Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - BONUS EPISODE | The Prosecutors: Karen Read and the Death of John O'Keefe

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

Today, we bring you something new from The Prosecutors podcast. Join Brett and Alice as they delve into the death of Boston cop John O'Keefe, who tragically died during a blizzard, sparking accusations against his girlfriend, Karen Read. Was it a frame job or a romance gone wrong? This is Part 1 of a gripping 9-part series. Listen and follow The Prosecutors on all major audio platforms: https://podfollow.com/1513765512  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Hi, guys. Let me share something new with you from The Prosecutor's Podcast. In this episode, Brett and Alice take us deep, deep, deep into the case of Boston cop John O'Keefe. His death in the middle of a blizzard leads to shocking accusations against his girlfriend, Karen Reed. Was it a frame job or a deadly romance? Listen to part one of The Prosecutors, nine-part series. If you like it, listen and follow The Prosecutors. They're on all major audio platforms. Don't miss a single episode.

It's awesome. The Prosecutors. I'm Brett. And I'm Alice. And we are the prosecutors. Today on The Prosecutors. When a Boston police officer was found dead in the snow, an apparent victim of a hit and run, suspicion fell on his girlfriend, Karen Reed. But did she do it? Or was she framed? Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of The Prosecutors. I'm Brett, and I'm joined, as always, by my divisive co-host, Alice.

Well, there you go. At least it wasn't homely. That's all I have to say. That would be divisive. That would be divisive. But maybe I'm not the divisive one, but boy, oh boy, is this case divisive. I will confess, Brett, when this case started going to trial, very recently, everyone was asking us our opinions. And I was like, you know, we cover a lot of cases. We prosecuted. I did. You do. A lot of cases. I read about a lot of cases. And upon first glance, I was like, why is everyone focusing on this particular case? It did not strike my fancy to begin with, which is why we didn't cover it in real time. But because we listened to you guys and because it has become so divisive and are we

about to uncover some massive conspiracy or are we going to be cold water prosecutors? This is going to be divisive. I think whichever way we come out on this, there will be people who will have lots of opinions on it. And I'm here for it. And I'll say this. I'm actually kind of glad we didn't cover it before because going into the trial, I didn't really know a whole lot about it. I knew sort of the basic storyline. I knew that Karen Reid was accused of murdering her boyfriend. Wasn't even really sure how she was accused of doing that. I knew there was a lot of craziness in the media and online. I knew that at least

one blogger had been charged with a bunch of felonies for possibly committing witness intimidation and all sorts of other stuff. But we sort of dodged, I think, the drama that maybe you've seen with Delphi. You know, one problem of being with Delphi this whole time is this whole run up to the trial in Delphi has just been, it has been wild. And I think people who followed this case from the beginning have experienced a very similar roller coaster with the Karen Reed case. But we're coming into it without a whole lot of that baggage, I'm going to say. And we're going to look at this case through the lens of the trial. We're going to do this the way we did the Murdoch case, which was another one that, frankly, I didn't know a whole lot about until we did the trial.

The Derek Chauvin case. I mean, I think those are the two cases that we sort of covered in real time. As we record this episode, the trial is still ongoing. It is an incredibly long trial. We could do legal briefs on the trial because it's very weird the way they're doing it. Though I will just say, guys, state cases, sometimes you see this. There's the young thug case. I think that's his name. Sorry, I'm not very hip. In Atlanta, that's been going on for forever and has like all these weird breaks. In this case, they're most days, they're doing half days. They're only doing trial through like noon, and then they break for the day. and sometimes they have trial like one or

two days a week and then they will have trial. So it's been going on for a long time. At this point, we're far enough along that we hope that we can finish sort of either as the trial is finishing or after it's finishing and not sort of catch up and not be able to do this. But given that we've released these weekly, I think we'll be fine at this this. But given that we've released these weekly, I think we'll be fine at this point. But it's been going on for a while. The Commonwealth's case, because this is in Massachusetts, has a lot of witnesses and there are a lot of people involved in this story. And that's part of what makes it so interesting, because a lot of these people are accused of being part of a cover-up or a conspiracy to frame Karen Reed for the murder

of John O'Keefe. And that is not an exaggeration. I'm not using hyperbole here. As you're going to see probably today, because we'll almost certainly maybe get to the opening statements, the defense's opening statement, the very first words out of their mouths, the very first thing the jury hears from the defense is that Karen Reed was framed. And that is such a strong claim. It's not just we're going to put forward evidence that maybe she was framed. Maybe that's one possibility. But they are going all in on this idea of, as we've said before, the best story wins in creating a story and selling out to try and convince the jury that not only is there reasonable doubt, but that she was framed for this crime. Yeah, those are some bold words. You know, when we started researching this case to cover it, the first thing I did was to actually just pull up the opening statements and the defense one I listened to first because I want to hear what their defense was.

And when the first words out of the defense counsel's mouth was, Karen Reed was framed, I kind of gasped a little bit because I didn't know anything about this case. Because we've talked a lot about the best story wins. We've also talked about how the defense doesn't have the burden to tell you another story. They just have to show that there's reasonable doubt not to convict their client. To say that Karen Reed was framed, and not just framed by anybody, framed by the police, is a very tall order to fulfill, especially in your opening statement. Those of you who've followed us for a while know that the difference between opening statement and

closing statements is that in opening, you're not supposed to argue. You're supposed to tell them what they will expect to hear in evidence. It's not supposed to be argumentative. Closing arguments are where you get to take your spin on the evidence that's been presented and make your best argument from those pieces of evidence. And to state affirmatively from the beginning, she was framed is a bold move, not one that you see often. So let's go ahead and dive into the story here. For those of you who, like me, have been living under a rock and didn't really know what this case was about, or maybe you're blessed to live in a different country where this case has not been on the headlines. I mean, if you live in Boston right now, my favorite part about this case, by the way, is we're going to Boston. I'm very excited to go back to Boston, to go home to Boston. My second home.

My first home in my heart. Are you going to say all the names right? You know, actually, I probably can say all the names right. I'm not going to lie. I looked up a lot. There's like a Bostonpedia where you get to, it's a YouTube page where you get to put in all the different towns and things and they tell you how to say it. So I was practicing. Not Warchester.

Not Warchester. Okay. So there was nothing particularly interesting about Karen Ray's life. It seems like to me up until January 29th, 2022. She was a 41-year-old financial analyst and a lecturer at Bentley University. And she had met a man named John O'Keefe in her younger years. They lost touch. You know, they dated for a little while, but they lost touch. But then in the middle of the pandemic, like so many of us, they reconnected. Sort of interesting

how the distance and the break in your life could bring back old relationships. And they hit it off. John was a Boston police officer, a 16 year veteran of the force. Although he didn't have any children of his own, the 46 year old became the guardian of his niece and nephew, his 14 year old niece and 11 year old nephew when he died, when his sister died in 2013 and her husband died shortly thereafter, which let me just go ahead and say the tragedy that those kids have gone through. Like I can't even imagine. And a lot of things get lost in the shuffle in this case,

but man, take a moment to say a prayer for those kids because to lose their parents the way they did. And then they have John who steps in and fills that role. And I think that says a lot about him and who he was. But then to lose him and to lose him like this and now to be subjected to this and eventually to be witnesses for the Commonwealth in this case, I can't imagine. He's really raised his niece and nephew since they were babies, since his sister and her husband passed away. And he was really their father for all intents and purposes. And they are still young here. They'll come into play throughout this trial.

