20/20 - The Crime Scene: Karen Read Murder Retrial Begins

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

The high-profile murder trial of Karen Reed captivated millions and divided a tight-knit Massachusetts community. Now, a year after her first trial ended in a hung jury, Karen Read is back in court being tried for murder again. Follow The Crime Scene Weekly to get new episodes early! You can find the podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Deborah Roberts. We've got a new show for you that I think you're really going to want to check out. It's called The Crime Scene Weekly from ABC News. Each week, host Brad Milky, who you know from start here, sits down with the journalists covering the latest true crime stories. From the discovery of grisly new crimes to breakthroughs in cases that are far from closed, you can stay up to speed on the latest true crime headlines. It's true crime in real time. And for the next few weeks, we're going to bring the crime scene weekly to you here in the 2020 feed. If you like it, make sure to follow the show and keep listening. Again, it's the crime scene weekly. Now, here's Brad. Again, it's the Crime Scene Weekly. Now, here's Brad.

Last year, the high profile murder trial of Karen Reed captivated millions and divided a tight knit Massachusetts community. After 600 pieces of evidence and 70 witnesses, the case ended with a hung jury. Well now, Karen Reed is back in court being tried for murder again. Welcome to the crime scene.

I'm Brad Milkey. I host ABC's daily news podcast, Start Here, and every week we're bringing you the latest on what's big and what's new in the true crime space. This week, I'm talking to ABC's Chief National Correspondent, Matt Gutman, who did the first full exclusive interview with Karen Reed before her first trial

and has now been prepping for this retrial. Matt, I did not think we would see each other so soon after you joined us last week, but I'm so happy you're here. Thanks for being with us. I'm happy to be here, Brad. Thank you. So this story starts in 2022.

It's January 28th. It's a winter night. In fact, it's the night of a historic snowstorm. Can you walk us through what happened? So it's a weekend in Boston and we are talking about a group of Boston cops and it's a snowstorm and so typically the activity is going to the neighborhood bar. Right. Right. And so Karen Reed who is an adjunct finance professor works in the financial

industry as well. That's what she and her Boston police officer boyfriend, John O'Keefe, he's been with the police department for well over a decade. And that's what they end up doing. They meet some friends in Canton, Massachusetts for drinks at a bar called The Waterfall. And they drink. And they drink some more. And after a few hours, a guy named Brian Brian Albert who is a police sergeant detective with a very elite unit Who John O'Keefe had always looked up to offers Karen and John the opportunity to go back to his house for an after-party

You know he said some of the guys and their family members are gonna drink there there and hang out some more and they want to come. And John said yes. Karen tells me that she said that she wasn't so interested in staying for more of that kind of stuff and she wanted to go home. So she was going to drop him off. She lives with John and he basically adopted his sister's children after his sister and her husband passed away tragically, which kind of gives you a sense of who John O'Keefe was.

Okay, so Karen allegedly drops John O'Keefe off at his colleague Brian's house for this after party. She goes home. What happens next? The way Karen Reed describes it is she wakes up, it's 4 a.m., she searches the room, she's on the couch, she doesn't see him in the living room downstairs,

she goes upstairs to the bedroom. He's not there. Where is he? Checks her phone, no messages from him. She starts to get frantic. She calls John's friend, Kerry Roberts and Jennifer McCabe, then goes to pick them up and they create this search party to go look and she and Kerry Roberts and Jennifer McCabe are in the car. The snow is still ferociously

coming down and they're searching for John. They go back to the Albert's house, the place where the after party was supposed to be. And after a short search, they realize that John's out there in the snow. He's unresponsive in the snow bank and it's not looking good. Yeah. What is his condition right there? So he's alive, but barely. Karen says she touches him, she realizes he's freezing. He's obviously hypothermic, but he's got gashes on his head, and then the ambulance arrives, police arrive, and initially no one's quite sure what happened.

