John O'Keefe's Friend on How Karen Read Got Away With Murder.

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, just to be clear, you didn't do it.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
We know who did it, Steve, we know, and we
know who spearheaded this cover up.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
You all know if John was beaten up and attacked
in that house.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
Who did it? We don't know.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
We don't know.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
We don't know, and it's not for us to know.
Somebody other than Karen.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Somebody other than Karen is responsible for that, for the
killing of John.

Speaker 4 (00:34):
You are listening to the ROBERTA. Glass True Crime report
putting the true back in true crime from New York City. ROBERTA.
Glass is now on the record.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Okay, it is my great pleasure to be once again
with John O'Keeffe's friend, Brendan Caine. Welcome, Brendon, Hi, Roberta.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
Thanks for having me back.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Thanks for doing this. So last time we talked the
Karen Reid supporters, they seem to be outraged and said
that you didn't even know John O'Keefe.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Is that true, of course not now, as most of
the narrative that comes out of that camp it's baseless,
completely Well, I don't really feel I need to defend
the relationship, a forty year friendship. I would say the
summary version is clearly We grew up together on the
same street. He drove me to high school every day
once he got his car when I went the way

(01:57):
to school, came to visit me at school. I came
home every Christmas break, every summer break. We saw each
other all the time. He was in my wedding party,
he was the first person at my house when my
daughter was born. We just seen him a few weeks
before the murder at a hockey game. And we had
an annual tradition on Christmas Eve where we would go
to Canton for Chinese food and to give the kids gifts.

(02:20):
And that tradition ended in December of twenty one, which
is another story in itself.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
What happened on the last Christmas? What happened there? Why
didn't you guys celebrate Christmas Eve together?

Speaker 3 (02:37):
So this this was deep into COVID.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
This is like eighteen months into COVID, so most people
had kind of found the level footing with the virus.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
But we were set to go over there as we
had the past four or five years.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
And I got a call from Johnny a but a
couple to two three days before, and he said his
exact words were, Hey, I got a problem there's some
concern about COVID and it's going to be immediate family only.

Speaker 3 (03:05):
I was like, oh, seriously, okay, all right, didn't know.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
And the irony of that the story was that at
the time Johnny related to me, he said it was
actually Paul's wife who had the issue with immediate family only.
Had Johnny never murdered, I never would have found this out.
But since it came to light after his killing, it
turns out that it was not It was not Paul's wife, Aaron,

(03:30):
that had any problem with COVID. She was one of
the least the people that was least concerned about COVID.
It was Karen, And you know, we had just been
out with them. And you know, the way I justify
it is is Johnny wanted to kind of protect our
view of Karen, and if we said it was Karen
that had the issue, maybe our opinion would change a
little bit.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
But the key to.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
That and the reason why it hits home is that
my I can distinctly remember my daughter crying for you know,
ten to fifteen minutes that we're never gonna be able
to go to Johnny's again after he died. We can
never go back over here on Christmas Eve, and uh,
and for the for that you know year, until I
figured it out, I was I was blaming Aaron, and

(04:11):
it was it was Karen the whole time. So now
in hindsight, you look at you know, with with all
the other behavior and and it's just additional red flags that.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
That I messed.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Yeah, she was isolating you, and well we'll circle back
to it. It's why it was you that she didn't
win around when we know that she was at at
the height of keeping power and control over John. But
you know, I always feel a little guilty asking you
to do an interview. I mean, this just must be
a nightmare. I mean, what is what is this light

(04:44):
going through something like this.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
It's a process, It's definitely a process. So you know,
I still think about him every day.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
And uh, you know, talk to the family regularly.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
But you know, losing some someone this close at that age,
maybe it just takes forever to process it. You try
to rationalize, and you try to look at things through
the right the right lens and the right perspective, and
you you kind of just try to figure out what
else can I do here in the moment to either

(05:24):
help myself through it or help people that loved him
through it. And that's my personal way of coping. Is
is there anything I can do to try to help,
mainly because I know for a fact he would have
done the exact same thing for me had it been me.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
How is it different than a natural death? And and
how did you wake up to sort of you know,
it's such an odd it's an ute odd story. But
how did you get told about it? And how did
you start to put the pieces together as to how
Karen Reid murdered your friend?

Speaker 1 (05:58):
Yeah, so at about ten o'clock in the morning on
January twenty ninth, twenty two, I got a call from
another one of our friends who had no detail. He
just called me and said Johnny died.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
And I said what?

Speaker 1 (06:13):
And I called Paul immediately to see what happened. And
at that point there was still a lot of confusion.
It was very unclear.

Speaker 3 (06:21):
What had happened. But knew it was a blizzard.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
So that that entire day on the twenty ninth, the
blizzard fell, so I couldn't get the canton.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
Nobody could.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
I didn't get over there till the next morning on
the thirtieth, so I spent the day thinking, he, you know,
did most likely, let's sake Okham's razor, the real definition
of Okham's razor, not Alan Jackson's definition of Alcam's raiser.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
The simplest explanation would be hit by a plot.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
It was a horrible snowstorm, second worst snowstorm the area
had seen, and even on my drive over there on
the thirtieth, I'm still thinking this, you know, potentially was accidental.
And I got over to Johnny's house and Canton and
gave missus.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
O'keith a big hull. People were The entire room.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
Was full of Johnny's family and it was just universal,
just kind of shock, is the way I describe.

Speaker 3 (07:08):
It, and tears.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
And Carrie Roberts walked in about five minutes after I did,
And again she and I had gone high school together,
so I knew Carrie before.

Speaker 3 (07:20):
I didn't know any of the mccaves or the Alberts
at that point. I still don't don't know them that
well now.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
But carry walked in and we sat on the couch
in the back and I said what happened? And she
started to recount her narrative, and again I will say
her what she told me that morning was identical to
everything she testified twice, testified you twice in court. But
she's going through the entire story, and then she gets

(07:47):
to the point where she said, So Jen and I
are white knuckle driving with Karen in the backseat and
she's screaming she's histrionic. And we get close to Fairview
and Karen starts kicking and punched at her door and screaming,
let me out, let me out. And Carrie turned to
Jen and said the verbatim was this bitch is crazy.

Speaker 3 (08:10):
And Jen's like, I have no idea what she's doing.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
And so Carrie unlocked the door and Karen made the
beeline out the side of the car onto the lawn,
and Carry said, we couldn't see more than three or
four feet in front of us. We had absolutely no
idea what's going on. They it just chaos and confusion,
like nothing made sense. And I said, was he You
couldn't see him on the launch? He goes, no, he was.

(08:34):
When we got over there. He was half covered in
snow and Karen had jumped on top of him. And
that's when I looked at Carry, and that was the
click for me. That was the moment for me where
I said, how in God's name did she know where
he was if you were out there, you know, randomly
looking for him, retracing his steps, that she knew exactly
where his resting place was under a mount of snow.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
And so that was from that moment on I formulated
my opinion of what happened.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
What did you know at that time? Exactly did you
think she hit him with her car? Did you think
what were you thinking?

Speaker 1 (09:17):
So the day before when I talked to Paul, I
think my exact words to him, you know, just thinking
about all the possibilities, and I said, this is on
the morning of the twenty ninth, And I said to him, look,
I don't I don't want to start anything here. I'm
just curious. I'm like, did they might look at the
back of her car. And Paul said, you know what,

(09:37):
somebody else just said that before.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
Is it really?

Speaker 1 (09:40):
And he goes, they're gone. I said, what do you mean,
they're gone? And he goes, they came back after the hospital,
she gathered some of her stuff, and she was gone
in like fifteen minutes. And then the piece of the
story that still really irritates me is that I guess
in that fifteen minute period, as Paul was relaying the
news of Johnny's death the Patrick, Karen was on the

(10:03):
couch next to Paul.