You'll see they are privy to the relationship and they'll have things to say about it. But I think he has another brother who is also the guardian and now really the sole guardian. But the amount of loss this family has gone through, especially these young children who are still minors, is not to be lost in all of this, especially because remember when we talk about conspiracies, we talk about wild theories, whether they're rooted in truth or not. We're not getting to that yet. They have real effects on real people. And in this case, they have real effects on minors as well. So depending on who you ask, the relationship between Reed and O'Keefe was at times loving and at times rocky, probably not unlike most relationships, frankly. There were some

accusations of infidelity at various points in time. The two were known to fight with some frequency, though some of Reed's friends and frankly, even some of John's friends would dispute the allegations that the two weren't generally happy together. Like every case where you have a relationship that ends with someone dead, a lot of times things can get blown out of proportion. You'll have one person saying either way, one person saying they were the most loving couple ever. And somebody else is like, no, they fought all the time. They hated each other.

And then other people who are more in the middle with now they were kind of normal. They loved each other most of the time and they fought other times. Obviously, all this will be important as we're trying to figure out exactly what happened to John O'Keefe. And all of this would come to a head on January 29th, 2022. Before we dive into the timeline, as we typically do, we're going to do something we don't do in all our cases, but I think this case calls for it. And that's to introduce kind of the cast of characters that you're going to learn about, hear from, hear about in this trial. And there's a lot of them. Keep this in mind because the kind of allegation of Karen Reid being framed involves a lot of

people. So if you can remember to come back to this episode, if you ever get lost who the characters are, we hope to give you kind of a contents of who the players are. First, you've heard of John O'Keefe. He is the victim and he's Karen Reed's longtime boyfriend. He's been described as a good and decent man who is a dedicated cop and generally well loved by the people in his community. Not really someone that people had beef with or he himself wasn't really a divisive person. He was well liked by the people he worked with and also his family and his community. One of the things about this case that's interesting is pretty much everyone agrees

that John's a good guy. The defense will often call him this good man and say things like that. But you have to build some sort of story about what happened here. Remember, I think this is important to remember. We're going to come back to this. You're going to get sick of me saying this. The theory here in this trial is either that Karen Reed hit John with her car and left him to die in the snow, or John was involved in some sort of altercation with basically everyone we're going to tell you about here. And anyone he wasn't involved in an altercation with is involved in the cover up of that fact. So it's funny because on the one hand,

the state's trying to show how rocky this relationship was and how they fought all the time. And you're going to hear testimony through us, unless you're watching the trial. Actually, no, they were kind of fine. And then on the other hand, the defense is going to try and convince you that this group of people decided, either in a rage or maybe planning ahead, to attack John so viciously that he would die. And then you've got to kind of figure out why would they do that? And much like with the relationship between Reed and John, you start hearing the

testimony. You're kind of like, I don't really seem like anybody disliked this guy. So there's motive here is one of those things that is, I think both sides are striving to prove motive. That's one thing that's fascinating about this case, because it's just not your typical defense case. Both sides are trying to show motive, and they're struggling to do so. Karen Reed, the subject that we've been talking about, she's the one in trial. She's accused of hitting John with her car. Karen had been, as we said, in a long-term relationship with John.

And as we will hear more and more about, they either had this fantastic relationship or they were on the rocks. And it depends on who you ask. And listen to all the different testimony as we start to go through it, because honestly, it sounds like a lot of relationships, right?

It probably wasn't completely black or white. It was somewhere on the spectrum as most relationships are. Brian Albert. So Brian Albert owned the home where people gathered the night of John's death. John would be found in the yard of his home near the curb in the far corner. Brian is a retired Boston police officer and he had served on the force with John. Kevin Albert is Brian's brother and he's a Canton police officer, and he had served on the force with John. Kevin Albert is Brian's brother, and he's a Canton police officer and detective. Tim Albert, he's another one of the Albert brothers, so related to Brian and Kevin, and he lives across the street from the Canton Police Department.

And if you're already picking up on this, there are a lot of cops involved in this case. And that's one reason the police conspiracy angle has come up. We are going to talk about a lot of police officers, including the victim, but also pretty much everyone else who's involved. Not surprisingly, the victim, who's a cop, knows a lot of cops and is friends with a lot of cops. And like most families in the Northeast, being a cop runs in the family. So the Albert family, for instance, has a lot of police officers in it, and they know a lot of police officers. So you're going to hear about a lot of police officers through this as we talk about the case. of the Albert brothers. He actually owns a pizza shop often visited by John. And I guess it's pretty popular. He's owned it for like 20 something years. He and John, he says we're

friends. And he also is a town selectman in Canton, Massachusetts, which is the city, the town where all of this is going to take place. Canton, by the way, for those of you who don't know, is 15 miles south of Boston. It's part of the Boston metropolitan area. I think it's south. It's sort of in the Boston greater metropolitan area. If you've lived in Boston, you know, like Braintree, Cambridge, like all those places are these little towns that are, you know, if Boston is the hub, all these other towns are on the wheel and they all surround Boston. And Boston, in a way that, frankly, you don't see a lot of places.

Boston dominates New England like nothing else. I mean, people in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, obviously Massachusetts are all about Boston. And Boston is everything. And then as you go south, it starts to transition into New York. Providence, Rhode Island has a little bit of a rivalry with Boston, but whatever. Providence is a beautiful town, by the way. Love it. But either way. So Canton is close to Boston.

So you got some Canton police officers we've been talking about. John is a Boston police officer. Just a lot of cops in this area. And go Celtics. Okay. So Brian Higgins. Higgins is friends with the Alberts, and he is an ATF agent with an office at the Canton Police Department. He was reportedly at the home the night of John's death. This is not unusual, by the way.

ATF agents work very closely with local police to prosecute gun crime. Almost always, when you have a firearm, machine gun, whatever, it's almost always going to be discovered initially by local police who are then going to work with ATF to prosecute that case federally. So it's not unusual that Higgins would have this close relationship with the Canton Police Department. Then you have Brian Albert Jr. So he is, not surprisingly, Brian Albert's son. And in fact, it was his birthday the day John died. And there were people over at the Albert's house celebrating his birthday, including Colin Albert. Colin Albert is Chris Albert's son. Colin was over at Brian Albert's home earlier in the evening celebrating Brian Jr.'s birthday.

Colin Albert, by the way, is one of the people that the defense has posited as a possible attacker of John. So he is somebody they point to as a possible hothead, a bully that could have gotten into it with John, gotten into a fight with John, a bully that could have gotten into it with John, gotten into a fight with John, fatally injured him. And then the rest of the Albert family has to cover it up. So his presence there and how long he was there will become important in the case. So, so far with this cast of characters, if you're following along, it's a big family gathering and they're close family friends, essentially. And they all live together, work together, eat together, right? Pizza shop owner.

They live near the Canton Police Department. They've served together. They're all different kind of law enforcement officers. In these towns, you work across, whether it's Canton or Boston or ATF, they hang out together a lot. But so far, we're hearing about nothing unusual in terms of the people who are together. So another important player in this case is Chloe Albert, I guess I'll say. Chloe is a German shepherd.

And according to the defense, Chloe may have attacked John while he was over at the Alberts' home, could be responsible for some of the injuries that John suffered, could have been partially responsible for his death. Chloe will be rehomed by the Alberts a few months after John's death, which obviously has led some people to speculate that the reason for that was that the dog was vicious, couldn't be trusted, had already killed one person, and maybe was going to kill again. So they sent the dog, I think, to Vermont, I think is where the dog ended up. By the way, having been a German Shepherd owner, it's a real cheap shot to always go for the German Shepherd, right? The German Shepherds are typically police dogs. They are very smart. Obviously, they're used as canines for police forces. And even if they are the sweetest, most trained dogs, because they are known to be canines and police force dogs, and they can be very powerful as canines, this will not be the first time that a German Shepherd will be accused of causing death to someone. We're not talking about a little Yorkie. I was three.

