RedHanded - Episode 361 - Karen Read & The Death of John O’Keefe - Part 1

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

At roughly 12:30am on 29 January 2022, Karen Read drove her boyfriend, Boston police officer, John O’Keefe to a party at a friend’s house. The next morning John would be found unresponsive on the front lawn of this house, and would later die in hospital.Karen would say that she saw John go inside the house - so the people at the party must be the ones responsible for his death. But the 9 people in the house that night said that John never came inside.So, what happened to John O’Keefe? And who’s lying?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, you wonderful people.

Before we get on with this absolutely mammoth case that we have for you today, I just wanted to take a second to say something, to say thank you to each and every one of you, because this would usually be the time of year where Hannah and I would ask you all to vote for us in the Listener's Choice category at the British Podcast Awards. And you guys always deliver. Over the past three years, we have won a hat trick of golds in the Listener's Choice category. And it has honestly been some of the most humbling moments of our entire, not just podcasting careers, but lives, quite frankly. And it was all the more sweet because nobody ever thought we were going to win, especially not last year when more celebrities

than ever threw their hats in the ring. So it was just amazing to be able to take home gold again last year. I think it really shocked a lot of people in the industry because we are just still ultimately nobodies. And we owe it all to each and every one of you who voted every year. So thank you so much. This year, however, we are not going to be entering. And partly it's because we have been asked not to by the organisers. They felt that it would be weird for us to win another year in a row because they have actually asked us to be chair of judges this year. So yeah, we are going to step aside. We would love an independent podcast to win. If you ask me, you should go listen to The Upshot. They're a fantastically funny British

podcast all about football scandals. Maybe it's not your cup of tea, but go listen to it. They're very, very good. They're the kind of podcast that should be being highlighted by the awards. So thank you again for everything you've done for us. And with that, let's get on with the show. I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. Mm-hmm. Where we are going to talk for seven million hours. There's no avoiding it.

I have had a hard month with this case. I've also not been very well. And normally, like, when my alarm goes off, I'm like a get straight out of bed kind of girl. But I was like, I need to get up early these last two days to get this fucking case finished. And I just could not get myself out of bed. So I told Sam yesterday, I was like, whatever I say, how much ever I want to ignore my alarm, when you wake up, because we're currently in my parents' house, so he's having to wake up very early to get to work. I was like, you have to wake me up.

And he's like, what am I meant to say? And I was like, just scream Karen Reid in my ear until I get out of bed. And he did it with much glee. So let's get on with it. On the 29th of January, 2022, Karen Reid drove her boyfriend, Boston police officer, John O'Keefe, to a party at a friend's house at around 12.30am. There was a big Nor'easter coming. I had to figure out what that meant.

Uh-huh, uh-huh. Big storm. Big storm. From the Nor'east. From. I had to figure out what that meant. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Big storm. Big storm. From the Nor'east? From the North-East. Yeah. And many of the locals of the small town of Canton, Massachusetts, were passing the time by getting absolutely hammered.

But soon, the hangover from hell would kick in, when at 6am the following morning, John was found on the front lawn of his friend's house, buried under a layer of snow, in a critical condition, with injuries to his head and arm. The 46-year-old, who was unresponsive, would never regain consciousness, and John would die in hospital later that day. It was a tragedy beyond belief for the O'Keefes. Not only was John a beloved member of the local community and a 16-year veteran police officer, but he was also the legal guardian of his young niece and nephew,

who had been orphaned ten years before. Karen, his girlfriend, would later say that after she dropped John off, she saw him go inside the house. So the people at the party must be the ones responsible for his death. But the nine people in the house that night said that John never, ever came inside. So what happened to John O'Keefe? And who's lying? Because it's someone. To say that this is a totally confusing

and highly controversial mess of a story is putting it, quite frankly, totally unseasoned chicken, mildly. I don't think any case has ever clogged up our DMs like this one. You guys have been begging us to cover it. And at first I was like, yeah, okay, sure. But what the actual fuck?

Like I said at the start, over the past month I've sat with this case, I have never seen one where people are quite so fired up or so completely obsessed with every single tiny minute detail. So of course, this will have to be a two-parter. And I will try over the next two episodes to offload on all of you the sheer massive information that has entered my brain about the death of John O'Keefe. Just get it off your chest, man. That's what I'm going to do. But I'm going to do it not in a Bostonian accent, which is how it has lent it my head. I'm just trying to think if I can do a Boston accent.

Car. Mm-mm. I'm just trying to do an impression of Marky Mark, and I'm not, it's not coming. It's not coming. Don't worry. I think it will come. Police department. Yeah.

Close enough. Close enough. I've listened to a lot of, I know they're not in Boston, they're in Camden, but like, you know, potato, potato is like the same accent to me as far as my ears can tell. The Massachusetts accent. So stop thinking about accents because it's not going to happen. And we have a warning for you. a Massachusetts accent. So stop thinking about accents because it's not gonna happen. We have a warning for you. This is a total quagmire. Did you use the word quagmire on purpose because

Family Guy is set in New England? No I didn't but now I really wish I had because it's actually very apropos since this case is well totally gross and will definitely leave you feeling severely harassed. So we have a request for you. We ask that you leave your already no doubt well-formed opinions on this case at the door. And let's explore it together. We went into this with a totally open mind. And we've both changed our thinking on what actually happened multiple times. And that is the experience you will have also. And that's because there is a lot of misinformation and disinformation out there on this story. Please remind me which one is which.

Misinformation is where you spread inaccurate information without knowing that it's not true. Disinformation is where you know it's not true, but you continue to spread it anyway. Okay, I will remember it as D for dickhead. And M for muppet. And all of the muppets and the Dickheads, all of that information came out before Karen Rees' trial even started. And poor old Saru has been picking through lies and Reddit threads and blogs to try and get to the truth. And it has been a bit of a slog. So aren't you lucky? You're getting your money's worth out of us, that's for sure,

considering this is free. Absolutely. So strap in, because it's going to get bonkers. This story has it all. Affairs, Aruba, blizzards, butt dials, gross text sent by adults who should definitely know better, blackout drinking, questionable cell phone data, dodgy Google searches, disappearing dogs, intergalactic basketball, accusations of evidence tampering,

police cover-ups, and more Irish names and possibly more bent coppers than you can shake a pair of red socks at. Very nice. Thank you. So, let us begin by rewinding earlier in the evening of the 29th of January 2022. At 7.30, John O'Keefe was out with some of his mates at a bar in Canton called C.F. McCarthy's. Around an hour later, his girlfriend of two years, 41-year-old Karen Reid, a financial analyst and adjunct professor at Bentley University, joined them. At 10.54pm, the couple left CF McCarthy's and walked across the road to the Waterfall Bar and Grill, where more of their friends were hanging out. Present were Brian Albert, a retired Boston police officer, his wife Nicole Albert, Nicole's sister Jen McCabe,

her husband Matt, Brian's brother, Chris Albert and his wife Julie, and last but most certainly not least, Brian Higgins, an ATF agent. There are so many people in this story and what we usually do is try and get rid of some of them. It's impossible. Honestly, it's totally impossible. Yeah, so get a pen and paper. Maybe you need to make a family tree. I did to have to understand. Yeah. I will also draw some sort of family relationship connection tree and we'll like put it up on our social media or something because it's really, really important that you understand how everybody relates to each other. Remind me what the ATF is. Yeah. So ATF agent is guns and firearms, explosives, firearms trafficking,

anything blowy-uppy or shooty. So it's the DEA but for blowy-uppies. Exactly. Got it. So, John O'Keefe was really good friends with Jen McCabe and Chris Albert, but also knew the rest of the group to various extents. For example, he'd previously worked with Brian Albert, but they weren't particularly close. So Karen, John, the two sets of Alberts, the McCabes and Brian Higgins, are all having a good time. CCTV from the bar shows them joking around, doing shots and generally getting on it. Though they would later say that no one was that drunk. But I guess they would say that,

because when the bar called for last orders, Brian Albert invited everyone back to his for an after-party. And they all left the bar, got in their cars in an impending snowstorm, and drove there. Except Chris and Julie Albert, who drove home. The amount of drink driving that is in this story. Oh my God. Has given me a whole new level of anxiety. And they're all like,

there's so many cops as well. There's so many cops, so many people in law enforcement, law enforcement adjacent, all just getting hammered and driving about in blizzards. And blackout. Yeah, yeah. Not even just, I had an extra glass of wine and I probably shouldn't have. Yeah. Blackout drunk. Yeah. Ugh, horrible.