Speaker 3 (10:05):
So she's there, She's sitting there.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
As Paul is relaying to this kid that his third
guardian of his life is now gone.

Speaker 3 (10:12):
That that that that pieceto really pisses me off.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
And did she did she comfort him? Did she not
a word?

Speaker 3 (10:21):
Not a word from a paulse that just sat there.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
Wow, and she just got her her murder vehicle and
high tailed that out of there. Yeah. I mean, to me,
it seems so obvious that all those screaming and were
theatrics that she put on that night. She acted hysterical.

(10:44):
But I still hear from the Free Karen readers, Well,
Carrie and Jen didn't seem upset, They weren't emotional, But
of course they're trying to be helpful at the time.
They're trying that that's generally what you do in a crisis,
just be helpful and not hysterical. But I mean, didn't
seem like everything that Karen Reid did that morning was

(11:06):
for her and not for to get help for John O'Keefe.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
Yeah, once I saw the videos, and I would I
would actually make a case that Krry and Jen reacting
in a kind of logical In some people's estimation, calm
manner was directly affected by how hysterical Karen was. So
you have somebody losing their mind in the most ineffective way.
You're just trying to remember it's a blizzard, it's pitch dark.

(11:33):
They're both woken out of bed at five in the morning.
So you come back to this again, all the abuse
and the harassment that Jen McCabe has taken carry two.
That's the thanks they got for answering the phone at
five in the morning. Jen answered a call from Kayley's phone.
People forget that. So you get a phone from your
daughter's friend at five in the morning, and Jen answered

(11:55):
that phone like any good human being would.

Speaker 3 (11:57):
And look what that got her.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
Why didn't Karen Reid get the number and call her
from her phone? She noticed that she does everything by proxy,
so that it's Jen McKay calling nine to one one.
There was no need to get called Jen McCabe and
Carrie Roberts that morning. And I'd say that she was
acting hysterical rather than actually being hysterical. You know, I

(12:21):
don't think I think that she needed to act hysterical
in surprise so that when she found him, it would
be when she quote unquote found him, as she led
them right to him, she would look surprised or look hysterical.
But she knew exactly what she did. There's so much
evidence from the phone calls that she made saying nobody
knows I'm here with your kids. First of all, Cally

(12:44):
was the only one there Patrick. She knew Patrick wasn't there.
She wasn't with the kids at that at that right
at that point. And I may be wrong on that.
I thought she was in the car at that point.
No one knows where you are. She knew where he was,
which right where she left him after she clipped him
with his car. Cover up happened immediately after she d

(13:04):
she she.

Speaker 1 (13:05):
Put it in motion pretty quick if people think about it.
She so if she had to call Carrie and Jen
because what else was she going to do.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
Well, she had to go back to the.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
Scene with her car and have first responders show up
with her car with a broken tail light. No, her
car was safely inside Johnny's garage, so she had to
in hindsight again, the cover up began immediately. She's she's
quickly putting together this plan on the fly, and she
needs to distance herself as much as she can, so
she needs other actors in her, in her in her play,

(13:33):
and at this point, in my opinion, and that's why
she had to she brought in Kaylee's best friend's mom
and Patrick's best friend's mom. Kaylee's best friends mom. She
didn't have her phone number, that's why. That's why she
she had Kaylee caller.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
I know, but she could have gotten the number from
Kaylee and called her on her phone. Do you see
how it's never on her phone. It's never her phone.
It's never her phone calling nine one one, it's never
her calling nine one one. If she had just appeared
at the scene with her car with the smash, just
mitherines taillight and it was just her, there's no one
else that she could point the finger to. I think

(14:06):
she's been doing this her whole life, mixing in people
so that she can later point the finger at them.
Otherwise it's just her who's standing there and also creating
chaos at the scene also not helpful. But everything she
did at the scene was help for herself and not
for John, you know, and to making sure she got sectioned,

(14:27):
and she didn't talk to the police. But in interesting
you mentioned her return to John's house. Why do you
think she returned to She didn't return. She never came
from there. She came from Mansfield. She why do you
think she went to John's house snuck in like a burglar?
And why did you think she plotted her her cover

(14:48):
up from his house?

Speaker 1 (14:51):
So think about the timing of one that that decision
was made. It was it was right after she hit them.
So now what are her options? Go back to Mansfield
with a damaged car? I mean, did you think that
far ahead? Was she that devious that she had to
explain away the tail light? To me, the biggest mistake
the Redcamp made the entire time was when they took

(15:13):
the murder weapon on the twenty ninth back to Dyton.
They should have buried that thing.

Speaker 3 (15:19):
In a ditch.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
Yeah, yeah, she thought, and a.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
Lot of people were fooled by her ring video backing
out of Johnny's garage where we've proven with video.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yeah, tell that story one more time. I mean, I
know we talked about it last time, but I think
it's a. It's a it's a good illustration of I mean,
can you imagine I mean when she talks about being
in so much grief and I'll play I'll play a
clip in a second. But she talks about being in
so much grief to Gretchen Voss that she was on

(15:54):
her parents couch for days, when you know, we know
immediately the next day she was with a p I reach,
racing her steps and already coming up with this story.
So I mean, imagine, you know, killing your boyfriend of
two years and already I mean, having the presence of
mind to make a video of a fake way that

(16:17):
you busted your Tailight, that is some really cold psychopathic stuff,
you know right there. Most people with feelings would be
so distraught that their boyfriend of two years was gone,
But it was all about her and getting away with this.

Speaker 3 (16:39):
Yeah, that was the immediate That was the media plans.
She she knew she had them.

Speaker 1 (16:45):
I don't believe she knew how badly injured he was,
but she left them there. That that explains the dozens
of calls to his phone, just hoping he'd pick up.
Then she's getting angry and angrier because she knows that
either he's not answering for one.

Speaker 3 (16:59):
Reason or another one far worse for her.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
And I think that, you know, part of the hysteria
that she's able to build up in the back of
Carrie's car was still there. Was there was a piece
of the piece that she didn't know. She just didn't know,
and once she saw the hump on the grass, then
she knew for sure. But you know, there were calls
made to her mom or dad's phone, and then she
had some time there once she got back to Meadows

(17:26):
av to formulate this plan.

Speaker 3 (17:28):
She definitely made mistakes, not mistakes big enough.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
To I'm gonna have to disagree with you about not
knowing how badly. First of all, there's the first admission
where she says, he it's an emission in the negative,
so you have to reverse it. And there's a there's
a theory in statement analysis. It doesn't mean it's it's
absolute or whatever, but in this case, I think it's right.

(17:53):
So when she says he didn't look mortally wounded, clearly
he did look mortally wounded, or there was no need
to bring it up that she looked at him before
she left and he clearly she said, you know, in
that interview, he says, was that when you dropped him off, Yes,
I looked at him, and he didn't look mortally wounded,
so clearly he did. And then she was telling everyone
he's dead that morning. She knew he was dead before

(18:15):
anyone else, something terrible that his life was taken, you know,
from the very early morning hours of the twenty ninth.
So I think she did know how how badly she
hit him.

Speaker 3 (18:28):
I see your point.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
I've always I've always kind of my interpretation of that
statement was that she knew she hit him, but she
didn't she didn't know how bad that he was injured,
and maybe he was playing it up.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
That that's the way I took it.

Speaker 1 (18:40):
It's like, so your take is that she knew he
landed and was in deep trouble, which could be true,
but for me, it was the way I read it was, yeah,
I know I clipped him, And she said that in
many different ways, like I made maybe I clipped him,
that she clipped his leg, clipped.

