Part Three | Did She Do it: The Investigation Into Karen Read - Unspeakable: A True Crime Podcast By Kelly Jennings

Episode Transcript
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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
kjre for another outstanding episode of Unspeakable, and we just
gonna have to bow our heads right now in prayer, because,
as you know, because you've been listening to this series
I'm doing on this Karen Reid trial, this has been

(01:14):
all over the place. If you followed any of this
before I'm telling you the story, you know exactly what
I'm talking about. If you haven't followed it, hold onto
your butt crack, because now we're about to do some
zigging and some zagging and some bobbin and some weaving. Okay,
so get your running shoes on, get a helmet, whatever
you need, because this is about to go everywhere, all right,
So let's pray Lord help Kelly get through this one. Amen,

(01:37):
all right, So let's get back into the saga of
the death of Karen Reid's boyfriend, John O'Keefe. And again,
this is a part three that we're on right now.
So if you have not listened to part one in
part two, go back and listen so that you can
keep up with what's coming your way. But a brief
recap of what we know so far from what I've
told you, John is dead. There's a huge discrepancy on

(02:00):
how he may have gotten to the spot of his death.
Was he dropped off there and then something sinister happened
to him or was he hit by Karen and then
she left the scene? Either way, whatever you believe to
this point, Karen was arrested and charged with the death
of John O'Keefe on the overall belief that she had
run over John in the yard of the in law

(02:23):
Albert's home with her vehicle. Now by a runover, I
don't mean forward run over. I mean they believe she
backed into him and then left the scene. So the
overall summary of why would be this, Why did they
arrest her? They number one talked to witnesses who overall
placed her vehicle in the very location where John's body

(02:44):
was found. Number two, witnesses claimed that Karen said quote,
I hit him. I hit him when the body was found.
And number three, her SUV tail light was broken in
the rear as if she had backed into him in
that location and then left the scene. But because she
was now arrested, her defense team would have to start

(03:05):
doing all of their investigation on this case that was
being built against her in order to build the defense.
And so the way I'm going to structure this episode
is I'm going to cover their findings as in the
defense team's findings, mixed with opposing views as they are
uncovering things. And that's why it's going to seem kind
of back and forth. This episode's really going to focus

(03:27):
on experts and facts versus deciphering whose statements seem truthful
versus whose statements seem like they might be lies. That's
going to be kind of your role as the listener
as you're listening to this, you have to kind of
decide how you feel up to this point. But in essence,
Karen was arrested because the police believed that she hit
John with her car while she was leaving, and right now,

(03:49):
what I want to do is detail how that could
have happened for just a moment. So the defense was
trying to figure out how they came to the conclusion
that she hit him because Karen Karen was adamant, beyond adamant,
that she never hit John and that he got out
of her car and he went into the in law

(04:10):
Albert home. He never came back out she left. That
is her statement. That's been the statement from the jump.
So there's going to be a lot of looking into
the details of everyone who is involved at the different
locations that night to make this kind of jive. I
already covered the waterfall bar and what all went on

(04:31):
there in the last two episodes, But the main question
now would be if John arrived and went into the home,
did that actually happen? So girlfriend Karen said he went
inside the in law Alberts, the homeowners said he did
not go inside, and the mccabs who were related to

(04:52):
the in law Alberts who were there said John never
came inside. So it's Karen's word basically versus everybody that
was in the house that night. But there's someone else
to introduce here that's gonna become super relevant. And again
I'm trying not to bombard you with people, because that's
why this becomes such a clusterfuck when you're trying to
follow what's happening, and I'm kind of layering people in
through these episodes. But back at the Waterfall Bar when

(05:16):
everyone was partying, another man was with them that I
haven't spoke of much yet, and his name was Brian Higgins.
Now the in law Alberts, that's Brian Albert, Brian Albert's
good friend, Brian Higgins. Hello, we have two Brian's now
to make things even worse. So what I'm gonna do
now is I'm gonna refer to Brian Higgins as ATF. Higgins.

(05:39):
So we have the in law Alberts, that's Brian Albert,
and then we have ATF. Higgins Brian Higgins. You got me? Okay?
So last episode I left off with some questions yet
to be answered, including was another man possibly involved with Karen?
So let me address why I asked that ATF. Higgins

(05:59):
was a friend and somewhat of a coworker of in
law Brian Albert. See ATF. Higgins had an office at
the PD where in law Albert worked. Although he was
ATF he was close also to the chief of the
Canton PD, and he worked alongside that PD office very often.

(06:23):
So that's not odd. I do want to give you
some insight here. Agencies do have close relationships like this.
I've seen it with my own eyes, and they will
have a very close working relationship because even though they're
separate law enforcement entities, they still oftentimes overlap. It could
be because one agency has equipment another agency needs. It

(06:43):
could be because they get called in to do a
further investigation. There's a million reasons why. So I did
not find that entirely out of pocket. So ATF. Higgins
and his friend in law, Brian Albert had gone together.
Now this is going to be the day, the daytime
of the day that John died. Okay, those two men

(07:04):
had gone to a funeral of a fallen officer in
New York. Now this was earlier in the day before
they met up together with everybody at the Waterfall Bar.
Now would it interest you to know that twelve days
prior to John's death, Karen Reid had gotten ATF. Higgins's

(07:24):
number from another friend, and she, out of the blue,
really had started telling him how she and John's relationship
was falling apart and how it had seriously deteriorated since
John's sister had died of that geoblastoma that she had.
Now Higgins ATF Higgins was pretty surprised, and you could

(07:47):
tell in the text messages and I'm not going to
read him because they're que frankly, quite boring and childish,
but you could tell he was a bit surprised and
taken aback at how forward Karen was with him pretty
quickly on because car and told ATF Higgins that she
thought he was hot. Now he questioned her on this
as well. He says in the text messages, don't you

(08:09):
have a boyfriend? Because ATF Higgins was not good friends
with John O'Keefe. They knew each other this night and
previously I guess just through like general passing buys, but
they didn't like hang out together. They weren't friendly, They
certainly didn't text. They weren't friends like that. So he

(08:31):
asks her do you have a boyfriend? And he even
says are y'all still together? And she elaborated that John
had hooked up with another woman recently while they were
on vacation together in Aruba, and this I would find
out was actually true. But let's kind of investigate what
the word hooked up meant, because hooked up to me

(08:52):
means like sex. Okay, I don't know what it means
to you. But just twenty nine days before John was killed,
he and Karen, along with his brother Paul and Paul's
family and some other people too, were celebrating and vacationing
together and at one point Karen came downstairs. I believe

(09:15):
they were in a Ruba if I remember that correctly,
but he and Karen were there with everybody, and Karen
came downstairs at one point after putting the kids to bed,
I guess, and she caught John kissing another woman in
the lobby of the hotel now rut Row. That's obviously
a red flag. But Karen was pretty close with John

(09:39):
O'Keeffe's sister in law, who was also there on the trip,
and Karen ended up telling her about it. She was
very upset about the whole incident, and you know, that
was something that they had discussed. And I know that
that happened because I went and listened to some information
from that sister in law that validated that this had
had happen. They also they being John and Karen, had

(10:05):
fought at a home that they had rented in the past.
It was in Cape Cod, but it was only after
alcohol got involved and they were both drinking that the
emotions really got stirred up and it was not a
physical fight. But John's brother Paul was there as well
as his wife, and John's brother Paul really had to
play like verbal referee at the time to get them

(10:26):
both to calm the hell down and to chill out.
So there definitely had been frictioned between the two at
some points. But either way, the sexy texts and the
flirting went on for twelve days up until the day
John died. And it wasn't just sexy talking too, okay,
because further looking into this would prove that atf Higgins

(10:49):
and Karen had been together at some point at a house.
I think it was just at a party that somebody
was having or a get together and they were just
all kind of hanging out, But they had been sexy
texting and at one point they both went outside at
this home where Karen took it upon herself to lay
a kiss on Higgins, and it took him ATF. Higgins,

(11:11):
but it took him by surprise, and he genuinely did
seem confused by what she was doing because Karen had
never shown interest in him before in their passing bys,
and they're kind of intermingling with the with some of
these people, but now all of a sudden, she was
going hard and I mean like real hard towards him.
The last text between Karen and ATF. Higgins was at

(11:36):
the Waterfall Bar while she was there with John, and
all it said was something to the effect of uh okay,
like kind of like okay, now what or what are
you doing? But she never answered him. So John, Karen,
and ATF. Higgins were part of that whole crew that
were at the Waterfall Bar. So this kind of becomes important.