Mm-hm. In the bar's CCTV footage, you can see Karen Reid doing drinking and then she leaves at ten past twelve. John O'Keefe followed her out with a drink still in his hand. At 12.14, John texted a group chat that he was in with the McCabe saying, where to? Their reply was, come to 34 Fairview Road. And that is the home of Brian Albert. So drunk Karen drove drunk John to the Albert house. And we don't know what exactly happened on this car journey, but it's safe to assume that the pair had an argument. Because later on, everyone

would say that John and Karen seemed really happy and lovey-dovey that night. But Karen didn't go to the after-party with John. She says, according to her story, she dropped him off at around half twelve and then she left. And then, from just after half twelve up until six oh three in the morning, Karen would call John's mobile a total of fifty-three times. And she also left him numerous expletive riddled voicemails, including one which she sent pretty much after dropping John off. You fucking pervert! You're a fucking pervert! It went on and on like this for those next five and a half hours. With Karen berating John with message after message, calling him a fucking loser, a pervert,

and saying repeatedly that she fucking hated him. And the calls? 53 times in just over five hours. That's ten calls an hour. Jesus Christ. That's a call on average every six minutes, all night long. At the thousand text month? Uh-huh.

None of these calls were answered by John, but Karen kept going. You are a fucking using brand. Fucking have a girl. She's really next to me. You're a fucking loser. Fuck yourself. In amongst the barrage of abusive messages to John, Karen sent him one at 12.59am saying,

No one knows where the fuck you are. And this one is very weird because Karen just dropped John off 27 minutes before at the Alberts' house. How could she have forgotten that so quickly? Even if she was battered? I don't know. I've been real drunk. This is the thing.

I was going to talk to you about it. So let's just play that clip of her saying, no one knows where the fuck you are, because, again, this case, filled with lies, filled with misinformation. I don't want people to think I'm getting these quotes from nowhere. So let's play a clip of it.

John, I'm your fucking kid. Nobody knows what the fuck you are. That is sent, as Hannah said, at 12.59am. She had dropped John off, according to her own story at half past 12. She's cognizant enough that she's able to drive. She's able to operate a phone and leave messages. I don't think she sounds great in that message, but I wouldn't say she's slurring or anything. Could you really feasibly forget 27 minutes after dropping somebody off that you had done so and now you don't know where they are question for the group it's a tricky one because i think alcohol affects everybody in very different ways so i wouldn't be surprised like i've definitely woken up the next day and be like i do not remember sending that text and it's a horrible fucking feeling but I've never driven drunk so I don't

know but so much of driving is second nature especially if you live somewhere like New England where everyone drives all the time maybe I mean I'm not convinced either way but could I imagine a person being able to drive and text coherently and not remember it, I think that's possible. Okay, let's give her the benefit of the doubt then that she genuinely doesn't remember. I guess another point here, and maybe I'm picking too much at the specific language she's using, especially if we're saying that she's very, very drunk. Phone records also show that she didn't speak to anyone else during this time, except possibly her parents, who she did try to call twice. And she possibly spoke to them one of those times, or it went to a voicemail.

It's very hard to tell. But what does she mean by no one knows where you are? Again, maybe I'm being very pernickety. She doesn't say, I don't know where you are, or where are you? She says no one knows. But if she hasn't spoken to anybody, who is this no one? Just a question to put out there. Also, the angry voicemails that she's leaving, to me, prove that she knows they had an argument some 27 minutes ago or so. She remembers that, but she doesn't remember that she drove John to Fairview while they had this

argument. And she doesn't remember dropping him off there to Fairview while they had this argument? And she doesn't remember dropping him off there? I don't know. A generous interpretation is that she's just drunk and doesn't know what's going on. But perhaps a more cynical person might think that Karen Reid is starting to build some sort of alibi. So while all this is going on, at 12.55am, Karen sent John a text saying, I'm going home. Now we know that Karen sent this message when she was already at John's house in Canton, because her phone connected automatically to the Wi-Fi there at 12.36am. But Karen still had her own place in Mansville, which is another town about a 20 minute drive away. So when she texted John saying, I'm going home, that's where she was now headed.

So she goes to his house, sends these messages, connects to the Wi-Fi and then is like, I'm going home. Gets in her car and drives to her place in Mansville. Despite the fact, again, that she's been drinking, it's dark and there's a blizzard happening. I am horrified by that. This is nightmarish. Like cars are already death machines. Yep. So Karen follows her I'm going home message with three more to John in very quick succession saying see you later, your kids are fucking alone, I'm back in Mansville, the kids are home alone. And the kids she's referring to, in case you've forgotten, are John's niece and nephew, who he was the legal guardian of. And at this stage, they were 10 and 14,

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and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness.

And inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Now, we don't know exactly what the couple were arguing about that night on the way to 34 Fairview. But I think we can probably make some educated guesses.

Especially because it seems that they argued a lot. Take the day of the bar hopping and the Albert's after party itself. Karen had been non-stop texting and calling John all day long. And I'm not talking about the calls and the texts we just went over. That's after the bar. I'm talking in the lead up to them even meeting up in CF McCarthy's. There was message after message from Karen basically wanting John to go and meet her for a drink without the kids from around, like, lunchtime. John just keeps telling her, again and again, to just come to the house and hang out with them. But she really wants to go out, and she really wants John to come without the kids to meet her. At first, I had included like transcripts of these texts, but it is so

mind-numbing. It's absolutely exhausting and I cannot be bothered, honestly, to read it all to you. Just imagine somebody who's constantly like, please come meet me, come meet me, come meet me, come meet me. And John's like, I can't. And Karen doesn't just text. She calls John again and again and again during the day. And John says repeatedly that he's at the doctor's with his nephew and then he has to take him to football and he can't answer. So to please stop calling. But she doesn't.

Karen very clearly in these messages, as Saru said, wants John to drop everything and show her how committed he is to her and their relationship. And Karen grows frustrated as she doesn't get the response from him that she wants. Healthy, healthy, healthy. Yeah, you can very much tell reading the text, and I'll leave a link in the show notes so people can go read them if they want to. She's basically wanting him to prove to her that he's in this by coming to meet her,

even though it would be incredibly inconvenient for him to do so. And abandoning these children. Yeah, I just think when you read the text, it's very obvious that like, maybe John doesn't want what Karen wants from this relationship anymore. I do think he is sort of dialing back a bit. I think he's a little bit over it. But Karen will not take no for an answer. It's totally toxic and it just makes me feel tired.

Like, my God, how exhausting. What an exhausting way to live your life. But even though it went on for hours and hours, obviously the pair of them managed to smooth things out in time to have a night out. So what could have set Karen off on the drive to the Alberts? Well, it could just have been the fact that John wanted to go to the after party. Though, at the bar, Karen had been begging Chris Albert if they could all go back to the pizza shop that he owned and make some food. But he said no because he and some of the other guys were doing a weight loss challenge.

