Did She Do it: The Investigation Into Karen Read

In this episode of Unspeakable, KJ delves into the death of Boston police officer John O'Keefe and brings you into the investigation of his girlfriend Karen Read to finally answer the question…Did she do it?

Chapters
01:44 The Life of John O'Keefe
12:36 Adjusting to Parenthood
14:30 New Neighbors and Community
24:19 A Night Out Turns Sour
33:36 The Emergency Call
49:33 The Heartbreaking News
54:01 Family's Desperate Drive to the Hospital
1:06:44 Unraveling the Mystery of John's Death

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SOURCES
https://www.cartwrightfuneral.com/obituaries/John-J-III-JJ-OKeefe?obId=29113887 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/236494717/john_j-o'keefe/photo
https://whdh.com/news/john-okeefe-was-a-veteran-officer-and-devoted-father-figure/
https://www.today.com/popculture/officer-who-appeared-police-reality-show-bostons-finest-dies-2d11638373
https://www.patriotledger.com/story/news/2014/01/16/two-young-canton-kids-lose/40602672007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/05/07/who-karen-read-trial-murder-case/83476129007/
https://www.masslive.com/news/2025/04/these-are-the-20-people-you-need-to-know-to-follow-karen-reads-2nd-trial.html

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast where I tell
stories of real crimes with real victims, whose cases are
so shocking that many are left wondering how is this
even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement corrections,
and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator,

(00:28):
dig deep into complex cases of evil acts, some so
evil many feel they are unspeakable. Warning. Unspeakable as intended

(00:52):
for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm
not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey y'all, it's
kJ here back for this episode of Unspeakable. How's it going?
What you're doing? I just damn near knocked the whole
microphone and stand off the table. I guess I got
so excited to press the button. Formal apologies to Jimothy
for almost tearing down his studio from top to bottom.

(01:13):
Now listen up to this. I know for a fact
because people be messaging me that a bunch of y'all
are following or at least have heard about this case.
So I know. Look, I gotta jump on the train
to dude. I gotta get this one done, and I've
got to give it to y'all. So here we go. Now,
I will start out and tell you this is gonna

(01:34):
have to be a multi part. But trust me, you
can cool your jets because you're gonna want the full
Manti on this one because it gets cray. So go
ahead and give this one a listen and make sure
you listen in order as I release these. So, I
want you to come with me to Massachusetts, specifically the
areas of Canton and Boston. Okay, this was the home

(01:58):
of twenty six year old John o'keith. And I know
right now I just said that, Dame and sudden y'all
are like, oh, no, she didn't. She's doing this one already. Yes, ma'am,
I am you message and you shall receive. So let
me give you a little background on John. Okay. So
John was born and raised in Braintree, which is about
twelve miles south of Boston if you don't know that

(02:18):
area like I did not. And his parents' names were
John and Margaret. Miss Margaret went by Peggy, and they
were the proud parents of three kids. Kristin was the oldest,
John was the middle, and Paul was the youngest. And
their home was one of those homes that was full
of love and commitment to family. No doubt, they were

(02:40):
a tight knit group. John was referred to as Johnny
by his family, and he was gonna be successful, just
like his siblings were. He graduated from Braintree High School
and then he went on to graduate from Northwestern University.
But that was not enough for John. He also wanted
to continue to level up, and he did so by
earning his master's degree in criminal justice from UMass, which

(03:02):
he would then turn around and turn into a career
in none other than law enforcement. A man after my
own heart in this one, I can tell that he
and I have very similar likes and goals I guess
in life, so to speak. And his career would be
a fulfilling one too because he knew, beyond a shadow

(03:22):
of a doubt that he wanted to help people. That
was something that just was intrinsic in him to help people,
and so this would lead him to become a police
officer with the Boston Police Department. Specifically, he worked the
roads as a patrolman and he was now in his
sixteenth year as a Boston Police officer. He loved his job,
he was good at it, and there's a difference some

(03:44):
officers show up for a paycheck. Some of them show
up to be the job, to do the work. And
John showed up to do the work. He was good
at it, and his drive to help people was something
that led him to this career. And he did us
that he would also have his life change because of

(04:06):
this drive to help people. And I'm gonna it would
change in a drastic way, which I'm gonna get to
in just a second. Matter of fact, it would change
the trajectory of his life substantially in just a moment
when I get to that. So, John was devoted to
loving and caring for his parents as well as being
close to his siblings. Now, his parents weren't dependent on
him day in and day out, but he was a

(04:27):
good son and he wanted to make sure his parents
were well taken care of. They were just a tight
knit trio of siblings as well as a tight knit family,
and they loved one another greatly and deeply. He was
lucky also that he had a best friend in the
world named Pat Rogers, who he loved like a brother
as well. Pat and John were not only best buds,

(04:47):
but they were also co workers at the Boston PD.
Now Pat. He had been an eight year veteran of
the department as well as a second generation, second generation officer.
It was just in his blood as well. He was
a likable guy and so much so I'm not just
saying this, so much so was he liked that He
even became somewhat of a star on a TV show

(05:09):
called Boston's Finest if you remember that, it was a
reality TV show that followed officers on their beats, and
he just was liked by the audience. So both guys,
John and Pat had that unmistakable accent that you just
know is Boston. But Pat was just relaxed and a

(05:29):
chill dude. Pat was always teasing people. It was always
in fun. But then could flip a frick and switch
and be as tough as nails street cop doing what
he had to do to keep order in the streets.
Now John would really need that best friend in Pat.
He would need him to show him support because on
November eleventh of twenty thirteen, John's sister, Kristen passed away.

(05:54):
She had been battling an aggressive brain tumor, a geoblastoma
is what it is, and she passed away pretty quickly
after being diagnosed with it. She did die at home
and she was surrounded by her family, but it was
a pretty quick demise. Once she was diagnosed, she was
having headaches and migraines and wasn't feeling very good. Went

(06:16):
to the doctor and that's how they found this tumor.
So she had two young children at the time, a
daughter and a son, and obviously her two children were
just devastated by the loss of their mama and how
quickly things pretty how quickly things went downhill for their mama.
But John was there to support his brother in law.

(06:38):
His brother in law's name was Stephen. Just all of
them were affected by this tragedy. It affected everyone's lives
and so he knew that Stephen needed support as well
as just someone to lean on, and he also wanted
to show extra love and support for his niece and
his nephew through the dark days in weeks that would come,
but John would still be grieving the fresh death of

(07:02):
his sister when just days later, he was devastated when
he woke up to the news that his best friend
Pat Pat had committed suicide.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
It was just.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
November nineteenth, literally days later after losing his sister and
It's like you just never really know what people are
going through, do you. It was out of the blue,
it was unexpected, and Pat, this jokester and also this
father to be with his girlfriend who was pregnant at
the time, was gone. He just, I guess, lost his

(07:35):
battle with depression. And John took this hard. To lose
your sister and your best friend within just days of
one another was rough. Now. One thing that became, I guess,
a bright side to things was that, although feeling this
tremendous loss on two fronts, when Pat's son was born,

(07:57):
John was named the godfather of his best friend's baby boy.
And what a moment that would be. When Pat died,
John believed it was his role and he stepped up
to the plate and he decided that he was going
to help Pat's girlfriend out during her pregnancy. That was
his role as the best friend, and he was the person.

