because they're the ones investigating. And
what do you do after that?
Speaker 2 (43:49):
Do you honestly think, after digging so deep into this
case that we could see a different result if this
goes to trial again?
Speaker 3 (43:57):
It's hard to say. I mean, I do wonder how
the defense would maybe change course, if they're going to
still stick with this third party call brit Defense, or
if they are just going to allow the prosecution to
dig their own graves, so to speak, and just allow
the reasonable doubt to shine, because there really is no
(44:20):
solid proof that Karen Reid killed John O'Keefe, and murder
too is manslaughter, but there's also no intent there. And
does this woman deserve to spend upwards of twenty plus
years in prison for an accident? You know, obviously this
family deserves justice, and they are very upset with how
(44:46):
famous this case has become and how Karen Reid's popularity
has grown over this, and they deserve some kind of closure.
But I just don't know if any closure will come
from another trial unless new evidence is uncovered.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
The other thing to come out after the mistrial was
the RS actually coming forward and speaking, which I'm not
sure is completely legal, but what did they actually say?
Speaker 3 (45:13):
So after the mistrial was declared and Trooper Proctor was
fired from the Massachusetts State Police, a lot of jurors,
forgers to be exact, came forward pretty quickly, and they
went to Alan Jackson and David Ynetti first, and they said,
we reached two unanimous decisions. Out of the three charges.
(45:35):
We reached unanimous decisions on two of the charges. There
was only one we couldn't agree on, which this was
actually a big part of the arguments on the defensive
side during the trial is that the jury instructions were
very confusing, and they felt that they were purposely confusing,
and that the judge didn't write them out correctly or
(45:57):
didn't explain them correctly, and so it could lead to
something like this happening. And a bunch of jurors then
went to the District attorney's office and said this thing.
And the reason why this is important is because in
the United States of America, there's this rule called double jeopardy,
and you cannot be prosecuted again for the same charges
(46:22):
if a jury found you innocent of them. And so
the only one they couldn't come to a conclusion on
was the one that had to do with the vehicle.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
So they agreed on the murder charge. Well, the manslaugh
to of charge.
Speaker 3 (46:39):
Yes, the jury was unanimous in finding read not guilty
of second degree murder and leaving the scene of personal
injury and death. They found her unanimously innocent, not guilty
of these charges on manslaughter and the lesser included charges.
The juror said the jury's final vote was a quote
(47:00):
soft nine to three, with nine voting guilty. So this
is something that the judge is really going to have
to consider very seriously, and that's why I'm not surprised
that it's taking her quite a long time to come
to this decision.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
With all of that in mind, I'm going to ask
one final question. Do you think the Internet and the
Free Karen movement, given all of this stuff that's come
out since the mistrial, do you think this is just
going to keep exploding?
Speaker 3 (47:32):
I do, and I think that Turtle Boy's going to
have a lot to do with that. You know, he
got a lot of fame from this. He says that
he's received a podcast and movie deal, and the TikTok
In Couch detectives are still at it with exposing what
(47:52):
they think are important details that, of course, you can't
prove in any courtroom. And I think that the Internet
is a perfect place for a conspiracy theory to grow
and grow and grow and grow. And if the judge
comes back and says we're not going to try this
(48:12):
case again. I think it would die out eventually, but
if she says no, we're going back to trial, this
is never going to die. It's going to get even
more attention because there's a Netflix documentary coming out. You know,
our podcast is out. Your podcast is going to be
coming out. Every true crime podcast is talking about this,
(48:34):
and so there's going to be probably like ten times
the amount of ears and eyeballs on this then there
was in the first place. And so, unfortunately, conspiracy theories
and really interesting cases like this are just bound to
grow and grow and grow until someone says, Okay, here's
your closure.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
Thanks to Jessica for assisting us to tell this story.
True Crime Conversations is Amma Ma a podcast hosted and
produced by Jemma Bath with audio design by Scott Stronik.
Our senior producer is Crystal kor Nielssen. Thanks for listening.
I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation.
True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
waters that this podcast was recorded on. Hey, True crime listeners.
As you may have seen, there has been a major
update in the Karen Read case, and we're going to
bring you up to speed on that so you can
better understand what this case is about. We are re
releasing our episode featuring Jessica Lowther from the Law and
Crime Network and producer of the hit podcast series Karen.
(00:29):
After a second trial and five days of jury deliberations,
Karen Reid has been found not guilty of second degree
murder and leaving the scene of an accident in the
twenty twenty two death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer
John O'Keefe. She was convicted only of one driving offense,
and that's driving under the influence, and sentenced to one
year of probation. This verdict marks the end of a
(00:52):
high profile case that captured global attention and went viral
on TikTok, drawing in true crime fanatics and sparking fierce
debate online. Outside the courtroom in Massachusetts, Reid thanked her supporters,
but despite the legal conclusion, questions still linger about what
really happened that night. In July twenty twenty four, her
first trial ended in a mistrial due to a hung jury.