(11:58):
Now this girl, this guy you've kissed and that you're
flirting with real hard, sees you with John walk in
the bar and at some point texts, uh okay, you know,
like now what is this because you know she had
been telling him that their relationship was falling apart. And
now that we know that, let's go back to what

(12:18):
we also know from what everybody said that night that
was interviewed. Everyone left the Waterfall Bar in a good mood.
They were happy, and they kind of just looked normal
whenever they walked out of the bar. Based on all
of the evidence to this point and a little bit
more perspective about the morning John was found, and this
is again based on interviews from people that were involved

(12:40):
in the whole situation. In law Nicole Albert, she's married
to in law Brian Albert. They're the homeowners where John
was found. She said that they went to bed, her
and her and her husband Brian went to bed around
two am and they didn't go outside the morning that
everything took place because they were asleep. She told police

(13:04):
that they weren't even awake until her sister Jennifer McCabe
burst into their bedroom physically, and this would have been
after finding John. Now, her sister jenn McCabe agreed that
that was true, that she did not talk to her
sister in law Albert until she bust up in the house. However,

(13:27):
those pesky cell phones come into play here because they
looked at the data of this and the cell phone
record review showed that Jennifer McCabe did call her sister
in Lanicole, Albert. She called her at six oh eight
am and she called her at six forty two am.
But both of the sisters say they never spoke. Well

(13:50):
on that first call, I can agree, I don't think
they necessarily spoke. The length of that call was only
two seconds, but the second call was seventeen seconds. Why
does this matter, Well, seventeen seconds would be long enough
for Jim McCabe to tell her sister this statement if

(14:11):
she had and I'm just adding this in. I'm not
saying it happened, but seventeen seconds is long enough to
say the police are here, or we're about to come in,
or okay, get ready. Because remember, Karen is saying something
happened at the house because she left. So why in
the world did you know if something happened to John

(14:36):
at the hands of someone in the in law Albert home,
that would prove that there must be some type of
cover up here going on. So, in essence, what's happening
here is the defense team felt like Karen was being
set up and that now she was being railroaded by
people who had the ability to control the narrative of
the evening. Because they're all related in some fashion, and

(14:58):
they all have that law enforcement connection. Case in point,
no one in the home of the in law Albert
home had a story that seemed to line up as
to who was there and when they were there and
where they were when they were there. You follow that one, Okay,

(15:18):
So interrogation of people that were in the home that
night would differ in terms of who was there. It
differed depending on who you were asking. Nicole Albert in
law wife Albert, she says it was just her Brian Albert,
and a Sergeant Lank that was in the home when

(15:39):
they came downstairs after being awakened by her sister. Okay,
so we got immediately woken up. My sister busts in
the room. It woke us up. We go downstairs. It's
just us, my sister, and this sergeant Lank that was
in the house. But when her sister was asked, when
Jen McCabe was asked, Jen McCabe says she was her

(16:00):
husband was there and Sergeant Lank was there too, meaning
there was either four in laws together plus an officer
or there wasn't. And then where did the husband come from?
Why would one sister say there was another man there,
and another sister say there wasn't. Either way, neither sister,

(16:22):
neither one of them mentioned that ATF Brian Higgins was
there that morning. But even Brian ATF Brian Higgins agreed
when he talked to police officers later, that he was there.
So you're telling me, all right, maybe Jim McCabe forgot
that her husband didn't show up, or maybe her sister

(16:45):
forgot that he did show up. Okay, whatever, but neither
one of them remembered that ATF. Higgins was in the home.
That's weird. He had come back to the house that morning,
and I'll address more of that later. And then when
that was realized, they would later claim, oh, well that
was after Sergeant Lank had already interviewed them and left.

(17:11):
So okay, well, we'll go working off of that. Maybe
he wasn't there, even though he says he was there.
Why would he say he was there if he wasn't.
It doesn't make sense. So far, I've told you that
the state police Sergeant Lank was not with state police.
Remember he was with Canton p D. So far, i've
told you that state police interrogated everyone at the in

(17:35):
law Albert home home as part of the investigation. But
I left off last episode where it was realized that
a Canton officer i e. A coworker of in law
Albert the homeowner. Okay, he worked, he's a coworker of him.
He had interviewed the in law Alberts as well as
the mccabs inside their home before any form geral interviews

(18:00):
were done, and that meeting was not documented nor recorded. Well,
that officer is the very one that I'm talking about
right now, that Sergeant Lank, that there's now confusion of
when did he arrive? When didn't he arrive? Okay, So
the defense team believes that this is part of the
proof that there was a setup in some way, because

(18:21):
it was a big time problematic situation as to who
this officer was. So let me go more into this
officer for a second. His name was Sergeant Lank, and
he was very close friends with the in law Alberts
as well as Jim McCabe and her husband. He was

(18:41):
good friends with them. So how did he even come
into play at this whole situation. The morning of the
twenty ninth, that's when John's body was found, Sergeant Lank
was notified by another officer that morning. His name is
Officer Good. He was working in dispatch. He was notified
by the Officer Good about a man being found in

(19:02):
the snow and that that man was a Boston Police officer.
So Lank, after he was notified by Sergeant Good, went
to the in law Albert home for whatever was going down.
Sergeant Good, who was working in dispatch that morning, he
left and he got someone to cover his spot in

(19:23):
dispatch so that he could go to the scene as well.
So Sergeant Lank arrived and spoke to Officer Good first
when they got there, and then spoke to Jen McCabe
eight or nine minutes outside by the body where the
body was. He says that he told Jen McCabe to

(19:44):
go wake up her sister so that they could go
talk to them. Remember, Jen McCabe found John outside. She
found the body with Karen Reid and the other friend, Carrie.
But she's also the sister of the in law Alberts,
the very home they are in front of. Okay, So

(20:05):
I want to make sure you're understanding this link here.
So she walks up to the house to go get
her sister. So, if you remember last episode, the police
were saying they didn't have any probable cause to go
up to the house to interview people in the house
because the body in the snow had no link to
the house. But now when they're investigating and people are

(20:27):
starting to ask questions on this defense team, now all
of a sudden, there is probable cause because himself, he said,
I told her, go wake up your sister. And just
real quick, why would an investigator at a crime scene
tell a witness to go wake up somebody in the house.

(20:47):
That seems like a very strange leap for me, because
I would want to go wake up the people in
the house if they were asleep in the house. I
would do that as the investigator, not send a witness
to go do that. That's weird. So Sergeant Lank then
at some point spoke to dispatch at the back of
the Canton PD and he even said it was a quote.

(21:10):
He said, it looks like this guy's been in a
fight or something and he has serious trauma. It's a
crazy scene. So I'm not telling you everything that happened,
because I'm just trying to give you some major sticking
points that'll matter later on. But a lot more happened,
But Sergeant Lank also made a phone call on video

(21:30):
the dash cam of the of the police units pick
it up, and that call was a total of five
minutes long. Roughly, while all of that's happening, Carrie Roberts
and Karen Reid drive off in Carrie's SUV. Why because
by that point John's body had been taken and they
were going to go to go follow up with John. Plus,

(21:52):
if you remember from last episode, Carrie was gonna go
get John's John's mom. A few minutes yes later, after
they're gone, Jim McCabe is still inside her sister's house.
She's still in the house, and you can see on
bodycam or of the dash cam that a light then

(22:13):
comes on on the front porch. Whenever that happened. Sergeant
Lank then went inside the house with his good friends
by himself and did not document anything that happened or
anything that was said before he came back out. His

(22:34):
whole reasoning was that he didn't have probable cause in
his mind to enter the home. But I want to
tell you something. When he spoke to Jennifer McCabe, the
one who found the body outside of the home, for
eight or nine minutes before he ever went into the house,
he already knew. She told him then that they had
all been partying together. She told him, So it begs

(22:56):
the question which one is it? Did you have probable
cause or or didn't you? And if you didn't have
probable cause, why did you go up there? And if
you did have probable cause, why would you send a
witness into the house unsupervised to talk to her sister
before you went in? The heme you could chalk this
up to piss poor policing. I don't know what you

(23:17):
think of it, but damn, y'all. Witnesses lie like people lie.
And if you're being objective and you're trying to figure
out what the hell's going on, you wouldn't go in
that home and just take a look around just he's
in the front yard. You wouldn't go talk to those
people and then record what you I mean, like nothing.

(23:38):
I mean, we could chalk this up to piss poor
policing tactics, or maybe we could say this was biased
because he knew them and so he just accepted what
they were telling him and so he didn't think that
they were part of anything. But again, that's not being objective.
That's not reading an entire crime scene and taking into
it every aspect. If you ask me, he never locked

(24:01):
down the home, He never secured their dog, he never
took any photographs, He never did anything, nor did he
record their conversation. Okay, So that just if anything kind
of makes you go hmm, you know that that's not
proper procedure. So just how close was Lank, Sergeant Lank

(24:22):
to these people in the home, the mccabs and the
in law Albert's. Well, I want to tell you a
little bit about that, so you can assess what I
mean by they knew each other strangely. Initially during this
whole investigation, they would claim that they did not know
each other. Okay, they said, we don't know Lank, Sergeant
Link like that. But a further probe after Karen was arrested,

(24:46):
would prove that that was simply not true. Now, how
how do we know that? All right? Remember there's a
lot of Albert brothers in this story. Sergeant Lank knew
all of the Albert brothers, and he'd known them all
since childhood. So Tim Albert, he is the detective Albert.