(08:18):
He was not in the delivery room when the baby
was born, but he was the person that came in
right after she gave birth. He remained a constant presence
in that child's life thereafter. And as far as best
friends go, John is everything that you would hope for
and a best friend in your absence. You know, when
I do my live shows, I have a security person

(08:43):
that comes and he's law enforcement, and he actually reminded
me of this because he's a police officer and his
best friend was killed in the line of duty. His
best friend had a baby boy right there when that happened,
and so my security still, to this day it's been
what ten eleven years, still takes care of that child

(09:07):
and is in his life and takes him fishing and
does all the things that you would pray a best
friend would do. So this is something that was just
very touching to me because it does mean so much.
So John would revel literally in his new godfather's status,
but again that would soon be overshadowed again by sadness because,

(09:31):
unimaginably and almost unbelievably, just two months after losing his
sister and his best friend, his brother in law, his
sister's husband, Steven, would also pass away unexpectedly from a
heart attack, and this left those two children, John's niece
and nephew completely orphaned of parents. I mean, Stephen literally

(09:55):
was barbecuing and having a good time in the backyard
with the kids, went to bed and never woke up.
So this is obviously as you can imagine. I mean, hell,
I'm only ten minutes under this episode and we've had
three deaths, and this is just devastating for everyone involved.
But John's heart for his family and for helping people,
like I had mentioned just previously, would shine through in

(10:18):
a moment like this because although he was single and
he had no children of his own, John decided then
and there that this was his role to rectify. He
would make the decision to change his entire life as
he knew it in an instant, to become the parent

(10:39):
to his niece and his nephew, obviously not take the
role of their mother and father over, but to become
that constant that they would need in raising them. He
made the selfless decision. He owned a condo. He decided
he was going to sell his condo. Why because he
was going to go take all of his things and
move into his late sister and brother in law's home.

(11:01):
Because this was the only quote unquote home that those
kids knew, and he wanted them to be able to
keep one last shred of normalcy in their lives, and
he didn't want to have to just upend them completely
and move them to his condo, so he sold his
and he moved into his late sister and brother in
law's home. So between John, his parents, and his brother Paul,

(11:26):
those kids had a fortress of love and support surrounding them.
His job too, which this was impressive to me. His
job too, was very accommodating to this big upheaval in
his life because they decided then in there that they
would transition him from that patrol job on the road
to more of a roll behind a desk with daytime

(11:49):
hours so that he could be there for these kids
and not be working night shifts. So he was reassigned
to the sex offender Registry unit, and the change in
his scale suited the demands of his new life requirements.
It was a big shift. I mean, single guy now
a parent of two and all the loss that was

(12:09):
around him, plus moving, plus now changing his job and
his role. You can imagine that's a lot of change
in a short amount of time. But luckily for John,
he also had friends that would come to his aide,
swoop in and would go above and beyond to help
him not only as a new dad, but also with
that steep learning curve that comes with parenting and he

(12:32):
didn't have that. I mean, he loved his niece and nephew,
and he had been there in their lives obviously since
they were born. But there's a difference between coming in
on the weekends and loving and hanging out and powing
around with your niece and nephew to now you're their parent.
That role is very different. So one such friend that
came in and was a genuinely huge help to John
was a woman by the name of Carrie Roberts. Now

(12:54):
Carrie was married and she had two kids of her own,
and she though was just a good friend to John.
John and Carrie had a long history too, so they
met in high school together. They played soccer. I also
believed that John took Carrie to homecoming one year and
that they were they that good of friends. I'm not

(13:15):
saying that they were best friends after high school, but
they remained in the area of one another. They did
remain friends, and when John's sister and brother in law
passed away, Carrie really jumped in and was able to
help a lot too because her kids were friends with
John's nephew. Or Carrie's son was friends with John's nephew,

(13:36):
so they had that relationship there as well. So Carrie
would do things like, hey, look, I can pick up
the kids. I can take them to school if they
had practiced together, she would help out with that because
Carrie's son was the same age as John's nephew, and
they had gone to preschool together from pre school forward. Really,
those kids had gone together to school, and they played

(13:58):
baseball together, and they were buddies. So John really leaned
on Carrie to help him as an instant dad, and
he would soon become very close again with not only
Carrie but her husband. John's parents would also become much
closer and tighter with Carrie and her husband due to
their constant interactions and helping out with the kids. Really,

(14:21):
just a beautiful symbiotic relationship between a lot of people
with the nephew and niece in mind from the get go.
So the kids home that John had moved into that
were his brother in law and sisters, was a very
very nice home, and that home was stationed next door
to a couple called the mccabes, Matt and Jen McCabe.

(14:45):
They had four daughters, and so John and the next
door neighbor, the mccabes, they would then become close friends
as well, living next door to one another. Now, after
living there for a few years, years would pass and
in twenty eighteen, John and the kids would eventually move
to another home, and this home would be what I

(15:06):
would consider theirs as a new family. So it wasn't
that he was just getting rid of their old home.
It was that some time had passed and they wanted
to have a fresh start as their own. You know,
he was solidified as their guardian, as their parents, so
to speak, and so they got this new house as
their own. Now, this home was located in Canton, and

(15:27):
his new neighbors there would also become good friends with
John as well as his kids or his niece and nephew. However,
you want to look at that. Now, this family was
the Albert family, and this family consisted of Chris and Julie,
who also had three sons, Chris, Colin, Chris Junior, Colin,
and Dylan. Now, I know I've introduced a whole lot
of people here in a short amount of time, So

(15:50):
for purposes of storytelling and keeping everything straight, I'm going
to refer to these couples as old neighbors and new
neighbors because they're going to be mentioned throughout the story,
and there's also going to be a ton more people
that are involved. But I have to introduce all of
these people into the story. You'll understand why as it unfolds.