(01:15):
Throughout both trials, Reid maintained her innocence, alleging she was
the victim of a cover up involving local police and officials,
a claim that fueled the case's viral spread and polarized
a Massachusetts town. Take a listen to the episode let
us know what you think.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
It's a blustery winter's night in Canton, Massachusetts, in January
twenty twenty two, and Karen Reid and John O'Keeffe are
out with friends. They're drinking, bar hopping and enjoying a
night on the town. John is a local cop and
the plan is to move the party to one of
his colleagues homes nearby. After midnight, Karen drops John at
(01:56):
the address and heads back to his house. She starts
panicking when he still isn't home in the early hours
of the morning. Well that's her side of story, anyway.
John's body is found outside the location of the house
party at six am the next morning. Pieces from a
broken tail light are found nearby. As Karen wails at
(02:19):
the sight of her dead boyfriend, she says something that
remains a point of contention either I hit him, I
hit him? Or did I hit him? Did I hit him?
The slight change of inference means everything. It could mean
the difference between freedom and a jail cell for Karen.
But this story gets even murkier because as her defense
(02:42):
picks up the case, they start to unravel another potential
series of events, one that involves a cover up, contamination
by law enforcement, and the framing of Karen for murder.
(03:05):
I'm Jemma and this is True Crime Conversations a Muma
mea podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking
to the people who know the most about them. Before
her arrest, Karen Reid was a financial analyst and professor.
She'd been dating John O'Keefe, a Boston police officer, for
two years. Photos of the pair show an attractive, smiling
(03:27):
couple in their mid forties, but despite the pretty pictures,
their relationship wasn't all rosy. They'd been having some disagreements
in the lead up to that January twenty twenty two evening.
Ever since John's death, the town where he died has
been divided, but it since snowbled into an international debate
fueled by the Free Karen movement that's grown legs online.
(03:50):
There's two very distinct camps. Was John killed by those
inside the house, a house full of police and law
enforcement who then proceeded to cover up his murder, or
did his girlfriend Karen kill him before he even made
it through the To help us unpack those theories and
everything that came before it, we're joined by Jessica lalfa,
(04:13):
producer of Karen, an in depth podcast series by the
Law and Crime Network. Jessica joins us now. Jess tell
us about Karen and Jones love story.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
So, Karen and John actually first met when they were
in their twenties, shortly after college. They dated for a
little while, but their careers took them on different paths.
Karen became an adjunct professor at Bentley University in Massachusetts,
and John O'Keeffe became a cop. He was a Boston
(04:54):
Police officer, and in twenty twenty or you know, during
the COVID era, they came across each other again on
Facebook and he messaged her and was like, you know,
longtime no see and she was looking at his profile
and was like, oh, I noticed you have these kids
with you now, like, what's going on with that? And
(05:15):
it turns out that he has taken custody of his
niece and his nephew after the really really sad story
that not only did his brother in law die, but
also his sister died, and so that left the kids
without any parents, and so John swooped in and took
them under his wing. And so he ended up taking
(05:36):
a desk job at the Boston Police Department to have
a safer job so he could take care of these kids.
And from what I'd seen on their TikTok, they just
had like a ton of fun together. You can tell
he was the fun uncle and really loved them, and
it really just seemed like a really fun house to
live in. But Karen and John they rekindled and they
(05:59):
dated for two years up until the night that this
tragic incident happened.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
That's a little of different dynamics to navigate as someone
coming into a new relationship. You've got this once single guy,
no kids, who suddenly has two children to look after,
he's also grieving. How did they navigate all of that?
Her basically adopting two step kids in this relationship.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Yeah, From all accounts we've heard, Karen really really cared
about the children, and she was often spending the night
at John's house and helping to raise them, to take
care of them. She was very invested in their futures.
But Karen and John were only dating, and so there
were times where she felt like she was being taken
advantage of when he would go out drinking and she
(06:47):
couldn't get a hold of him and she would be
at the house with the kids. You know, She's like,
I have to go back to my house. I have
a job to do, and you're nowhere to be found.
And so there was a lot of back and forth,
it seems, between the two of them over the kids,
and especially from some testimony we heard during the trial
about what she was feed eating the kids. It's actually
(07:08):
kind of ironic that it's all over like Dunkin Donuts,
which is very Massachusetts, very Boston of this case.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
So take me through that he was upset that she
was feeding them donuts.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Yeah, so there was just one morning where instead of
making them a breakfast, she brought them Dunkin Donuts and
John was unhappy about the kids eating donuts and wanting
them to eat something healthier and they had a big
argument about it. But I'll say this, just judging from
everything we've learned about Karen and John over the course
of the past couple of years since in since and
(07:42):
it happened, it seems like it's pretty easy to get
them to fly off the handle. You know, she seems
like she has quite a temper on her and I'm
not sure about John. I haven't heard that about him.