John is taken to the hospital. He's pronounced dead there. He's got head trauma, hypothermia, he's got injury to his arm. Karen Reed's also brought to the hospital. She sees his family there and that's when things begin to grow cold because people start to wonder what exactly happened and that's when suspicions begin to mount against Karen. And those suspicions lead to an arrest, right? Yeah, three days later. She is arrested and she pleads not guilty to charges of second-degree murder manslaughter leaving the scene of Crime she is always from the very start

Pleaded not guilty and has been adamant that she did not hit John with the car, that she wished John were still alive, and that she loved him, despite, and this would come back to haunt her, a couple of things, including some really nasty messages that she left on his phone as they parted that night. Clearly they were in an argument, clearly things were not going well, and she was very, very angry, and it wasn't the first time that she had been angry at him. She had also been angry at him at a trip in Aruba and there were some other incidents as well but overall she says she loved the guy. So what is the theory from the prosecution here is that Karen

Reid is drunk and then hits this guy with her car and leaves him to die? Because Karen by the way denies being drunk or incapacitated. So what is the actual argument being made by the prosecution? That's pretty much it. I mean, it's Occam's razor, right? They're drunk people in Boston in a snowstorm. Visibility is near zero. She drops the guy off. The prosecution claims they were in the midst of a fight.

And you could see how the voice messages and what she calls him terrible names, is is screaming at him can back that up. She backs the car up at a very fast pace as she's leaving the scene and the prosecution pulled out vehicle data that indicated that Karen Reed had backed up about 60 feet hitting 24 miles an hour. That's when they alleged that she slammed into John O'Keefe. The force of her 6,000 pound SUV hitting him knocked him so far back. He falls backward, his head snaps against the ground.

The snow had started falling heavily, but it wasn't as much snow as it was hours and days later when the snowstorm ended. So he hit the frozen ground, bang, lights out, starts some significant bleeding in his body. He's holding a glass from the bar. That shatters, it cuts him up. The prosecution alleges there are pieces of broken taillight everywhere and that this is Occam's razor.

She's drunk, she's angry, she backs up into him, hits her living boyfriend, the guy she loves because she's upset at him, and then leaves him to die in the snow, and leaves the scene and goes home, wakes up the next day, buyers remorse, and then comes back and produces this act according to the prosecution. They say it's an act. Oh, you know, I had no idea, I had no idea what's going on. But one of the things that they keep coming back to is that she asks did I hit him? I hit him I hit him, you know

there's this phrase that emergency workers testify to hearing Karen Reed repeatedly saying and The prosecution found that very damning So to the prosecution open and shut case Like you said Occam's razor simplest explanations the most probable explanation But the defense here Matt has told a completely different story, right? They've alleged a framing and a cover up by fellow police officers. Everyone in that house has said, not a chance. We had nothing to do with it.

There's no framing. John O'Keefe never even entered the house, they say. So what is the defense alleging here? This gets really interesting, Brad. In my 15 years doing 2020s. I have never met a lawyer who so believed in his client as Alan Jackson Alan Jackson former top-notch Prosecutor here from Southern California still lives in Pasadena guy now works for

Clients he is a defense attorney looks good He dresses really nice, really nice suits, which he walks into like working-class Boston courtroom and and not everybody heads definitely turned, not everybody liked what they saw, but he got a call from Karen Reed very early on in the case and he is not normally inclined to take cases like this, but she was so convincing on the phone he told me. She was so good and so truthful sounding, he believes she is telling the truth, that he essentially let her talk pre-trial outside on the courtroom steps. He let her have hours long interview with

me. I was going to say that's rare pre-trial. Like any of that can theoretically be held against you. Most defense attorneys would say that's absolutely suicidal. That's why it never happens because it's a terrible idea. But Alan Jackson so believed in his client and in her innocence that he was willing to put her out to the whole world before trial.

And one of the things that ended up coming out from conversations with Alan Jackson and with Karen Reed is this alternate theory. And the alternate theory is that John O'Keefe was sort of like considered a bit of a softer cop. Like he was the nice cop you want to run into. He's not the knuckle dragging SWAT guy who's going to beat you up, according to the defense. And he wanted to hang out with these guys the Albert tour really like one of the great famous families in Boston police officer lore this guy is

such a big-name cop in Boston he was actually featured in a TV series along with Donnie Wahlberg called Boston's finest which shows like these top-notch hard-charging cop so the defense claims that hey John O'Keefe was just desperate to hang out with the cool kids, right? And they were the cool kids. It's like a family of cops. They know everybody. They're super connected. But there was some beef that I'm not going to get into with another member of the family that put John O'Keefe in the sights of these other cops. And the allegation from the defense is that John went over there, Karen Reed left in that SUV

on that snowy night, not hitting him. She watched him go in or thought she watched him get close to going in. And so what the defense says happened is that John O'Keefe was essentially led into an ambush. He was brought downstairs into the basement of this house in Canton, Massachusetts. And a fight broke out. Other people piled on.