(16:10):
All right, So, John, now that time has passed, was
no longer single by this point either. He had rekindled
an old flame with a woman named Karen Reid. John really,
as far as his family was concerned, had only had
two real I guess you'd call serious relationships that they
knew of, and serious meaning he dated these people for

(16:32):
an extended period of time, maybe like a year or more,
not just a week or two or something of that nature.
John had dated a woman named Amy, but they broke up,
and then he originally had met or dated Karen back
in two thousand and four, but they broke up because
she ended up moving to Ireland for work. But then

(16:53):
during twenty twenty they reconnected. Now, remember what's going on
during twenty twenty there was a pandemic going around, COVID
and all of that. It's during that time frame when
a lot of people were spending time at home. John
reached out to her via Facebook and they reconnected and
again romance blossomed from that connection. So Karen, she's a

(17:15):
rather petite woman. She's forty four years old at this time.
She's got long brown hair. It's accented with some blonde highlights.
She's a naturally pretty woman. And if I had to
give you something to I guess compare her to, I
would think along the lines of maybe the singer Sheryl Crowe.
She kind of has that vibe about her. She worked
in finance, and she was a very educated woman. Looking

(17:39):
back on her life, I did a little digging about her,
and she had attended private Catholic school as a kid.
She was someone that was a member of the National
Honor Society in high school, where she was well liked
by her teachers. They remembered her as someone that they
considered to be a girl that was going to go places,
very strong willed, bright, someone that would speak up and

(18:03):
just bound for success as far as they were concerned.
So she graduated high school. She then went on to
college where she earned not only her undergraduate degree but
also her master's degree in finance at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts.
And while she was there, she was also a presidential
scholar after she would graduate, she then would turn around

(18:25):
and pour back into students I guess she would say
in that area, because she would in turn become an
adjunct professor at the very college that she had graduated from.
Her dad, too, from what I understand, was president of
that university or worked high up at that university, and
so it was a proud moment for her father as
well as for her to follow in her dad's footsteps there. So,

(18:49):
as this story is really starting to unfold here, John
and Karen have now been dating for about two years.
Obviously this is a serious relationship, so much so that
she really cared for the kids as a motherly figure.
She was absolutely inserted into their lives. I would almost

(19:09):
go as far as to say step motherly in that role.
She wasn't just a girlfriend that came and saw them
every now and then. She genuinely cared about these children.
She cared that they did well, that they succeeded. She
doted after them, and they wanted her at this point
a part of their lives, and they she was very

(19:31):
built into their lives. Now, this would lead to fights.
I mean, it wasn't the perfect situation. I don't care.
How much you love and care for people, you're gonna argue.
And a lot of these arguments that started were really
between John feeling like Karen was spoiling the kids and
that she was doing too much. You're doing too much, Karen,

(19:52):
you know, for the children, and she needed to quit.
An example of this would be that she would take
the kids out and get them dots dunkin donuts and
coffee or whatever before she would take them to school,
stuff like that. But he felt like she did it
too much and that maybe they were getting just a
little too accustomed to all these extras. Now, this was
now during COVID and if you remember, during the COVID era,

(20:15):
the kids were all all over the US, kids were
taking classes remotely. We weren't actually in session at school.
The kids were doing school via computer by and large.
I mean we did that here. And again, I was
a school teacher then, so I know this drill that
we were trying to teach by computer, which was a nightmare,
but that's what we had to do. Now this would
be perfect really for their household though, because Karen, at

(20:36):
her job, was able to work remotely as well, and
she could stay home with the kids a majority of
the time while John was doing his job at the
police station. So they really had this kind of routine
that they were in. Karen's routine is that she would
stay at her own house. She did own her own home.
She wasn't mooching off a John or anything. She would
stay at her own home on Mondays and on Thursdays,

(20:59):
but the other days she would stay at John's and
help tend with the kids. Monday was kind of like
her reset day, I guess you would say. She would
go home and reset at her life and her home
and take care of the things that she needed to
take care of. And then Thursday she needed to be
at home because that was the day that she would
teach her adjunct classes for the university. So that was
kind of the routine during the week. And John and

(21:22):
his brother Paul were very close. They spoke constantly like
tight siblings would do. Whether they were meeting up, having
lunch or dinner, or texting. They were always in communication.
And this included that Paul and John also liked to
vacation together and with their respective families so to speak.
So for example, the New Years of twenty twenty two,

(21:45):
so the end of twenty twenty one. Rolling into the
year twenty twenty two, they were all in Aruba doing
a celebration. Paul and his family were there as well
as John and Karen, and even some other couples and
people were there as well. It was kind of like
modgepodge of friends and friendship group. Karen and Paul's wife,

(22:06):
Aaron got along really well too. Paul liked Karen, Aaron
liked Karen. The groups just melded really really well together,
and the two women, Aaron and Karen, really became actual
friends during this time. They would chitchat over the phone
while they were driving, they would do things that girlfriends

(22:27):
would do, and that's kind of how it goes right.
You want to be friendly and loving and invested in
the person that your dating's family, and so this was
completely normal. And because of the kids, and because of
them all working together to help each other out with
the children, that relationship just really blossomed and everybody got
along well. Now, John in the meantime, wasn't someone who

(22:51):
would just quit being friends with somebody just because he
moved away. And so when he did move from the
children's initial home to the new house, that would become
their new house as a family. He would eventually introduce Karen,
his girlfriend, to Jen McCabe. Now, Jen McCabe, remember that

(23:12):
is the wife neighbor at the old house. Now why
did he introduce Karen and Jen McCabe to one another? Well,
they were friends. He was friends, and he wanted to
know one another. But also both women suffered from multiple sclerosis,
and so they were able to talk to one another
about their struggles and help one another and give tips

(23:32):
and tricks, and it was just something that kind of
bonded the women together. Jim, did you see what happened
in Texas today?

Speaker 3 (23:42):
Wait before you tell me that, let me tell you
what happened in New York.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
It cannot be as crazy as the case I told
you about yesterday in Louisiana.

Speaker 3 (23:50):
You know what, we should do a podcast about it,
And with that we did.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
Crime Wire Weekly covers the crime news headlines that have
dominated the week.

Speaker 3 (23:58):
We cover trending crime from all over the country and
even sprinkle in a few globally.

Speaker 1 (24:04):
Crime War Weekly is available now wherever you listen to
your podcasts.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
Simply by searching Crime War Weekly or clicking the link
in the description of this podcast.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
It was also a commonality that these two women would
be around each other at social outings and social gatherings
and events, so it just made sense that they would
know each other and become friends. So I want to
fast forward now to January twenty eighth of twenty twenty two,
and this was a Friday. So John's brother, Paul was

(24:42):
a coach for both of his daughter's basketball teams. Being
Paul's kids, Paul coached his own kids basketball teams, and
so he spent the evening doing just that. There was
games back to back, and so he was coaching. Now.
He was also at the same time in a group
text with not only John, but also their parents because
John had just gotten some great exciting news and he

(25:05):
wanted to share it with the family. John's niece had
just been accepted to a private school, which they were
just through the roof about. Very excited. The niece, I believe,
was going from eighth grade into ninth grade, so this
was again a transition year into high school. This was
a private school she really wanted to get into, and
her best friend, the niece's best friend, also got accepted

(25:28):
to this private school, so it was perfect. Two friends
made it into this private school. They were very excited
that she got that acceptance letter. And then on top
of that, he was super proud because his nephew had
just gotten back some national math scores on this testing
that he did, and he nailed it. He absolutely nailed it.