So Karen wasn't exactly desperate to get out of the company of these people or go to bed or anything. And obviously then Karen drives John to the Alberts. And we know that she did that because there's CCTV footage showing her in her black SUV heading in that direction. Here is our best guess as to why Karen was quite so furious when they left the waterfall bar. John was texting and calling his friend Jen McCabe for directions to 34 Fairview. At one point, Jen tells John that Fairview is off Bella's street. Bella's, a key apostrophe. Bella isn't the name of another road. Rather, Bella is a girl who was friends with John's niece, whose mum, John, had dated in the past.

If Karen heard this, I have no doubt that it would have sent her into a rage. And that is not just us casting aspersions. Karen repeatedly called John a pervert in her rage texts and voicemails that she was sending that night after dropping him off at the Alberts. And she outright accuses him during those 53 calls and millions of text messages that she sends, accusing him of being with another woman and using her. And the next day, Karen would actually bring up Bella's mum, which we'll get to. And she's the ex-girlfriend.

She's the ex-girlfriend, yeah. Bella's mum is the ex-girlfriend. Bella is his niece's friend. And jealousy is clearly also an ongoing issue for Karen. She, John, and John's niece and nephew had taken a trip to Aruba in December 2021, less than a month before John died. They'd been invited on this holiday

by sisters and long-time close friends of John's, Laura and Etta Sullivan. Laura's husband had been John's partner at Boston PD, and tragically, he killed himself. And after that tragedy, John stayed close to the Sullivans. He was even godfather to Laura's son. But things weren't perfect in Aruba Paradise. One night, Karen, who characteristically was hammered,

caught Etta giving John a hug in the hotel lobby. She lost it and accused the pair of making out screaming, who the fuck was that? and telling Etta to fuck off and go fuck herself. Apparently the next day Karen was mortified by her behaviour and offered to pay for Etta's room. Etta refused

and John, Karen and the kids came home early. That is mortifying. Yep, I'm mortified. But getting back to the night of the 29th of January, the next step of our timeline is at roughly 4.30am. Karen leaves her place in Mansville and comes back to John's house in Canton. And John is still not home. Karen now wakes up John's 14-year-old niece to ask her if she's heard from her uncle. When the teenager says she hadn't, Karen asks the girl to phone Jen McCabe. Jen, who actually answered the phone at this horrific hour,

would later say that Karen sounded hysterical in the background, screaming, Jen, Jen, Jen, and saying that John was missing, that they'd had a fight, and that she could barely remember anything about the night before. Jen's husband, Matt McCabe, would later say that he was woken up by his wife taking this call, and that Karen was screaming loud enough to wake the whole neighbourhood. The call ended abruptly after Karen told Jen that she was going to the Waterfall Bar because that was the last place she remembered being. To which Matt McCabe asked his wife why on earth Karen would go there when they both saw her SUV outside Brian Albert's place after they

had left the bar. After this call, Jen phoned some of John's other friends to check and see if he'd ended up on one of their sofas and got stuck there because of the snow or something like that. But no luck, no one had seen him. At 5am, Karen then phoned a woman named Kerry Roberts. Kerry had known John since high school and considered him to be one of her closest friends. Again, Kerry describes Karen as having been desperately upset that John was missing, but that she kept saying strange things, like how she was scared John was dead and that maybe he'd been hit by a snowplow. A confused Kerry tried to calm Karen down. She hadn't actually even been out with the group the night before.

Her husband had been at the first bar, C.F. McCarthy's, but had come home by 10.30. So Kerry had no idea what was going on. John was missing, and it was unusual for him to vanish on the kids like this. But dead? Yeah, I think this is actually a very important interjection from Karen. Very, very, very important.

And the fact that she says it to Kerry Roberts, who wasn't there that night, who isn't really friends with Jen McCabe or any of the other people that were there, is very crucial. There was no reason at 5am on the 29th of January for anyone to think that John was dead. There is no reason to think that. And obviously some people will still not believe Kerry Roberts, right, that Karen said this to her on the phone because everyone is lying except Karen. But I do want to point out something important that happened after this call. Because after Kerry got off the phone with Karen, thanks to hearing what she heard from Karen about John possibly being hit by a snowplough,

Kerry actually phoned the police's non-emergency line and the Good Samaritan Hospital to ask about any possible plough accidents. Why would Kerry Roberts do that if Karen hadn't said this to her? I agree. After Karen got off the phone with Kerry at 5.07am she got in her car, no doubt still drunk. Oh yeah.

And as she pulled out of John's driveway she backed into the front of his parked vehicle. This is caught on John's ring doorbell camera. This is important for later on so squirrel it away somewhere in your brain hole for now, and it'll come back. She pulls out, she hits his car, and she goes to the waterfall bar. But obviously, it's five o'clock in the morning, the place is closed, and John isn't there.

Then, at 5.35am, Karen arrived at Jen McCabe's house. Now, before we continue with our timeline, let's pause for a moment. Because the drive from John's house to the Waterfall Bar, then to Jen McCabe's house, wouldn't have taken Karen as long as it did. Blizzard or no Blizzard. And her cell phone data shows that after the Waterfall Bar and before she arrived at Jen McCabe's house, Karen's phone pinged in the vicinity of Fairview Road. And look, Jen's house is not that far from Fairview. But it still doesn't explain why Karen seems to have specifically been on Fairview that morning.

Or why it took her so long to get to Jen's? Again, just put it somewhere in your brains for now and we'll come back to it. Once she got to Jen's place, Karen admitted that she hadn't really searched John's house properly before she left. So the women agreed that maybe John had just fallen asleep somewhere in the house

other than his bed. And that's why Karen hadn't seen him. Or maybe he'd returned home in the morning while she'd been out looking for him. So Karen and Jen get back into Karen's car and they drove back to John's house, where I assume the children still are. Yep.

Scared out their minds, by the way, because Karen's told his 14-year-old niece that she thinks john's been hit by a snowplow kerry roberts met them there and they all had a look but john wasn't in the house at this point according to both jen and kerry karen pointed out the damage to her car saying look at my cracked taillight karen would later say that this was a result of backing into John's car on his driveway that morning. The prosecution would say something else, but you're going to have to wait, probably until next week, to hear about that. At this point, Karen is still hysterical, and she told the two women that she'd already driven to the Waterfall Bar that morning because she

couldn't really remember anything that happened after that. So Jen now reminded Karen that she'd come to 34 Fairview after they had all left the bar. She and her husband Matt had seen her SUV pull up outside the Alberts' house the night before, but that neither she nor John had come into the house. Hearing this, Karen got upset, apparently shouting, I was so drunk I don't remember driving to your sister's house last night. Remember, Nicole Albert, Brian's wife, and the owner of 34 Fairview is Jen's sister.

Please refer to the family tree. Uh-huh. And like I said before, we know that Karen went there. This isn't just something that Jen McCabe and Matt McCabe are saying. There was CCTV showing Karen driving to the Alberts' house after the waterfall bar. And multiple witnesses saw her SUV outside the Alberts' house. This is something that is not up for debate. It's not up for dispute.

She was there. But at this point, Karen says she doesn't remember going to Fairview at all. This story would later change, but I just want to be clear. So now, after that outburst, the three women drove to 34 Fairview. Jen and Kerry would later claim

that during this drive, Karen asked out loud, could I have hit him? They also said that when they approached Bella's street, Karen asked, do you think he could have gone there? Do you think that's where he could have been? But when they arrived at the Alberts' house

at 6.03am, almost immediately, Karen, who was sitting in the back, started kicking the car door, shouting, There he is. There he is. Let me the fuck out of this car. She managed to get out and she ran to the front lawn of 34 Fairview and straight to a mound of snow. The other two women claimed that visibility was so poor that they could barely see anything, and how Karen thought she could see John was beyond them. But there he was, buried under four

inches of snow. John was alive, but completely unresponsive. As they cleared the snow from his face, Kerry would later say that she was horrified. There was blood coming out of his nose and mouth and his right eye was swollen up like a golf ball. Karen tried to perform CPR and warm John's body up with hers, while Kerry and Jen flagged down a passing patrol car and called the police. And they managed to flag somebody down, so there was a policeman, Officer Sarath, on the scene almost immediately after John was discovered.