A German Shepherd tried to kill me. I still bear the scars from that attack. Having had a German Shepherd, they're terrifying. You know, mine was like 120 pounds and she was lovable as all get out. But when she got really excited, she would knock me over. Right. So these are real, real things. But I'm also pointing to the fact that this is a large German shepherd and German shepherds have been known to attack people

in their job as part of their profession and also when they are not properly trained. Moving on, we have someone whose last name is not Albert, but they're still related to the Albert family. Jennifer McCabe. McCabe is Brian Albert's sister-in-law, his wife, Nicole's sister. And she was out drinking with the group the night that John died. She invited John and Karen back to the Albert house and was with Karen when John's body was found. So she's essentially one of the first on the scene along with Karen. Michael Proctor. He is the lead state police investigator on this case. And it's come out

that Proctor had known Chris Albert for about 15 years. It's been reported that Proctor is currently under internal investigation for some undisclosed violation of department policy. That could literally be anything. It might be related to this case. It might be completely unrelated to this case. It might not exist at all. This is undisclosed. And typically, these types of things won't be disclosed until there is a conclusion and a conclusion of findings usually wrongdoing, because if it's closed and there's nothing, then they won't disclose anything. I'm going to go on a limb and say it probably is related to this case. Proctor is sort of your nightmare cop.

If you're a prosecutor, he liked to send text messages that said really terrible things about the defendant, which have now become part of this trial. And when you're a prosecutor and you see something like that, you just want to bang your head against the table because whether or not it has anything to do with the case, it absolutely is going to be introduced by the defense. And it absolutely is going to make some jurors shake their heads. So Michael Proctor, he is going to come up a lot as we talk about this case. We're nearing the end of the list of cast of characters. I think we'll add to it as the trial goes on.

We will. There really are so many people that testify. I was like, oh, this is a relatively short list for the number of people who will testify. But this will get you started on the trial. Kenneth Berkowitz. So Kenneth is now a retired Canton police chief, and he found a piece of broken taillight at the scene a few days after John's death. Berkowitz also knew the Alberts and had appeared at a fundraiser for Chris's political campaign. Their kids played sports together and Chris called him a friend. So they were close by all accounts. Their kids played together. They knew each other. And then he, of course, finds kind of a key piece of evidence that points towards Karen's potential guilt in this case.

And as Alice said, we could go on and on and on with people in this case because everyone plays an important role. I mean, ordinarily, they're really only a few key witnesses. Usually, most witnesses are kind of non-controversial they're just not controversial neither side the prosecution puts them on sort of set the scene the defense may do some minimal cross-examination but then that's it right and then you move forward in this case so many people are important because essentially what you're going to see here, and we're about to get into the timeline, is you have this man found outside in the cold during a blizzard. He's got some sort of wounds.

It's unclear exactly how that happened. And as you're going to see, in order for this to work, you really need all three, I'm going to say three, of the important defense strategies to come together. So if you're a defense attorney and you're defending somebody, there are a few different ways you can attack a case. You can attack a case through incompetence. You can say, look, the police are just incompetent. They did a poor job securing the scene. They did a poor job gathering evidence. They zeroed in on my client. If only they looked a little harder, they would have found all this evidence of someone else. Think of Leo

Schofield, right? The police have those fingerprints in the car, but rather than running them against known offenders in the area at the time of the murder, they're so focused on Leo, they don't even think about it. And that's a problem, right? That's some deep tunnel vision and incompetence. That's one thing you can say. Second thing you can say is some other guy did it. There's somebody else who did it, and they're the person who's responsible. And maybe they even acted to make it look like my client is responsible. The other thing you can say is the police framed me. So this might be your sort of Adnan Syed type thing where the police have decided they've got to solve this case. They've got to pin it on somebody. They pick a target for whatever reason, and then they begin to plant evidence to make it look like that person is guilty. They pressure witnesses. They falsify physical evidence, whatever, to try and move this case forward. In this case, you need all three of these. All three of these things

have to come together. The people who are not involved in the conspiracy have to be incompetent. And the people who killed John O'Keefe have to be working to frame Karen Reed. At the same time, they have to have allies in the police who are not only incompetent and tunnel vision, but are actively framing Karen Reed by doing things like planning evidence. We just talked about Chief Berkowitz. You know, the theory here is he didn't find that piece of taillight. It was planted there either by him or someone else for him to find so that this could work, right? So all these things have to come together. And that's why the cast of characters is so long because so many different people are involved from the Canton Fire Department to the Police Department to the State Police, to the Alberts, to the McCabes, to the dog. They're all

in this together. And that's why it's important to remember these names. And hopefully you can keep them straight. It is not easy to do. We're going to try and keep remind you of who these people are as we talk about them. But just know this is going to be a little bit of a struggle as we move through this. OK, the timeline. So like every case we do, we want to orient you with a timeline. So the way we've done this timeline is we kept it pretty short. And basically, this is a high-level timeline, just to give you some general idea. It is based on public reporting. A lot of it is based on what the prosecution says they can prove.

Some of it based on what the defense says. So just know that. We're going to give you this, but don't consider this gospel. Don't get mad if we say something and then in a week there's some testimony that undermines it. This is just to give you a general idea of what happened that day. Remember, trial's still going on. So this happens where you call witnesses to rebut what the prosecution says or what the defense says. And so I expect that this timeline

may change as trial progresses. So this is Friday, January 28th, heading into Saturday, the 29th, 2022. So this is the eve of a Nor'easter is about to hit Boston. It's going to dump a couple feet of snow onto the city. Everybody knows that. And so what do you do when a nor'easter's coming? You go out and drink. There's nothing better than drinking before a blizzard, because what are you going to do the next day? You're going to lay around, wait on the blizzard to die down so you can dig yourself out. This is a great thing to do. And around 730, John, along with a group of friends, are going to go to a strip on Washington Street in Canton. Canton, as I said before, is a suburb of Boston lying 15 miles southwest of downtown.

Canton was named after Canton, China, because they thought it was antipodal, I think is the word, to Canton. So they thought it was literally like on the other side of the earth. It is not. That's what they thought. Canton, China, by the way, is now known as Guangzhou, which is a small Chinese city of only 20 million people. By the way, great pronunciation. Not just of Canton, but Canton is not how you say it in Chinese, but Guangzhou is really good. Oh, there you go. I knew it when I was a kid.

So 8.51 p.m., Karen is seen on video entering C.F. McCarthy's local pub. According to prosecutors, Karen did what you would expect a person to do at a bar. She drank. So, according to prosecutors, at 8.58, Karen is going to get a drink from the bartender. It contains a clear liquid with a lime in it. Obviously, that could be water. I've often gotten sparkling water with a lime in it. There's that could be water. I've often gotten sparkling water with a lime in it. There's going to be testimony about this, that it was vodka, but as the defense

is going to point out, there's no real way to know whether or not she's mixing, you know, getting a vodka tonic and then getting a water. And she's getting a lot of drinks. So 9.15, she's back for another drink. 9.20, another drink. 9.33, another drink. 9.57, another drink. But this time, she's back for another drink. 920, another drink. 933, another drink. 957, another drink. But this time, she also gets a shot of clear liquid that probably is not water. 1022, another drink. So there are a lot of drinks happening here. The exact number is hard to say because we don't know exactly what she had.