(25:48):
So John was the proudest uncle on the planet that
these two kids had overcome so much in such a
short amount of time, they were thriving through their struggle,
and just he just could not have been prouder. I
guess I wrote in my notes here he was a
proud uncle dad because again he wasn't trying to take

(26:09):
the role of take the place of their parents, but
he was uncle dad to say the least. And they
all chimed in with excitement. The grandparents were stoked, Paul
was stoked. Everybody was just so excited. So John and
Paul had plans to meet up the very next day,
which would have been Saturday, the twenty ninth, to hang out.
But Mother Nature would unfortunately intervene and she would change

(26:33):
those plans because it turned out that a massive blizzard
would be pounding the area starting that Friday night and
probably into the midday the next day. On that Saturday,
and this was not just any old snow. This was
a really, really bad one, something that driving in would
have been very troublesome, and staying home and warm seemed

(26:55):
like a much safer and more reasonable plan for the evening. SOSA,
the brothers talked and they were like, look, let's just
put off our plans. We'll see each other another day.
I just don't want to get out, and Paul wanted
to stay home with the kids and just be safe.
So they canceled their plans and they made plans in
the future to do something different. Well before the storm
came in, John's niece and her bestie, who again were

(27:19):
really excited and wanted to celebrate getting into that private
school together. They wanted to celebrate. John said that is fine.
The bad weather wasn't there yet, and so she was
able to go and be with the best friend and
with the best friend's family that evening. Around seven pm,
the nephew he wanted to go spend the night at
his friend's house as well, to which John agreed and said,

(27:42):
that's fine. Your sister went to go stay there, you
can go stay at your buddy's house too. So, considering
that the kids were both gone for the night. John decided, well,
I still want to do something, you know, I'm kidless,
I want to go out and I want to have
some fun. And the storm wasn't there yet, so that's
exactly what he thought about. Maybe some dinner, maybe some drinks.
That would be a really you know, fun evening, nothing

(28:04):
out of the ordinary. So there was a local favorite
place that was called the Waterfall Bar and Grill, and
this is kind of a pub eatery with things like
hamburgers and fish and salads, and this was just somewhere
that locals like to go. There was also another place
that was kind of nearby, and this place was called
c F. McCarthy's.

Speaker 3 (28:26):
C F.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
McCarthy's is an Irish pub and eatery, so they're cat
kind of all near each other as far as the
restaurants are located. So around nine o'clock that night, John
and Karen met up at c F. McCarthy's in downtown Canton,
where they decided to have some drinks and hang out
and do whatever. Well, about that same time, old neighbors

(28:51):
Matt and Jim McCabe arrived at the Waterfall Bar and Grill.
Well roughly an hour later, a man by the name
of Brian Albert, who is the brother of the new
neighbor Alberts. He showed up and met up with the
old neighbors, Matt and Jim McCabe. So I know that

(29:12):
that's a lot going on there, but just hang with me. Well,
about an hour after that, all those people met up.
John and Karen left c F. McCarthy's and decided to
meet all these other groups of people at the Waterfall
Grill as well. They were all hanging out having a
great time, and it was really just a lot of fun.
All of these people knew each other and were intermingling

(29:35):
and it just was a blast. Well, they were having
so much fun. By midnight, it was time for the
bar and the grill to close. So when they announced
last call, none of the adults there were wanting the
party to stop. They were drinking. They were just having
a blast. So Brian Albert invited everyone, as far as
all those friends I mentioned went, He invited everyone to

(29:57):
go back to his house on Fairview Road. The thing was,
John didn't know how to get there because remember this
isn't his new neighbor's, the Albert's house that he's going
to He's going to his new neighbor's brother's house. There
was no worries here, though, because old neighbor Jennifer McCabe

(30:21):
called John to give him directions to Brian Albert's house. Now,
I know, right now you're wondering, why would his old
why would John's old neighbor know the directions to this
other guy's house and be able to give it to John. Well,
not to confuse you, but Jennifer McCabe is the sister

(30:42):
of Brian's wife. All right, y'all, don't even play with
me right now. Okay, if you're watching me podcast, look
into my blue eyes. Don't even play with me right now.
I know you're confused. I know you are. I've just
given you so many people a name's I mean, I
was writing a damn thing and putting my notes in,
and I confuse my damn self. So I came up
with a way for you to be able to follow

(31:03):
this and me to be able to tell the story
in a more simple fashion, because it's about to get
a whole lot deeper. Okay, for some clarity, this is
what's gonna happen. Old neighbors were the mccabes. The new
neighbors are the Alberts. Well, the mccabs and the Alberts.
Both of these sets of neighbors they had siblings right well.
Old neighbor wife McCabe's sister married the brother of new

(31:28):
neighbor husband Albert. So basically there's two sets of neighbors,
new and old, and both of those sets of neighbors
had siblings that married one another. Okay, so from now on,
I'm gonna call those siblings that married each other married.
From the two sets of neighbors, i'm gonna call them
the in law Alberts. So here we go. The old

(31:51):
neighbors are Matt and Jennifer McCabe. New neighbors are Chris
and Julie Albert. In law Alberts are Brian and Nicole.
So old neighbor Jen was able to give John the
address to the in law Albert's house. Now, this was
around twelve fourteen a m. About a minute later, old

(32:12):
neighbors Jen and Matt saw Karen's suv. She drove this
black Lexus suv. They saw it pull up outside of
the in law Albert's house where everybody was meeting up
for the after party. Well, whenever they pulled up, Karen
decided that she wasn't feeling well, and she decided to

(32:33):
drop John off at the party at the in law Albert's,
and then she was just going to head back to
John's house to go to sleep. They had been drinking heavily.
She was ready to go. Whatever. Now, when Karen got
back to the house, by that point, it was really
really late, or I guess you could say early in
the morning, and the niece had already been brought back

(32:53):
to John's house after spending time celebrating with her friends.
So the nephew was still gone, but the niece was
so now the snow was really starting to fall. It
was freezing and windy. There was really nobody on the
streets as the early morning hours crept by, because soon
it was going to be very, very dangerous to even drive,

(33:15):
So nobody was on the road except for a guy
named Timothy Nutdall now Timothy Nutdall, just so you know,
he is a firefighter and paramedic. He was out early
because he decided that he needed to get to the
fire station much earlier for his shift than he normally would.

(33:37):
So this is now the early morning hours of Saturday,
the twenty ninth, and the reason he was out so
early for his shift was because of that again impending weather.
He was afraid he wouldn't even be able to really
make it to work on time if he didn't leave
really early, So he got to the fire station at
around six am, even though he wasn't scheduled to be
there until around eight. He just left early enough to

(33:58):
beat all of that weather. But just as he walked
into the building, the emergency alert tone went off at
the station because a nine one one call had come
in and paramedics were needed stat So he overheard the
dispatch give the nature of the call, which was, we
have an unresponsive mail in a snow bank. And this

(34:19):
was a serious, very serious call in that everyone knows
you can't be out lying in a snowbank. This could
be life threatening. So he wasn't even really dressed for
being on duty yet, but he jumped as quickly as
he could, did the best he could to throw on
some gear. He jumped on the ambulance or the fire
truck to help and see if he could help this person,

(34:42):
if advanced intervention would be needed, because he was the
one that was qualified to do that, he got everything
prepped and ready as they were driving, so that as
soon as he stepped off, he would be ready to go. Now,
the dispatch that came over the fire station was minimal. Okay,
if you don't know how the this works, whenever the
nine one one call comes in, the information is taken in.