More police, firefighters and paramedics arrived by 6.37am, and John was taken to hospital. But, at 7.50, he was pronounced dead. If you listen to the 911 call, you can tell that Karen was absolutely hysterical. We've got a clip for you here, and bear in mind that this is the cleaned up version, but so much is still really unintelligible. Yes, some of the people who are in the fourth year, Carrie's fourth year, they're going to get the thingy and pass out in the snow. Yes. Okay. I know.

Where do I get to? I don't see Blake and Carrie. I'm just going to go right now. um i know i know i'm on the phone with andrew i know i know i know And if you'd like a visual, you can watch the dashcam footage from Officer Seraph's car. You can see Karen running around screaming. A lot of comments on the YouTube videos of this footage seem to be about how Karen looks like the only one concerned with trying to save John's life. And that's just not true. She's just the loudest one there. And look, I get it. If it was my boyfriend, would I be the most hysterical one there?

Possibly. But I think it's unfair to say that nobody else is bothered about John because they're not running around screaming. Yeah, they've been driving around all fucking morning trying to find him. And they have no idea what's going on. It's a completely shocking situation. And leave alone the driving around, Jen and Kerry were the ones who phoned for help in the first place and flagged down a passing cop.

And they also went to get John's family as well. So I think they are bothered. I'm Jake Warren. And in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now, exclusively on Wondery+.

In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life.

I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me, and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy.

You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media.

To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. But anyway, sticking with Karen's behaviour, as more and more people arrived at the scene, different people say different things about what Karen said that morning and how she said it. One officer would claim that she was screaming, this is all my fault, this is all my fault, I did this. Others say Karen was shouting, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.

While some feel it was more, did I hit him? Did I hit him? Did I hit him? And a few say that they didn't hear Karen Reid say anything other than, is he dead? Over and over. We'll come back to this whole mess next week when we get into the trial. But I do want to make one thing clear at this point. People on the internet make it seem like no one said anything about Karen shouting, I hit him, until months after the morning in question. That is not true. EMTs who took John to the hospital told doctors that he may have been struck by a vehicle because of what Karen said. And Jen McCabe told officers at 9am that day that she heard Karen say, according to her later testimony, I hit him, I hit him. Or according to the defence, what she actually heard was, I hope I didn't hit him. And Katie McLaughlin, a firefighter who was there that morning,

also made a report to police about hearing Karen say, I hit him the very next day. When I read through that for the first time, one name popped into my head. Can you guess? Lucy Letby. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because obviously she had that diary where she was like,

I did it, I killed them. And so many people were like, it's just guilt, it's just guilt. This is very affirmative yeah like if she had just stopped with this is my fault this is my fault yeah i could buy that there's some gray area yeah i could buy the people arguing that there's gray area and i'd say let's look at the the rest of the evidence because you could say that they have this horrible argument she leaves john there she sends them have this horrible argument she leaves john mayor she sends him all these horrible messages she's riddled with guilt that that's the last way in which she spoke to him and maybe she feels like oh if i'd have stayed with him at the party or if i'd

have convinced him to come home he wouldn't have died this is my fault because i had this argument with him about fucking bella's mom or whatever i could buy that argument. But multiple people say she said, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him. Even if she said, did I hit him, did I hit him, did I hit him, which is what the defence say she actually said. We'll come on to this next week. They never say she didn't say anything like this. They say she didn't say, I hit him, she said, did I hit him. That's enough for me.

I'm not saying it's enough to chuck her in jail. Let's look at the rest of the evidence. But that is very, very, very important. At the scene that morning, Karen also said to Jen that if John died, she would kill herself. And she made Jen promise to look after the kids after she was gone.

And after this troubling statement, Karen was taken to hospital for her own safety. Here they took her blood to check her alcohol levels. It was 9.03am, to hospital for her own safety. Here they took her blood to check her alcohol levels. It was 9.03am and Karen's blood alcohol was 0.93. The legal limit is 0.8. And that's hours after she stops drinking. That we know about.

They do, and we'll come on to this later, sort of work backwards to try and figure out how drunk she would have been at 12.30. But we don't know, though. She didn't carry on drinking. That's true. She went back to John's. She went back to her place in Mansville. We don't know. Karen was later released,

and she went to her parents' house in Dighton. While all this was going on, back at 34 Fairview, the investigative team were really struggling to manage the scene. And I have seen a lot of people on the internet furious at how the police handled this case. And I am not going to sit here and deny that there was a lot of fuck-uppery.

This whole case in general is defined by sloppy police work. How much of it is incompetence, laziness or straight-up corruption depends on who you ask. So let's just go through it for now. But before we do, we've got a reminder for you. The police were working in the middle of a legitimate blizzard. It's not a typical situation, although I would argue in New England they're probably more used to it than the LAPD are.

But who cares what I think? For example, they couldn't even put up a tent over the spot where John's body was found because it kept blowing away. They also couldn't secure the crime scene tape around the perimeter. Which has led a lot of people on the internet to claim that the scene was open to evidence planting. Which we'll come on to later. But to be clear, police did park their patrol cars around the street to block off the road. And then they went about trying to collect evidence. They quickly found John's phone, which had been under his body. But as they tried to hunt about in the snow for more evidence,

they quickly realised that they weren't getting anywhere. So one cop, Lieutenant Gallagher, found a leaf blower and began to try and clear away some of the snow. And look, I'm not a cop. I've never been in a blizzard. So in terms of what they should have done, a lot of people have a lot of different opinions. Some people argue that using a leaf blower could blow away or move around evidence. While some say that this, while not a conventional method, did give officers the chance to find something instead of risking losing vital evidence. Some other people argue that they weren't looking at this as a potential murder scene yet,

but rather just a horrible accident. So they didn't even think that there was anything there that would become crucial later on. Eh, that's my least favourite. Yeah, again, I'm just putting out all of the stuff that people on the internet say. And there are also other law enforcement officials that I've seen comment on the leaf blower situation say that nothing should have been touched until a proper emergency response or forensics team had arrived. But nevertheless, all the same, the leaf blower did indeed come out. And you can watch this footage. You can see there are spotted pools of blood and broken glass around John's body.

The glass looks like it's from a smashed cocktail glass. And it's the one that John left the waterfall bar with. I'd also point out here that according to an interview that we watched with a former FBI agent, when a proper emergency response team did arrive, they actually used a shovel to go through the snow, which you could argue would have caused quite a bit more damage to the evidence,

especially evidence like glass. So, leaf blower or not not i think it just goes to show that the scene was a total nightmare it's kind of like them trying to sort of uh sift through all of the snow that's around him also more snow is falling as they're working they're in a blizzard so i'm not saying the leaf blower was like the correct thing to do but when a forensics team gets there and they use a shovel you could argue like that there's problems with that. Like, it just doesn't seem like there was a really clear idea of how to work in this environment. And on top of all of that, it does seem, although they're in New England, very few officers had experience in handling a crime scene like this.

And we're not making excuses for them before everyone takes to Twitter. I'm not calling it X ever in my life, sorry. Do you know how long it took me to get off MySpace? I was like, fuck Facebook. All we're doing is pointing out the obvious. Now the next questionable move by the cops on site was the blood collection. They only had with them blood evidence collection kits that had these little like swabs in them.