But a number of drinks. People are having a good time. They're having some drinks. Everybody's in a good mood. So far're kind of moving along the strip. At 1210 a.m., Karen and two other women leave through the front door. John follows behind carrying a drink. John and Karen walk together towards Washington Street. After a night of drinking, Karen did the thing that other people do after going out to a bar. She drove, right? You're not supposed to. We all know, you know, if you had a drink, if you even think you're buzzed, don't drive. Don't drink and drive. We see all those signs everywhere. But in reality, the number of people who do drink and drive who are above the legal limit is astronomical. This case, look, if there's one

thing that I think we can say for certain, I don't know if the Canton Police Department is corrupt, the Boston Police Department is corrupt, but there's a lot of people in the Canton and Boston Police Department who drink and then drive. You're going to see a lot of that in this case. And in the Boston area as well, which is also known for drinking and driving. And remember, this is January, which means it's real cold. There's the Nor'easter, but generally Boston area in January is incredibly cold. You don't wanna be standing outside waiting for an Uber, especially when your car is already on kind of like the busy street.

You don't have to figure out the next morning having to come and get your car back. I'm not justifying drinking and driving. I'm just telling you what people think about in their heads and why they end up drinking and driving. So Karen does just that. She gets in the car and she drives. And the plan was to drive back to the home of Brian Albert, another Boston cop, what we talked about earlier, where there was an after party planned at 12, 14 a.m.

John texts the group and he says, where to? There's a response in that text chain and it says, go to 34 Fairview Road. According to prosecutors in between the bar and the Alberts house, something went wrong. Karen left a voicemail to John that said something among other things like, quote, parents who are listening with their children, there's going to be. For the sake of our for the sake of our our. I'm not going to say why don't you? Yeah, I'm not going to say it. But but I also if a child is listening, I'd like them to know that I'm about to bleep

out words that they can really easily figure out what it is. And by the way, trial, you say all these things. So we don't censor within trial because you need to know exactly what it is. And by the way, in trial, you say all these things. So we don't censor within trial because you need to know exactly what was said. So this voicemail to John says, quote, you are an effing loser. F yourself. And John, I effing hate you. But these are the kinds of things you really hope you don't say to someone, especially on a recording, the night that they happened to die. But clearly, it had been a night with probably a lot of drinks. Don't know what happened.

But it was an impassioned voicemail with a lot of F-bombs directed at the person who's going to end up dead. And it's recorded. This is not great for Karen. And let's just say, I mean, if you're a defense attorney, I think you can spin this another way, which is if she just killed the guy, if she knew that she just hit him and left him for dead. It's weird to leave him a voicemail and say that. So you could say, look, this is evidence that they did get in a fight for some reason, but maybe it was because he wanted to go to this party and she wanted to go home. And she was like, well, then fine, you can go, right? And she drops him off. He goes in the party and she fires off some mean voicemails, speeds home,

goes to bed and doesn't realize anything's wrong until later. So there's, that's the great thing about trials. That's the great thing about evidence is you can, you can spin things all these different ways and shade them depending on the argument you're trying to make. So around 1240, according to witnesses, Karen's black Lexus pulls in near a flagpole and a fire hydrant on the sort of far left side of this property. So if you imagine this property, it's a home, nice home. There's on the right side of the property, there's a driveway, there's a road running in front of this property, as there are in front of most properties. And then there's a flagpole sort of in the corner. And then on the, you know, near the curb, there's a fire hydrant. So apparently she pulls in to this area.

About five minutes later, she drives away. At around 1.30 and then later on at 2, people who are at this house are starting to leave. They're getting a ride home. One of them will later report seeing a dark object near this sort of flagpole fire hydrant area, but she doesn't know what it is and she doesn't really think that much about it. Now it's January in Boston and there is a nor'easter coming. So unsurprisingly, by this point, it has started to snow. It starts to snow around midnight. As the night goes on, the snow gets heavier and heavier and heavier. The temperatures are dropping into the teens, and this blizzard that is bearing down on the city would last most of the next day.

At 227, this is a key point. This may be one of the most important points in the entire case, and whether or not this actually happened at 227 is a matter of contention. But according to the defense, Jennifer McCabe, who you may remember, Brian Albert's sister-in-law, and another friend who was at the house that night searches. She means to search how, but she searches HOS, long to die in cold. Obviously, if she's searching this at 227, unless there's a major coincidence here and everybody's just curious, man, it's cold outside. I wonder how long it takes to die. And she's like,

well, I'll search it. That would not be great given that someone is going to die in the cold that night. Kind of like we were saying about if you're Karen, you don't want to have left those voicemails when someone just so happens to die. And for Jennifer, you don't want to have searched for this the night someone dies. But it's not as simple as that. The defense says it happened at 2.27. The prosecution will say that this search happened at 6.23. And this is going to be a battle of experts thing with people looking at this data and trying to determine when exactly this search happened. If it happened at 2.27, it's bad.

It's bad for Jen. If it happened at 6.23 and it's at the behest of Karen, then it's probably, well, it's not as bad for Jen, obviously. And questionable how significant it is because by that point, they have found John. And you can imagine just trying to figure out exactly what's going on and exactly how bad it is. Yeah. Very, very big difference between kind of the four hours of when this would happen. And just for those of you wondering, there is a typo and instead of how it's HOS. So for those of you in the chat who are laughing about maybe she just wanted to search for hoes instead of how that's a possibility to hose. We don't know how long it takes hose to die in the cold. But by the way, this is relevant though, because obviously we all text

with typos. You can't change texts to enter them into evidence. And so these are things that people fight about in trial as well. When there are typos, when there are kind of differing, something that doesn't say exactly that you want it to say. So we'll come back to that, obviously. Okay, going back really quick to the party. So we'll talk more about what this driveway looks like, what people can and cannot see. But the time they're leaving is pretty typical. That's when a lot of bars close down. So 1.30 to 2 a.m., people leaving, getting in cars.

It's been snowing for a couple of hours at this time. It's dark outside. Keep all this in mind. We're not leaving in broad daylight where you may have, you know, unobstructed visibility. Keep in mind the time of day and also the environment around them as people are leaving and whether they can see something there or not. At 2.30, because it's been snowing for a couple hours, and I will say this much,

Massachusetts, you guys know how to do snow. You have to start plowing immediately. You can't wait till the morning once kind of the snow has accumulated to really plow. So at 2.30, a snow plow driver is plowing because that's when the snow is fresh and that way you don't have to plow feet of snow later. And he will say as he plows near this house, he did not notice a body lying in the yard.

Now, you would think that the plow driver is keeping his eyes on the road, that his job is to plow the snow. So he's very aware, unlike maybe the guests who are leaving at 1.30 or 2. Things to think about in terms of credibility and who you believe. And one other thing I'll point out about this, and we'll see whether or not this comes to fruition, this is what the defense says is going to happen. But if the timing is correct here, then that means that John is not in the snow at 2.30, which would also mean that you would believe that when Jen McCabe searched that, this was a very premeditated act. They are going to put John out there in the cold sometime after the snowplow goes by for

the purpose of killing him. So this wasn't a, they beat him up and threw him out of the house and then he stumbled and collapsed in the snow and died. This is, we're going to kill him. How long does it take to die in the snow? Okay. That seems good. Let's throw him in the snow. I mean, that's essentially, I think what you have to believe is happening here. I'll just tell you the snowplow drivers in Boston. I mean, they pay attention to like cars on the side of the road for the purpose of either running into those cars on purpose or covering them in snow. But I don't know how observant they actually are of anything else. So we'll see what ends up being testified to about this.