(25:09):
He had known that one since he was sixteen years
old Chris Pizza shop Albert. He had known him since
junior high, since he was about fourteen, and he knew
Brian Albert in law Brian Albert very well. He'd known
him since they were teenagers. They are now grown ass adults.
So to say you don't know somebody is and you've

(25:32):
known him since they were teenagers seems a bit of
a stretch, and you're like, okay, Kelly, well maybe they
just knew of each other. Okay, Well, they didn't say that. Secondly, Lank,
Sergeant Lank also coached locally and he knew in law
Brian Albert from that. His kids played with Lank's kids.

(25:54):
Jim McCabe remember in law Albert Nicole that Jen McCabe
is her sister. They knew each other since childhood. Sergeant
Lank knew everybody in that home that he did not secure,
and that he went in by himself and talked to
them for about forty five minutes. He'd known them all

(26:15):
since they were basically, well, i'll give him a break,
since high school. Okay, they knew each other. And then
that begged a question when they say they don't know
each other, Well, let's back up a little bit further.
So there was an incident that I want to tell
you about so you can really see the friendship here

(26:36):
and why I'm pointing out that they did know each
other all right. A few years prior to John's death,
Sergeant Lank was off duty. I want you to know
that he was off duty. He was at a bar,
a bar, restaurant, whatever, and they were eating and drinking,
not together, but they were both happened to be there.
This is kind of like small town situation. And then

(26:58):
Sergeantlank went out to his truck. While he was in
his truck, Chris Albert this is the pizza shop owner, Albert.
Chris Albert approached him and said, there's some men inside
that are threatening me. They have a little conversation about that.
And then while they're having the conversation, lo and behold

(27:18):
the men that were threatening pizza Pizza, Chris Albert come
walking by. So when that happened, Sergeant Lank decided that
he was going to confront those guys. Remember he's off duty.
He's going to go confront those guys and he's going
to basically tell him leave him alone. Whatever. But it

(27:41):
got kind of hot, so he called for backup and
the man that he had gotten hot with. His name
was Alfredo. That man was arrested. So the lowdown of
basically what happened is that Sergeant Lank and Alfredo had

(28:02):
crosswords or whatever. But Sergeant Lank also punched another man
that was with them. This guy's name was Mark. He
punched that guy. After this incident went down, Sergeant Lank
ended up getting sued over punching this guy and it
was settled out of court. So the claim though, and

(28:25):
I know I'm going really deep, but y'all, this is
why this case is so big. The claim that was
made was that Sergeant Lank punched him, beat him and
bit him while the fight, while they got into a
fight of his fight, and then after backup had showed
up and arrested those men, that's when Sergeant Lank allegedly

(28:47):
walked over to the Alfredo guy and spit in his
face while he was cuffed. That's all allegedly. I wasn't there.
Sergeant Lank countered that argument though, and he says, no,
Mark punched me and then I retaliated, And then he
said after that went down, Mark fled the scene and

(29:09):
Alfredo was arrested. Now, keep in mind, the very next day,
both of those brothers arrived at the Canton Police Department
to file a complaint. No police report was written about
this by Sergeant Lank until September the third. That's another
couple of days. And by the way, no police report

(29:33):
was written until after the complaint came in. Okay, so
it kind of was weird. Why didn't you write a
report about this? And then only after they complained did
you go write a police report about it. Well, then
a few days later, whenever Sergeant Lank was at a
gas station, those same brothers were at the same gas

(29:55):
station and supposedly they exchanged words about how I guess
it was bullshit what happened, And so Sergeant Lank then
arrested them again and charged them with witness intimidation. All
went to court, the brothers were found not guilty not
guilty in the assault case, and the witness intimidation was

(30:17):
thrown out by the district attorney. So the reason I'm
telling you all of this is that when Sergeant Link
was questioned about that, because remember it involves an albert brother,
he says, no, man, I would have done that for
anyone Okay, well I'm gonna I'm gonna stand right here.
Y'all know I love law enforcement. You know I'm a
supporter of law enforcement. But I'm calling bullshit right now.
This dude, Sergeant Link, was off duty drinking at a

(30:40):
bar and then in his vehicle to drive. Okay, that
in and of itself could could have been an issue,
and he shouldn't be drinking and driving, But I don't
know how much he had to drink. I'm not going
down that rabbit hole. But I'm not buying for a
second that he would have extended his neck out that
far for anybody. No, you stick your neck out like
that for a friend. Then here's another instance. Years prior

(31:02):
to that, he did an investigation on a hit and
run that happened. A woman was hit at a red light.
Then the person who hit her drove away. Well, whenever
Link showed up, there was transmission fluid. That's how bad
the wreck was. There was transmission fluid leaking from the
suspect vehicle. So Link did what I guess any common

(31:24):
sense would tell you. He followed the transmission fluid, and
that leak from the transmission led him straight to none
other than thirty four Fairview. That's the address where John's
body was found. Now, I'm not saying those two are
linked those two instances. What I'm telling you is that
at that time, guess who lived at that home none

(31:45):
other than the other Albert brother, Tim Albert. Tim Albert
lived at thirty four Fairview. Lank busted him at the
house and was like, bro, what's going on here? Now?
Let me tell you this too. He never did a
DUI I check on Tim Albert. He never had his
blood drawn. He just quote unquote talked to him and

(32:06):
then explained, oh, I just panicked after the wreck and
I left. So he charged him with a misdemeanor, which
I'm telling you right now was on purpose because when
he got the misdemeanor, he went to court, he got
a diversion opportunity, and so his record was wiped clean.
Lank knew these Alberts. For anybody to say that they

(32:30):
did not know one another is a flat out line.
I've given you two examples right there of where they
knew one another. So it begs the question why would
they lie. Good friends and also related family members all
have different opinions of who was in the house when
the officer interviewed them and then said officer was a

(32:52):
close friend of theirs who didn't document or record anything
that was said. And then Nicole Albert's the one that
said it lasted forty five minutes. That's that's bad. That's
a conflict of interest, if anything, and something interesting about
this was uncovered. In addition to that, Jim McCabe who

(33:13):
found the body of John with the other two women
after Sergeant Lank left the interview. After he left, she
called him on his personal cell phone, even though she
claimed she did not know him, she called him on
his personal cell phone, and now said she wanted to
add something that she quote forgot to tell him during

(33:33):
the interview. Well, this would seem also what she forgot
to tell him during the interview would seem super important
because guess what she forgot to tell him in the
forty five minute interview, directly about the situation that just
happened with John O'Keefe. She forgot to tell him that
Karen said at the scene, I hit him, I hit

(33:54):
him when they were looking for John. She forgot to
tell him that part. So Karen at that time was
maintaining that she must have said that she thought. Karen said,
oh my god, did I hit him? And she said
this was after they found the body. Okay, so which
one is it? Because they're very different. Karen was adamant

(34:16):
she never said I hit him, and this obviously was
a similar sentence, but it has a very different meaning.
One is a question. One is a proclamation, possibly made
under stress. So this was something that also definitely needed
to be looked at deeper. So I'm going to fast
forward a bit here and tell you that none none,
nuh of the police reports, nor were any of the

(34:40):
reports of anyone who responded to that scene that morning.
This means fire, this means medical. None of the reports
mentioned Karen ever saying I hit him, not one, which
would have been a very extremely important thing to note
by anyone with any experience specifically considered the situation. That's

(35:01):
like the whole premise of what's being argued here. But
not one report said it. Not a police officer, not
a fireman, not a medic, and they were all hearing
her scream while they were there, not one of them
put that in their report. Also, now it's kind of
important to probably tell you this, Sergeant Lank was not

(35:23):
the lead investigator on the case that was actually assigned
to a state trooper. That trooper's name is Trooper Proctor.
Why was Trooper Proctor from the state police given lead
investigator status on a Canton PD case. Well, that's what

(35:45):
because one of the Canton officers that were on the
scene the morning that had happened realized, Uh oh, the
brother of the very man whose house this involves is
a detective at Canton p D. Yes in law Brian Albert,

(36:06):
the homeowner where John's body was found. His brother is
the lead detective at Canton PD. Obviously there was a
conflict of interest here. O. Brother can't investigate his own brother.
So let's talk about Trooper Proctor for a minute, because
that's a good move. Let's make state police take lead
on this so that there is no Let's be transparent, right,

(36:26):
let's put another agency involved in this. Well, let's talk
about Trooper Proctor for a minute. Back at the in
law Albert's home the day John was found, Okay, eventually
everyone was gone from the scene. Medical was gone, the
fire trucks were gone. Even Carrie and Karen were gone.
Remember I told you they got in their car and
they drove off to go to the hospital. The only
people that remained at the in law Albert home were

(36:50):
the in law Alberts and the mccabes, who again are
related to them, and cops. And it was sent just
any cops. It was friend cops. It was Sergeant Lank,
who I just told you about. And there was another
officer there named Lieutenant Gallagher. Now Gallagher, I want you

(37:12):
to know, he's a lieutenant. He's a ranking officer on
the scene. He's the one that brought up. Look, this
is going to be a conflict of interest. I really
think we need to bring somebody else in to look
at this because of his brother being a detective. Sergeant Lank,
after he was told by his supervisor, we need to
get state police involved, called state police, and by this
point they realized John was likely not going to survive.