Speaker 3 (18:55):
His knee, he spun and landed on the lawn. And
and she's saying he didn't looked dead to me.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
I mean, but so if he wasn't mortally wounded, Karen,
what type of wounded was he?

Speaker 2 (19:08):
Okay, so okay, but she's not calling inside and saying, coach,
check on John. She's immediately calling him and saying I
hate you. So there, So if she didn't know then
that he was I mean, depending on the expert that
you listened to, quickly dead or was dying some time

(19:29):
on the lawn, you know, in desperate need of help.
And maybe there was that I think thirty three percent
chance that he if he had gotten help, he could
have been saved in some way, you know, in what
kind of condition. We don't know. But there was that
moment where she could have she could have stopped and
gotten out. She knew she hit him. I think we

(19:50):
both agree she knew she hit him, and she could
have gotten out and gotten help. Instead, she's calling and
say I hate you, You're a pervert. So so the
option was if I didn't finish him off, I'm getting
this is where I'm at with it this now, I'm
gonna drive away from the scene to make sure he
doesn't get help. She knows he's in no condition to

(20:11):
ring for help. She clearly knows from looking at him.
I mean, her decision to drive away was the decision
to let him die. How do you see that? You
think that's unfair.

Speaker 3 (20:22):
No, I think it's impossible to prove.

Speaker 1 (20:25):
Maybe, I mean that the things we do know for
effects that she never called for help. So from her,
from her own quotes, he wasn't mortally wounded as far.

Speaker 3 (20:34):
As I could see, I hit him my head on
my maybe I.

Speaker 1 (20:36):
Clipped them in the knee, all of all of her
own words. That's what That's what I believe is fact,
is that that she she.

Speaker 3 (20:42):
Knew she had him. That's why I know in her courage,
I know she didn't call for help. Will we ever
actually know whether she knew he was mortally wounded? Now?

Speaker 2 (20:53):
But also here, here's another thing. When she sneaks into
John's home, when she bades his home and starts to
plot to get away with this, which worked, by the way,
because I think she's been doing this her whole life.
She she wears her high heels. You hear her high
heels going into the house. Now, John had a rule

(21:14):
that nobody could wear their shoes in the home. And
were you aware of his neatness and his insistence on
keeping things neat and orderly? Very was He always like.

Speaker 1 (21:26):
That, always liked that you did not wear your shoes
into the O'Keefe residence.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
So his parents were like that too, or.

Speaker 3 (21:34):
I think missus O'Keefe a little bit more.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
You know, again, if you kind of look at the family,
it's clear that that Johnny miss O'Keefe had a lot
in common. And then because Kristen and mister O'Keefe had
a lot in common, and Paul's kind of like a
combination of both of them. But yeah, it was Johnny
definitely took that, took that those genetics and the fastidiousness
carried over into Johnny's adult life. He was he was

(21:59):
a clean guy.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
So you know, she's so so he or she is
wearing her shoes in the home. It's like another middle
finger to John. And when I heard that, when I
first heard that in court, my jaw dropped. And it's
not everything, it's not the whole reason I believe she's
guilty of this crime. It was just such a telling
detail in this case, such a telling small detail that

(22:26):
and then when she when Carrie and Jen insisted they
look for John because Karen Reid strangely had lost John
had lost something she never looked for, which when do
you ever lose something you never look for? Only only people,
the only people like Karen Reid, are looking for or

(22:47):
have lost something, they don't look for. She doesn't. Again,
they all take off their shoes and she doesn't take
off her boots. So it's like the same same thing again.
She knows he's gone, he's not coming back to to
chew her out about not wearing her shoes in the house.
I mean pretty telling.

Speaker 3 (23:05):
No, it resonated with me. I mean that there's dozens
of these these bullet points. But again, it wasn't.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
My first inclination was Carrie's story about how she knew
where he was was lying dead. That was my first,
But you know, there's been dozens and dozens of other
points that make absolutely no sense.

Speaker 3 (23:24):
Her narrative consistently changed.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
Her walking in this house with her shoes on, knowing
that he wasn't coming home was and it was one
of those scores of of of examples that that just
never added up, makes no sense. And you know, we
we are I think you said, we're we are stuck
with the truth and the Karen Reid narrative just perpetually
changed over time, whenever discovery became available or she needed

(23:49):
to explain something else away, or that was the misdirection
and the distraction.

Speaker 3 (23:52):
No, no, no, look over here, look over here. Something different,
look over here. But yeah, the the the shoes.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
In the in the home were definitely a resonating piece
of that story.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
What are some more little moments you had in court
where your sort of jaw dropped or you were like, uh,
I mean, do you remember any of those moments where
I just remember I remember that so specifically when that
came up in court, I made the hairs on the
back of my neck stand up.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
Yeah, I mean, I mean, amongst a lot of other things,
her lack of reaction to the autopsy photos, So that
was notable.

Speaker 3 (24:30):
I'd expected her to put on a show for that.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
She didn't even bother batting and eye at the In
fact that she was, you know, talking to her counsul
and maybe even smirking at one point.

Speaker 3 (24:39):
That was bothersome to me. That's not normal behavior, you know.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
Yeah, you could see the whole way she went through
the trial the happiest murder defendant. I mean, it was
like this was the highlight of her life. All the
attention and power and control she was over the courts.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
I mean, how do they explain even just things out
of her own mouth, how do they explain her first
court step statement of we know who did it Steve
you all know to her Ted Daniel's special Super Bowl
edition where she said, we don't know. So even even
on that basis, well, okay, so here's your boyfriend of
two years and we're going to find the real killers.

Speaker 3 (25:24):
Complete bullshit, all of it, all of it just part
of the part of the plan.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
I have had that up as my opening for I
don't know how long, maybe a year, maybe, maybe longer,
maybe less. And I've never gotten one comment from Free
Karen readers on that specific, any explanation for why she
went from we know who did it too, we don't know,
and it's not for us to know. We're not supposed

(25:52):
to solve it. Turtle Boy went out with that narrative,
they copied it. It's not for us to solve even
though that we've gone from one killer to the next.
I mean, the first trial, Higgins wasn't even part of this.
So the second trial, now he's you know, you know,
public enemy number one, and no one raises an eyebrow, Like,

(26:14):
what happened to Jen McCabe? What did she say? She's
a quarterback? Or I don't know, I don't watch football,
some kind of some kind of football play. I didn't
even know football analogy in this how did they think
Jen McCabe was part of the cover up? You know,
what I was thinking was so brilliant about about making
this as kind of a blue wall of silence tail

(26:37):
is that it really is a revictimization of John O'Keefe,
because if it's the blue wall of silence, then he's
kind of part of that going over there to his
police buddies. So it's a real stirring up, real hatred
towards the police.

Speaker 3 (26:53):
It definitely the narrative they were trying to create.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yeah, we have said because of that, because at the
tide of the police is Johnny just died on the
wrong lawn.

Speaker 3 (27:04):
If he had died two houses over, the result might
have been very different.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
Yeah, what do you mean by that?

Speaker 1 (27:10):
It was because law enforcement lived at that location, and
that's what tied everything together. You know, it was a random,
non police officer, non firefighters home and canton that he
died on. I think that you know, it would been
much tougher to kind of spin this tale of the
of the Blue Wall.

Speaker 3 (27:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
And the other thing that innocence fraud narratives do so
well is they exploit human weaknesses, like we all have
weaknesses and human frailties. And what they do is they
exploit and troubles in life and they exploit them and
capitalize on them in an effort to take your attention

(27:50):
away from the killer. And what they in this case
Karen Reid and her personality. I mean, how many times
they remarked on Brian Albert or Brian Higgins or Jen
McCabe's shortcomings or frailties or what they see is their shortcomings,
they're frailties and they never talk about or or things

(28:12):
they think are lies like the butt dials someone butt dials,
and they don't talk about all Karen. The way Karen
Reid changed her story and lied and got caught in
the lies. No one talks about that.