(35:05):
But then that is just in brevity, just into basics,
relayed to the firefighters that are responding. They get very
minimal information. So they didn't really know what to expect
other than this unresponsive male in the snow blank in
the snow bank. So his questions in his mind while
he's riding is kind of, what do I need to
prep for whenever I jump out of this vehicle? What

(35:27):
if this was a drug overdose? What if this guy
had a heart attack? I mean, it was completely unknown,
And so while he's riding, he's packing bags and trying
to get everything prepped as best he can. But it
felt like it took a lot longer to arrival on scene.
But that's because now that weather really had started coming
down and was a serious issue. It was still dark outside,
the snow was heavily falling, and that wind had really

(35:51):
picked up, so while the firefighters obviously didn't hear the
nine to one one call. I'm going to play it
for you now in its totality so that you can
get listen for it and get a feel for what
exactly was going on.

Speaker 4 (36:04):
No plus of square line? What is emergency? Yes?

Speaker 5 (36:07):
I need someone to come to thirty four can't uh
thirty fourth th of you road and can't in math.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
There's a man passed out in the snow.

Speaker 4 (36:14):
You're in Canton. Hold on, you can't plase you called me?
You're connected to know it?

Speaker 2 (36:18):
Okay, Yeah, I don't know why.

Speaker 4 (36:19):
It's a better yet the towns the last line I.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
Can keep dead. You need like you got to get here?

Speaker 4 (36:25):
Okay, I'm a transcend line can okay, I know where.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
We are. The blankets, I don't see blankets. Carry someone
to come immediately toch thirty four p of you road?
Can't in math?

Speaker 4 (36:42):
What's going on?

Speaker 2 (36:43):
There's a guy on responsive in the snow, in the
snow at thirty yes, thirty four the albert resident. Yeah,
I just broke up and found him.

Speaker 4 (36:52):
Okay, thirty fourth of you.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
Thirty fourth th of you can'ton math?

Speaker 4 (36:56):
Yeah, not one that's on your.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
Al Hello, Yes, I'm sorry. Can you come to thirty
four the road in.

Speaker 4 (37:06):
Canton, thirty four Fairview.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
Yes, there's a man on responsive in the snow.

Speaker 4 (37:12):
Okay, the h.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
You've got to get here, okay, Okay, what's going on?

Speaker 4 (37:20):
Is your face down?

Speaker 2 (37:22):
We just flipped him over?

Speaker 4 (37:24):
Okay? And who's that in the background? Is that someone related?

Speaker 2 (37:28):
That's that's his girlfriend? Name is John A Pee?

Speaker 4 (37:32):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (37:32):
How old is he? John is forty six years old?

Speaker 4 (37:37):
Forty six? How long has you been outside?

Speaker 2 (37:39):
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (37:42):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (37:42):
He got out of the car and a couple of hours.
If he carries he I don't, I don't. I don't know.
If he's breathing.

Speaker 5 (37:54):
There two women trying to heat to his heat and
they're hysterical.

Speaker 4 (37:58):
Okay, can you just try to ask you? I know
it's tough, but we already have the fire department goal
and they just got.

Speaker 2 (38:02):
To know keep breathing, you guys, I didn't seem to
be breathing.

Speaker 4 (38:07):
Okay. Do they know how to do SUTPR? Do they
want to tempte?

Speaker 3 (38:10):
Right?

Speaker 2 (38:11):
Can you guys do CPR?

Speaker 6 (38:13):
No?

Speaker 2 (38:13):
I guess he's gone.

Speaker 4 (38:15):
Okay. They don't feel comfortable doing so.

Speaker 5 (38:18):
I think he's passed away.

Speaker 4 (38:19):
Okay, all right, we have the fire department and the
police department on the way. If everyone's a climbing suit PR,
then I can't. I'll hang up with you and if
anything changes, you can give us a call back. Where
are you guys outside, waitt?

Speaker 6 (38:33):
I know I know him on the phone with the Andelans,
I know, I know, I know, I know, Honey, I
know for carry you gotta get off some money, Kerry,
you got to get.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
Off of him, you know.

Speaker 4 (38:47):
If there was any alcoholic drugs involved.

Speaker 5 (38:49):
Stop, they had been out. They had been out, yes, out,
But I'm talking at maybe and I don't know.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
How many he's been in the stuff. Okay.

Speaker 4 (39:06):
Is there any bleeding or anything? Maybe it is hit
his head.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
Out, yes, possibly the bleeding in the face.

Speaker 4 (39:12):
Okay, bleeding from the face, all right, yes, how big?
The pull of blood? If there is any something's.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
Coming out to note. And one of the women is
doing CPR.

Speaker 4 (39:21):
Okay, one of theomen is doing CPR, yes, talking all right.
If she's doing CPR, just let me just give him
a callback if he becomes response. Right, But we're on
the way, okay, thank you.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
Yes, So when the fire truck arrived. There was already
an officer on the scene. His name was Deputy Sarah,
And so Tim Nuddall threw open the doors. And as
soon as he threw open the doors to his truck,
he heard the screams of women happening, and so he
exited and he instinctively followed the sounds of the screams,

(39:56):
which led him to a group of three women that
were standing next to a man that was lying on
his back in the snow. Now, to give you some
directional ideas of what's going on, if you're standing in
the road and you were looking at the house that
they arrived at. Okay, they're looking at a two story home.
It's brick on the bottom and then it's got this

(40:16):
tann vinyl on the second story. A two car garage
is attached to the right side of the home. But
these women are standing off kind of far to the
left hand side of the yard. But it wasn't just
in the middle of nothing, way off to the left
hand side of the yard. I mean it's past the
side of the house. It's even further than that. There

(40:37):
was a flagpole that was mounted in the yard to
that far left side of the home. It has an
American flag atop it, and then there's a fire hydrant
as well as kind of like a bush right there,
and that's where this man was lying, and the women
were now at some point. As someone who's only seen

(40:57):
and been in real snow once in my lifetime, which
was coincidentally this past year and a once in a
lifetime freak event weather event in South Louisiana that was
a lot of snow, this is rivaling that even. I mean,
this is an all out blizzard that is going on,
and these conditions are going to matter as I tell
the story, So please be aware. The wind is whipping,

(41:20):
it's blowing from left to right, which you can even
see in dash cam videos from responder cars. It's wet,
it's nasty. These are absolutely the worst conditions probably possible
to be trying to watch dash cam through. The women
had on hooded jackets and the rainy snow makes it