(37:34):
So when he called state police to say we want
y'all to come take over, Trooper Proctor is the one
who called him back because he had missed the call.
But when he called back, Trooper Proctor told Sergeant Lank,
we're not going to be responding. Although they would have
taken jurisdiction on an unexpected death or homicide anyway in Canton.

(37:54):
He flat out said, we're not responding, and I need
you to know. There was no explanation given as to why.
To this day, I don't know why they said they
would not be responding. Then after that happened, another officer
went into the in law Albert home to talk to
everybody and ask questions. Jen McCabe said that John was

(38:20):
supposed to come in the house, but he never came in.
She said that in front of all of the in
law Alberts, they knew what Jen mccab was saying. They
got to overhear it. You're never supposed to question witnesses
in front of other witnesses because they lie and you
don't want them to have collusion. That's why you separate them.
And now we have siblings and they're listening to each other.

(38:44):
She also said that they had all been partying the
night before, YadA YadA, YadA to the officer, and about
that time Jen's husband, Matt entered into the home and
met up with everybody in the home. So I just
want to recap real quick. She's saying that it's Jen
McCay and her husband. Jen McCabe is the sister of
in law, Brian Albert's wife. Okay, so they're just sisters

(39:07):
together with their spouses. Jen McCabe also said that atf
Higgins didn't show up until nine am at the scene.
She says that that was after all the questioning happened.
So let me just tell you there's been a whole
lot of questioning going on here. But guess who has
not been questioned. Karen Reid, like the very woman that

(39:28):
they've arrested for the death of John O'Keeffe. She had
not even been spoken to at that point. So it
makes you kind of wonder why, like, why wouldn't she
spoken to. Well, the police spoke to Matt McCabe after
Lank had already walked out of the house, but they
never spoke to Karen. It's just the whole thing does

(39:50):
not jibe. The timelines are not driving Lank. Sergeant Lank
said that when he went into the house, Brian Albert
in law Brian Albert looked like he had just woken up.
Whenever he's like, oh, I went in the house and
Brian Albert didn't you know, he looked like he had
not been awake at all, like he had just woken up.
And been startled when Jim McCabe went into the house
and came down. But let's talk about that real quick.

(40:11):
Guess where the in law Albert's bedroom was on the house.
Their bedroom was the closest bedroom two where the incident happened.
It's upstairs to the far left, which is the closest
bedroom to where the incident took place or is believed
to have taken place, with two windows that are facing

(40:32):
it as well. But both of them claim they never
heard anything that morning. They never heard the ambulances showing up.
They never heard the cop showing up. They never heard
this woman who was screaming at the top of her
lungs saying I hit him, I hit him. According to
Jim McCabe, they never heard anything. Also, they said that

(40:52):
their dog, Chloe, was sleeping in the bedroom with them.
Their dog never alerted to any of that either, Like,
do you find that weird? I do. I have a
little weeny dog, Toby Man. Toby barks when the wind blows.
He's definitely gonna alert whenever there's fire trucks and ambulances
and people screaming, Hell my bird, does you know shout

(41:14):
out to my little bird? Teddy. You know, ted screams
when he hears people talking outside. So but they're saying, nope,
we didn't hear anything, and neither did the dog. I
just really find that hard to believe, really hard to believe.
But that's what they said. But something that happened simultaneously
after John's body was found and when everyone had left
the scene, was that the police then realized, Okay, John's

(41:39):
gone to the hospital. That would mean that John's kids
should be home alone, correct, because nobody's there with them.
Karen's gone to the hospital. John's at the hospital, the grandparents,
everyone there, Oh my gosh, we need to go check
on the children. Everyone basically said that the daughter must
have been home whenever Karen was calling around looking for John.

(42:01):
And let me explain why I'm bringing all of this up. Okay,
so I'm gonna have to go in a different direction
for you real quick. And it matters to know this.
There was an officer you don't have to remember this name,
but his name was Lieutenant ray Well. Whenever they believed
that the kids were home alone, presumably because John and
Karen were gone, an officer was sent to go go

(42:22):
get the kids. That was going to be this Ray officer. Well,
he had dash cam rolling whenever he pulled up to
John's house. John also had a ring camera on his house,
so there's multiple views that's filming all of this going down.
It shows that Officer Ray showing up just about eight
o'clock in the morning. Karen's suv is in the driveway. Okay,

(42:45):
because remember just a recap, Karen drove did Jen McCabe's house.
Then Jen mcab and Karen drove back to John's house.
Carrie went and met them there. Carrie drove to to
where John was found. So that's why Karen reads vehicles
back at John's. It makes total sense. But there's video

(43:06):
of this from the dash cam and you can see
Karen's SUV clearly parked in the driveway. And so I'm
looking at the vehicle parked in the driveway. Now there
is snow collected where the light is, but I will
tell you the light does in fact look broken. It's
the passenger side rear tail light. And this is at

(43:27):
eight eight twenty ish in the morning, just a few
hours after John was found dead. Okay, the kids they
would find out were not there though, because what the
police didn't know is that John's niece, her bestie friend,
remember the ones that were getting in school together, and
they were all excited. He had left the dad of

(43:48):
the bestie went and picked her up from the house already. Okay,
so now you're wondering, well, how did he know to
go get her? How did he even know that there
was an issue which brings up the besties dad's wife,
which is bestie's mom. Okay, they interviewed her as well
later on, but they interviewed her. Now quick reminder, Bestie's dad.

(44:10):
I'll give you his name, but you don't have to
stick with it. Is mister Camerano. Bestie's dad and John
were drinking the night that John is believed to have
an accident or something have happened to him. He was
the one that was with him at c. F. McCarthy's
before the waterfall. This is the first bar. Remember they
went there and they were celebrating their kids getting to
that private school together. Well, Karen had made a phone

(44:34):
call to mister Camerano's wife. Her name was Catherine, if
you care, she was at work though early the morning
of John's death. She was a nurse. Karen called her
between four and five am, screaming, where is John? I
can't find John. It makes sense because the reason that
they would be she would be asking her where's John

(44:56):
is because the husband had been drinking that night with John,
so I thought maybe they were together. And when that happened,
this woman said she heard the niece in the background screaming. Also,
like her and Karen were kind of talking back and forth.
So whenever they hung up, this woman, this nurse mom,
she texted John two. So she got off the phone,

(45:18):
she texted John and there was no answer. She sent
that text around five to ten am. And that makes
sense to me. I want to tell you why she
was kind of asking John where he was when I
myself was told personally. And we can only view things
through our own personal lens, right, and we all have
our own beliefs and personal interactions that manipulate who we
are and who we become. But when I was told

(45:40):
the morning that my two friends were dead, I didn't
want to believe it. I was hoping that they were wrong.
The very first thing I did was hang up and
I called both of my friends and I left them
both a voicemail. I also texted them. Obviously, they never
texted me back because it does turn out that my
two friends were dead. But that makes sense to me
that after she got off the phone, she tried to

(46:00):
text John to say, hey, man, you know, where are you? Well,
she called Karen back, and by the time she called
Karen back to say what you know, update me what's
going on, she then could hear Jen McCabe in the background,
and Jen was saying something about we're going to look
for John, so they had already gotten together at that point.
This woman also spoke to Carrie Roberts later on and

(46:24):
that's where she found out that John was in fact
found and was being taken to the hospital. And then
she in turn turned around and spoke to her husband,
who then you know, turned around and said, oh my god,
let me go get the niece. So I want you
to know how that happened and how that played out well,
the mom the nurse. She also texted Karen back later

(46:44):
and said to the effect, don't worry about him. He's
probably on someone's couch. Keep me posted. Do you think
he's maybe at his brother's. Did he maybe go to
his mom's. Well, then that kind of made it make
sense to me. If you remember last episode, I mentioned
that I thought it was weird they would all be
calling John's mom so early in the morning. That just
kind of seems strange. But this makes sense because it

(47:05):
was six thirty four in the morning that Bestie's mom
was trying to say was he possibly at his brother's?
Was he at his mom's? So that kind of made
sense at that point. But the next text or communication
she would get from Karen later on is he's dead.
He was in the snow. Catherine was taken off guard
by that and she says, are you serious? But there