Speaker 3 (28:29):
The facts don't change.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
Her story changed consistently over time, and I think, really
people for I guess forget this or don't acknowledge it,
but in order for the defense's narrative to.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
Hold any weight.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
And again they pointed their finger at different people the
entire time. There's Jen and then it was Brian Albert,
that was Colin Albert, and then and then moving on
to Higgins, so that that was a constantly moving target.
But the bottom line is even now looking back that
in order for any of any of what they're claiming
to have had happened to have happened, you're talking about
dozens of people that were all part of a conspiracy,

(29:07):
that had careers on the line, that had their families
on the line, that all remained silent over time. I mean,
they say, the only way you can keep a secret
is if only one person knows it, right, So this
is the greatest conspiracy in the history of the United
States law. That everybody involved in the cover up remained

(29:28):
silent even under the scrutiny of a federal investigation.

Speaker 3 (29:31):
I mean, it's absolutely absurd.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
But you'd have to believe investigation. Yeah, go ahead, I'm.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
Sorry, No, you're fine.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
You'd have to believe that to believe Alan Jackson's fairy tale.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
A federal investigation. And also they had that independent audit too,
which also found nothing, which is ridiculous. So it doesn't
matter that they didn't. It's a belief, you know, it's
a belief, and people want to believe it. They want
they want to They're like I said last time, it's

(30:07):
like a carrot in front of a donkey. They will
be constantly being led forward. Oh, the Feds are coming,
This is coming, next, something's coming, someone's gonna be at first,
everyone's going to be arrested, and no arrest, Feds are coming,
arrest nothing, and then nothing happens, and they and they
just keep thinking that something's gonna happen, and they'll change

(30:28):
the narrative d and then then they'll go into DNA
testing and then it'll keep going and going and going,
and they can drift off this for years.

Speaker 3 (30:35):
The other.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
Kind of take from that side, from that camp, was
it anybody that supported the Karen Reader's guilty narrative has
been brainwashed. People were brainwashed by the mccaves and the Alberts.
I've said this before, but I don't I didn't know
the mcaves or the Alberts before this happened. I've gotten
another them caves a little bit. They're really wonderful people,

(30:59):
objectively wonderful people. And uh, at the end of the day,
if there was a single iota of evidence that pointed
at anybody else other than Karen Reid. I would be
extremely vocal about that. There is not one single solitary
piece of evidence. There's a lot of conjecture, tons of
finger pointing. They victimized these innocent people who did nothing

(31:20):
but try to help out a friend that morning, and
then extended that to their, their, their, their, their larger
family as targets. Why to get one guilty, privileged white
woman off.

Speaker 3 (31:32):
That's what happened. It was Karen above all, and they
did not care.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
It's scortched earth, Alan Jacks, Karen's words, scortched earth. As
long as Karen's off, it does not matter what what lies.

Speaker 3 (31:45):
In that wake.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
Well, good point. I mean I've been bringing up wouldn't
you think that Karen Reid, now that she has all
this time, Uh, she's not defending herself, and wouldn't the
ultimate way to clear your name is to find the
real killers. And you look at her in that interview
and he says, well, who didn't because it's it's not
for us to know. We're disinterested, but this was your

(32:08):
boyfriend of two years. You don't want to find out
who murdered him with all the money that you raised
and could raise to find the Don't I don't. I
don't want to. Don't I don't want to, you know,
start another O. J. Simpson hotline to find the real killers,
you know, like he did. But isn't it interesting that
she's not out every day trying to find the real killers.

(32:31):
Isn't it interesting that once she got off that that.

Speaker 3 (32:35):
Just it.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
There is, it's just left not Karen Reid. That's the answer.

Speaker 3 (32:41):
Who did it?

Speaker 2 (32:42):
Not Karen Reid.

Speaker 3 (32:46):
Yeah, it's it's not interesting to me. It's what expected.

Speaker 2 (32:49):
Of course, I know. I'm just saying. I'm just saying
it's not interesting to me either. I've seen this a
thousand times. They move from one suspect to the next suspect,
and you're not supposed to know, and no one says anything,
and there's sure, there's sure the first suspects are right,
then the second suspects are right, and no one says
what happened to the first suspects?

Speaker 3 (33:10):
Right?

Speaker 2 (33:11):
It just it just goes on. So there's one thing
that Karen Reid has ghosted out of her narrative totally,
which is and it's and she fought really to keep
this out of court. Which is the last text messages

(33:31):
she had with John o'keef that night. For an hour
and ten minutes, she is going back and forth from
the first about this Richie the plumber she has coming over.
At seven twenty four or eleven, she says, I'm having
issues with my hot water, so had to text someone

(33:52):
to take a look. And John writes back immediately at
seven twenty five thirty five, You're trying to piss me off.
Why would Karen Rea texting a plumber pissed John off?

Speaker 1 (34:03):
Because John's dad is a plumber, and Johnny was a
really pretty solid plumber himself.

Speaker 3 (34:07):
He had worked with his dad prior to becoming a cop.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
So why would you call a plumber when your boyfriend
essentially has plumbing skills is what would have pissed him off.
So again, hindsight is very clear, but she was clearly
trying to annoy him with.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
That great she says, She says, nothing. I mean they're
texting it. I mean we can go through these texts
all day. Some of them are very interesting regarding the kids,
but I just wanted to just fascinated by this plumber
that nobody. I've put an SOS on my podcast for

(34:44):
Richie the Mansfield plumber to come forward if he heard
from Karenry that night. I haven't heard a word. We've
never seen texts from this plumber. From Karenry to this plumber.
I believe it was a fabrication to role John up
that night, to make him angry and to start a fight,

(35:05):
and also to delay coming out for whatever reason. But
you know, they go back and forth. I mean, let's
just take a look at some of these text messages.
Hold on one second, let me just pull them up.
They go back and forth. So he says, she goes,

(35:26):
why now you're not coming? I'm She goes, he goes,
why now you're not coming? And she says, I'm waiting
for the plumber. I actually think he's in the driveway.
This is a little bit. I think she mentions it
before I've had a you know, hold on one second,
and he's still going out after it's eight pm on

(35:47):
a Friday. He's saying, and you have a plumber coming
over at eight knowing me and Papa could have handled it.
Good luck, And she said, I've always told you I
will not put either of you out of your way,
the way everyone else in your life does. So I'm
too good of a person to have you fix my

(36:09):
plumbing issues, even though I had you put in a
chandelier two weeks before. I knew it wasn't working right,
when you were at the doctors with Cally, and I
knew neither of you could get here. And this guy,
Richie fixed it the last time. Whatever it was. He
was supposed to be here at five. If it's not
a quick fix, I'll tell him to forget it. If

(36:31):
you need a new water heater, don't let him do it.
He's here now. It's not quick. I'm not doing it.
I'm not doing it. I just want to be sure
nothing is wrong will go wrong when I'm not home.
He's not a scammer. Half the quick stuff he does
he doesn't even charge me for. He just puts the

(36:52):
toilet seats on crooked status. Still here. So she's making
him wait now, after fighting all day, she's now making
him wait for him wait for her. She's said he's
got to go to home depot and I'll be back manyana.
And then he writes so, and then she writes woman

(37:15):
a woman's signal, just trying to figure out if I
need to be here? What do you what do you
think of all this?

Speaker 3 (37:23):
I think there's like a kernel of truth in there somewhere.
I think she had a plumber for smaller stuff.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
That existed, because otherwise she's referring to him, and Johnny
would have.

Speaker 3 (37:33):
Said who who?

Speaker 1 (37:34):
And the thing about the toilet seat being crooked like
very specific, So that was something that I think had
come up, must have come up before.