And it was clear that they weren't going to work on the pools of blood soaked into the snow. So the officers went to a neighbour's house, who was also a cop, and got some plastic red Solo cups and supermarket paper bags. The police then collected the snowy blood in these cups and packed them away in the paper bags. Hold your horses before you freak out like everyone has been on the internet. We hear you. We get it. However, something to remember is that these red cups were sealed in plastic. They were brand new.

Obviously, it's still not fit for collecting evidence, but it could have been a lot worse. Again, it's hard to say. By doing what they did, they definitely compromised the evidence. But then again, tests would later show that all of the blood that they found and collected that day was John's. So at least we know that they didn't accidentally introduce a false positive result of, like, contaminating the evidence with somebody else's DNA

that, like, ends up skewing the investigation. And again, we're not defending what they did, but I do think it looks to me more like unprepared cops working in extreme conditions rather than something nefarious. If we want to believe, as the defence would later allege, that Officer Lank, one of the officers at the scene that morning, was part of the conspiracy to cover up John's murder because he was friends with Brian Albert's brother, Kevin Albert, who remember wasn't even there that night but was a Canton cop, then we have to believe like so many things.

And I also want to ask that if he's part of this conspiracy, why would he even bother trying to collect the evidence? Why wouldn't he just leave it and hope that it did get lost? I suppose you could argue that by collecting the evidence poorly, the police knew that they had a really good shot at the evidence being compromised and inadmissible in court which would of course fuck up the whole trial but if that's true if that was their intention it's a funny way of going about it because that throws a lot of heat on them yeah who's willing to take that kind of bullet and be like called incompetent called corrupt called all this just to like help some other people get away with this murder. Yeah. You're putting your reputation on the line.

The blizzard is the perfect situation. Just leave it. Wait for it to go away and melt all the evidence away with it. But sure, we can wax lyrical about this all day. Whatever they did, collect the evidence or not collect the evidence, could have been spun into them acting with nefarious intent. Whichever way you slice it, someone is going to say that they did it because they had an agenda. Yeah. Imagine if they hadn't collected any of the evidence. People on the internet would be screaming that they didn't collect it so that it would get lost. The issue that I have, though, is that Lank was there, right? He was there that morning

and he's doing all this. He's collecting the evidence. And he does this before there's any proof that he spoke to anyone who was at the house, before there's any proof that he spoke to anyone who was involved in this cover-up. So how did he know, if we're saying that he collected the evidence

in order to fuck it up, how did he know to start fucking up the evidence for the cover-up to be successful? You'd have to say that if Lank is doing it start fucking up the evidence for the cover-up to be successful? You'd have to say that if Lank is doing it to fuck up the evidence, then he is involved in the pre-planned attack on John O'Keefe, which again, there's no evidence for, and is adding just yet another person to the mix, which to me only makes the claim more bonkers.

Lank also did the right thing at the scene. He told Jen McCabe that he needed to speak with the homeowners of 34 Fairview. So Jen tried phoning her sister Nicole and Brian, but there was no response. She managed to get into the house anyway and woke them up with the news about John. Gallagher and Lank then spoke with the Alberts inside their home and didn't report seeing anything out of the ordinary. But a point that is very important to bring up here because it's something that a lot of people on the internet love to get like aha about and I don't want anyone accusing us of like not talking about it is that Brian and Nicole didn't wake up or at least they didn't come outside of their house for 30 minutes while firefighters, paramedics and police were outside of their home from about 6am. And look, yes,

you can have different opinions of whether you think that is weird or not, but I do want to say that it seems like nobody really came outside of their house to see what was going on that day, and there are multiple cops who live on that road, so you'd think that they'd be the most vigilant. Could chalk it up to the fact that there were blizzard conditions going on and it was very early in the morning. And if you look at the Albert specifically, they at least had been up until just a couple of hours before John O'Keefe was found. They're probably passed out. Yeah, dead to the world, I would have thought. I don't think that's suspicious at all like okay some people will will really fixate on the fact that this is suspicious how are you going to sleep through all of this activity that's going on outside especially when you've got a dog is the dog not barking I get it it is happening on their front lawn but remember we can't just look at like individual things like this and come to conclusions we have to look at all of the evidence as a whole

before you formulate an idea of what's actually going on. So yeah, it's a piece that doesn't make sense. But this case is messy. There's loads of things that don't make sense. But look at the evidence in its entirety before you form an opinion is all I'll say. So yeah, a lot of accusations are levelled at the Canton Police Department. And we're not going to say that they handled the situation perfectly because they didn't. But one thing they did that was absolutely the correct move was that they recused themselves from the investigation

because Kevin Albert, Brian's brother, was a Canton cop. So the case was passed to Sergeant Buchanek, a senior officer in the state police. And that had happened by 7am on the 29th of January 2022. And Buchanek put Trooper Michael Proctor in charge as lead investigator. Together, they went to speak with all of the first responders, collected John's clothing from the hospital, and then went to interview Jen and Matt McCabe. Jen would tell them what she heard Karen say about hitting John.

They also interviewed Brian Albert that morning. And we have to spell this out because, again, there is so much misinformation out there. I've seen people saying things like no police officer spoke to anyone who was at 34 Fairview for weeks. But that's just not true. There's also a lot of online hysteria that the people at the after party were allowed to communicate with each other and they weren't all like sequestered or something. That is something that is like widely splashed about everywhere. The fact of all of these people that were at the house party when John's found dead, why were they allowed to speak to each other afterwards? But I'm like, how could the police have done anything about that? The police

cannot simply forbid people from speaking with each other without making any charges or arrests. Yeah, certainly not on the spot, like when they show up. They can't just be like, oh, this man's been found dead. Anyone who had any communication with him, anyone had anything to do with this, you are not allowed to speak to each other. That's just not legal. They cannot do that. Until they arrest you or charge you, they cannot make any demands of you that you're not allowed to speak to other people

that were involved in the case. That's just not something that can happen. And yes, the people that were in the house that night were texting and calling each other the next morning. Was it to organise their cover-up? Or was it because a friend of theirs who they'd been out with the night before, had just died? It's more suspicious to me to not call anyone.

Exactly. If it was a pre-planned attack, it would surely make more sense that they not speak to each other. And look, the whole, was it a pre-planned murder, or was it an accident that happened in 34 Fairview and everybody there's trying to cover it up, or did Karen do it, is something we're going to come to later. But just to put this out there, as you listen to the evidence, the defence's theory at trial is that this was a pre-arranged hit against John. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's stick with the morning of the

29th of January. After interviewing the first responders, Jen, Matt and Brian, Trooper Proctor and Sergeant Bucheneck went to Karen's parents' house to interview her. When they arrived, Proctor said that he noticed that the right rear taillight of Karen's car was damaged and had large pieces of plastic missing from it. During this initial interview with Procter & Buchanick, Karen simply stated, I don't know what happened last night. She was asked if she saw John go into the house,

and she said no, she did not. She was asked about the damage to her taillight and how that happened. She said she didn't know, but that it had happened last night. Later, she would say the damage happened when she backed into John's car that morning, but no taillight pieces were found on John's driveway. By this point, it's clear that Proctor already suspected a vehicular incident. Thanks to the fact that John was missing a shoe that would later be found several feet away from

him buried in the snow. Which is what happened, as we learned, in the murder murders by Johnny Murder. When you get hit by a car, your shoes come off. Yes. And also contributing towards Michael Proctor's thinking about this being a vehicular strike was, of course, due to the damage to Karen's taillight

and Karen's own statements at the scene. Because remember, by the time Trooper Proctor gets to Karen's parents' house to interview her, he's spoken to Jen McCabe, who's told him she was saying, I hear him. So following this initial conversation with Karen, the police took her cell phone into evidence and seized her SUV. The car was then taken to the Canton Police Department's Sallyport, which is a new phrase I've come across. I did look it up. Just seems to be like a shed. It's

like where they keep the cars. Right. Meanwhile, back at 34 Fairview, the CERT team, led by Lieutenant Tully, found pieces of taillight buried in the snow where John's body had been found at 5.45pm on the 29th of January. That's when they found them, that's not when John died. And this is another important point to note. We've seen it said in multiple places that the taillight pieces were not found for days after the incident. Once again, categorically not true. It's just said, like it's a fact, that the taillight pieces were found days after.