John O'Keefe tried to defend himself, but there were too many other guys. They beat him badly and then dragged him outside to die in the snow. They also allege that he was bitten by the family German shepherd and there are a number of other allegations as well. Basically, the defense charges that John O'Keefe was beaten very badly, dragged out in the snow and that he died there. And you know, normally that would be a pretty outrageous accusation to make by the defense against Boston's finest, right? You're talking about a very, very

large police department that has some credibility, but it also has lost some credibility in recent years. And that was also on display in the way that the investigation was handled and the connections between the cops who were allegedly at that after party in Brian Albert's house and the cops who Investigated in the coming hours this alleged murder You know one of the things that the defense kept talking about is that John O'Keefe's injuries were not consistent with a car accident.

They didn't like the fact that everybody seemed to know each other. The investigators knew the people who owned the house where John O'Keefe died. That's the Albert house. At one point, they used a leaf blower to try to get the snow away so they could pick up pieces of potential evidence underneath. And they also pointed to a Google search made by Jennifer McCabe. She was the woman who was driving with Carrie Roberts and Karen Reed to try to look for John O'Keefe.

Now, the defense alleged, and they told me this very, very early on in the case when they first got the discovery that Jennifer McCabe made a Google search in her phone, how long to die in the cold? H-O-S, how long to die? But basically, she her phone house long to die in the cold HOS how long to die but basically she was asking how long to die in the cold Wait, that's the term of the Google search how long to die in the cold But like a typo version of how long to die in the cold house long to die in the cold Yeah, huh allegedly around 2 30 a.m And that was hours and hours before John O'Keefe's body was found by

Jennifer Cabe, Karen Reed and Kerry Roberts. There are other weird things as well. The defense claims that the family dog was then given away, the Alberts sold the house. Putting all of these incidents and allegations together, the defense suddenly start to feel that well maybe there is a cover-up here But prosecution very quickly especially this happened at trial shot a lot of this down, right? They said that that Google search actually happened at 6 a.m With Karen Reed at the Alberts house when she came back and found John O'Keefe dying in the snow But it was a tab that had been opened or had been open since 2 30 a.m. So

basically it misread the time stamp. Oh, so like you open up a tab, it says like that tab was open since 2 30, but maybe the search term wasn't put in until 6 a.m. or something. Exactly. So then, isn't the other thing here, Matt, that all the investigators are cops? So many of the people allegedly in that house at the time are cops. Is it possible for investigators to maintain distance in the case like this where it's a dead cop, it's cop witnesses? How do you keep that distance? Can you? So, okay, remember, the house where this happened belonged to that very well-known Boston cop named Brian Albert. Brian Albert's

brother worked at the Canton Police Department and there was already a bit of conflict of interest when this was happening. So they did the reasonable thing and it was the state troopers who took control of the investigation. However, the state trooper and lead investigator in the case admitted to actually knowing the Albert family and actually being friends with them. And very quickly, through discovery, the defense began to pick these pieces together and to allege that this lead investigator named Michael Proctor not only did a bad job, but he was biased and prejudiced against Karen Reed from the very get-go.

There were texts that they showed the jury in which he calls her names, really bad names, crude names against women. He calls her a whack job. He texted his sister that he wished Karen Reed would just kill herself. He allegedly treated her very badly when he initially arrested her and of course again He was friends with members of the Albert family who lived in that home where John O'Keefe was found dead So the defense pounced on this and they hammered Michael Proctor on the stand It was merciless and at the end it was so bad for Proctor

He was put on leave and then after the totality of these text messages and his conduct was exposed, he was fired from the police force. We are actually going to take a quick break right here. When we come back, we will hear how this case divided this quiet community of Canton Mass and what is next for Karen Reed. Don't miss Good American Family. We have a little girl here for adoption. She has dwarfism. for Karen Reed. I don't know what's going on. How old are you? You should get a lawyer. You have no idea how those people hurt this girl. The Hulu Original Series. Good American Family.