Speaker 3 (37:41):
So again it's like the the.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
Deviousness of having just a kernel of truth to work
off of, to spin into what plumber works at eight
o'clock at night, unless it's like a major flood in
the basement, No, give me a break, that's not true.

Speaker 3 (37:57):
And so to me, it's just a complete manipulation.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
You know, whether she was like, I don't think he
cared if she came out that night. Frankly, so her
delaying her arrival, I don't know what that would have achieved.
But I think earlier in the day she reached out
to Aaron Paul's wife and asked if she wanted to
have drinks.

Speaker 3 (38:12):
I think that same day.

Speaker 2 (38:13):
Like that afternoon, right, and she's also she's also he's
also worried that she's not going to come out, because
he says to her, you know, I'm relying on you
for a ride home. So I think he was more
concerned that he wouldn't be able to get a ride home,
which she had gotten an uber, it'd still be alive. Yeah,

(38:36):
you know, but he's it sounds like he's more worried
that he won't get a ride home. But there's he's
just I mean, she just knows right where to go
and we have finally Michael Camerano second trial, Weekly Weekly
says John told Michael Camerano that he was upset about

(38:57):
the about the plumber, about Karen Reid a calling a plumber,
and Yanetti immediately realizes this issue, you know, goes well Well,
meaning that he would have had someone to fix it. No,
he would have fixed it, Yanetti. You know that, you know,
he knows what it's about. They fought to keep this out.

(39:18):
I hope they bring it up in the sym Well
trial because it's such a good example of Karen Reid's manipulation.
She knows right where to go to start a to
start a fight with him, don't you think I do?

Speaker 1 (39:31):
And and again, as time passes and you look back
at the entirety of the situation. What I think a
lot of people identified as like a jealousy and her
behavior was that.

Speaker 3 (39:42):
Of a jealous one.

Speaker 1 (39:42):
I I've changed my mind on that. This is this
is always about control. This is control in the situation.
This is power and control, not jealousy.

Speaker 2 (39:53):
Yeah, like right, let's look at some of these text messages.
So right early in the in the morning, she gets
gets him to apologize for a fight they had, and
once he apologizes, she doesn't let it go. She just
keeps in on him on how terrible he is. And
he says, like, I don't know what you want me

(40:15):
to say. I've apologized for it, and she says, and
what's interesting is here she is she's already started flirting
with Brian Higgins and seems like she might be opening
up some relationship with him. But she keeps saying, you're
not into this anymore, and he says, well, not into
fighting yeah all the time. You're right, We've been fighting

(40:35):
constantly for months. Well, how do you think that that
played in court? And what do you think the reality
of it is?

Speaker 1 (40:51):
When you saw the totality of the text chain, it
does look pretty consistent. He is trying to get a
little bit of space, and she is just hammering him
and pasting him with text after text after text.

Speaker 3 (41:05):
How did they play in court?

Speaker 1 (41:06):
I think better with the first jury, even though the
second jury heard her admit on camera all the.

Speaker 3 (41:12):
Things that she said.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
But again, based on the results from the from the
first trial versus the second trial, I don't think they
really head home to the Maybe they weren't presented in
the way that would have provided the clearest view of
what it was actually going on there.

Speaker 3 (41:26):
I mean, it took me a couple of years to
figure out what was actually going on there.

Speaker 1 (41:30):
I was just still assuming that, you know, there's a jealousy,
base of jealousy. And then the more I looked at
everything and the more I listened, and that's where I
kind of came to the conclusion that this is not
a jealous woman. This is a manipulative woman that wants
control of Johnny, right.

Speaker 2 (41:47):
She wants him on the back foot in the in
the submissive position. So what's a great way to get
someone in the submissive position accused him of something. It's
a really street street tactic. You know you did this,
you did that, so the also the again it's to

(42:07):
look over there. It's again, don't look at my behavior,
look at your it's your behavior. It's and Karen re
never admits to any kind of any kind of mistakes
of faults. She's perfect and everyone else is terrible. I mean,
that's been sort of the theme that was created by

(42:29):
the defense.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
I will say that that I have to assume that
Johnny was a challenge for her in this in this area,
Johnny would have been very hard to manipulate overall. So
I mean, even if she's you know, professional level, Johnny
would have been a worthy competitor. He was a strong
he he he had a hit, strong footing when it
came to that type of thing.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
Yeah, but here right before the Christmas, let's get back
to the Christmas. He's a he's he's putting Karen's COVID.
I mean, and you had gone out with her to
a game. They didn't wear masks, did they do that
game that you know to? Right, So she's so concerned
with COVID that she can't have you over and your

(43:12):
family over for Christmas Eve like you always did, so
she went She's wanting to isolate John especially specifically you,
and and to keep you from from what was going
on in that home. I mean, I mean john had
asked her to leave and she wouldn't leave. I mean,
would this have been a thing that he would have

(43:32):
talked to you about.

Speaker 3 (43:34):
No post mortem.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
Yes, after the relationship ended, I would have gotten full detail,
but not while it was going on. Johnny was pretty
private with that stuff. And then once something was actually over,
then you'd get the full download.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
You get the full you get the full story. But
I mean, specifically, I think that she isolated you because
you would have been the one of all the friends
to say, you know, if you had picked up on
some of the dynamics that were going on in that relationship.
I mean I think it had. He may have been
good in the beginning, but by the end, I mean

(44:08):
you look at those text messages. She had had total
power and control over him to the point where she
could keep his friends out of the home, She could
keep his uh. She could call him a million times
and text him and he could say stop, stop, stop,
and she wouldn't stop. She could try, he could try
to kick her off the home and she wouldn't leave.
I mean, she was walking all over him. I mean

(44:29):
at the at the end and keeping total tight control
over who he saw and what he did.

Speaker 3 (44:34):
Don't you think I mean I give I give him
a pass. Frankly, uh, looking back at it, because.

Speaker 1 (44:40):
From if I put myself in his shoes, if okay,
if for whatever reason she feels as strongly about this,
he's like, you know, Brenda will understand.

Speaker 3 (44:47):
Whatever it's.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
It's better than than than taking ship from Karen about
it from from what you see in the text, like
it wouldn't have ended. She wouldn't have let it go.
But I don't want if anybody else comes over here
other than the immediate family, we're not. She's bringing her
parents over that night, so should I'm worried about my parents,
and you know, if you look at them, you can
make a case that, yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (45:08):
I'd be worried about their health that they're older.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
But she's not worried about their health. Brenda, come on,
she wouldn't help you out. She knows that her parents
are going to give her relationship.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
I understand.

Speaker 1 (45:21):
I'm saying it's a story that that could that would
pass muster if it wasn't like you know, it was
like her parents are in their forties, is my point.
I know now, but at the time, again, at the time,
I thought it was eron. So now you look back
at it and say, yeah, okay, but I try to
put myself in Johnny's shoes and okay, man, look I
get it, not a big deal.

Speaker 3 (45:39):
We'll do it next year, that type of thing, not
knowing it would never be a next year.

Speaker 2 (45:43):
Yeah, but let's look at how this relationship started. It
started over COVID, So it started in isolation, and you know,
there wasn't a lot of interaction with with John o'keef
and Karen and John's friends just due to COVID, and
Karen has turned that around on you. I mean, I've

(46:05):
seen the comments about just our conversation, is that they
you had seen him, you know, but due to COVID,
nobody saw anyone during COVID. But so it bloomed during
a time when she could keep power and control over him.
You see, do you see what I mean?