(47:26):
was no more communication from Karen back to her. But
we now know that's because Karen's phone had been seized
by that point. So why did I bother to tell
you all of this? I'm glad you asked, because that
broken tail light was obviously going to be the lynch
pin that the state used in their argument to prove
Karen hit John the night before, obviously because her tail

(47:48):
light's broken. However, Karen's defense team would go back and
look at this video too, as well as an additional video.
This video would be that camera from John's home. Remember
he had one mounted above his garage, and so they're
watching that video, and that's whenever they uncover the moment
that Karen initially backed out of the driveway to go

(48:11):
meet with the other women to go find John, and
that camera would capture this and would show that she
backed out extremely close to John's parked vehicle in the driveway,
and her defense wondered if maybe she actually had hit
his car when she was backing out. Well, I watched

(48:31):
the video, okay, personally, my own two eyeballs, and I
absolutely agree that she bumped John's vehicle and she would
have bumped it. And it's proven that she would have
bumped it because when you zoom in and you focus
on John's back rear tire, you actually can see when

(48:52):
she bumps it. It's not hard, it's not like she
slammed into it. It's just a bump, a tap, But
you can see that John's car tired literally shift but
boom whenever she bumps into it. Now, was this enough
to shatter the light? You can't tell one hundred percent
from the video quality because it's it's in the middle
of a blizzard and all of that, but it certainly

(49:14):
was convincing that that could have been the cause of
why her tail light would have been broken. And this
is where it's important to note what took place later
that same day, after John was declared dead. And I
know I'm jumping all over the place, but this is
how an investigation works. Okay. After John was declared dead,
the family eventually left the hospital and they all went

(49:35):
back to John's house to break the news to their
kids that their uncle was dead and to absorb everything
that had happened. I'm gonna add this in real quick.
I didn't have it in my notes, but I want,
I want to tell you a little bit about this
real quick. The bestie's dad, remember he had the niece.
I just explained how that happened. He actually was told

(49:57):
that John was dead before he he returned back to
the house with the niece, and he had to kind
of quietly act like he didn't know anything was wrong.
And I have lived that exact experience because my high
school boyfriend and I was very close with his little sister.
I babysat her and a lot and everything. She's a

(50:17):
cute little thing named Jaqueline. Well, Jacqueline's mother and my
high school boyfriend's mother passed away unexpectedly and I'll never
forget it. I was eating at the Ponchos. I know
that's disgusting, but we were eating at Ponchos on Florida
Boulevard in Baton Rouge and I got a phone call
from her dad and I answered it and he was
very direct, and mister Jerry said, Kelly, I need you

(50:41):
to get in the car now, and I need you
to bring Jacqueline home. And I said, okay, are you okay?
And he said, I'm fine. Her mother passed away. Please
don't say anything. I have never in my life felt
a pain where I had to look at this little
eight nine year old girl and pretend like everything was okay,
knowing that her life was forever about to be changed.

(51:03):
And I had to smile and had to drive her
home and not change any of anything because it wasn't
my role to tell. And I just, I don't know.
My heart hurt when I want to learn that about
the best friend's dad having to act like everything was
okay and bring her home knowing he was about to
change her life. So he did, though, he dropped her
off and they broke the news to the kids. Eventually

(51:23):
after that, people began to drop by. They wanted to
give their condolences, and Karen was eventually released from the
hospital later that day. Remember she had been acting kind
of suicidal. Oh my god, if he's dead, I'm gonna
kill myself blah blah blah blah blah. Well, her dad
would eventually pick her up from the hospital and Karen
called the family John's family to say, can I come by?

(51:43):
I need to see the kids? Can I see the kids?
They said yes. Karen went to the house. Her dad
drove her to John's house. She saw the kids, she
gave hugs, whatever, She went upstairs for roughly fifteen minutes.
She got a little bit of her of a few
of her items that she would needed, personal items, and
then she left the home for the family to get
to grieve, and she went to go do her own grieving. Well,

(52:06):
when that was going on, John's brother, Paul, he was
trying to stay busy. He needed something to do. He
went outside to blow snow off of the driveway. He
kind of shoveled, but he also used the snowblower. Well,
John's ring camera that was manut above the garage that
I've mentioned that captured all of this. It captured the
bomp by Karen bumping into the car, but it also

(52:27):
captured whenever Paul was doing all of the snow blowing
of the driveway, which included the area where Karen bomped
John's car. So police did talk to him and asked
him about that, or not directly about that, but this
is later on it got brought up. And when Paul
blew the driveway off, he didn't find one piece of

(52:49):
tail light, not one, And whenever he was snow blowing,
he also never got any pieces of tail light or
plastic or anything like that in the snowblowing machine. So
it seems like if she would have busted her tail
light at that point, which the defense was kind of
bringing up that if it would have shattered. I don't

(53:10):
personally think the momp was hard enough to shatter it,
but if it would have shattered at that point, there
would have been pieces on the ground. Okay, So he
never found pieces, which lends itself to say, okay, with
there or any pieces it would have sucked up in
the snowblower machine. Look, this is where I'm at. Crack
it quite possibly shatter it. No fucking way, It was

(53:31):
not hit that hard. It was not hard to I've
bumped cars before, allegedly in my own driveway, and didn't
crack tail lights whenever that happened. So it makes you
wonder a little bit of what evidence of actually hitting
John did the police have. Okay, because they're saying that's
why they've arrested her. Well, okay, what do they have

(53:51):
then that she hit John? Well, when the police did
their initial investigation the morning of John's death at the
site where he lay, they found nothing in terms of evidence.
I've already told you this. There were no pieces of
vehicle from the crash that they say happened. There were
no light pieces, there was no nothing. So the defense
would obvious say, well, duh, there wouldn't be any because

(54:12):
she never hit him, and the proof is in the pudding.
They never found any light pieces. Clearly she didn't hit him. There, however,
some evidence had actually been found, but the evidence that
was found would then also come under great scrutiny. So
let's talk evidence and timeline for a minute. Also, while
I'm doing this, don't let it get lost on you

(54:34):
that this whole eventual trial that would eventually come to
be took almost a month to lay out. I'm trying
to do this for you in just a few episodes.
So every single, tiny minuscule piece of information from trial
I probably will not give to you. So I'm trying
to just give you what I find to be the
most important and telling while I'm telling the story. I

(54:56):
don't have thirty days to do that for you, nor
do you want me to take thirty days to do it.
All right, So, nothing was found at the scene other
than blood, right, y'all. Remember that initial investigation that was done.
They took the solo cups, the snow, and the blood.
That's all that they had found. Well, looking into the report,
while building the evidence or building their case to defend Karen,

(55:17):
some information was realized that had never been mentioned really before.
The day that John's body was found. There was no
tail lights, no nothing found in the snow. Even though
they shoveled it and they used that infamous blower to
carefully remove layers of snow back and forth in the
area of where John's body was, nothing was found. It

(55:39):
was what four or five officers they are doing this
and nobody saw anything. Well, the next five days are
now going to really come into play here. On January
twenty ninth is when John was killed. No tail light
evidence in that search in the early morning hours. But
later that same day is whenever the State Police SRT
that stands for Specials spons Team, the State Police CERT

(56:02):
Team was asked to come out and do an additional
search for evidence. This is the same day that John
was killed. They got on scene or was murdered. You
have to decide, did it was an accident, whatever, that's
up to you to figure out right now. But they
got on scene around five pm. The commander that showed
up was advised on the basics of the situation that happened,
and he was pointed in the direction of where he

(56:24):
needed to search for additional evidence. Now, the commander of
the CERT team, he did not know the in law Alberts.
He was not friends with them. For that matter. There
was no connection whatsoever between the CERT commander and this investigation.
I want to make sure you know that it was
a weird request for them to be called out and

(56:45):
to search in the middle of a blizzard. Okay, and
there was still a blizzard kind of going on here.
But it was definitely normal for them to be called
out to do a secondary search. That was not strange.
The reason they would have been called is that they
have more advanced training and more advanced training specifically in
evidence searching that might be small because they use a

(57:05):
different process. They grid off the area and they search
it section by section. So the grid area that they
created was from the front door of the Albert home
in law Albert Home all the way to the fire
hydrant that I have mentioned was right near the flagpole
where John's body was found. And what they were advised

(57:26):
to is kind of interesting. They were advised to look
for a missing sneaker and tail light pieces. The reason
they said look for a sneaker was because John arrived
at the hospital with only one shoe on, so look
for a sneaker and tail light pieces. So the commander
then turned around and said, okay, well do you have
a photo of the tail light so we can assess

(57:46):
what we're looking for inside in terms of pieces, And
the officer there said, no, sorry, we don't have it.
Because by that time they said that they already had
taken Karen's car into custody and towed it from her
parents' house back to Canton p D. And while it
was being towed back to Canton PD, it was being