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The amateur, Rated PG-13 Maybe inappropriate for children under 13 Now playing only in theaters and IMAX We're back with ABC's chief national correspondent Matt Gutman who's been following the Karen Reid case throughout. Matt, we heard the arguments in this case. There have been lots of twists and turns, even so far as having the lead police investigator

suspended and then later fired. How did all this then affect the trial and the public response? So here's where this story continues to get more interesting, right? You think this is a cut-and-dried case. There was a, you know, an allegation by the prosecution that a woman was driving drunk. She got angry at her boyfriend. She rammed her car into him in the snow. They were both drunk. Okay, that's the end of the story. That's what happens here. But it's so layered that it keeps expanding outwards. So the trial takes place not far from Canton, Massachusetts, where John O'Keefe was found

in the snow, in Detta, Massachusetts. And pretty quickly, this story becomes the all-consuming passion of the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Everybody is talking about this, including a guy named Turtleboy who runs at this point a very small news website based out of Worcester Massachusetts who begins to start to try to investigate the case set out by the defense. He believes that there is a mass conspiracy by Boston police, by state police to cover up something.

And he starts following people on the witness list who are connected to the Alberts. He follows Jennifer McCain. He follows the Alberts. He's going to their kids' sports games. He's heckling them. And he doesn't stop. And he starts to create this army of supporters.

To which, and we should say, Matt, his turtle boy, his name is Aiden Kearney. He's facing witness intimidation charges related to this case now, to which he's pleaded not guilty, right? But go on. By the time this trial starts in April, 2024, and I was right there in courthouse steps,

as the skies just grew dark and ominous and there was this huge rainstorm. But before that hit, Turtle Boy and the supporters of Karen Reed had turned up by the hundreds swarming the courthouse outside protesting in her favor, heckling family members of John O'Keefe as he came in saying that Karen Reed was framed. It created an entirely different dynamic. And then inside the courtroom, Brad, there was not a seat in the house.

There was standing room only. You couldn't get in. You had to get on a waiting list just to sit in the courtroom. That's how big this trial was in Boston. Boston was saturated with details of the trial and everybody involved. And it was a nine week trial. Eventually the jury got the case and they deliberated for five days, like 25 total hours.

And they couldn't reach a verdict. And Judge Canone eventually declared a mistrial. Why is that? Like, did you get a sense of what the jury found lacking on either side? They weren't quite sure how to handle the three different charges. So jurors afterwards spoke to us, they also spoke to the defense, and they wanted apparently to deliver a partial verdict, couldn't figure out how to do it, and apparently there was some confusion about the jury instructions which the judge hands down to the jury to explain how they're

supposed to proceed. So eventually they declared a hung jury, they said they couldn't come to a conclusion, they took it back to the judge, and as happens in every case where a judge is presented with a hung jury, typically the judge might send it back to the jury and say, hey, work on this a few more hours, give it another day, see if you can come to something. But I think the judge realized that they weren't going to budge and she declared a mistrial, meaning that this is not her being exonerated of anything. This means the jury couldn't decide and there has to be another trial. Now, the prosecution could have decided at this point, you know

what, this has cost so much money, we spent so much time on this, that let's just drop this thing, we're going to let her go and chalk up this loss. But the prosecution didn't do that. They are adamant that she is guilty. And so they went back at it. They decided they wanted to try for a second trial. And that's basically where we are today during jury selection for the second trial of Karen Reed in Debt of Massachusetts.

Yeah Matt, so yeah catch us up on this new trial. So what has happened so far and what will be different about it I suppose? You know if you can imagine a trial with even more fireworks this may be it. So the prosecution in the first trial had used a local deputy DA. This time they've chosen a special counsel and lead prosecutor, a pretty famous Boston lawyer who represented the Boston gangster, James Whitey Bolger, who was obviously notorious in the city. And Judge Canone, who was also the judge in the first trial, basically ruled that she's going to allow something called the third party culprit defense, which involves Brian Albert and Brian

Higgins, who were alleged to be in the house the night of the murder. So I think we're going to hear more about this alleged conspiracy to kill John O'Keefe and the Boston police coverup, which the defense alleges. Like sometimes you're not allowed to be like, it wasn't me, it was this other person. But here, like, that's a legitimate defense, perhaps, in this case. They're going to be allowed to introduce that, yeah. And I believe that they're going to push that all the way to the hilt.