Speaker 3 (46:20):
Yeah, horrible timing.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
So I mean you can chalk it up to again
died on the wrong lawn, horrible timing for this relationship.
I mean, again, we are we are talking about Johnny O'Keefe,
who once lost twenty one consecutive bets on college football.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
Which is almost mathematically impossible to do.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
But he, yeah, did everything aligned in the worst possible
way to get this reality.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
She means that, do you think he had bad luck?
Was it just that twenty one bets? I mean, that's
incredibly incredible. Do you think he yeah?

Speaker 3 (46:53):
No, do you think do you think just think general? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (46:58):
No, But you know, the twenty one bets would be
what I would bust his chops about or whenever. You know,
you keep a list in the back of your head
when you're trying to you know, when you're busting each
other's chops over the years and whatnot, these things and
you have forty years of things to drop on.

Speaker 3 (47:14):
He would, he would.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
The one he would always go to was when I
was like ten, eleven, twelve, I got glasses, but to
play basketball, I had to wear the I had to
wear goggles. I mean, very very flattering, very flattering for
chubby redhead kid to wear goggles. And God would he
hammer me on that goggle. So just just little stuff
like that. But but this is the I would say

(47:37):
Joinning was a very lucky person overall, but in this
particular scenario if you got unlucky it was twenty one
straight bets. Or he winds up dating a girl during
COVID who winds up betting manipulative and exclusionary and then
proceeds to murder him and then victimize his family for
three plus years.

Speaker 2 (47:57):
Yeah, I would say that he was he would you know?
I mean, I've I covered the next Seeum trial from
the courtroom and all the hearings. And you know, the
thing that is consistent with people who and also the
Larry Ray Trill, that get into colds or get into
bad situations is that they're always vulnerable. It's always had

(48:19):
a time of change. And here Karen Reid comes in
at the time where he's lost his sister and he's
vulnerable to someone who is a coercively controlling or a
DV relationship is because he's mourning his sister and he's
also in this new role, which you can see some

(48:39):
insecurity about that. He says, I'm not built for this.
What was your view of him as a guardian and
what kind of relationship did you see him having with
his niece and nephew.

Speaker 1 (48:51):
Okay, so I'll disagree with you slightly on this. One,
so Chris in the past years before, So this Johnny was.

Speaker 3 (48:56):
Not new to this when he reconnected with Karen. You've
been doing it for years.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
And I think the thing that made him vulnerable wasn't
his trauma or lost you know, that's there, but it's
the thing that'd been invulnerable was COVID. So he's but
he's a single guy raising two kids and no one
could go out anywhere. Going out and meeting people was
his his social circle.

Speaker 3 (49:16):
That was his release. So honestly, I.

Speaker 1 (49:17):
Think if COVID, if COVID had never happened, I don't
think Karen never happens.

Speaker 3 (49:22):
He was he was at a spot where, you know,
he threw out.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
Some messages to people that he had, you know, known
from years past, and he threw a lot of fishing
lines out there and he he caught the wrong fish.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
Yeah, good, good point. Yeah yeah, okay, Yeah. It's just
always had a time of change. Something, something's different, something
shit what So what was it? What was he like
as a as a parent, and what what kind of
relationship did he have with his niece and nephew.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
I think one of the coolest things, I guess it
was released publicly, but people have seen it was. There
are some some solid videos that really exemple he was.
He was put in a spot to be the disciplinarian
at that point as their guardian, which is an incredible
challenge converting from exclusively playing a role of fun uncle.

Speaker 3 (50:12):
So he was incredibly involved with their lives from the
time they were born.

Speaker 1 (50:16):
He was really really close to Kristen and he was
by her bedside when she got sick every day and
helping Steve out with the kids.

Speaker 3 (50:25):
And so Johnny was already in there.

Speaker 1 (50:27):
It wasn't like he swooped in, you know, from across
the country and took over. He was he was already
very involved. It's just that his role had shifted and
now all of a sudden. I think there's another text
message where he says to Karen that he's always forced
to be the bad guy, and to me, the bad
guy means disciplinarian. He's the one that has to say no.
And Karen had a number of instances where she made

(50:50):
some grandiose, over the top.

Speaker 3 (50:55):
Gift, whether it was picking up the dinner in.

Speaker 1 (50:58):
Aruba or I think that text is based off of
a like a really expensive cashmere sweater that she bought
from Kaylee that really rubbed.

Speaker 3 (51:08):
The wrong way.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
Where he's just trying to figure out where the guardrails
are on how to set some limits on the kids,
knowing full well what they've been through and how they're
treated outside the house. And he is the the lone
human being that has to tell these two kids that
have lost so much no on a regular basis and
try to get them give them to the upbringing that

(51:33):
that that he thought they deserved, which he's the one
providing structure if everybody else Karen, most notably in the
last two years, is doting on the kids and you know,
buying expensive things. Uh, it makes Johnny look like the
bad guy. And and and that that really bothered him.
And and and that even ties around the smaller things
like that she tried to minimize, oh what what she

(51:55):
had got Kaylee for breakfast that morning, and these these
small and they seemingly in uckuous things, But it was
just another example in the relationship where someone in this
case Karen was giving them these children, giving these kids
what exactly what they want, and Johnny's trying to rein
it in and make sure and he did a really
good job. The kids are incredibly well balanced considering what

(52:17):
they've been through. But again, Johnny had to be the
guy that said no or rein it in, and he
was looking for some help from his partner at the time,
and she wasn't.

Speaker 2 (52:26):
Doing that were And you can tell how much trust
they had between Cally and john I mean, here she
is putting your phone in his room, you know right
at the time that she has to to charge it
when even when he's not there, I mean, I mean
what trust? Not like oh, you know, I would think

(52:48):
maybe myself as a teenager, Oh, I can have a
few more minutes with the phone because he's not here
to you know, find out that I'm gonna you know,
when I go to bed, I can go to bed
with my phone and then sneak in. I mean, she's
still obeying his rules even when he's not there. I mean,
what trust. And then he's writing her to from the
bar and letting her know where he is. And those

(53:09):
haven't those text messages haven't been put in the public domain.

Speaker 3 (53:14):
He loved those kids so much.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
I mean, they go from from Kayley's perspective, from that
was her father figure from the time she was six,
so the time she.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
Was fifteen, I'm sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
Very developmental years. So they were unbelievably close. He loved
them so much.

Speaker 2 (53:42):
And you can see in her testimony that the testimony
that came out, and I always felt it was a
disadvantage to the prosecution. I understood why it was not
broadcast because they were because Kaylee was a minor. But
what came out? Were you there in core when she testified.

Speaker 3 (54:01):
I was in court for Patrick testifying, not for Kaylee.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
We had she had a we had specific people that
the kids wanted in there when they testified for support.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
And uh, and you because you're closer with Patrick, right,
you have a special relationship with Patrick.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
I'm closer with Patrick, and it's easier, it's easier to
relate to uh, you know at the time to a
twelve year old boy, because I've been a twelve year
old boy. But yeah, he's he's uh, he's amazing too.
They're both amazing kids. They really are in their own way,
very distinct. They're both like whip smart, like super smart.

(54:41):
I mean, people always say they know they're kids so smart.
Now these kids object these kids are like legitimately like
very very bright, and I think, uh, Kayley's definitely a
little bit more sensitive.

Speaker 3 (54:54):
And I think they I think they're they're through through
going through this together.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
I think they're unbelievably close that you know, Kiley is crucial.

Speaker 3 (55:04):
For Patrick and Patrick is crucial for Kaylee.

Speaker 1 (55:06):
But yeah, I mean, I just I can't imagine my
child having to go through that. I can't imagine that
she wanted if that ever happened, God forbid.

Speaker 3 (55:15):
To us that she that if she came.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
Out and wound up where Patrick and Kayley are today,
I would I would be unbelievably proud of what they're
able to get through because it's impressive. It's just they've
just become impressive. I mean, Kelly isn't even a kid anymore.
There's some impressive people.