But it takes two to start a but yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Quick to fire, by the sounds. So what was the
state of their relationship looking like in twenty twenty two?
Early twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Two, people in the group were saying that the relationship
had run its course. The niece actually had overheard John
say to Karen that this isn't healthy. And this was
one week before his death, And so there's a lot
of moving parts around this time. They're dating, she's practically
(08:26):
living with him, she's taking care of his children, but
you know, they still love each other, and so it
seems like it's very hard for them to figure out
like how to make this work. And then leading up
to the night of the twenty eighth, you can see
on surveillance footage, John and Karen and their group of friends.
They're at this bar called the Waterfall Bard Girl, and
(08:47):
they look like they're having a great time. Everybody looks
like they're getting along. Everybody's laughing. She's like holding on
to him. They're very affectionate, and it's very hard to
believe everything that happens. After this.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
They go to an after patty, which is what happens
after the night out drinking. Before we get to what happened,
can you give us some context about who was at
that afterpotty because it was a house that was owned
by a man called Brian Albert, and he's quite significant
in this story.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
He is so Brian Albert is also a Boston police officer,
so he knew John O'Keefe. He said he was a
friend of his, but they were probably just buddies. They're
also cops. They live near each other. And also John
O'Keeffe lives next door to Colin Albert, which is the
nephew of Brian Albert. So thirty four Fairview Road is
(09:36):
where all of this ends up taking place in Campton, Massachusetts.
A Norraters coming in, which is a huge snowstorm, the
likes of which the area had not seen in years,
and they were projected to get like feet and feet
of snow, and so they were all just trying to
get one last hurrah before they were going to be
holed in by this snow. And at the house, they're
(10:00):
celebrating Brian Junior's birthday party. So Brian Junior is there
at the house with a bunch of his friends, while
the parents in John O'Keeffe and Karen Reider at the bar.
And so around twelve fifteen, everyone starts trickling from the
bar to the Albert home and this is the home
of Brian Albert. And at the home with them at
(10:23):
this point is Jennifer McCabe. So one other person that's
at this party is the person that Karen Reid has
been exchanging flirtatious text with and he was also at
the bar. His name is Brian Higgins. There are two
Brian's in this story. So Brian Higgins is not a
police officer, but he's in law enforcement and he happens
(10:46):
to have an office in the Canton Police Department, where
Kevin Albert is a detective. Kevin is Brian's brother, and
they have another brother named Chris, who is the Canton Selectman.
So this is clearly a very well connected family in
this little town. So it's easy to see where this
(11:09):
conspiracy theory took fire because there are so many tentacles
to this family and so many people involved. But at
the core of it, that night, there were about ten
adults and maybe a few of the kids left from
the birthday celebration around twelve thirty at night.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Okay, so what does Karen say happened that evening?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
So Karen Reid has really not said much about this
case publicly, except she did an interview for Nightline back
in twenty twenty three before the trial took place, and
I'm actually surprised her lawyers let her do this. But
she says that she and John were leaving the bar
(11:57):
and he says, we're going to go to the Alberts
for the after party. She says, are we invited? I
want to make sure we're invited, And so she tells
him when they get there to go inside to make
sure that it's okay, that they're welcome there. And this
is where the details get like a little fuzzy, because
(12:17):
she says she never saw him go in the house,
but she saw him approach the door, she says she
looked down at her phone and then drove off, which
is kind of weird because I thought she was going
to stay at the party. But there's also some times
where she said that she waited for a really long
time for John to come out and give her the confirmation,
(12:38):
and he wasn't answering his phone and he wasn't responding
to any texts. So perhaps she was there for about
ten minutes and waited for him, and then she took
off and went back to his house for the night
because that's where the kids were and somebody needed to
be with them overnight. And over the course of this
whole evening, she's blowing up his phone, she's texting him,
(13:03):
she calls him fifty times, and she's leaving like these
profanity laden voicemails. They're kind of funny if it wasn't
in the middle of this extremely serious situation. So that's
Karen's story, is that she wakes up around five am
and she realizes John never came into the house. She
was sleeping on the couch and I believe the niece
(13:24):
was with her in the living room, So she calls
Jennifer McCabe, who again is the sister in law of
Brian Albert, the homeowner, and she says, you know, John
never came home last night. Where's John? Do you think
he got hit by a plow? And it's really interesting
that she's just throwing out all of these weird like
(13:45):
what if he got hit by a plow? Like we
need to go look for him. So she and Jennifer
and this woman Carrie Roberts decide to go on this
journey together to look for John. And while she's on
the phone with Jennifer McCabe, Jennifer's husband hears the conversation
and Karen is saying, I left him at the waterfall.
(14:07):
I must have left him at the waterfall, and he's like,
what are you talking about? We saw you outside the house.
So there are multiple people who say they saw her
dark suv outside of the house. So we know that
it's at least true that she pulled up to the
house and dropped off John. That's true. Nobody's debating that.