(41:40):
very hard to see one hundred percent clear, but you
can tell when Tim arrives that he jumps out and
you run straight over to that man. He then drops
down to his knees and he immediately starts assessing this
patient while the women are kind of pacing and moving about.
The body of this man was roughly fifteen to twenty
feet off the road, and it was it was in

(42:03):
the yard, okay off the road and near this flagpole.
So Tim checked for a pulse in the man's neck.
He looked for signs of breathing, and he was not
finding anything. To the touch, the man felt frozen. He
literally found no signs of life. Now, as is I
guess you'd say common practice. Other paramedics that arrived jumped

(42:27):
off of the trucks and they run over there to
I guess to a follow up assessment and kind of
check each other to see if they're coming up with
the same assessment of the patient. And they all agreed.
At that point they came to the conclusion that this
man was not alive. This was probably not gonna end well.
So Tim stood up and he walked over to the

(42:47):
group of three women to explain what they had found.
But just about that moment, another paramedic yelled out, hey, man,
wait a minute, I think this might be workable. This
might be workable, and so Tim stopped what he was
doing and he went back over to the body, and
that's where they started to proceed. They felt like maybe
they could revive this guy. Now, his core temperature wasn't

(43:10):
quite low enough yet that they felt like he was
flat out dead, and so they decided they were going
to work this like a hypothermia cardiac arrest type situation.
They didn't know how long he had been down either,
and so they wanted to do everything that they could
and not just give up on this guy. His fingers
were white, white, white, and they were stiff with poor

(43:30):
blood flow, and so to just kind of give you
the visual, this just it wasn't good at all, but
they were going to try. So when Tim ran back
to the guy and he dropped down to his knees,
he grabbed an oxygen bag. He put it over the
man's mouth and he started to try to ventilate the
guy and pomp and give this guy oxygen while the
others started doing the CPR compressions. Now, with zero medical history,

(43:54):
you can imagine that it would be extremely difficult to
ascertain exactly what even like where to even start as
a diagnostic on this guy. I mean, they had nothing
to go off of it other than he's really cold
and in the snow. So as Tim was pumping that
oxygen mask. Manually, he looked up at the women and
he kind of focused on this petite, middle aged female.

(44:15):
She had long brown hair, and she was standing really
close to him. He also noticed in the moment that
he looked up that that woman had blood on her face.
Now what they would come to find out that the
blood on her face was actually from her attempting to
give CPR to the downed man before help even got there,
So hoping maybe she could shed some light on what

(44:36):
it was wrong with the man, considering she was willing
to get his blood on her face, Tim asked her, Hey,
do you know him? Do you know him? Like what's
happening here? But the woman was so extremely frazzled, she
was almost in shock that she was unable to give
much information. She was visibly upset, very shook by everything
that was going on. The scene was now very chaotic

(44:58):
with sirens and respet and everybody trying to ascertain what
was going on. So watching this woman, she was a
mix of pacing back and forth and then kind of
like running and pacing. Then at times she would just
bend over, almost like she was in physical pain. Just
she had her hands over her face, complete distress. She

(45:19):
would cover her mouth. She just put was in disbelief,
literal disbelief of what was what she was seeing. And
I'm gonna tell you it's very genuine what you see
in this woman. She is all out panicked. So Tim
is asking anybody, do y'all know what happened to him?
But no one was really saying anything. They didn't know

(45:40):
what happened, and so he just turned his direction back
to assisting and diagnosing him as best he could medically,
and just focused on trying to do his job. It
was kind of irrelevant at this point if nobody was
going to be able to give him a very direct answer.
So as they worked on this guy, they got him
on a stretcher and they rushed him into the ambulance.
And when he was loaded on the stretcher, despite there

(46:02):
being six inches of snow if not more, everywhere, there
was grass directly beneath where the man had laid, as
well as his cell phone was underneath him. My point being,
he wasn't It wasn't like he passed out in snow
because there wasn't any underneath him. He was flat on grass,

(46:24):
and then the snow had piled up around him. So
this indicated to them that, you know, he had been
there a long time for someone to be laying down
on the ground in snow. So they hooked his tongue back.
They prepared to intubate him, and they heard noises as
they were suctioning out his airway. Before they were intubating him,

(46:45):
some blood came out of his throat, mucus came out,
and so they stripped him down to remove all that
wet clothing. They put the heater on full blast to
try to warm him as best they could, along with
some other methods, but mainly trying to get him to breathe.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
Now.

Speaker 1 (47:00):
During their assessment, they did note that there was a
massive hematoma or a big bomp on his right eye.
He also had these deep but not bleeding scratches almost
from his shoulder, maybe his mid bicep area, I guess
you would say, down to about his wrist. He also

(47:21):
had some blood on the back of his head, but
the injury in that time was just unclear because of
everything that they were doing and because they weren't able
to necessarily roll him and check him head to toe.
So the ambulance drove as fast as it possibly could,
but it had to be cautious as well, so that
they could make it to the hospital without crashing. This
weather now was even worse. It was just deteriorating by

(47:44):
the moment. But they did eventually arrive at Good Samaritan Hospital,
where they gave report to the physician who would then
take over the man's care. It was not good at all, y'all.
The man's body temperature was only eighty degrees upon arrival.
So for reference, your body temperature should not drop below
ninety seven. Okay, once that occurs, you're now in There's

(48:08):
different stages of hypothermia, but once hypothermia starts, your body's
going to react in pretty negative ways. So if you
are ninety five degrees, you're considered to be at mild hypothermia.
If you're eighty nine degrees down to eighty two degrees
your moderate hypothermia. This man was at eighty degrees. He

(48:30):
was in severe hypothermia. And all of this matters because
once you get into that level, you're looking at severe
renal problems, cardiac problems. Your central nervous system is going
to suffer consequences as well. Because I mean, at first,
when you get cold, your body will start shivering in
an attempt to increase your core temperature. But this is

(48:52):
going to increase your heart rate, your respiratory rate, your
blood pressure and all of that. But when the body
drops below ninety five, the more it drops, the more
those reactions that your body does to try to save
itself they are going to diminish, and eventually they'll actually
just become inhibited, where your body can't do what it
needs to warm itself up. So while all of this
is going on, I mean, they are doing everything they

(49:13):
can to try to bring this guy's temperature up. People
who knew the man started to arrive to the hospital
and it became very clear, very quickly, based on everyone
showing up and talking, that the man that was lying
in the snow and non responsive in the early morning
hours was John O'Keefe. The three women who were tending

(49:36):
to him in the snow that morning whenever they called
nine to one one where his girlfriend, Karen Reid, Jennifer McCabe,
his old neighbor, and Carrie Roberts, the friend from high
school who had jumped in to help take care of
the kids. So Carrie, as you remember, she was very