(58:08):
followed by the lead investigator, Trooper Proctor. So no, they
did not have a photo of it. So it was
kind of nasty outside and it was dark, so wearing
headlamps and then using their own vehicles to light up
the area, that's how they got the lighting where they
could actually see what they were doing. There was very
little lighting naturally without adding more, which to me, when

(58:30):
they said that makes sense as to why nobody would
have seen John's body out there laying for some time.
Because they had to add lighting to be able to
look in the snow, then it makes sense it was
probably darker in that area when they did that search. Though.
They found multiple pieces of tail light, multiple between the
street and the flagpole, three large ones and some smaller ones,

(58:55):
as well as his other sneaker. The large pieces were
almost the size of a dinner plate. So the way
that they did this was they would make a scoop.
They would look for something. If they didn't see it,
they would dump it in the street and then the
commander would then had a sifter. He would put that
through the sifter and then if a piece came out,

(59:17):
then they would collect it. And also what they do
if you don't know this is they use a GPS
system to mark where every piece that they find was,
so like literally you could look on a map and
you would see a GPS coordinate of where the piece
was found. Now, I'm talking more of the bigger pieces,
the smaller ones where they sifted not so much. They
wouldn't necessarily know exactly where that was. According to what

(59:41):
the SRT or the certain commander said, he said that
all of the pieces they found were at ground level.
But the report that was written, which was written by
a Canton PD officer Tully, His report said that the
pieces were found beneath some snow, and that would indicate
that there was also snow underneath the pieces. So a

(01:00:02):
couple questions here, How the hell could pieces that presumptively
when Karen hit him, that fell out on the ground,
how could there be snow underneath them? If John's body
was ground level, then you would think that the pieces
would be ground level. But he clearly wrote in there
that some of them were just found beneath some snow,
meaning there was snow underneath them. Okay, so it just

(01:00:24):
begs that question, which one is it? Number two? Why
would the person who wrote the report not write exactly
what the commander was saying. Was he changing the report?
It just makes you kind of wonder in these little y'all's,
the little things that become the difference. That's why it
give so many details. But number three, then they found

(01:00:45):
a whole ass shoe. I think it was a SiGe twelve.
This is a frickin' boat man, big shout out to
people who wear a toil. That's a big ass man's shoe.
I mean, even if it wasn't a twelve, it doesn't matter.
It's a whole as shoe, okay, from a man's foot.
None of that was found in the original search. They
couldn't find a shoe. They didn't find a shoe y'all
next to a body. But now all these hours later,

(01:01:07):
after snow has fallen and there's a blizzard, now the
team not only finds a shoe, but they find pieces
of tail light. And they're all found within inches, as
in a few inches of each other. And this is
per the GPS report. It's showing that they're right on
top of each other, so much so that it only

(01:01:28):
looks almost like one dot for multiple pieces. They're so
close together. Okay, yet none of this was seen in
the original search. So then you're like, Okay, well maybe
they accidentally blew it and they didn't see it. Then
it wouldn't all be together. I mean, it just doesn't jives.
That can't not be like everything I've just told you
cannot be. It's got to be some or none. So

(01:01:51):
it's just there's a lot of questions here on what
actually happened. All right. Then five days after John died,
this is on February the fourth, It's eight fifty the morning.
Chief Berkowitz, he's the chief of Canton PD. He calls
and wants Sergeant Lank to come back to the in
law Albert house because he says he personally just may

(01:02:14):
have found more evidence at the scene. His thing is
a lot of snow was now gone because it had rained,
and then it had the sun came out, and now
the ground could be seen, and he himself may have
found some pieces. Well. When Lank arrived, he saw a
red plastic piece that was roughly six inches long. He

(01:02:34):
photographed it and then called state police to come get it.
Guess who came and got it. His name is Trooper Buchanic.
That was Trooper Proctor's supervisor. Okay, now why am I
bringing this up? Because I need you to remember the
fact that the chief and his whole ass agency had
recused themselves from this case. They were not doing the investigation.

(01:02:59):
So so why would the chief be at the home?
And number two, why was he looking for evidence? Did
he just happen to drive by where he doesn't live
and see a six inch piece of tail I just
happened to even though he's recused from this and he
just tell me that. Tell me that doesn't make you
go hmm, that's weird. Well, after that evidence was documented

(01:03:23):
that piece that Chief Berkowitz supposedly found, over the next
two weeks or so, additional pieces of tail light were found,
according to all of the evidence bags in the case.
But guess what, none zero of these additional pieces were
ever documented or photographed as to the actual location that

(01:03:46):
they were found. None of it Like that's evidence one
to one and none of that was done. All that
was written on the bags was general vicinity and it
was by Trooper Proctor. And the review of these documents
would bring about even more questions. For example, a burm,
y'all know what a burm is, right, It's a like

(01:04:06):
a shelf made of snow. Right, A birm was created
during the original investigation whenever they were pushing back the snow,
and photos were taken of this because that's what you
do in evidence collection. Okay, first photo on January twenty ninth,
twenty twenty two, the day that John was died. There

(01:04:28):
was no tail light photo. There was no tail lights
in the berm. There was no piece of tail light, nothing.
A supplemental report was filed later to this case. That's normal.
You get more information you add a supplemental report. The
issue is that the supplemental report had the same date

(01:04:49):
as the original report, so they both say January twenty
ninth on them. But guess what, the photo on the
cover page of the evidence changed. How can that be
even if it was a supplemental report, the photo of
record on the original report should remain the same. Why

(01:05:13):
Because it's the original record and it's a supplemental not
an addendum. We don't make addendums to reports. We make
supplementals to reports. So you could argue, okay, well, human
error may maybe happen, this is something you know, maybe
they just put the wrong date on the report. Possibly,

(01:05:33):
But tell me this, how did the original photo change
to a photo of snow with a tail light in it?
The photo would not change. It would have to be
physically changed. That doesn't you You can't change the date
and have a new photo when it's pulling the original report.

(01:05:55):
It doesn't work like that. So also, a supplemental report
would have its own report number, just so you know that. Okay,
I want you to know a supplet So if the
first report is report one, a supplemental report will be
number two, but it will be noted that it's added
to report one, just for ease of sake. Okay, But
the supplemental report had the same report number as the

(01:06:16):
first one. That's too fucking sketchy, man. It it's too
it's too convenient, it's too weird. If a report is added,
it should have a new report number and then added
to the original report. That's basic record keeping. What happens
now is it alters the integrity of the purpose of

(01:06:38):
a dated report and a photo change. If all of
that is changed. I have a really hard time with that.
I can't I can't. I can't trust that just a
human error. There's too many things that are that are
kind of whack there. What I would have liked to
have seen I never got to see. This was another
case handled by the same agency and look at a
supplemental report, and now I would be curious to see

(01:06:59):
how to the photos change and did the report number
change or or whatever, which obviously it would, but I
would still like to see it. The state never provided
this though, and so it leaves a lot of questions
in my mind as to what kind of happened here.
And it's really starting to seem to anyone that's of
any you know, any common sense like me and you,
that these reports were being altered in some way or fashion,

(01:07:22):
and that it has to be for a reason by
friends and family that are all intertwined, and all witness
stories are not aligning. So this is sketchy. I mean,
at minimum, this is getting too weird. Also, another interesting
quote unquote oversight was that the address of where John's
body was found was incorrect. It wasn't even right. So

(01:07:46):
the in law Alberts lived at thirty four Fairview, but
the official documents, the official documents of record stated thirty
two Fairview the face sheet or the cover page of
the report, and this would actually be realized later on
like Livetime on video, the face report says thirty two fairview,

(01:08:08):
but the rest of the report says thirty four fairview.
Why would they be different? So it seemed like someone
put the wrong address in, possibly to make it look
like it was the neighbor's house, not the Alberts home.
Just why would it change just on a one sheet

(01:08:29):
of paper. If it was wrong on the cover page,
it should have been wrong in the report. You follow me.
So then my brain started thinking, here, the only thing
that I could come up with was maybe because they
called nine to one one originally from a cell phone,
maybe they didn't give the location, and maybe the phone
had to be pinged, and because it was right on

(01:08:49):
the property line, very close on the property line, maybe
the phone pinged to the neighbor's address and that's why
it was wrong. And then it was corrected on scene.
But then I went back because that's how I am,
and I re listened to the nine to one one call.
You can go listen to it again if you want
to go back to last episode, but you can trust
in me. I went back and relistened to it. But

(01:09:09):
guess what, Jen McCabe on the phone call says she
is at thirty four Fairview Road. Who changed the address?
You want to say, it's just a typo. Well, in
conjunction with everything else, it's kind of seeming to pile up.
There's a whole lot of either shitty police work problems,
bad report writing, or something else is at play. Do