(14:28):
But what happens next is still a mystery because they're
driving around the two square miles from the bar to
the two houses, and as soon as they pull up
in front of the house. The homeowner is Brian Albert,
Boston police officer. She immediately homes in on this gigantic
(14:49):
snow mound in between the flagpole and the fire hydrant,
and she runs and she bee lines to it. She's like,
it's John, it's John, it's John. Nobody else sees what
she's seeing. Like again, it's snowing, very, very hard. There's
at least two feet of snow on the ground, I
believe at this point, and she runs over to him.
She's pushing the snow off of him. At one point
(15:09):
she takes her shirt off, she takes his shirt off,
and she's trying to warm him up. And I believe
he's still alive at this point, or you know, maybe
he's just pronounced dead later. But it's really strange what
you end up seeing. Of course, I've never seen his
(15:31):
body on the scene, but he has two black eyes,
a big straight abrasion on the back of his head,
and he has a lot of what looked like claw
marks scratches on one of his arms, and he's bleeding
from the mouth and the nose and the eyes, and
so they call nine one one. Multiple people have called
(15:52):
nine one one at this point, and this is where
again it gets even more complicated because a lot of
people end up on this scene, the paramedics, the investigating
officers from the Canton Police Department, who do not investigate homicides,
let alone deaths, and so they're a little bit out
of their element. It's snowing, it's a crazy scene. It's
(16:13):
six in the morning, and Karen is screaming hysterically. Everyone
keeps talking about how crazy she's going at this scene,
while everyone else is very calm and they're just, you know,
kind of in shock that this is even happening to
their good friend John O'Keefe. And there are multiple accounts
(16:34):
that Karen said I hit him, I hit him, I
hit him, but nobody wrote it down in a single
report at the time.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
There was also contention over the wording of that wasn't.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
There right, And so she maintains that she did not
say I hit him. She maintains she asked did I
hit him? Could I have hit him? Because she's thinking
back to the night before when she dropped him off.
And so this is where it gets a little fuzzy,
because you either have to believe that she doesn't remember
(17:11):
anything about that night, or she's only remembering details, or
they're coming to her over time, which could happen. But
really everything about this case is really complicated by the
fact that nobody secures the scene. None of the officers
separate the witnesses. They never go into the home. Brian Albert,
(17:34):
a police officer and a first responder, never comes out
of his home to see what's going on outside. And
they start collecting evidence with red solo cups borrowed from
a cop neighbor who lives down the street.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
That is a wild detile, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
I know it came out in the trial. It was
just like, how far away is the police department? You
guys don't have sterile plastic containers? What would take you
five minutes to get there? So they're clearly out of
their element. By the time the afternoon rolls around. Obviously
this case has been taken out of their hands and
it's given to the Massachusetts State Police. And this complicates
the case even more because the person assigned to investigate
(18:19):
this is Trooper Michael Proctor, and he is also a
friend of the homeowner. Brian Albert.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
You're listening to true crime conversations with me Jim A.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Bath.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
I'm speaking with Jessica Lautha about the trial of Karen Reid.
What is John's actual cause of death put down in
his autopsy report.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
This is what's crazy, is that his cause of death
is blunt force trauma mixed with hypothermia. So if it
happened how the prosecution says it happened, is that Karen
Reid back up into John O'Keefe hit him with her
car and he laid there for six hours until someone
(19:12):
found him, and it was freezing cold, wind whipping snow
piling up. But what's so strange about that is that
there were a lot of people coming and going from
this party all night, and even the plow driver who
came through at two thirty in the morning has his
(19:33):
light shining and says he never sees anything in that
front lawn, and he would have noticed it because he
drives this route all the time. And they never determined
his manner of death, which is curious that you would
try to put someone on trial for murder without a
determined manner of death.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
And there were, as you were saying before, quite bizarre
injuries on him. If you consider that, the prosecution thinks
that he was backed into. But he had bruises on
his eyes, and he had weird mocks on his arms.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
And that's the thing, is that the prosecution has an
expert that testifies that these injuries are consistent with being
hit by a car, but the defense has an expert
that goes on and says they're not. This is consistent
with either a fight or an attack by an animal.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
And there was an animal there wasn't there.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
There was an animal there, and is if this story
is not crazy enough. Now a dog named Chloe becomes
a suspect. There's a German shepherd that's been living with
the Alberts for seven years, their beloved pet dog. And curiously,
they rehome this dog within months of John o'keeith's death.
(20:48):
And not only do they rehome the dog, they rehome themselves.
They buy a new home, even after they had just
renovated their entire basement. So a lot of curious things
going on, a lot of strange coincidences, I suppose. But
on the final day of the trial, before closing arguments,
(21:09):
they have an expert go up there and say, these
marks on John O'Keefe's arms are consistent with that of
dog claw marks and bites, and if you look at
the photos or look at other photos of dog attacks,
they look exactly the same. Nobody ever examined the dog.