That's just not true. They found them that day. Although it is also true that more pieces were discovered in the days and weeks after by various officers as the snow started to melt but that doesn't change the fact that they found taillight pieces on the day John died. And look before everybody's like you're not even looking at the possibility that this is a cover-up all right it is true that the initial taillight pieces were only found after Proctor had taken Karen's car into police custody.

This has led many people to believe that Proctor took Karen's car, smashed her damaged taillight further, and then planted pieces of the red plastic at the scene. But there's an issue with this. The initial pieces of red taillight plastic were found by the CERT team, as we said, at 5.45pm on the 29th of January. Not found, as some very brazenly speculate online, by Proctor himself. Proctor and Buchanick didn't even go to 34 Fairview until the 3rd of February. When they interviewed Nicole and Brian Albert and Brian Higgins. So how could Trooper Proctor have planted the first pieces of taillight that are found? Again, it is mind-blowing to me that on the internet it just states as if it's a fact that

the taillight pieces weren't found until after Proctor took Karen's car. That's true. I'll give you that. That's the only bit that's true of what I'm about to say. Then it says that Proctor was the one who found them at 34 Fairview. Incorrect. It was not. Lieutenant Tully was the one overseeing it. And then the whole stuff about them not being found for days. No, they're found on the day, not by Proctor. And yes, after Proctor takes the car, but Proctor didn't go to the house until two or three days after they were found. So how is he planting the evidence? To believe that he did, you would have to believe that Proctor snuck over to the crime scene immediately after picking up Karen's car and without anyone seeing him,

he managed to plant the taillight evidence at Fairview. Despite the fact that there is an entire team of people working there and the fact that Buchanek, his senior, was with him the entire time. Buchanek being a man who has no connections to the Alberts. So why would he be involved? Also, there is more taillight evidence to discuss, which we'll come on to shortly in this episode. Like the fact that tiny pieces of the taillight plastic were found embedded in John's clothes, making the idea that Proctor planted it even less likely. To me at least. But also to the defence. Because.

As we'll see next week, the defence don't really even make the sustained claim that the taillight pieces were planted. Because they know when Proctor first went to the house. We understand why people hate Proctor. We've got a lot to learn about him and also the handling of this case. You can make your own mind up, but I can understand why people have zero trust in him at all. But some things are

indisputable. For now, let's continue with our timeline. On the 31st of January 2022, the post-mortem on John O'Keefe found several abrasions to his right forearm, two black eyes and a cut to his nose, a two-inch laceration to the back of his head and blunt impact injuries which had caused multiple skull fractures. And looking at the condition of his organs, hypothermia was also believed to be a contributing factor to his death. At the time of his death, John also had a blood alcohol level of 0.21, which would only have made the hypothermia worse. The following day, the 1st of February 2022, Karen Reid was arrested and charged with manslaughter, motor vehicle homicide, and leaving the scene of a

motor vehicle collision causing death. She pleaded not guilty. Then, a few months later, on the 10th of June 2022, a grand jury actually indicted Karen Reid on the more serious charge of second-degree murder, as well as manslaughter while operating under the influence of alcohol and leaving the scene of personal injury and death. A forensic toxicologist, based on what Karen's blood alcohol levels had been at 9.03am on the day of John's death, estimated that Karen's blood alcohol content would have been around 0.13 to 0.29 at around 12.30 the night before, putting her well above the legal limit when she drove John to the Alberts' house. And, according to the state hit him with her car. Now I do want to point out again if she had drunk alcohol after 12 30 which is very very plausible that she did that obviously does skew the the findings it makes it you know very very hard to be accurate about how drunk she was when she dropped John off. But CCTV footage from the bar shows her having at least nine drinks.

What? Yeah. She has five tall glasses with ice and like a lime in them. And people are like, that could be water. It's fucking not. It's fucking not water. Like, come the fuck on. And then she also has five little glasses

with limes on top of them and people are like that could be water i'm like are you right they're fucking shots and also so excuse me while i drink my thimble of water with a lime on top and there's also video footage of her in there with her tall drink and taking the shot and pouring it in and i'm like what she's doing there is i don't and taking the shot and pouring it in. And I'm like, what she's doing there is I don't know what the rules are in America, actually. But here you can only buy, I think, a triple. You can't buy anything more than that. So sometimes people who want to get absolutely obliterated will buy a triple, buy a shot and then pour it in to make themselves a quadruple. You don't buy a water and then a shot and then pour it in. Just come on, guys. Like,

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So yes, after the grand jury, they up the charges against her. They're now going for second degree murder. Again, Karen pleaded not guilty, but posted the hundred grand bail and was released. Who gave her a hundred grand? Her parents, probably. Yeah, probably yeah right like she's not an unsuccessful woman that's true yeah yeah yeah and her parents stand behind her 100 in this and we'll also go on to find out how she's funding the incredibly expensive defense attorneys that she has at trial and look i'm not saying that people shouldn't have a defense go higher if you are in

this situation the best defense attorneys that you can afford. Absolutely. But there's a lot of issues I have with it, which we'll come on to. Let's fast forward to the 22nd of September 2022. Karen Reid's defence team now officially went one step further and now alleged in court that John had been severely beaten by someone or some ones who had been at 34 Fairview on the night of the 28th of January. And as for the injuries on John's arm, the defence pointed the finger squarely at Chloe, who we haven't met yet, because Chloe is a dog.

She was the Alberts' six-year-old German shepherd. The claim the defence made was that John had been beaten by someone in the house, attacked by the dog and then dumped outside the Albert home. And then the Alberts, using their ties to the Canton Police Department and the Massachusetts State Police, had brought about a large-scale cover-up to frame Karen Reid for the murder of John O'Keefe. Rewind that, listen to it again, and really drink it in. And on the 12th of April 2023, Karen's attorneys publicly released court documents that they said contained bombshell exculpatory information. And it was a bombshell. I was aghast. Yes, I was shell-shocked.

Absolutely. Like, look, I'm not going to deny it. When I first looked into this case, as much as I said I went into it with an open mind, I genuinely believed the cover-up conspiracy story. I thought, my God, look at all of these headlines I'm reading. Not necessarily headlines from like reputable sources but headlines off the internet i'm reading about the taillight pieces about this thing we're about to talk about i was like oh my god this woman was so brazenly framed and then i went back and looked at my notes after i had done all the research and i was embarrassed with myself

but let's talk about it because i understand why this got people very, very worked up. The defence alleged that Jen McCabe, who had been at 34 Fairview on the night of the 28th of January, had made a Google search, how's long to die in the cold, at 2.27am, hours before John's body had been found. And they claimed that the Massachusetts State Police and the prosecution had kept this damning evidence from them for over a year. And it's not hard to argue that this is indeed shocking. After all, it looks to be evidence that proves

that other people were aware that John was dying in the snow before Karen even knew he was missing. And this is a real turning point. It was this, upon the release of this evidence, that this case caught on fire on the interwebs. Of course it did. This is a huge revelation. But there is also someone more specific who we can thank for this. A blogger named Turtle Boy.

Turtle Boy, a.k., aka Aidan Kearney, published his first piece on the Karen Reid case on the 18th of April 2023. It was titled Canton Cover-Up Part One, Corrupt State Trooper Helps Boston Cop Cover-Up Murder a Fellow Officer, Frame Innocent Girlfriend. Two days later, Turtle Boy had an even juicier scoop when he broke the news about a federal grand jury investigation, and he called this one multiple witnesses in home where John O'Keefe was killed, subpoenaed by federal grand jury, FBI visits homes, basement floor reportedly replaced. In that article, Kearney wrote the following. Breaking news.