But it's an interesting point in the timeline. At 4.53 a.m., O'Keefe's niece, the one that he's the guardian of, called Jennifer McCabe. Karen, she said, was distraught. John had never come home and he wasn't answering his cell phone. In fact, Karen was screaming, John didn't come home. We had a fight. So this is clearly the middle of the night. She's 14.

Probably, I'm going to guess that she's typically not awake at 4.53 a.m. She's probably woken up by the distraughtness of Karen screaming, he didn't come home. We had a fight. And so she's trying to seek answers, reaching out to a friend who may have been with him that night to try and find out what's going on. At 5 a.m., Karen calls another friend, Carrie Roberts, and says, quote, what if he's dead? What if a plow hit him?

I don't remember anything from last night. We drank so much. I don't remember anything. At this point, Karen gets in her SUV and drives around the neighborhood and town. So this is about three, four hours after she was seen driving away from the Albert home. At 5.30 a.m., Karen, Jennifer McCabe, and another woman go look for John. According to prosecutors, Karen says that she noticed a crack in her taillight and wondered if she could have been the one who hit John. Later on, Karen would say that she actually hit John's SUV in the driveway, breaking the taillight and damaging her own Lexus.

But no taillight pieces were found in the driveway. And so these are all, I mean, like I said, these are things that we think that will be at issue at trial. A lot of this seems pretty damning for Karen, but it's coming from people like Jennifer McCabe. And it's coming from people like Carrie Roberts, who I think is the other woman who was with her at the time. And I just want to repeat to you why this is all important. Because a lot of this evidence that you're going to see is dealt with through the conspiracy. But because it's dealt with through the conspiracy, the conspiracy has to be true. So it's not good enough if you think the police are incompetent, for instance, but you're not convinced of the conspiracy.

Well, that's not great for Karen Reid. She really needs you to think they're incompetent and there's a conspiracy and Jennifer McCabe's in on it and everybody else is in on it. Because you have to show how this evidence that you're seeing at various places and the things that you're hearing, you have to explain it away in a way that's not, well, it's because Karen's guilty. And I just think it's important to remember that because when you're trying to figure out what happened here, I mean, the jury is going to make a decision one way or the other. She's either going to be convicted or acquitted. But I think most of us want to know the truth, right? I mean, most of us, I hope at least those of us who are listening to this, this whole cheering squad thing that's happened in the Karen Reed case where you got like, it's like a sporting event with the pro Karen Reed people and the anti Karen Reed people. I'm just not that interested in that. I'm interested in knowing what happened.

So when you're trying to think about what happened, all of this stuff is very important. Fast forward to 6 a.m. Reed sees John lying in the snow near Brian Albert's home. So she's in the car with these other two women. According to the other women, no one else in the vehicle sees them. Reed jumps out of the car. She runs straight over to where he is. Emergency responders quickly arrive and Reed, who is inconsolable, repeatedly says, at least according to some people, I hit him. I hit him. The defense will later argue that that is not what she said and that the responders who say that she said that are lying for various reasons. So note what the defense is arguing here is that the responders who were not at the party,

who were not Alberts, who are not cops, are also part of the line to create the framing here. So when the first responders arrive, they will say that Reed is trying to perform CPR and her face is covered in John's blood. The defense will use this to say, look, the only person who tried to save John's life was Karen Reed. Interestingly, and this is something that's going to come up again and again. How do we know that? How do we know that the only person trying to save his life was Karen Reed? We know it from the same people who also apparently are lying to save his life. She was covered in blood. And this is sort of an interesting thing that's going to happen with a lot of these witnesses who are going to be posited by the defense as key parts of the conspiracy who are going to give testimony that's really

good for Karen Reed. And this is just the first example of that. So we have testimony, right? Whether you believe it or not, that Karen says, I hit him, I hit him at the time that she finds his body. There are other ways that the defense could go with this type of bad evidence for Karen, right? That doesn't sound great, no matter what, you're going to have to deal with it because it's in evidence. They chose one way, which is to say that the person who testified of her saying, I hit him, to have lied. There are other ways to explain it away. She's in shock. She had nothing to do with this. The first time you see someone dead, especially if it's someone you're in a relationship that you love, you say all types of things, whether they are true or not. We know this of

people who had nothing to do with someone's death saying, I killed him. Not literally, I killed him, but like you feel the guilt of having been the one who was supposed to go home with him. And instead of going home with him, you went home and didn't make sure he got home, for example. Right. So there are other arguments that could have been made with this bad evidence. And this is not going to be the only bad evidence for Karen. So note that just because you have bad evidence doesn't mean you have to immediately default

to they lied or there's a framing. These are conscious decisions and strategies by the defense to do these things. I'm not necessarily even say it's a good strategy, bad strategy. I'm merely pointing out this is not the only explanation for what she's saying. And I'm glad Alice brings that up because this is a conscious decision by the defense. Now, they might have made it for many different reasons, but at some point, they made a conscious decision to go with this defense strategy. And the problem with this defense strategy is it sort of precludes you from saying it was an accident. Now, look, maybe that's because I don't know that you could argue this and not be guilty of something,

but we're going to talk about the charges she has in a minute. But you could have said, look, she dropped him off. She was mad because she wanted to go home. She she left, had no idea she hit him. And then she wakes up the next morning and he's not there. And she starts to think, you know, in sort of a recovering now from her drunken haze. Oh, my God. What if when I was leaving, what if I hit him? I never actually saw him walk in. I didn't wait. You know, I had to back up to get out of there. What if I hit him?

Right. And then she ends up driving over to where she parked, which she remembers where they parked when she dropped him off. And that's why she sees him, because she's already has this sinking, horrible feeling that maybe she did hit him. And then there he is. And all of her worst fears come crashing down on her. And that explains everything. Right. I mean, that explains everything. And then you're basically just arguing it was an accident. At worst, this is some sort of DUI type thing. But, you know, DUIs are hard to prove. And as we're going to see, there's a lot of debate about the

actual amount of alcohol that was consumed here. You might be able to get a clean sweep on that, but they have kind of foreclosed that as a possibility because of the defense they've chosen to put on. And I would go one step further for DUIs being difficult to prove is that we all know that when something terrible happens to our loved ones, we blame ourselves, right? Like if your child gets in a terrible accident, the parent is always going to think, I had something to do with it, even if it's incredibly far removed. So it would be natural you could argue if you're the defense.

Of course, she's going to put blame on herself because she loves him. That's what you do when you love someone. You think of the worst case scenario, how you had some blame, but there's actually no evidence. And she doesn't even actually know that she hit him. So we're arguing that she didn't. She wasn't the one who hit him at all, right? I can see complete reasonable doubt there because she doesn't remember. They don't remember. But I find that to be a believable story, right? We all know everyone is drinking that night. You could have all these same witnesses getting up there talking about the number of drinks they had, backed up by cameras, you know, footage of them going back up to the bar, drink after drink after drink. And they go back to an after party, drink after drink after

drink, and they leave. This is a very believable story, one that I don't think is difficult to sell. But I will say this much. You probably wouldn't be hearing about it in the news as much if that was the defense's theory. And look, one interesting question, and we might as well talk about this because there's no way we're actually going to get to the openings. Like I said, we'll start the next episode with those. One interesting question is how much did pretrial publicity influence the defense strategy and vice versa? Because this case like Delphi has been one where there's been a lot of talk about the conversation between the defense and by a lot of the people in the media who have supported Karen Reed. And the

people who've supported Karen Reed have been very aggressive that she is completely innocent, that this arises from corruption in the police department and that she was framed. And they've really pushed that narrative. And that narrative has generated a lot of support for Karen Reed, a lot of money for her defense. I mean, she has top flight defense attorneys who I assume are being paid for through some sort of defense fund. I mean, maybe she has the money to pay for them. I'm not sure. But I mean, these are really good defense attorneys. And I almost wonder how much of this decision was influenced by that, because if you don't make that argument, the argument that's been made in the public, are you going to lose

that support? So even if there's a pretty good strategic decision that you could make there to kind of accept some responsibility, but not criminal responsibility, you can't do it because of the public situation. I'm sure we'll talk about that more. This is a fascinating case. It really is. You'll just have to deal with us because we're going to ramble a little bit on this one because when we talk about these fascinating cases, we ramble. I think that's why some of you listen to us. That's why some of you hate us.