The dog was living in Vermont, and they say that
(21:31):
they offered up the address of the dog if they
wanted to go interview her. But yeah, no one ever
really followed up with this lead. And because really the
crux of the story is is that they honed in
on Karen Reid from day one and they wanted someone
to blame this on, and they blamed it on her.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Well, she was arrested in early feb initially not charged
with murder, but quite quickly upgraded to murder two, which Frozzies,
is kind of like manslaughter. On what evidence was that
charge made? You've said that the prosecution claims that the
car backed into John, but what was the evidence that
(22:14):
that happened.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
The evidence that they claim that proves Karen Reid hit
John O'Keefe with her SUV is that there were microscopic
tail light pieces found on him, and there were tail
light pieces that were found around the scene underneath the snow.
So after they use the leaf blower to push all
(22:38):
the snow away, the State Police finally come in with
shovels and find tail light pieces underneath the snow. And
so that's one of the contentious points of this case
is that nobody saw any tail light pieces until the
state police came in. And when you have an investigator
assigned to this case who has as much history as
(22:59):
Trooper Proctor does, this is when the conspiracy starts to
really really boil to the surface.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Was there anything that directly challenged that version of events?
I've said a lot of debate about that tilelight evidence.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Yeah, the tailight evidence is really kind of crazy because
even at the trial, the plastic bag that the tailight
pieces are in multiply over time, like the pieces multiply,
and so at one point there's only three, then there's five.
And even over the course of the investigation of this case,
(23:35):
they found tailight pieces near his body. Then they found
the microscopic pieces on him. But when you see pictures
of Karen's SUV, the taillight did not look as broken
when they brought the car in as it did when
it left there. And so there's this surveillance footage of
(23:55):
the quote Sally Port that the Massachusetts State Police brought
her suv to search it to give it a very
thorough look through. And one thing that the defense notices
right away is that this video appears to be inverted,
and so what looks to be the passenger side is
actually the driver side, and what looks to be the
(24:17):
driver side is actually the passenger side, and supposedly it's
the right rear tail light, so on the passenger side
that's broken, and on the video you see two people
walk by and appear to be fiddling with something. But
because this looks like it might be the driver's side,
(24:38):
nobody's really thinking anything of it until it's pointed out
in the trial that no, this video is inverted. They
see the number on the wall, the floor is backwards,
on the police cruiser is backwards, and so it's very, very,
very complicated. What they're implying through all of this is
that Trooper Procter planted evidence and purposely broke the tail
(24:59):
light and brought the tail light pieces back to the
scene to plant in the snow to frame kar and
read this murder.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Which is a huge thing to accuse local law enforcement
of doing.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Right m it's not unheard of. There's a history in
this area of not trusting law enforcement. A lot of
people don't trust authority, A lot of people don't trust
the police, And so you have like two sides forming
do you trust the police investigating this case or do
(25:34):
you believe that this woman is being railroaded in the
death of her cop boyfriend. But it's not unheard of
for this area to be suspicious of these investigators, and
turns out a lot of them were right based on
what happens after the trial.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
But what reason would these cops have to frame her?
What do they say happened? The defense to John.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
The defensive theory of what happened that night is that
Karen drops John O'Keeffe off at the Alberts. He goes
into the house and is immediately confronted by people in
the basement of the albert home. There's a weight room
down there, and they think that a fight broke out
(26:25):
pretty quickly. Someone may have hit John O'Keefe with a
dumbbell on the back of the head, maybe punched him
in the face, and then maybe perhaps he fought back
and the dog intervened and the dog attacked him. And
I don't think anyone intended for John O'Keefe to die.
(26:48):
Now this is all alleged. This is a house full
of law enforcement, so they have to spend the next
few hours trying to figure out what to do. And
their theory is that they bring the body out through
this back set of stars from the base to the
backyard and bring the body around to the front yard
(27:10):
and lay him there with his phone underneath him.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Up next, we delve deeper into the trial that captivated
the world and the text messages that put a lead
investigator on notice.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
And he lies there until Karen finds him at six
in the morning. And so how does this turn into
a big cover up? Is that Trooper Proctor again is
friends with Brian Albert. There is a thin blue line
cops protect other cops, and cops don't get in trouble
(27:59):
for these types of things, and we don't investigate other
cops and especially not our friends. And so Truect obviously
knew when he was pulling up to this house that
this was the house of his friend Brian Albert. He
chose not to go in and interview, he chose not
to lock down the crime scene, he chose not to
separate the witnesses, and there were a lot of missteps,
(28:21):
and all of this is captured in his own text
messages that he embarrassingly has to read on the stand
in front of the world, where he admits that he's
gonna make this case cut and dried and pin it
on the girl, and the girl is Karen Reid, And
then there's a lot of horrible text messages where he's
(28:43):
talking about her body and how hot she is and
how he hates her accent, and he calls her the
C word, and you know, there's just a lot of
really disgusting things said by this man to his superiors.