According to reliable sources close to the matter, a federal grand jury has subpoenaed multiple witnesses who were in the home of Boston police officer Brian Albert on the night fellow BPD officer, that's unfortunate, John O'Keefe, was killed. This was a scoopity-scoop-sop scoop of the highest order for Mr Turtle Boy, because it would be over a week later that the Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey's office learned that witnesses in Karen Reid's case had indeed received subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury, and this information wouldn't be publicly announced in any official capacity until the 5th of December 2023.

And it would be nearly two more months before it was confirmed to the public that the FBI was indeed conducting an inquiry into Karen Reid's arrest and prosecution. And everyone was shocked. Norfolk DA Morrissey, who is responsible ultimately for prosecuting Karen Reid, was forced to admit that, quote, federal interference in an open state murder case is highly unusual, if not unprecedented. And look, I'm not going to gloss over the fact that the FBI were conducting a federal inquiry into the case against Karen Reid and how the case had been handled by the Massachusetts State Police. But we don't know why the FBI inquiry into this case began or what's really going on. We don't even know the FBI's true focus of this investigation and it's likely we won't know for quite some time because their

investigation is still ongoing. But let's just say that if the FBI had found any evidence of any form of police corruption into the Karen Reid case, the trial would never have gone ahead. And they're sure as shit wouldn't be a retrial planned for next year. Spoilers. You're so happy about that. Oh my god. Any whoozles. Let's leave all of that behind us for the time being and keep on going. On the 24th of May, 2023, during a pretrial hearing, Karen Reid's attorneys, David Yannetti and Alan Jackson,

laid out what they alleged to be a cover-up by law enforcement. Here is what they said. And I have been instructed in my stage notes to read it dramatically. So I'll do my best. Because not so much Yannetti, but Alan Jackson is one of the most dramatic defense attorneys I've come across. And look, he's doing his job. And if I ever get accused of anything, I'm going to give that man a call because he is all over everything like hot shit and he's so dramatic imagine this in an american accent i'm not going to do one

certainly the massachusetts state police is involved there are people that were in that house that are involved brian albert is involved jennifer mccabe is involved the rest of the folks that were in that house there's some level of involvement by every one of them, every single one of them. We're not going to rest until we get to the bottom of exactly who is behind this cover-up. Not only Karen Reid deserves this, John O'Keefe deserves this, and has deserved this from moment one. And that's why they're not going to rest. And we read that particularly dramatic statement out loud in full because it's really, really important. Next week when we get into the trial, remember this statement. I'm going to keep hammering this home and you guys are going to get

bored of hearing me say this, but we have to say this. Karen Reid's defence are claiming that huge numbers of people are involved in this conspiracy. They are clear. The state police are involved and every one of the people in that house are involved to some extent. They are all lying. As for the likelihood of such a widespread cover-up involving so many people, having all kept their mouth shut for over two years, despite the immense amount of scrutiny that they've all been under, well, you make up your own minds as to, you know, the feasibility of that. Do not water down what the defence is saying. Because Yannetti and Jackson are certainly not hiding away from it. They're not like, oh, it could have been this, it could have been an accident. No, no, no. We just heard Hannah beautifully, very dramatically read it out loud. It is a conspiracy.

And John was killed on purpose in a pre-planned attack. More on this next week. It's an astonishingly bold move, though, because they don't have to do that. All they have to do is poke holes in what the prosecution put up. Yep. Interesting. It's because no other theory makes sense. This theory doesn't make sense.

Don't get me wrong. This theory doesn't make sense. But to argue that it was an accident, as we'll go on to find out next week when we really get into the trial and the meat of the evidence, that doesn't make sense. So it's like they know that whatever other theory they put forward, whatever narrative, because we know this in all our years of doing true crime, the evidence is one thing, right?

The evidence, super, super important, but it's the narrative. It's the story you tell in court about what happened. You need a strong story. And the defence pick this one because everything else doesn't make sense. This makes the least nonsense. And it was after this particularly dramatic hearing that Karen Reid spoke to reporters for the first time. She said it feels we're the only ones fighting for the truth of what happened to John O'Keefe. And me and my family and my attorneys and my team have marshaled every resource to get to the truth.

It just feels like no one else wants it. And Karen, just to be clear, you didn't do it. We know who did it, Steve. We know. And we know who spearheaded this cover-up. You all know. Yes, we do. And no, she didn't do it. No, she didn't do it. This is. And no, she didn't do it. No, she didn't do it.

This is an innocent woman. She didn't do it. I tried to save his life. I tried to save his life at 6 in the morning. I was covered in his blood. I was the only one trying to save his life. She didn't admit to it. She didn't admit to anything close to that.

Nothing close to that. And you should know that. That was like three or four times. No, she didn't. That's not true. Nothing close to that. And you should know that. That was like three or four times. No, that's not true. She asked a question. That was Jackson that you heard being like, and she didn't do it, to be clear. And obviously this is an audio program.

If you can please just visualize in your minds, the reporters are like, Karen, just to be clear, you didn't do it. She just does this like, excuse me. But she doesn't say, you didn't do it. She just does this like, excuse me, but she doesn't say I didn't do it. No, she doesn't. And look, not going to get bogged down on what people say

and what people don't, but she doesn't say it and that's why Jackson steps in and is like, she didn't do it. Yeah. Just to be clear. Do you know what it is? It is exactly what happens

in Chicago. Isn't it? You're right. We've both reached for the gun. i was a moth crushed on the flame but in a northeast accent i was raised in a convent i could do the whole thing i'm not gonna after this uh i wouldn't even know what to call it. Is it a slip up? Is it a, I don't know.

After this first press conference. Yes. First press encounter. Yes. After the first press encounter that Karen Reid subjected herself to, Turtle Boy cranked it up a notch. He started to sell free Karen merch and donated all of the money to Karen's defense fund. Over the years, he raised more than $300,000 he dues, which, OK, fine, someone's got to pay for something. And people are willingly buying this merch, like, go nuts, whatever.

But what's not whatever is what he did next. He also started to harass, dox and intimidate state witnesses. He would turn up at witnesses' children's sports games and approach them, calling their parents a cop killer. Yep. He got people's numbers and sent them threatening texts and voice messages. And he'd go and stand outside their homes. And he encouraged his bizarre following of turtle riders to do the same. He shared Witness's personal information on his blog. Prison. Put the man in prison. How fucked up this is, is beyond any words I can muster, right?

You might believe, you might read Turtle Boy's fucking blog, in which case, like, go for it. Like, I'm not going to tell you not to. Well, actually, no, I will tell you not to. Don't read it. But you cannot agree with the idea that it is in any way acceptable before a trial happens for anyone to be going and intimidating state witnesses. What he wants is to get to the point, because he went after people like Jen McCabe. He went after Jen McCabe hard. He wants her to be so scared that she doesn't want to testify anymore, or that she doesn't want to say what actually happened because of what might happen to her. Think about the

reality of that situation. That is fucking banana republic stuff. This is an abomination. Turtle Boy needs to go to jail. And if you need an example of the type of threats he's making, in one of his posts talking about these witnesses he's intimidating, he wrote, you guys, as in the witnesses themselves, should just stop going out in public. It will only get worse from here. It's not even veiled, is it? No. No, no, no. Then in December 2023, Kearney was indicted on 16 charges, including 8 counts of witness intimidation, 3 counts of conspiracy

to intimidate witnesses, and 5 counts of picketing a witness. Fucking good. Yep. He continued to scream about his innocence, of course, and he was released on bail. Only, however, to have this bail revoked two weeks later, after he was charged with assault, battery, and

witness intimidation, based on accusations made against him by an ex, who claimed that he attacked her and posted intimate pictures of her online against her will. Kearney claimed that this woman was just pissed off that he broke up with her, and she was jealous because she believed that he's now in love with Karen Reid.ed which i also believe it is horrific to me that this man has

gained the following that he has when you just google any question you have about the karen reed trial fucking turtle boy's blog comes up on the first page of google it is disgusting. And let's rewind a bit, because who is this guy? Who is Kearney? Who is Turtle Boy? Well, he used to be an assistant principal at a school called Shepherd Hill. My God. I know. But he left that job after he was spotted being lewd and intimidating towards a young woman at a Patriots-Buffalo Bills game. The school started an investigation after they received a ton of complaints about Kearney, but he resigned before the investigation went any further. Yeah, jump before you're pushed.