Okay, it's 623. Coming back around. According to prosecution, Jennifer McCabe searches Hose, Hal, long to die in cold. This is the search that the defense argues was actually made four hours earlier at 227. Whatever the case is, at 634, Reed will text a friend, he's dead. As the day continued, the police are searching through mounds of growing snow during this ongoing blizzard. They will find a broken cocktail glass and pieces of taillight at the scene. They also find a shoe matching the one that John was missing. According to the prosecution, the taillight pieces will later be found to have John's DNA on them. After the snow melts some more, even more taillight pieces will be found. According to the defense, these pieces were planted to help bolster this case. The DNA,

there will be accusations by the defense that essentially evidence that was collected during this period was collected in a way that would not have secured that evidence and would have allowed someone, if they so desired, to plant DNA on these pieces of taillight pieces are found really within hours of when you think, let's go back to about midnight, 1230, when Karen drives away. So really within six hours. So if there was a conspiracy to make it look like Karen was the one who hit him with a car, this all had to be fabricated pretty early on on because yes, we know that taillight pieces were found later on when the snow melts, but there's also taillight pieces found at the time of this blizzard. Those of you who've been through a blizzard

know that this is no joke. When there is a blizzard and there's snow literally rising and covering up things, that is not an environment I would like to have to search. So the fact that they found anything at all, honestly, is kind of amazing because this snow is still coming down at the time. So I'm not saying conspiracy is not possible, but think of the timeline in which this had to happen. This wasn't something that kind of came to fruition

a couple of days later. This had to have been done basically at the same time that whoever you think planted the body had to plant these pieces at the same time. Yeah. And like the broken cocktail glass was found very early on. And we know for a fact that John left the bar with the cocktail glass. And yeah, I mean, the wheels had to start turning pretty soon. Basically, what you have to think is happening is while he's laying out there in the snow, calls are being made, texts are being made, whatever, to various people in various organizations to begin this cover up, to call in a lot of favors to make this happen. And then either at the time or subsequently, additional people are added into this conspiracy, including first responders, members of the fire department, to bolster what's going on here. And you'll see that as we go through the witnesses, there are a ton of them. And the prosecution made a very conscious decision about how to present their evidence. They're doing it in chronological,

basically. So the first few witnesses, the first lot of witnesses are the scene. So you see initially it's all the people at the scene who were showing up, finding the body, the first responders, the police on the scene. You know what I mean? Those people, they are the initial witnesses. And then they sort of go back a little bit to that night and they're calling people who were at the bar and they were calling people who were at the Albert's house and they're going to move through it like that. And every single one of these witnesses on cross, the defense is starting to try and build this theme that somehow these people were involved in this conspiracy. It's a fascinating thing to watch. And if you are not watching this trial, it is worth watching. And

unlike some trials, it is televised. So you can watch every single second of it if you want to. So at 9.08 a.m., Reed's blood is drawn. She's actually, we're going to talk about this some, but she's saying things that some members of her family and some police officers think may be suicidal. So she's actually, and we'll have the exact term when we get to the witnesses, but basically a mental health hold is put on her. She's taken to the hospital. In addition to other things, her blood is drunk. Her blood alcohol level at the time is 0.07 to 0.08. So she is legally drunk at the time of this. It's nine o'clock in the morning. It's like eight hours after she leaves the Albert home.

Right. And according to a witness who is going to sort of do this backwards. Right. I mean, it was just an inexact science. But if she stops drinking at that point, so she drops John off, goes home and goes to bed. That would put her BAC at between point one three and point two nine around the time of the supposed strike. Like I said, that's a huge range. And it is a testament to how your body processes alcohol and how everyone is different in how they process alcohol, that that range is so massive. Now, Karen, she's not a big person. She's a woman. Typically, women don't process alcohol or handle alcohol as well as men. Not saying that there aren't women out there can drink men under the table. Absolutely.

Don't be offended. But because of sort of her body type, you would expect that if she drank as much as the prosecution is going to say, that number is probably closer to point to none. That is two point one three. I mean, it's striking alone that eight hours after she last left the house, she is still legally drunk. Right. That is the fact we have. So of course, there's going to be an autopsy done on John's body. And on January 31st, the autopsy finds that John died of blunt impact injuries to the

head with hypothermia as a contributing factor. The medical examiner finds no obvious signs of an altercation or fight, though. On February 2nd, 2022, just a couple days after the autopsy comes back, Karen is charged with manslaughter, motor vehicle homicide, and leaving the scene of a motor vehicle collision. Four days later, on February 6th, hundreds of officers line the streets for O'Keefe's funeral, which is also attended by the mayor of Boston, Michelle Wu. So he has served on the force for 16 years. He is seemingly a very well-liked man in his community, within his workplace. And it is not unusual, of course, when a fellow officer is fallen,

that you pay your respects by lining the streets, attending, etc. And this one really draws out everyone. He doesn't die in the line of duty, but he dies kind of in his prime. He is a young man. He's only 46 years old. He's already served on the force for 16 years. And this draws a lot of attention, of course, to Karen Reid, who just days earlier had been charged with his death. On June 10th, 2022, Karen is indicted. So she was charged previously, right, with the manslaughter, motor vehicle charges, essentially. These charges are essentially elevated to a higher crime on June 10th when she's indicted on second degree murder, manslaughter while under the influence and leaving the scene. This is not that unusual. We've talked about this before,

especially when you have enough evidence to charge something, like it's clear something has happened. Then you can go ahead and charge the lower crime. And as your investigation progresses, the autopsies come back, et cetera, et cetera. You read text messages, and you think you can charge something higher and prove it.

You can come back and enhance those charges. And that's exactly what happened here. And you got to remember, the grand jury is hearing the prosecution's story without the benefit of the defense story. And I mean, I think everyone could agree that the prosecution's story without the conspiracy, if you assume the police are not planning evidence, if you assume you can believe the first responders, you can see why the grand jury would reach the conclusion it did. Obviously, that is going to be disputed at trial, and that's what we're talking about now. Initially, the defense's position is kind of what we said earlier. It's like, look, this is horrible. They vastly overcharged her. This was an accident. She didn't even know she

hit him. Said sort of that line of things. But by May of 2023, that story has changed. Now, Reed's defense team is alleging that, in fact, John was involved in a fight inside the Albert home. After he was beaten, his former friends dumped his body in their front yard. The defense even claims, as we said earlier, that the wounds to John's arm were created by an attack by the Albert's dog, Chloe. The defense will claim, quote, that every single one of the people in the house that night, including Brian Albert, Jennifer McKay, various other people were involved in John's murder and cover up in some way. The cover up also included the Canton Police Department, first responders, people in the state police. A vast swath of people in Canton are involved in this.

And the reason for this is because the Alberts were pillars of this community. And if they needed help, the community was going to come together and help them to Karen Reed's detriment because she was an outsider. She was not part of this community. Note one thing in this change story from the defense. We're hearing a lot about who is doing the conspiring. But you may all be thinking, what is the mayor of Boston who showed up to the funeral have to do with this? A city select councilman, you know, people who ran campaigns for them. Who is John O'Keefe? Why is the entire city of Canton conspiring to kill him?