So you can tell this is kind of a culture, right,
a culture in this department, in this lawn or smith community,
(29:07):
that they can do anything and get away with it,
and even so far as to say no nudes yet
because he was going through Karen's phone, Oh my gosh. Yeah,
So all of this combined it makes it look like
a cover up. It makes it look from the beginning that,
you know what, this was Brian's house. We can't have
(29:30):
this on Brian. Let's just pin it on the girl, like,
let's just put it on her. And this didn't even
have to be a murder case. This didn't even have
to go to trial. When you really think about it,
this could have just been an accident. I don't know
if the defensis theory is correct. I don't know if
this was planned from the beginning to pin it on Karen,
or whether it just happened naturally after she supposedly said
(29:53):
I hit him at the scene. It all starts to
build and build and build to make for a very
very interesting case with a trial that riveted thousands and
hook over TikTok for like an entire week while Trooper
Proctors reading these text messages on the stand, apparently to
the horrified jurors we spoke to. Our reporter said that
(30:16):
the jurors were just disgusted visibly by these text messages
and by Trooper Proctor. And one interesting thing to note
is that the jurors, who are a very important element
of this case, they were not allowed to be aware
that Trooper Proctor was under investigation at this time for
his behavior on this case. They're not allowed to know that,
(30:39):
and they're not supposed to be looking up information about
the case after they leave. They're not sequestered, so it's
not like they're staying in a hotel with no TV.
No phone, no news. They're just not supposed to be
talking about it and they're not supposed to be looking
up in information about it. So not having that information
is pretty interesting. But I think he kind of you
(30:59):
said it all himself on the stand before.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
We get more into the trial. I think it's worth
tracking a bit to TikTok because, as you mentioned, this
case exploded. People might have heard of book talk. There's
also crime talk out there, and this was one of
those cases that just captivated the internet. And I need
to bring in Turtle Boy because he's one of the
main reasons for that. Who on earth is Turtle Boy
(31:24):
and why is he kind of the one that helped
fuel all of this?
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Yeah, So Aidan Kearney is his real name, and he
goes by Turtle Boy. He's a local Massachusetts blogger. He's
had this blog for over ten years, and he's really
known for his bravado and his kind of like take
no shit attitude. He's credited with bringing the Reed trial
to the public's attention and mobilizing the quote Free Karen
(31:50):
Reid movement that ended up resulting in crowds and crowds
of people forming outside of the courthouse wearing these pink
shirts and solidarity with Karen with their signs, and it
really kind of took on the air of like a
celebrity trial for this tiny little town in Massachusetts. And
that's all because of Aiden Kearney and he through our podcast,
(32:13):
which is just you know, affectually called Karen, we found
that Aiden Kearney was actually pretty heavily involved with the
defense before this case went to trial. He fed them
a lot of information about the Alberts and the mccabs
and he found a lot of this through his own
(32:34):
investigative work. Now he has been charged with witness intimidation
and so you know, he's not a perfect person to
be aligned with as a defense attorney. But at the
same time, he really exposed the police cover up and
the corruption in this town and the conspiracy surrounding this
case in particular.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
He was also quite involved with Karen Rott.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Mm hmm. So it turns out that Turtle Boy and
Karen were talking a lot. They talked a lot on
the phone. There was dozens and dozens of phone calls
between the two of them. She would feed him information,
he would feed her information, and yeah, they were pretty
chummy there at the beginning, and I don't necessarily think
(33:20):
this is a bad thing as long as you know
he has sources to back up like what he's saying.
But the defense was basically given a gift in aiding
Kearney to really bolster this conspiracy theory.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Let's get to the trial, because it was a very
long trial went for nine ten weeks, which is huge
for something like this. Was there anything that stood out
to you? Obviously we knew all of this web that
had been built beforehand, all of these players. How did
you find the trial?
Speaker 3 (33:55):
The trial was super entertaining and long and maybe a
bit in the weeds more than people really want to experience.