Uh-huh. And look, I really don't want to go on about this guy. He's gross, he's a weird little man who's obsessed with himself and absolutely obsessed with Karen Reid. Turtle Boy is a total narcissist who thinks he's a blogging fucking Batman. Or as he claims his followers call him, Journalism Jesus.

I'm unwell. Yep. He's drawn attention to himself by whipping up a frenzy around this case and he is absolutely a key source of a lot of the misinformation and disinformation that has poured out all over the place. And I wish that we could just stop talking about him here. But we have to mention one more

thing, because his involvement with this case goes a little bit deeper. Cast your minds back a few moments to the federal inquiry into the investigation of Karen Reid long before it was made public? Because he got the scoop. Nobody knew. Not even the DA's office. We're going to tell you how. In January 2024, a state police affidavit revealed that Karen Reid had allegedly fed confidential information to Kearney for his blog. Over 189 phone calls lasting over 40 hours cumulatively. And nothing really happened, which seems shocking. But in February, Kearney faced yet more charges of harassing a witness after he threatened a woman who had accused him of attacking her. And we cannot, as much as

it hurts our souls, we just cannot ignore Turtle Boy. He's written endless blog posts filled with straight up lies, and also used confidential information that looks like it came straight from Karen Reid and her attorneys. And those actions fucked up any hope of a fair trial. A large number of people, including those in the jury pool, already believed the conspiracy because it had been so widely spread on the internet and backed up by lies. So this trial was a complete mess before it even started. But let's get back to the case. By the start of 2024, both the prosecutors and the defence filed a joint motion to delay the start of the trial. This was because some of the state's forensic evidence still hadn't been processed. And, by now, news of the federal inquiry into

the investigation of Karen Reid was out there. And everyone wanted to wait and see what information about the case the feds would reveal. They wouldn't have to wait long. On the 22nd of February, the prosecution's long-awaited results on some vital crime scene evidence was finally unveiled. They found that John O'Keefe's DNA was on the broken pieces of taillight that had been found outside 34 Fairview. Just to be clear, again, this wasn't blood. It was touch DNA.

And they also found that microscopic pieces of the same taillight plastic were found embedded in John's clothing. And that a hair belonging to John had been found stuck to the bumper, so frozen onto the bumper of Karen's SUV. Along with more of John's DNA. Big stuff. And then, four days later, federal prosecutors released more than 3,000 pages of new evidence from their investigation. And this led to yet another bombshell. In March 2024,

there was a hearing where the defence called for all of the charges against Karen Reid to be dismissed. They were armed with new sensational evidence from the federal inquiry. Firstly, the investigators in the Karen Reid case had close personal ties with the witnesses. The defence had been shouting about this from the start with regards to Officer Lank, who had been friends with Brian Albert's brother, Kevin Albert, for years. But the federal probe also found that trooper Michael Proctor was good friends with some of the Alberts.

So close that he'd actually texted Julie Albert, Brian's sister-in-law, to babysit his kid ten days before John died. Yannetti brought up, again, the question of why the Alberts had not come out of their house the morning John was found, stating that they were waiting on a friendly to arrive at the scene, and they mean Officer Lank. Then there was of course another look at the how long to die in cold Google search. Jackson accused prosecutors of withholding witness Jen McCabe's Google search for how long to die from the grand jury that indicted Karen.

Prosecutor Lally, however, argued that the version of the software indicating the timestamp did not exist at the time the grand jury was convened, so they weren't withholding anything. And that a senior technical analyst with the software company, Cellubrite, found that Jen McCabe actually made that search at 6.24am, after John's body was found. I know, that sounds so confusing. And it's a whole thing, and we're going to come back to it next week,

I promise, we don't have time right now. It really takes the winds out of the sails, though. For now, let's stick with the attempted dismissal. Finally, prosecutors pointed to perhaps the most damning point to come from the federal inquiry. Karen Reid's lawyers revealed that federal investigators had hired a professional reconstructionist to examine whether Karen Reid's car had in fact made contact with John. And their conclusion was that John's injuries were inconsistent with the damage on the car. And that the damage on the car was inconsistent with having made contact with John O'Keefe's body. Jackson alleged, quote, in other words, the car didn't hit him. And he wasn't hit by the car. Period. Full stop.

So, Your Honour, if Mr O'Keefe was not hit by a car, then the defendant did not kill him. Sounds good, right? When I first heard that, I was like, yeah, fine, alright, good. Well, the judge, who at the time, and of course throughout this thing, knows a hell of a lot more about all of the evidence than we do on the internet, denied the motion that Jackson was trying to get passed through to have all of the charges dropped because of what this reconstructionist had stated. And the judge denied it due to, quote, extensive evidence supporting the indictments, such as John's DNA being found on the broken taillight of Karen's car. And I do think that this was absolutely the right decision by Bev, as she's now known on the interwebs. But it's not a term of endearment. People really hate Judge Beverly Canone. There's

some stuff there with like, her brother had like defended one of the Alberts in a court case and so they're like oh she's compromised she should have recused herself blah blah blah but actually if you watch the trial I think Bev lets the defense get away with so many things that I don't think she should have so I don't really get the impression that she was biased towards the prosecution but anyway let's talk about what the Reconstructionists said. Saying that John's injuries are inconsistent with being hit by a car is not the same as saying

John was definitely period, full stop, not hit by a car. There are lots and lots of issues with this analysis, as we will most certainly dive into next week. And of course, there is also all the evidence from the car itself, which we haven't even touched upon yet. So please, I know, I know there's people listening who might be feeling frustrated that we are not buying into the

conspiracy theory or the cover-up theory. I'm sure there are people who are like, I can't believe you guys aren't looking at this more openly. We did. I'm telling you, I went into this thinking it was a cover-up. That is how I approached this. My mind has been changed because I now have all of the evidence. I've spent a month researching this. I know how this ends. I know what we're going to say next week. So please, just keep an open mind, bear with us, and hear us out. After the dismissal failed, the defence made it clear that they wanted to go with the SODDI defence. Soddy defence, as they say. And I would not be saying one of these words unless it was a direct quote because I fucking hate it. It makes me feel very ill.

The SODDI defence, S-O-D-D-I, stands for Some Other Dude Did It. Yep. Guess which word I hate. Obviously, that's not how it's officially known. Officially, this is called the third-party culpability defence. The judge said that they had the constitutional right to use this defence, but the evidence against the people they wanted to accuse had to be relevant, competent and admissible.

And there were three men who were going to fall into the defence's soddy crosshairs. They are Brian Albert, Colin Albert, Brian's nephew, and Brian Higgins, the ATF agent, who, Karen, as we'll find out next week, had been exchanging some very interesting texts with. But I'm not going to tell you about them. Until next week. Come back then when we will jump headfirst into the extraordinarily eventful trial of Karen Reid and I promise your questions will be answered.

We'll see you then. Bye. Bye. Drive safely. Don't drink and drive