Speaker 2 (55:38):
And you have a special special tradition with Patrick. Can
you talk about that.

Speaker 3 (55:42):
Yeah, we've tried so.

Speaker 1 (55:44):
Every year since the murder, I've taken Patrick to opening
day at Fenway. That was a tradition of Johnny's before
that that Johnny and a handful of his closest friends
in the forest and I would join whenever I could.
John Jackson would go again, there's John Jackson. Some people
questioned John Jackson wasn't even friends with John O'Keefe. I
can vouch to John Jackson was genuine friends with John

(56:05):
O'Keefe from the time they met the first day they
met at Northeastern for the record, but because that was
Johnny's tradition and Patrick loves baseball. That's actually probably why
the connection with Patrick was just easier for me, because
I can go to his games.

Speaker 3 (56:18):
He's a really good athlete. Kelly's too, actually, But.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
At the end of the day, I think it's it's
just impressive where they've been able to get to considering
their reality.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
And just circling back to, you know, the breakfast. Is
that the real thing that they thought about that morning.
I've heard that it was about her driving with the
kids drunk. Is that true or.

Speaker 3 (56:44):
That I've not heard?

Speaker 1 (56:45):
I always took it as that it was simply as
little as he was trying to set some limitations and
then Karen went outside those bounds. It could be as
simple as a Duncan donuts refresher that created that.

Speaker 2 (56:58):
That's okay. How did she spin that in court? And
her lawyers spin that to be Karen was just too
nice to them and John was the mean father, denying
the nice things that Karen wanted to do for the kids.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
I mean, I would ask anybody just to put themselves
in somebody else's shoes. So the reality is they've had
one disciplinarian in their life for the past nine years
and then here comes this girlfriend of eighteen months and
she is just, you know, doting and overly generously over

(57:35):
the top type of behavior.

Speaker 3 (57:38):
It's just got to be so frustrating.

Speaker 1 (57:39):
If you're in that disciplinarian role and your partner is
making your life more difficult because you're painting me to
be even worse. Why don't put me in a position
where I'm the one that has to say no. That's
true in any you know, married couple with kids, you know,
dating couple with kids, anybody with kids, there's a give
and take, and it's like, you know, good cop, bad cop.
But you try to have an understanding with your partner

(58:02):
that we're on the same page here and and yeah,
we want to make sure they have everything they need,
and yeah they if they earn it, they should should
get some extra stuff. But you know, there may be
other reasons in that moment in time where now it's
not the right time to to take them out the
lunch or buy them something expensive. And I'm just trying
to do the best I can here to raise these
kids the best like that I'm able to. And you're

(58:22):
making it more difficult on me, that's the reality. But
instead almost she was so generous and so nice. What
a nice person. So you're making things more difficult for
your partner.

Speaker 3 (58:31):
So perspective matters.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
Right, And then it also got spun in the documentary.
Let me just share this clip real quick. She says
that she wanted to go wait, hold on one second.
She wanted to go be with John through the snowstorm
that that weekend because they always had fun, the four

(58:56):
of them together, and the tech will hit the message,
isn't it a second? Old?

Speaker 3 (59:05):
On?

Speaker 2 (59:07):
Here we go? They didn't want to be shut in
here with the snow. I'd rather be up there with
John and the kids and doing something fun. And we
always had fun on the weekends.

Speaker 4 (59:18):
And then if.

Speaker 2 (59:22):
And then her father is no ster domas somehow tells
her not to go out. He knows that somehow it's
something bad's gonna happen, tells her not to go out,
and if she had to listen to him, that's another
spine she puts on it. She had listened to her father,
she would have. But then when you look at the
text messages she's writing that day, she's she's writing I'm

(59:45):
paranoid that she writes at three oh four twenty four,
I'm paranoid now that everything I do with them is problematic.
So rather see you for a minute without it kids
around or five oh six forty five. I don't want
to have this constant conflict of the dynamic of the

(01:00:06):
four of us. Rather just meet you out for drinks
when you figure out what your night looks like. And
her text at eight thirty three sixteen, I think the
four of us together is toxic, meaning the children make
it toxic. Would like to limit it, She writes, your thoughts.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
It's another one eighty it's another story change with a
complete one hundred and eighty degree flip and went from
we always we want to be with them during the
blizzard and we always had a good time to to
this this foresome is toxic. It's it's very similar to
we know who did it, Steve.

Speaker 3 (01:00:39):
We don't know who did it, and it's not for
us to know. It's the story hasn't just shifted slightly
left or right over time.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
She's done full turnarounds on things. This is being another example,
which is it Karen.

Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
Well Well, I mean, I think she's publicly tried to
say that she had a great relationship with the kid always.
I think that stayed consistent. It's just conflicts with the
evidence and in the court, which they didn't. They just
didn't dispute, but they just kept trying to talk about
all the gifts and things that she did for for
Cally and Patrick. And when Calle testified, she said, they said, Yannetti,

(01:01:16):
I think, who was cross examining her in one trial,
said well, didn't she go to your games? She goes, No,
that was John. That was my uncle. He was at
the games. He was there day to day. Occasionally she
would drop me off to get my nails done. She
didn't like getting her nails done, but she would drop
me off to get my nails done occasionally. But for
the day to day she made it clear it was

(01:01:37):
her uncle that was there always for her doing the
real hard day to day parenting. And she so I
can understand why you would be angry that she would
come in and sort of occasionally, I think as a
way to exert power and control, give you know, these

(01:01:58):
over the top gifts. Also, she said that she would
also go cold and give them the silent treatment. It
was a real issue her relationship with his kids. And
then there's the messages with Brian Higgins where she's where
she goes silent. Oh, she says, oh, it's great you
don't I mean, essentially says it's great you don't have kids,

(01:02:20):
like she's relieved Brian Higgins doesn't have kids.

Speaker 3 (01:02:24):
Yeah, the thing about the kids. The other piece that
I think needs to be known was when the kids
testified in the first trial.

Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
Yanetti when he was finishing up or asking Patrick one question,
he didn even ask a question. I'll think he just said,
I'm so so sorry you were made to come here today,
making Lally look like he forced Patrick on the stand
to have to go through this traumatic process. I can
tell you with one certainty, Patrick wanted to be there.

(01:02:56):
He wanted to help, he wanted to tell the truth,
he wanted to be part of getting justice.

Speaker 3 (01:03:00):
In fact, he was.

Speaker 1 (01:03:02):
He was a little bit upset about not being able
to testify in the second trial because Hank didn't put
Patrick on the stand. He only used Kayley. But that narrative. Again,
there's so many false narratives. Or it's like, oh that
the Comwealth's going to force these children in this horrible
situation and they've been so traumatized already. Leave these kids alone.
These kids wanted to do this. They wanted to get lost.

Speaker 2 (01:03:26):
Also, just to touch on the false narratives, Turtle Boy,
Aiden Carney spun your comments about Calley's sunglasses, which I
think is a kind of juvenile anger that she showed
wearing Karen's sunglasses on the stand. Is that you forced
her or that her parents put her up to wearing
the sunglasses on the stand, and that she was so manipulated,

(01:03:50):
and how cruel the o'keefes are and you are. I'm
not sure if he who he was pointing the finger
at you or the o'keefes are both. That you would
make Cally get on the stand where Karen's sunglasses is
a way to troll her. You have some response.

Speaker 3 (01:04:06):
I think that's hilarious. That's how they spun that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:09):
Oh yeah, no, no, no, not at all.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
No one had control. That was that was exclusively Kayley.
No one made her do what no one asked her
doing most people even know she was doing it. I
think maybe they thought that nobody knew what the significance
of the sunglasses was. That was that was a sixteen
seventeen year old girl that wanted to send a message.

Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
Right right, And you know, had they known, I think
they probably would have said, taken them off your head.

Speaker 3 (01:04:42):
I agree, I agree.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
It's not it's not the most I mean, I'm gonna
agree with Turtle Boy in some ways it's not the
most mature thing to do. And I don't think you
can trol Karen Reid. You know, she's not bothered by
Proctor's text messages and all the other think she says.
She's not easy. You know, people have said, you know,
we'll talk about this just briefly, but you know, bb Fell,

(01:05:08):
this new gl Amazon lawyer being brought in to the
civil case. What do you know about her being brought
in and why she was being brought in?

Speaker 3 (01:05:19):
Very little.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
That was a decision that the legal team for the
o'keef's made and brought to the o'keefes. But from all accounts,
she's a phenomenal lawyer. From from my perspective, I don't see,
I don't see any negative to having a strong female
presence on that side of the aisle. I think that
was probably missing from both the first two trials. Laura
McLoughlin had had had parts, and the parts she she

(01:05:43):
did were phenomenal, but it was a you know, largely
the entire trial was the exception of Liz Little's baby
giraff routine. She they it was always male as a male,
male dominated trial both.

Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
Times, ALESSI being the most brutal.

Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
But at this point, you know, this is just a
I think I think it may actually boil down the
fact that that they need additional help. Everyone wants to
make a big deal out of the okeefs adding a
third lawyer, but what about Karen adding a seventh lawyer.
I mean, it could just be a workload issue, frankly,
but they want to bring in someone that that that
comes with a history of success and maybe shed some

(01:06:22):
a different perspective on coming in fresh to the case.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
Right, And we don't see also in these innocents for
our campaigns. They also have also to volunteers. They've also
crowdsourced their defense, where they get ideas from Karen Reid.
Supporters have in a way that the Commonwealth never did. So,
I mean they have a big team behind them. Just
circling back to you know, before we were talking and

(01:06:46):
you said, I'm sorry if I if I get this wrong.
Is this your John O'Keefe was your sixth friend who died?
Is that right?

Speaker 3 (01:06:55):
Fourth?

Speaker 2 (01:06:56):
Fourth? I'm sorry, not that the lawyers.

Speaker 3 (01:06:59):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:07:01):
So from the a couple of days after my twenty
first birthday through Johnny's murder, I lost four people that
I was close with, all unrelated to different things motorcycle accident, cancer,
heart attack, and murder. So you know, you can look
at that and say, geez, man, that's a lot of loss,
which definitely is.

Speaker 3 (01:07:21):
So it's all about perspective and rationalization.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
But to say that, you know, I was lucky enough
to know these people and be close with them for.

Speaker 3 (01:07:29):
As long as it was possible.

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
But I actually do think that the previous losses through
you know, again, other than accidental or natural causes, there
was no no crime committed in any of those cases.
This was the wrinkle to this loss, But I think
it did kind of over time, Like you get not conditioned,
but you have.

Speaker 3 (01:07:50):
Experience a loss, you know how to go.

Speaker 1 (01:07:52):
Through the process, and you know, this one, I'm not
gonna rank them, but this one was really really tough,
really really tough.

Speaker 2 (01:08:01):
Still is still is you know, I mean John o'keef
must have been you know, all these things have helped
Karen Reid. You know just how good natured all of
John o'keef's friends have really helped Karen Reid. Because for
the for the public, it's just not.

Speaker 3 (01:08:17):
I think that's a function of a couple of things.

Speaker 1 (01:08:19):
But number one is that we were not restricted, but
gently suggested that we stay quiet during the first trial.

Speaker 3 (01:08:27):
And so I think, again, this is.

Speaker 1 (01:08:29):
A lot of folks first foray into the criminal justice
system in Massachusetts. I think that we had frankly blind
faith in the process. We understood what the evidence was.
We felt very confident that if objective people hear this information,
there's no way that that that she's going to be
found not guilty.

Speaker 3 (01:08:47):
We were wrong, not once, but twice on that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
And the system kind of the system did fail us,
whether it's Canoni, the jury selection, the process itself more see,
I mean, we the Mastate police and and they just
provided enough little strings to tug at to keep a
narrative going to point the finger, and we were stripped
of any chance of justice.

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
But I know that, I know that I've taken up
a lot of your time, and I thank you for it.
I just have one last question. If the evidence pointed
to anyone else in this case, would you be holding
that person responsible.

Speaker 1 (01:09:24):
One percent one per every stitch of hard and circumstantial evidence.
And you're throwing the behavioral things and the well, that's
odd things that doesn't match up either. You put it
all together, and from the moment I sat on that
couch with Carrie Roberts, there's only one person that caused

(01:09:46):
John O.

Speaker 3 (01:09:47):
Keith's death. There's never been a single.

Speaker 1 (01:09:50):
Stitch of evidence of any time circumstantial aside just false
narratives and claims and theories.

Speaker 3 (01:09:57):
It's all.

Speaker 1 (01:09:57):
It was theoretical. We still haven't seen the that was
going to be tested for DNA. Where's the carpet and
everything they claimed? It's there's been nothing, not a single
piece of evidence. Oh and the point to all this
other stuff it's all about it's it's it's like talking
into the political conversation people the response is always yeah,
but but what about this? But what about it's always

(01:10:19):
about the lack of something.

Speaker 3 (01:10:21):
We're saying.

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
No, what about the ten second window from the infotainment
center that coincided with Johnny's phone that stopped moving forever.
You know, we've talked about the microscopic pieces of tail
light and his sleep.

Speaker 3 (01:10:35):
Oh, the answers.

Speaker 1 (01:10:36):
The mass State Police planted those, The Masstave Police planted
shards of red.

Speaker 2 (01:10:41):
Tail light, microscopic, microscopic pieces of evidence that they can't say.

Speaker 3 (01:10:47):
Right, like using like a cheese grater, Like how does that?
I don't understand how that works, Like it just doesn't
make sense.

Speaker 2 (01:10:54):
Right, right, So we'll get back to some of those claives.
Hopefully you'll come back on We'll get back to some
more of those claims next time. There's so much to
talk about with this innocent fraud campaign and the evidence
in this case. Brendan Kane, thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (01:11:12):
Thank you, ROBERTA.

Speaker 5 (01:11:22):
I hit my boyfriend with my car.

Speaker 6 (01:11:27):
It wasn't an accident, but with Lion lawyers.

Speaker 2 (01:11:32):
I'll go far.

Speaker 6 (01:11:34):
Lion lawyers and witness harassment, all avoid prisoners.

Speaker 5 (01:11:42):
It was some one.

Speaker 3 (01:11:46):
I pushed the pendle.

Speaker 6 (01:11:48):
Now him, now the legal system, my clown.

Speaker 5 (01:12:00):
Mm hmmm.

Speaker 6 (01:12:02):
Incense fro a campaign to save my skin, making my money.

Speaker 5 (01:12:11):
Truth is my second victim.

Speaker 6 (01:12:14):
Carry carry gentle like John were Mama. My innocence for
a campaign is my biggest to.

Speaker 5 (01:12:45):
M I hit my boyfriend with my coat. It wasn't
an a see.

Speaker 6 (01:13:06):
Both flying lawyers all go far, lion lawyers and witness harassment.

Speaker 5 (01:13:15):
I'll avoid prison. It was snowing. I pushed the pedal down,
hit him hard.

Speaker 6 (01:13:24):
Now the legal system of my claim in aceense frog
campaigns save my skin.

Speaker 5 (01:13:38):
Making learning truth. It is my second victim.

Speaker 6 (01:13:43):
Carry carrying changing like John your world my mood. But
innocense for a campaign is my big It's hidden.

Speaker 5 (01:13:56):
It

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