Interestingly, the defense has also added another member to this pretty high-flying defense team, and that is Victoria George, who was an alternate juror during the first trial. Wait, what, she was an alternate juror on the case, and now she's part of the defense team? That is correct. She will be advising the defense team on these matters,

which is actually really smart if you think about it. You wanna know what the jury's thinking? Heck, bring in an ex-juror who sat there, who was there every single day of those 29 days of trial and might know and give you some insight into what the current jurors are thinking about. I just have to talk about the jury poll for a second. The amount of media saturation that this case has had in Boston has made it very difficult to find jurors who say that they are either Unbiased about the case or have not heard an unbelievable amount because when you go to Boston or anywhere around there In fact Brad people talk about this case and they know it with such incredible granular detail

That it's hard to imagine and probably elicits such strong feelings. We're talking about the murder of a cop either by his girlfriend or by other cops. I mean, I got to imagine it just gets really high stakes for everyone. Well, I mean, I think you put it perfectly. It is high stakes and it does elicit such strong feelings because on the one hand, it's either the murder of a beloved police officer or if the converse is true

and what the defense alleges is true, it's a giant ugly conspiracy by members of the Boston area police departments and state troopers to frame an innocent woman. Either way, it's not pretty. Well, and so then as we go forward, jury selection is still in process. We'll see how the trial goes, but you've actually spoken to the defendant Matt like you've spoken to Karen Reed in the past

What is your sense of her and how she comes across to jurors? You know Brad, I spent a bunch of time with Karen Reed We did the interview. We had a couple meals together. I spent time with her lawyer Alan Jackson According to him and what he told me, he took the case because he so deeply believes in her innocence and in the truth of the story that she's telling about what really happened that night. And not only is he convincing,

but Karen Reed is convincing. Did you kill John O'Keefe? I did not kill John O'Keefe. I've never harmed a hair on John O'Keefe's head. Would you say that you were angry with John that night? Yes. Is it possible that you might have hit him unwittingly in your admittedly very large SUV? No. Not possible. Could you have been angry enough and slightly drunk

because he had annoyed you and done some inconsiderate things of late that in the fit of rage you just backed up and tried to tap him? Not to try to kill him, but try to... To tap him with my 6,000-pound full-size SUV, to hit John's body with my car? No. The whole team tells a convincing story. And I think that's why so many people in the Boston area

and around the country, and this has really become a national story, believe in her innocence. She is compelling. She's so articulate. Her story has remained almost exactly the same from the moment that she started talking about it, which I think is one of the reasons that people could find her so compelling. Especially now that this judge has said, like, yes, you can sort of explain this theory of the case to these potential jurors.

Matt Gutman, as always, great reporting. Thank you so much. Thanks, Brad. Now, let's check in on some of the other biggest true crime headlines that are making waves this week. First up, an Oklahoma man has been charged with first degree murder in the death of a beloved Kansas priest. Father Arul Karasala was shot last Thursday in broad daylight on his church grounds in the small city of Seneca, Kansas. Sixty-six-year-old Gary Hermes turned himself in for the murder and is being held on $1 million bond,

according to the Nemaha County Attorney Brad Lippert. Carasala had been the pastor at St. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Seneca for the last 15 years. No plea has been entered. Next, a soccer coach has been charged with murder after a 13 year old on his team was reported missing by his family and later found dead, officials announced on Monday. The teen, Oscar Omar Hernandez, had gone to visit his soccer coach, 43 year old Mario Edgardo Garcia Aquino, two days earlier, according to Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hockman. Oscar was found dead on Wednesday in the city of Oxnard, West of LA.

Hockman says he does not have details on how Oscar was killed at this time. Lastly, Lori Valo Daybell, the mother convicted of murdering two of her children in a so called doomsday plot is now on trial in Arizona on allegations that she also conspired to kill her fourth husband. Opening statements

started this week and the trial is scheduled through mid May. Daybell is representing herself at the trial she is pleaded not guilty. All right, that will do it for this week's episode of the crime scene. Thank you so much for being with us. The crime scene weekly is a production of ABC audio produced by Nora Richie. Our supervising producer is Susie Liu, mixing by Shane McKeon. Special thanks to Liz Alessi, Tara Gimble and Emily Schutz. Josh Cohan is our director of podcast programming. Laura Mayer is our

executive producer. I'm Brad Milky and I'll see you next week at the Crime Scene. Critics call the first season of Andor thrilling and sophisticated. The Empire See you. There's a future here for those who dare. You're right here and you're ready to fight. Welcome to the rebellion.