You know, in your regular courtroom drama that you're watching,
you only get the fiery good stuff, which there was
a ton of that in this trial. There was a
lot of funny moments on the stand, a lot of
(34:18):
people who maybe could have used some better prep before
they went on the stand to testify. But in the end,
this was a very emotional, very heated, very caustic trial
with really great defenders of Karen Reid. Her defense attorneys
were top notch. They gave great performances in front of
(34:43):
this jury, and the prosecution in turn ended up looking
a little silly because they brought all of these witnesses
who basically have nothing to say. They all agree that
John O'Keeffe never entered the house. They quote the guy
never went in the house. And the thing about that
is is that they're all on text messages together like
(35:05):
a text chain, kind of looking like they're trying to
get their story straight. And so all these people are
on the stand being grilled about these text messages. And
that's the other thing. When you're a witness in a
case like this, you have to turn over your phones,
and everyone did except for Brian Albert and Brian Higgins,
(35:25):
because their phones were destroyed right before the police were
able to collect them, which ends up becoming a pretty
huge part of Brian Higgins's testimony so far. This is
the standout moment to me, besides the Trooper Proctor stuff,
which was absolutely insane and at least mildly entertaining. Brian
Higgins admits to destroying his phone, not backing it up,
(35:49):
and taking the SIM card out of his phone and
driving to a military base to dispose of it in
a bag along with his phone, and the only thing
that he saved were his text between Karen and John.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
And to be clear, this is the Brian that was
sharing flirtatious text messages with correct. Okay, I want to
bring in a search term used by Karen, either before
or after she found John's body, because it's also a
really important thing to bring in. The text or the
search is how long to die in cold? Why was
(36:28):
that so heavily scrutinized.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Jennifer McCabe is the prosecution's star witness, or so they think,
and they put her on the stand. She's very confident
on her first day on the stand against some pretty
tough cross examination. But there's this Google search that happened
at around six point thirty in the morning, six twenty
(36:53):
two and six twenty three am, where she says that
Karen told her to google how long does it take
for a person to die in the cold, And because
it's such a chaotic scene, it's so cool, she mistypes
it and ends up being like how slung to die
in cold? And colds? Misspelled? And how's misspelled? And the
(37:14):
search is done twice. But when this data is analyzed
by this company called Celebrate, it turns out that the
first time this was searched was at two twenty seven am.
So if Jennifer McCabe, the sister in law of the homeowner,
(37:34):
was searching how long to die in the cold at
two twenty seven am, this exonerates Karen because clearly someone
in that house knew that someone was outside dying and
they did nothing about it. However, the Celebrate expert that
(37:54):
the prosecution uses says this search did not take place
at two twenty seven in the morning. She had a
browse are opened at twenty seven in the morning, and
when she went to go Google it at six twenty
two in the morning, it made it look like because
(38:16):
she had just used the same browser that she was
using at two thirty am looking up basketball stuff for
her daughter, it made it look like the search was
actually performed then, but that's just when the browser was
last used. However, the defense argues the opposite that they
have a newer version of the Celebrate data and that
(38:38):
proves that the search was conducted at two twenty seven
am and also again when instructed by Karen Reid to
perform the search. So I mean, ultimately, if the search
did not happen at two twenty seven am, this evidence
is completely like moot, it doesn't matter. But this is
like three days of the trial is going over this
(39:01):
search term.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Well, this just gives you a taste of just how
confusing this hest becomes and how complicated all of these
moving parts are. I don't envy the jury. How did
that go with it?
Speaker 3 (39:16):
So the jury deliberated for over twenty hours over the
course of five days and lawng Crime. We live streamed
the entire trial. We had forty thousand people watching. I
think like at the most there was like fifty thousand
people on the live stream at the highest peak. And
it was a Friday afternoon. Everyone thought, we're going to
(39:38):
get a verdict. The jurors surely want to be done
with this, right, Well, no, they decide they want to
take the weekend to think about it, and they come
back on Monday and they say they're deadlocked. They say
they cannot come to a unanimous decision and that if
they were to continue deliberating, it would only result in
(40:01):
one of them having to compromise on their beliefs, and
they didn't feel like they were going to be able
to do that, And so they deliver this super eloquent
message to the judge. The judge accepts it and declares
a mistrial, which did not surprise a lot of the
legal analysts and reporters watching this case, because, as you
(40:24):
can tell everything we've talked about, this was pretty complicated.
You know, in essence, it's a he said, she said
with a lot of the evidence, like they say this
tail light evidence was there, and the other side says
it wasn't. And so that's basically like the Google search,
the tail light, the body itself, everything has two sides
(40:44):
to it, and so it's no surprise that these jurors
weren't unable to come to a unanimous decision. In my opinion, Well,
at the.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
End of the day, all you have to do is
prove that there is reasonable doubt.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Well exactly, and so a lot of people that we
talked to for the podcast actually said that that was
an interesting position for Alan Jackson and David Ynetti to take,
was to come up with this third culprit theory. And
you know, they fought in pre trial hearings to even
be able to bring this into the trial because the
(41:19):
American legal system is absolutely insane. You have to like
have a bajillion pre trial hearings in order to present
anything that you basically want to say, And so they
had to get permission to be able to say, if
she didn't do it, someone else did, and we want
to say there's a third party culprit, and we want
(41:40):
to explain how we think it happened. And so a
lot of people said there was enough reasonable doubt without
even this theory that he was beat up in the home,
dragged out of the back the basement, left there to
die by this group of people, and that fifty people
in the end end up agreeing to this one story
(42:01):
to protect themselves and blame it all on this one woman.
Was that even necessary, because if you strip all that away,
there is so much reasonable doubt even with the story
the prosecution wanted the jury to believe. So if this
case does end up going to a new trial, which
the prosecution has said that they intend to retry the case,
(42:24):
Karen's team says that they are ready for the fight.