(01:09:32):
you remember the Sergeant Good that I mentioned was the
officer at dispatch that morning. He's going to come into
play again too. So Sergeant Good left the dispatch station
and he went to the in law Albert's home, and
he asked another officer to cover him. Right, He called
two other officers, which by the way, neither of those
officers were on duty, to come and meet him there,

(01:09:53):
one of those officers being Sergeant Link, knowing that this
was Brian Albert's home, and this was brought up. But
I would like to clarify something here on that. It
looks sketchy, like, oh my god, you know, why would
you call an officer who's off duty to come to
this house. You know, Oh, there's some kind of conspiracy here.
But I did a little more research on this, and

(01:10:14):
he was actually scheduled to work that day. Sergeant Lank
was scheduled to work that day. It was just earlier
than shift started, so they called him because it was
the end of someone else's shift. He would have been
coming in and he could take it from the get go,
And he did officially go ten eight, which means on duty,
unlike the time he got involved with the Albert brother

(01:10:35):
at the bar who claimed that he was being harassed. Okay,
he wasn't on duty that day, so it does show
you that he went above and beyond for his friend,
because he wasn't even on duty that day. So he claims.
Sergeant Good claims that he was there when Sergeant Lank
first went into the in law Albert's home, but we
found that to be untrue. You already know Sergeant Lank

(01:10:58):
went in by himself before Good ever arrived, and when
they both went in together, which would have been Lank's
second time in, and he already knew that they had
been partying together. They never searched the home. They never
did anything of that nature. And when Sergeant Good was
questioned specifically about what all happened when he arrived on scene,

(01:11:19):
he said he heard Karen Reid screaming in distress. He
said there was a lot going on. There were fire
trucks and ambulances. It was a super chaotic scene. He
was there for an hour and a half on scene
and he never once heard Karen Reid say I hit him.
It was never mentioned in his report, but yet this
is why Karen was arrested so far, was because of

(01:11:41):
her supposedly saying it. He also said he never saw
Brian or Nicole Albert come out of their home. He
also was the officer that was on scene when the
leaf blower was blowing all the way down to the ground,
when all they found was blood in that they put
into the cups. He was the one actually filming it
when it happened. He was there when they were recovering

(01:12:02):
the blood. He never saw pieces of tail light. He
never saw a shoe. The on scene log you have
to keep us a log every time people come on
and off of a crime scene. If you didn't know that,
why because we want to know who's on scene for
instances just like this, and you have to put your
home address or if you're working that scene, you would
put the agency's address because you're representing the agency. Well,

(01:12:27):
everybody's name was on that log, first name, last name,
address and all that stuff. But there's one name on
that log during evidence collection the original time, but all
it said was a first name. It said Brian, there
was no last name, and the address was the Canton

(01:12:50):
PD address. In what planet do you put just a
first name of someone who has entered your crime scene
and you know, good and damn well, it's the homeowner
Brian that was out there looking and you know, good
and damn well, if it was homeowner Brian Albert, he
was not representing the PD at that time. He was
representing himself at his home and it should have been

(01:13:11):
his home address. So obviously there's a few more people
that are also of interest in this case. And so
I want to go over briefly what they told police
when they were spoken to Carrie Roberts. Remember she was
the one that found the body of Jen McCabe and
Karen Reid Well, her husband was in bed with her
the morning that John they went to go look for John.
So Karen's asleep with her husband in the bed, her

(01:13:31):
phone rings. Well, they interviewed Carrie's husband to ask, hey,
you know, what do you recall about this? And he
was very point blank he just said, look, the phone rang,
I could hear somebody screaming on the other line. It
alarmed me because it was so loud. I rolled over
when she hung up, I said, what is going on?
Who was that? And my wife said that Karen said
John is missing. John is missing. He was very clear

(01:13:55):
on that. Not dead, not run over. John is missing
is what Karen said. And I'd like to point something out.
I believe this, husband, and I believe that to be true.
Why because remember when Carrie was sitting in the driveway
waiting for them, and then she ended up later going
to go meet with them, but she was waiting, she
called nine one one, Remember that she wanted to see

(01:14:16):
if John had been arrested or anything like that the
night before. Well, the call was lighthearted. You listened to it.
I played it for you. There was no alarm at all.
So was Carrie miss remembering what she had just been told,
because if she had said John's dead or John, well,
she did say that that Karen told her John's dead.

(01:14:36):
But if she had said that Karen said John was dead,
why was her call so lighthearted to the police just
checking on him? Ha ha ha ha ha. That would
not have been the approach. So maybe she's misremembering what happened,
but the husband sure to align with the fact that
Karen just said John was missing. So then the brothers
of the in law Alberts, Chris Albert and Julie Albert.

(01:14:57):
Remember this is pizza shop owner Albert's, they too were
questioned because their son Colin, was at the in law
Albert's house the night John died for that brother, for
that son that was having a birthday party. Basically, what
was brought up though, was didn't y'all have a disagreement
with John recently? And they kind of cracked up about it.

(01:15:18):
This said, are you freaking serious? This is what had happened.
There was a running joke where the pizza Alberts had
John in their phone as never Cracker. Okay, I had
to look this up because I didn't know what it was,
but Nevercracker is a cartoon character. It's a grumpy old
man and he didn't want people on his lawn. The
reason that they had nicknamed him Never Cracker was because

(01:15:40):
there was an incident where John had caught I'm gonna
say caught, okay, but caught their kids cutting across his
lawn one time and another time he found beer bottles
that he thought that their son, Colin may have thrown
in his bushes. Okay, well, the son that he caught,
and I'm saying, caught loosely cutting through his yard. John

(01:16:05):
had yelled out at him, get off my lawn, kid,
and he was joking. I know he's joking because he
felt bad afterwards because he didn't think the kid took
it as joking, and so he even called up the
Pizza Alberts and they admitted to this too. They said
this is true and said, I feel so bad. I
was just picking what's his favorite candy. I'll bring him
some candy to make up with him. Clearly, John didn't

(01:16:26):
have animosity with this kid. So a few days later
or some time later, whenever John was on vacation in
Aruba or wherever he was, the Pizza Alberts went into
his front yard holding beer bottles and they have this
goofy photo of them in front of his house like
they're gonna go mess up his lawn. Okay, clearly it

(01:16:46):
is a joke. Anyone who sees the photos would know
that they were joking and it was just a play on.
They were gonna throw beer bottles in his yard. They
were friends, y'all. It was mischief, kid shit, and there
was no fight there. Okay. The night that John met
all of them up at the Waterfall bar, before he
got there, he had received a text from Pizza Chris

(01:17:09):
Albert that said get over here, or I'll fuck up
your lawn. This made perfect sense. It was playful banter
as to the ongoing joke about their son. But in
court later on, I'll just tell you this, it was
introduced as they said, I'll fuck up your lawn like
it was a fight. But the actual text, if you

(01:17:30):
look at it in context, was to John saying get
over here or I'll fuck up your lawn, saying come
hang out with us at the waterfall. That's how I behave.
I'm gonna look through it with my lens and I
would definitely say that to you if me and you
had to run and joke about it. Whatever. I have
a neighbor, for example, that every time I see him,
I flip him off and he flips me off. Anyone
on the outside would think that we were being mean

(01:17:52):
to each other, but it's actually just a joke. That's
what we do. We just flip each other off. Okay,
it's kind of along the same lines. The argument was
made though maybe their son and Colin while he was
at the house hanging out with that party, when John
showed up, they got into an argument. Maybe the sun
beat up John and that's how we ended up in
the yard. But the parents would testify that Chris walked

(01:18:13):
home from the waterfall, which is on video that's verified.
He got home around you know, twelve twenty ish. I
guess you'd say he ran upstairs, put on his pajamas,
got in his bed, and he said about ten minutes later,
his son came in said, hey, I'm home. I love you,
I'm going to bed. That seems completely reasonable to me,
and I don't think that they were they were lying

(01:18:34):
about that. But the next morning is whenever pizza Albert.
Wife Albert went to the in law Albert's house to
go drop off donuts because again that son was having
a birthday that would have been her nephew, and that's
whenever she pulled up to put the donuts in his car.
That was something that they had been doing for years,

(01:18:54):
as she would do that when he arrived. When she arrived,
she said that the in law Albert's were there, mccabs
were there, and so was ATF Brian Higgins, and they
called her into the house and that's when they broke
the news that John was hurt and or dead. Now
I want to add a little piece of information here

(01:19:14):
that you might want to know. Pizza Chris Albert not
only owns the pizza shop, but he also was elected
as a town selectman. He was one of five. Okay,
this means he had a job to kind of like
oversee municipalities and utilities and things like that. But it
also included that he would have a little bit of
oversight of Canton PD. Okay, well, that means that Lank

(01:19:41):
part of the Canton p D, as well as Chief
Berkowitz part of the Canton p D. They would know him.
But guess what he Chris Albert had been friends with Lank,
like I told you, since there were kids. But also
he had been friends with the Proctors, the state trooper
that was overseeing the investigation. He had been friends with
them for a long time. Michael Proctor, Trooper. Proctor donated