(49:57):
good friends. Now with John's parents, they'd become very close
through all the tragedy and through taking care of the kids.
Well after the ambulance had taken John, Carrie called her
husband to let him know what had happened, and then
she knew, I've got to call John's parents. I have
to call his mother. But it was still very, very
very early in the morning, but that didn't matter to her.
She knew that she had to talk to his mom

(50:19):
and had talked to his mom now, So she called
and when the phone answered, she let them know, Look,
John's been in an accident and you need to get
to the hospital. And poor John's mother shrieked out over
that phone. Oh my god, I can't do this again.
I cannot do this again, because remember John's sister had

(50:42):
just recently died, and now this mama had another kid
that she might lose. It's just unbelievable. Well, while that
was kind of going on, I'm telling you things simultaneously,
the officers that were on the scene had put girlfriend
Care and old neighbor Jim McCabe in the back of
their cruisers so that the two women could warm up

(51:05):
and to try to help keep them calm and out
of the way, and that's when John was rushed off
to the hospital. Well, Karen got out of the police
unit at that point and she grabbed old friend Carrie's
shirt and she was screaming, is he dead? Is he dead? Carrie?
Tell me is he dead? And Carrie said no, Karen,
I don't think so. They were working on him. They

(51:27):
wouldn't work on him if he was dead. You know,
he's not dead. They wouldn't work on him. If he
was dead. They would have just left him. And was
just kind of clinging to the hope that maybe there
was a miracle in that he would survive. So Karen
jumped in Carrie's car and the two ladies drove to
go pick up John's parents to get them to the hospital.

(51:50):
Why did they go to get him, Well, John's parents
were kind of elderly as well as they weren't equipped
with a vehicle that could drive in this type of snow.
Plus they were stressed out and they were scared, and
so Karen knew that she needed to go help them
get from point A to point B. John's mom, while
they are going to pick them up, got on the

(52:10):
phone and she rang her other son Paul and said, Paul,
you've got to get to the hospital. Your brother John
has been in an accident. I don't know much else. Please,
you've got to get there now. Paul jumps out of bed.
All he did was throwing the clothes near him, brush
his teeth, and he jetted out the door. He wanted
to get to his brother, and he was thinking, you know,

(52:31):
John is tough. He's a police officer. I mean, hell,
he's been hurt before in the line of duty. Maybe
it's not as bad as it seems. Maybe he just needs,
you know, some extensive care. Maybe he's gonna make it.
I don't know if this was more of hope or
if this was Paul trying to just keep himself in
line with He had to get to his brother, and
his brother was gonna be okay. But he drove as
fast and carefully as he could to get to his brother.

Speaker 4 (52:54):
Well.

Speaker 1 (52:55):
Back in Carrie's vehicle, Karen grabbed her phone and she
called her own. She was freaking out. She was crying.
She said, Oh my god, if John dies, I'm going
to kill myself. I can't do this. If John dies,
I'm going to kill myself. Well, alarmed by this, Carrie
snatched the phone from Karen and she got on there

(53:15):
and she said John is not dead. He is on
his way to the hospital. They are working on him.

Speaker 4 (53:21):
Well.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
Karen's mom told Carrie, look, take her purse away from her.
She's got medicine in her purse because she's acting suicidal
and saying she's going to kill herself. Will you just
please take everything away from her. I don't want her
to hurt herself. She's in a panic. Don't let that happen. Okay,
I'll do that, Carrie thought, as she continued to drive.

(53:41):
In the meantime, the police got word that the girlfriend Karen,
was saying these things and that she wanted to hurt herself,
so they placed a call to the friend Carrie, who
was driving, and said, Carrie, can you please re turn
Karen back to the scene. We need you to bring

(54:03):
her here because of her erraticness and that she's freaking
out and we don't want her to hurt herself. Carrie said,
no problem. Now this happened before Carrie made it to
get the parents, okay, So she turned around. She brought
Karen back to the scene, released her to the ambulance
that was waiting. There was another ambulance that had arrived,

(54:24):
and then she turned around to go and get the parents.
So I'm trying to make this kind of make chronological
order for you. So whenever, whenever Carrie got to the
parents' house, they were ready and waiting. They were dressed
and in the doorway, ready to go. They jumped in
Carrie's car and they drove to the hospital. It took

(54:44):
them a while to get there. I think it took
him like forty five minutes to an hour because of
the weather. So during that drive they were limited on information.
How was John, what had happened. Carrie was also limited
in information other than he was in the snow. We
tried to help him. The other issue was this was
still during COVID because of the restrictions. The parents were

(55:04):
worried they weren't going to be able to get into
the hospital. So what they did while they were driving
was they called another niece of John's mother. So basically
I guess it would be John's cousin. She worked at
the hospital, and so they thought maybe she could give
them more information about John. They also called a cousin

(55:26):
of John's who happened to be a nine to one
one operator to see if she could give them more information.
But all the nine one one operator cousin could really
tell them was that, look, he was very, very cold
when the call came in. They said he was needing
to warm up. This was really bad. You know, he
might have had hypothermia. But other than that, there was
really no more in depth information that they could get.

(55:47):
So about the time that that happened, the girlfriend Karen
called friend Carrie, who's driving the parents from the ambulance,
and she says, oh my god, God, I don't know
what happened. I left him at the party. I don't
know what happened. Like, how did this happen? Why was
he in the yard? Well, John's mom is in the

(56:11):
car hearing all of this, and she yells out, what
do you mean you just left him? Well the dad,
John's dad was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
He put his hands up. He's like, stop, stop, stop,
this is too stressful. We don't know what happened. We've
all got to calm down. And they hung up the
phone and they just said, let's get to the hospital
and figure out what's going on. But the longer that

(56:32):
it took to get there, the dad became more distressed.
At one point, he slammed his hands down on the
dash of the car and was like, oh my god,
he's gone. He's gone. They didn't actually know this, okay,
but Dad was just becoming so overcome with emotion that
he was starting to lose hope. That ride, like I said,
took almost an hour, and it was it was just quiet,

(56:53):
just painfully quiet. They didn't know what to say or
what to do. But they eventually made it to the
hospital and they were able to meet up with John's
brother Paul.