That is not something we've heard yet back in May 2023. And that's an important question to ask because kind of like in the Adnan case, conspiracies exist. We're not saying people are not capable of conspiracies. But I think an important counter kind of part of the story is why? Why all of this conspiracy for this particular person? Yeah. And I think it's a really good point Alice has put her finger on and it's something to remember. The reason the defense will say is because the Alberts were cops and cops protect cops. But the weird thing about this conspiracy, John's a cop too. And cops don't like it when cops get killed. And you would think there would at least be divided loyalties

in the various police departments and state police and everywhere else. And some people who really wanted John to get justice, even if it meant another cop was going to go down because he killed him. But you have to believe that, that this really is sort of they had to pick. You know, John's dead. It's sort of one of those, look, he's already dead. We can't do anything for him. We'll honor him at a funeral. We'll all show up in our dress blues and march down the streets of Boston. But then we got to protect our other police officer friend, even though he's responsible for John's death, we have

to protect him. And if that means framing an innocent woman, so be it. We have to do that. That's sort of what you have to believe. And at the same time that the defense is coming out with this, a blogger named Aiden Kearney, who had, to his credit, done some good work on uncovering police corruption through his postings on Turtle Boy News, was engaged in what he would describe as an attempt to uncover this conspiracy against Karen Reid. The prosecution didn't see it that way, saying that instead, Kearney was harassing and intimidating witnesses. He'd eventually be arrested on October 11th, 2023, and charged with at least 16 felony charges related to these claims. Things would get worse for Kearney when his bail was revoked over charges he had assaulted his ex-girlfriend. He'd spend two months in jail until released again. For his part, Kearney claims he is the victim of persecution for exercising his First Amendment rights. He has been attending the trial to some extent.

I believe he's excluded whenever someone testifies that he's accused of harassing, that he's been in there. Otherwise, there have been accusations that he's doing things like filming the jury and other stuff. No idea if any of that's true. He is a very controversial figure. So on March 12th, 2024, the defense claimed, and this is like a weird just curveball in all this case, which has led to some really great conspiracy theories. The defense claimed that the FBI, working as part of a federal investigation into the Karen Reed case, concluded that the damage to the SUV was inconsistent with hitting John's body. And this would become sort of a thing in this case, that in fact, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office

in Massachusetts was investigating this case from a different angle that at any moment the FBI was going to show up in the courtroom and arrest everyone. Maybe the trial itself was actually a front to get all these people to go on the stand and perjure themselves, and then they're all going to be arrested for perjury, and then this case is going to be removed to federal court. Just some wild stuff. I'm not exactly sure what all is going on with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office, but one thing I can say for certain is the FBI is not going to raid this trial. That is not the way this goes. So you can put that aside. But it's funny because at one point, this trial is constantly interrupted by sirens because it's

near, I don't know if it's near the police station or what, where the courthouse is. But there was a while where every time there was a siren, people would be like, is that it? Is this, it's the FBI? Are they here? Are they raiding the courthouse? Not going to happen. Let me just tell you, the FBI, if for some reason that was going to happen, the FBI would like talk to the judge and be like, this is what's going to go down.

We're not going to call the entire press and the gallery in and all the jurors who are like innocent bystanders. We're not going to have this public takedown where all these innocent people will be at risk, right? When you have a takedown, you try to control those environments as much as possible. That's why takedowns of like America's Most Wanted don't happen in crowded restaurants. They happen at the person's home at 3 a.m. to catch them surprised. So I'm just giving you a little bit of background.

I'm not giving like great state secrets over here. It's just the truth. There is no way if there was a takedown, the FBI would do it in a room full of innocent citizens. Not to mention, can you imagine a plan where we're going to let this woman be tried for murder? And then at some point in the middle of the trial, that's when we're going to spring our trap.

That's that's something particularly given that all these people have already testified in front of grand jury. So if you were going to get him for perjury, you can already get him for perjury because he testified in grand jury. But I don't know. We'll see what happens, I guess. Maybe I'll be proven wrong. I guess we're just we're being cold water prosecutors already.

It's just some of these things. This is damaging, right? We shouldn't be watching a trial waiting for the FBI to bust in and arrest everybody or like have a shoot down. Because guess what? You're not going to arrest people without guns. This is what I mean when I say they're not going to put all these innocent lives at risk because entire SWAT teams come in with massive artillery to protect the FBI when they do a

takedown. It's not going to happen in this courthouse. Not that it couldn't happen in general. It's just not going to happen in the middle of trial. On March 13th, Massachusetts State Police opened an internal investigation into trooper Michael Proctor, someone we noted earlier was the lead investigator on the Karen Reed case. The police do not say what prompted this investigation, and he remains on full duty, which probably means it's still pending, that they haven't concluded anything yet. The defense would allege that Proctor hid personal ties to people involved in the case. Now, Proctor did send a lot of text messages, and unfortunately, you never want to be part of a case that you're investigating or prosecuting. But his text messages become a major part of Karen Reed's case.

In April, the court denies both a defense's motion to dismiss and a prosecution motion to prevent Karen Reed's defense from making the some other dude did it defense. So kind of a loss and a win for either side, right? You would expect the defense to file a motion to dismiss, essentially saying she hasn't been properly charged. There's not enough evidence. All these things. We don't even go to trial, Judge.

Just kick it out on the papers. Judge said no. That's not surprising, by the way. These types of cases, very rarely, there's going to be a defect in the indictment for the motion to dismiss to succeed. Shout out to Leo Brees, by about the some other dude did it defense. Because some of you have asked before, when can you, as a defense, argue, he did it. Somebody did it. Doesn't matter who. Just not me.

Well, you can't just assert these things if there's no evidence. And so that's what the prosecution was trying to do here. They knew that because of the kind of public statements that the defense had made, they were going to say that Karen Reed was framed. So like the ultimate, some other dude did it, right? And so they tried to seek to keep it out and say there wasn't evidence to suggest that type of theory. The judge said, no, I'll allow it. After those two major rulings, which was a loss and a win for both sides, April 29th of this year, the trial began and it continues as of us recording this first

episode. Yeah, and we're in June. So that just gives you an idea. It's a long trial, man. How long this trial's been going. As we speak, the prosecution is still presenting its case. The defense says it's going to have a case. So this one could be going on for quite some time. We're going to try

and be with you the whole time. The case will probably be decided before we finish up, but we'll tell you at the end what we think should have happened and we'll tell you what we think actually happened that night. And look, I think this is an interesting case. I mean, I will be completely frank with you. As I have said before, when you make extraordinary claims, I need extraordinary evidence. So if I'm, when you make extraordinary claims, I need extraordinary evidence. So if I'm going to believe the cover up, I'm going to need to see a lot from the defense over these next few weeks to prove that to me. The better question, I think, is the weird thing about this is I want to say, can they get to reasonable doubt? But the way the defense has

structured their defense, you almost either have to believe that Karen did it and she's guilty or that the conspiracy is true. They haven't left a whole lot of room in the middle. There is still room in the middle. You could have a jury that says, look, we thought the defense was full of crap. But when we looked at what the prosecution put on, they didn't meet their burden. That would be a really savvy, good jury. That would be a jury that really understands its role. Usually when the defense is leading you down a certain path, the jury is going to either follow that path or they're going to go with the prosecution. So we'll have to see what happens. It'd be fascinating to see. I think there's a lot of really interesting stuff between Karen Reed committed second degree murder, which as we talked about before was second degree murder.