(01:20:04):
to Chris's campaign fund when he was running for that office. Again,
this was after John died. Just to be clear, but
guess who else donated after John died to his campaign
police chief Berkowitz. There's a photo of them at the
at the fundraiser together. I'll post that on Patreon for
you so you can see it. So basically, there is
a personal and professional relationship between Pizza Chris Albert and

(01:20:29):
Canton p D the Chief Lodi Lottida, so Julie Albert,
which is Pizza wife Albert. She says that they also
got interviewed thirteen days after John's death, so it was
certainly a very large gap before they were even interviewed

(01:20:49):
about what happened. Okay, check this out. Pizza Julie Albert
and Trooper Proctor's sister best friends speak on the phone regularly.
The day that Karen was arrested, she spoke to Procter's
wife for almost fifteen minutes and sixty seven times after

(01:21:11):
that over the next seven months. Pizza Julie Albert also
spoke to Procter's sister before Karen's arraignment and after like
that day, but multiple times when questioned she said, oh,
that just didn't have anything to do with that case.
It's just that we were talking. I don't believe that
for one second, okay. Also Pizza Julie Albert. She babysat

(01:21:34):
Procter's sisters kids. They're friends, y'all. They know one another,
they know each other well, okay. And when Julie Pizza
Julie and her husband, Pizza Chris Albert were interviewed, they
were interviewed together, not separate, so their story is obviously aligned.

(01:21:55):
And that same night, she called Michael Procter's personal cell
phone at six seventeen and he returned her call back
and they spoke for four minutes. Why would you call
some one's personal cell phone if you did not know them.
Maybe he gave the card with the cell phone, I
don't know. But when State Police called to talk to

(01:22:16):
Julie Albert, originally she told him she was sick and
that she'd have to call them back. And when they
called back to see if she could talk, she didn't answer.
But then she texted them in April and said that
she could meet up. Okay. So it's just kind of
weird how all of this is going on. I also

(01:22:39):
left you off last episode about Karen Reid's butthole, okay,
and what did her butthole have to do with State
investigator State Trooper Proctor investigating this. Okay, well, let's address that.
So when Proctor took Karen's cell phone to search it,
he then started talking to other officers in a group

(01:23:00):
text as well as just some of his friends in
a group text, and he started with, this is a
quote no nude so far, all right, personally speaking, some
of y'all might come at me for this, whatever, I
don't care. I chalk this up to number one, poor
taste and a dark joke at best. Okay, because people
be weird, all right, people be wild and on their

(01:23:22):
cell phones, trust me on that. Nudes are everywhere, and
so I do think it was in poor taste. But
I don't think that that exact text was necessarily like
anything that you know to fire him over at that
exact moment. But other things he said in that text
group become problematic. He says, she waffled him, as in

(01:23:44):
she hit him with the car, and someone said and
then left him to die in the cold, and Proctor responded,
that's another animal we won't be able to prove. Someone
in the group said, I'm sure owners of the house
are going to receive some shit, and Proctor responded, nope.
Homeowner's a Boston cor Okay. By the way, he said
this after only speaking to the mccabs and the Alberts

(01:24:07):
at the point that that text was sent. Okay, so
he's already made up his mind and he's not even
twelve hours into his investigation. That's not proper. Okay. Someone
said I thought he was drunk. Could he have been
beat up? Proctor said nope. Someone asked who's the homeowner?
Proctor never answered. Someone said does Canton have jurisdiction and

(01:24:28):
Proctor said, nah, had to recuse themselves, So he's already
admitting that they've been recused. Someone said, I guess you'll
make this cut and dry since it involves a Canton
police department. And another person said something stinks here that
someone not even affiliated with this said something stinks, and

(01:24:49):
he said, yeah, but there will be serious charges put
on the girl. Someone says, is she hot? Proctor said,
from all accounts, she's a whack job cunt. She's a
babe with a Fall River accent and no ass. By
the way, he hadn't even really spoken to Karen at
this point, so whose account is he referencing? And then

(01:25:13):
someone said, oh, she's skating and his response was zero
chance she skates. She's fucked. That was seventeen hours into
the investigation. He already said she's fucked, and someone responded good,
no ass bitch, and Proctor said lol. A few days later,
on February second, there were more texts and Proctor said,

(01:25:33):
talking about Karen, she has a leaky balloon, knot she
leaks pooh. I took offense to that, and I'm gonna
tell you why. Karen Reid. He was referencing the fact
that she had to have ten surgeries in eighteen months
and a collectomy, which is the same type of surgery
I had to have whenever I had colon cancer. So

(01:25:57):
it just kind of is like, how objective are you
really being if you're going to say that, First of all,
why would you share that with people? That's private information
and you have a privileged access to her phone, and
then you're going to take her personal information that you
find and share that with other people. I find that
absolutely disgusting, as well as the other parts, but just
specifically that it was just to humiliate her. There's no

(01:26:18):
other reason to say that. And then someone said, why
does her asshole leak? You know? It's just this is
unprofessional at best, and this is obviously showing that there
was clearly a bias against her from the jump. So
all of these texts, mind you, are happening when a
grand jury was brought together to hear if the evidence

(01:26:40):
supported maintaining and going after Karen Reid. Sergeant Proctor testified
in that in that grand jury, and when he was
asked directly in that grand jury questioning do you know
the Alberts or did you know the Alberts, he testified No.
That is a flat out lie that he testified to.

(01:27:01):
And follow me here. That grand jury testimony was on
June tenth of twenty twenty two. If they didn't know
each other, and I don't even mean a context of investigation,
I mean personally, if they didn't know each other per
his testimony in June, on June tenth, then why the
hell in February months prior were there are fourteen calls

(01:27:22):
between Jennifer McCabe and Sergeant Proctor when that was happening
if they did not know each other. Also, another officer
that one named Tully, that was involved in the initial investigation,
he asked jen McCabe in the fall of twenty twenty three,
if she had any sort of relationship with personal business whatever,

(01:27:45):
and she said she never met Procter before September of
twenty twenty three, then riddle me this, how are they
texting the year prior if they didn't know each other,
both of them relying. Also, what if I told you
pizza store Albert's son, which would be Jen McCabe's nephew,
was the ring bearer at the Proctor wedding when he

(01:28:08):
was little. He's seventeen now the night John died for reference,
give me a break, all right, that in mind, I
told you I was going to wrap this up in
a beautiful messy bow for you. Well that's kind of
half of the messy bow to give you some insight

(01:28:28):
to this. But now, more importantly, there's even more that
matters beyond just the little details. But there are going
to be egregious large slices of information that you're gonna
want to know if you're still unsure as to what
happened to John O'Keefe. Things like two am trips to
police departments after someone is believed to be dead in

(01:28:49):
the front yard. Things like Google searches that magically changed
timestamps and volleys of phone calls between witnesses and people
working the case, but were there recused yet remain involved.
But then again, there's also gonna be these angry voicemails
that are about to come into play, as well as biomechanics.
A crime scene reconstruction that leaves more questions than answers

(01:29:13):
will also be brought up. And what about deleted phone
data and completely missing phones? Does that make you wonder?
Because I haven't even gotten to that yet, and it
should make you wonder. So it's still gonna take me
another episode for me to get all this covered. But
trust if you want to know this case and you
want to know everything, I'm gonna give it to you.

(01:29:34):
Until then, though, I'm gonna give you some advice. I
want you to assess the people that are close to you,
how much do you matter to them? John had acquaintances,
messing with his woman who was very happy to turn
on him and mess right back with that acquaintance. John
had friends that now seemed aloof to the fact that
he was found dead on a lawn. And then there's

(01:29:58):
experts who are about to weigh and their findings aren't
gonna align with anyone's statements, especially the friends of John
that allegedly know exactly what happened that night or where
they were at least, I guess what we're gonna need
to look at more closely is data from cars, from
cell phones and GPS's since nothing else is really seeming

(01:30:19):
to be clear. So until then, I want you to
keep your friends close and your enemy's closer, because enemies
are at least blunt and honest. Your friends are gonna
lie to you with smiles. With Karen's life now in
the balance, since she's been indicted for her boyfriend's death,
there's gonna be a clear line that's drawn in the sand,

(01:30:40):
and people are gonna start taking sides. Karen is adamant
that she did not hit John, and now she is
in the fight of her life against the commonwealth of
an entire state that is against her. Friends are gonna
help you move in times of need. They're gonna provide
you that soft place to land when you need somebody
to talk to. But don't discount the role of an enemy,

(01:31:01):
because more often than not, they're the very ones are
going to help you grow a spine. M

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Part Three | Did She Do it: The Investigation Into Karen Read

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part Three | Did She Do it: The Investigation Into Karen Read