Speaker 4 (57:02):
Well.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
When they were allowed to go into the hospital and
someone grabbed Carrie and was like, I think you might
want to go clean up in the bathroom. That's when
Carrie looked down and she had blood on her arms
and on her hands because she realized, oh my god.
She didn't even notice it, but when she was trying
to help John in the snow, she had gotten the
blood all over her. She had even driven in the

(57:23):
car with the blood on her arms while she had
John's parents in the car. So she was led to
a bathroom where she cleaned up. She kind of was
thinking back through what had happened and how yeah, she
had wiped blood from his face, and then at one
point she had towels in her car when she was
back at the scene when she first found John in
the snow, and she had yelled out and said, get

(57:44):
some towels, get some towels, bring them to me. There's
some towels and blankets in my car. And if you
listen to that nine one one call, you even heard
the caller say, I'm not seeing towels, I'm not seeing blankets. Well,
that's what had happened. In her mind, all she could
think to do was to try to warm his head
and warm him. And so she had gotten all those
towels out of her car and was trying to pack
them around him. But with nothing left to do now

(58:07):
that she had washed off, but just wait, Karen became
distressed and she asked a hospital worker, where is your chapel.
I need to get to your chapel. They let her down.
She went in and she dropped on her knees and
she started to say a prayer for her friend who
was in desperate need of a miracle. She said her
prayer and she then walked out to where right before

(58:33):
she had gone in, when she was washing her hands,
a doctor Rice had summoned the family together and asked
them to come back and talk to them in his
doctor's office off to the side at the at the
emergency room. Well, when she came out from the chapel,
that's whenever the brother and the parents were now returning

(58:53):
out of the doctor's office from the talk. Now, as
this was happening, Carrie had won wanted to see John,
and so she had walked in to try to comfort
John into his room in any way that she could.
And but once she stepped in, the site was just
it was awful. John had on a net brace, there

(59:14):
was blood on the gurney. The site was just really
too much for her, and so she just had stepped
out of the room. And that's whenever John's family all
kind of appeared together. John's mom, Miss Peggy, was she
was motherly, she was tender, but she used all of
her strength to announce that despite all of the life

(59:38):
saving measures that they had done, the doctor just broke
the news to her that John was dead and that
he would not be leaving the hospital. And it was
just a gut punch to the soul of everyone that
was standing there to say the least, the tears began
to fall, and the reality that she had not lost
just one child, but now two who was almost unbearable.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
Don't also don't forget now that there are two children
involved that had not only lost their mother, but then
they lost their father, and now shortly thereafter, their uncle
turned guardian of the last eight months was now dead
as well. And perspective at this point, I think, is everything.
And it's just mind blowing to me, even on my

(01:00:26):
worst days, to think what people go through in this lifetime,
and these children had experienced so much loss in such
a short amount of time. It's almost unfair how things
work well. The family once they broke the news, they
wanted some privacy, and they wanted to walk in and
they wanted to see John. So John's brother and parents

(01:00:51):
were going to go file into the room to delay
eyes on their son and their brother for one final time.
And while they're walking towards that room, it was like
nobody really knew what to think or what to say.
He went to a house party and then he died
in the yard somehow, like, how did this even happen?

(01:01:11):
Make it make sense, you know, And they're all up
in their head. They're walking towards the room. And as
they're walking towards the room, they passed by Karen, who
had been brought to the hospital by ambulance. She was
still now absolutely hysterical. She was so hysterical that she
was having to be restrained by hospital staff and medical personnel.

(01:01:32):
And she was screaming out to the family in pain
as they walk by, is he dead? Is he dead?
My God? Tell me? Is he gone? Is he dead?
And she's just screaming at them. But they were in shock.
They're just trying to absorb it all in what's going on,
And so they just kept walking in their own grief
and in their own sadness. And they turned the corner
and entered his room. So they walked up to their

(01:01:57):
family member here, their son and their brother, and they
looked him over closely, trying to wrap their minds around
what could have caused this, because it literally didn't make sense.
When they entered the room, it was quiet, There was
no beeping, there was no busy sounds of machinery because
it was no longer necessary. John was gone, and only

(01:02:19):
his battered body really remained. So his brother Paul approached
almost cautiously, not wanting to really take in what he saw.
But John's appearance was beyond someone who was just cold
and needing to be warmed up. What they had been
told grossly understated the scene that they walked into. John's

(01:02:43):
neck was stabilized, he had on a net brace. He
still had the electrode pads stuck to his chest. Now
they're not connected anything, but they were on his body.
Both of John's eyes were black and purple, much looking
like what you see like the mask on a raccoon.
His eyes it spread from side to side, and it

(01:03:05):
was black across his eyes, black and purple. And his
eyes were so black and purple and swollen with blood
that his brother thought it looked like there were golf
balls underneath his eyelids pushing them up. They were that swollen.
There was blood dripping from his eyes, blood dripping from

(01:03:28):
his nose, and the pillow that John's led head lay
on was also soaked in blood. And seeing really just
this was all he could really see. While standing next
to his brother, he kind of looked down at his
arms and he noticed that there were scrapes and wounds
on that right arm, lots of linear, almost scratch marks

(01:03:52):
that were deep, and they went from his like I
told you, like from his mid bicep down to his wrist.
His right hand had a large bruise on it and
it was on top of his hand, almost circular in shape.
It extended from the from the where the wrist bends
down to the first set of knuckles, and it covered

(01:04:12):
the pinky finger to his ring finger. That whole area
in those knuckles, like the whole thing was black. And
it didn't take a rocket scientist in that moment to say, Okay,
John didn't just freeze. He had been through some type
of horrific trauma and he had been left for dead
in the middle of a blizzard. So his mama held

(01:04:33):
his held her baby boy's hand, and she cried as
she looked him over. Just not prepared for all of this,
and no mother should ever see her baby in that condition,
but this was her reality. And while she's looking him over,
she looked down at John's wrist, which was still wearing
a blue rubber bracelet from his sister's death that he

(01:04:54):
had worn every day since the day that his sister
Kristen had died, he never removed it. Well, Mama Peggy
gently removed that bracelet from her son's hand, and she
immediately slid it onto her own wrist. This was now
going to be her burden to bear. She was going
to carry both John and Kristen as memories and not

(01:05:17):
as current loves of her life. Her children. She went
from instantly the mother of three to the mother of
one in less than a year. And I want to
tell you something real quick. I remember my mother in
law telling me one time how horrible the question was.
After so, my husband had a brother who passed away.

(01:05:40):
He was killed in voting accident, and someone came up
to her after the accident that did not know her,
was in a meeting or something, and she said, well,
you introduced herself, and the woman said, well, how many
kids do you have? And she told me that the
grief that stabs you in the chest when someone says

(01:06:01):
how many children do you have? Because you don't know
how to answer it, because I had two children. But
then do you say I have one child or do
you say I had I had to now I have one?
And then if you say that, then what do I
do explain that one's dead. I don't want to explain
all of that. I don't want to say all of that.
But if I say I had two children, then it's

(01:06:22):
like ones not here, and I have to acknowledge that
they lived and that he's real. You know, it's not
you always have children, and that just I don't know.
It's not lost on me how that must feel, the
grief of that explanation of how do you go? How
do you explain that to people? And this was just
not once, but now twice that this woman had to

(01:06:42):
live this reality. But now the main question became why
was John in the snow? To begin with? How did
he get there? And how the hell had he been
injured so terribly based on everything that they knew so far.
While in an effort to uncover the answers to all

(01:07:03):
of these questions, it would soon become apparent that the
blizzard that blew through would be nothing in comparison to
the shit storm that was about to erupt in Boston
that no weather man could ever predict