Second degree murder is not first degree murder because first degree murder, which, as we talked about before, was second degree murder. Second degree murder is not first degree murder because first degree murder requires premeditation. So that you have to decide you're going to kill someone and make it happen. It is worse than manslaughter, which involves negligence or some sort of gross negligence. It's in the sort of fuzzy gray area where you do something that you should have known was incredibly dangerous and you do it anyway. So the example people often use is firing a gun into a crowded room. You're not trying to hit anybody. You don't care if you hit anybody.

You're certainly not aiming at anyone. But it's such a dangerous thing to do. It's such a reckless disregard for human life that if you do hit someone, we're going to punish you worse than just manslaughter. In this case, I think what you would have to believe is that Karen Reed did not intend necessarily to hit John. Or maybe she did intend to hit John, but she did not intend to kill him. But she hit him on purpose or she left him in the snow on purpose and then drove away. And that that action was such a reckless disregard for his life that when he then subsequently died, she was guilty of the crime. I think that's what you have to believe to get to second degree murder. There are sort of lesser included here.

The lesser charge of manslaughter due to intoxication is basically this was an accident. She was really drunk. She hit him, probably didn't even realize she hit him, drove home. The left the scene of an accident is sort of the same thing. If she was so drunk, she didn't realize it. That's enough to get there. She doesn't have to have intended to leave it. So there's sort of gradations of what you could see here.

You could see the prosecution win in a clean sweep, lose in a clean sweep, or something in the middle. And we'll be with you every step of the way. Okay, Alice, before we do a question tonight, is there anything else you want to say about this case? There's a lot to say, but we'll leave it at the first episode because there really is a lot more to say. But I hope you are hearing our skepticism, not necessarily. Look, there's a lot more to the trial to come. There are a lot more people to testify. But these are questions that you should be asking all along the way. You should have skepticism as you hear all the evidence. No, it's completely okay to ask these questions as you are presented with the evidence.

And it's something that you should do and it's part of critical thinking along the way. So these questions that we have may be answered by subsequent testimony in the trial. Doesn't mean we shouldn't be asking them now. So don't view trials as, well, I have to just accept everything that's told to me and sit back until I hear all the evidence at once. No, your ability to me and sit back until I hear all the evidence at once. No, your ability to reason

and critically think isn't suspended just because the full evidence hasn't been presented. If something smells funny as someone's testifying, that's okay to point out. And if that question's not answered at the end, then that's a problem. That goes to the credibility of whether you should believe that witness and that line of argument. Yeah, I'm just going to agree with everything Alice just said. And once again, not to dwell on this, but ordinarily the defense has no burden. The defense cannot ask, they can choose not to ask a single question of any witness. They can choose not to put on a single witness. They can choose to waive their opening and their close. They can do all those things and still the defendant be acquitted if the prosecution doesn't meet their burden. And I'm all those things and still the defendant be acquitted. The prosecution

doesn't meet their burden. And I'm not trying to burden shift here. I'm not trying to put a burden on the defense. But the defense in a real way has taken on a burden here. I was going to say they created their own burden. They really did. You know, we always say in opening statements that essentially what you're doing is you're building the shelf. You get to build the shelf as the prosecution and the defense. It could be a T-shaped shelf. It could be a round shelf. It could be a shelf with no shelves. You actually get to decide what the story will look like. And what that shelf is going to do is hold the evidence you're going to present. When I say no shelves, I mean, you don't have to present any evidence. That's completely valid. You can present an invisible shelf as the defense and say simply, there's no evidence, period. That is actually a very, very common strategy. But what they've done, the defense, by saying Karen Reid was framed within the first sentence of the opening statement, is to build a very complex shelf with a lot of intricacies that they have to fill with evidence by their

own words. That's not burden shifting. That's them building a shelf that they're going to have to now fill. Okay. We can't wait to hear what you guys think about this case. You've been asking for us to do this case. We're going to do it. I know this case is incredibly divisive and that's fine.

Half of you are going to hate us when we finish it. Hopefully half of you still love us. I don't know. Our goal is to lose all our listeners at some point. So that's just what we're trying to do. We try to be divisive. We don't. We can't. We try to be divisive all the time. So, I mean, at least, you know, we're not just telling you what you want to hear. So be with us. Stick with us. Let us know what you think at ProsecutorsPod for all your social media. ProsecutorsPod at gmail.com. If you want to send us an email, go to Prosecutors Podcast, our website for various things of randomness, including a lot of links. Look, great cover to this case. The Boston Globe been doing yeoman's work on this. Really excellent stuff. Great resource. You can watch every single episode, episode, day of trial, which seem like episodes

on YouTube, on various different sources. Do it. Go to the source, as we always say, because I will tell you, this is a case where having watched a lot of this trial, we're going to tell you how this goes and we're going to tell you what witnesses say. Credibility in this one matters so much. And hearing these people tell the story, it is so different from reading it on the dry page or on Twitter or wherever you are. So if you really want to know, don't listen to us. Watch the trial. But also listen to us because we like it when you listen to us.

Thank you to our patrons. So glad you guys are here tonight. Hope you'll be with us throughout this case. Okay. All that, all the business aside, let's do a question. We've run a little long, so we'll do one, but we'll do one. This is a good one. Okay, so this is from Missy Lexi.

Missy Lexi wants to know, Allison Brett, if you could have any animal in the world as a pet, what would it be? We're going through this fight right now with my kids. And my answer is no animals. Yes. They've asked for a rattlesnake. They've asked for. Oh, yeah, exactly.

They've asked for a manatee. The list can go on. But let me just say that question kind of hits a sensitive nerve because I've said no to a lot of animals that I say we cannot have. First of all, because a lot of them would be illegal to have. So I'm not just a mean person, but I'm a dog lover. I'm a dog lover. I was going to say, love dogs. There's nothing else I want. I want dogs. Dogs are the best. They are the best. I think people, okay. Number one, I think if I'm, if I want an animal, that's not a dog, then we're going to have to create miniaturization. If I can have a miniature elephant or a miniature giraffe,

I'm talking like a little one I can hold in my hand, that would be pretty cool. But otherwise, if it's in the realm of actual animals, give me a dog. You know, 10,000 years, dogs and mankind have been together, like fighting together to survive in this harsh world. We love each other for a reason. There's no connection like between

men and dogs. Like they are our best friends for a reason and do not shun them for some other animal. Though it would be cool to have a cheetah. A cheetah would be fun. But I want a dog. I'm going with a dog. Yeah. Glad we agree.

Okay. Well, now that we've brought everybody together before tearing everyone asunder we'll go ahead and say good night for now but we will be back next week probably there have been at least two days of trial between now and then next week with more on this case. But until then, I'm Brett. And I'm Alice. And we are the prosecutors. I'm going live. I'm going live. Oh, the things that people don't hear you say. I'm going live.

Going live. We're doing it live. We're doing it live. Doing it live. Woo-woo. Doing it live. Someone has to murder Joe first so we can cover it. Oh, my goodness.

Oh, my goodness. Anyways. Okay. You ready? You want to just do this? Let's do this. Let's elevate this. Let's elevate it.

Let's elevate it. There you go. Sorry, guys. Inside joke. Yeah. sometimes y'all miss the the green room conversation We'll be right back. Thank you, Mallory, for recognizing I am my own greatest fan for jokes. If you don't laugh at your own jokes, you know, double the fun. I'm going to warn you. You can tell it and laugh at it.

The word I'm going to use to describe you, it's not a pun, but it is more related to the case than to you so don't feel don't be insulted This is an iHeart podcast