But there was a motion to dismiss in early August,
and the judge is still considering that motion as we
speak now, and the new trials already set for late
January five five.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
A few things did happen not long after that mistrial,
which is not that long ago from when we're having
this conversation Michael Procter. He was relieved of his duty
then suspended without pay. Was that surprising, not at all.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
I think a lot of people were suspecting that they
wanted to relieve him of his duties during the trial,
but they didn't want to complicate matters or mess up
the case for the prosecution. So, yeah, he was relieved
of his duties. And then it's revealed that there are
two more people from the state Police that are being
(43:15):
investigated for their actions in this case. So that's three
investigators compromised. And that's a problem for the prosecution because
if you really are going to want to bring this
case to trial, you have three poison apples who are
supposed to be your line of protection, Like these are
(43:37):
the people that were supposed to trust or the authority.
We're supposed to be able to believe everything that they
say on the stand because they're the ones investigating. And
what do you do after that?
Speaker 2 (43:49):
Do you honestly think, after digging so deep into this
case that we could see a different result if this
goes to trial again?
Speaker 3 (43:57):
It's hard to say. I mean, I do wonder how
the defense would maybe change course, if they're going to
still stick with this third party call brit Defense, or
if they are just going to allow the prosecution to
dig their own graves, so to speak, and just allow
the reasonable doubt to shine, because there really is no
(44:20):
solid proof that Karen Reid killed John O'Keefe, and murder
too is manslaughter, but there's also no intent there. And
does this woman deserve to spend upwards of twenty plus
years in prison for an accident? You know, obviously this
family deserves justice, and they are very upset with how
(44:46):
famous this case has become and how Karen Reid's popularity
has grown over this, and they deserve some kind of closure.
But I just don't know if any closure will come
from another trial unless new evidence is uncovered.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
The other thing to come out after the mistrial was
the RS actually coming forward and speaking, which I'm not
sure is completely legal, but what did they actually say?
Speaker 3 (45:13):
So after the mistrial was declared and Trooper Proctor was
fired from the Massachusetts State Police, a lot of jurors,
forgers to be exact, came forward pretty quickly, and they
went to Alan Jackson and David Ynetti first, and they said,
we reached two unanimous decisions. Out of the three charges.
(45:35):
We reached unanimous decisions on two of the charges. There
was only one we couldn't agree on, which this was
actually a big part of the arguments on the defensive
side during the trial is that the jury instructions were
very confusing, and they felt that they were purposely confusing,
and that the judge didn't write them out correctly or
(45:57):
didn't explain them correctly, and so it could lead to
something like this happening. And a bunch of jurors then
went to the District attorney's office and said this thing.
And the reason why this is important is because in
the United States of America, there's this rule called double jeopardy,
and you cannot be prosecuted again for the same charges
(46:22):
if a jury found you innocent of them. And so
the only one they couldn't come to a conclusion on
was the one that had to do with the vehicle.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
So they agreed on the murder charge. Well, the manslaugh
to of charge.
Speaker 3 (46:39):
Yes, the jury was unanimous in finding read not guilty
of second degree murder and leaving the scene of personal
injury and death. They found her unanimously innocent, not guilty
of these charges on manslaughter and the lesser included charges.
The juror said the jury's final vote was a quote
(47:00):
soft nine to three, with nine voting guilty. So this
is something that the judge is really going to have
to consider very seriously, and that's why I'm not surprised
that it's taking her quite a long time to come
to this decision.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
With all of that in mind, I'm going to ask
one final question. Do you think the Internet and the
Free Karen movement, given all of this stuff that's come
out since the mistrial, do you think this is just
going to keep exploding?
Speaker 3 (47:32):
I do, and I think that Turtle Boy's going to
have a lot to do with that. You know, he
got a lot of fame from this. He says that
he's received a podcast and movie deal, and the TikTok
In Couch detectives are still at it with exposing what
(47:52):
they think are important details that, of course, you can't
prove in any courtroom. And I think that the Internet
is a perfect place for a conspiracy theory to grow
and grow and grow and grow. And if the judge
comes back and says we're not going to try this
(48:12):
case again. I think it would die out eventually, but
if she says no, we're going back to trial, this
is never going to die. It's going to get even
more attention because there's a Netflix documentary coming out. You know,
our podcast is out. Your podcast is going to be
coming out. Every true crime podcast is talking about this,
(48:34):
and so there's going to be probably like ten times
the amount of ears and eyeballs on this then there
was in the first place. And so, unfortunately, conspiracy theories
and really interesting cases like this are just bound to
grow and grow and grow until someone says, Okay, here's
your closure.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
Thanks to Jessica for assisting us to tell this story.
True Crime Conversations is Amma Ma a podcast hosted and
produced by Jemma Bath with audio design by Scott Stronik.
Our senior producer is Crystal kor Nielssen. Thanks for listening.
I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation.
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