SERIALously - 282: ARE YOU KIDDING?! Karen Read: The Defense Came Out Swinging!

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

This week in the Karen Read trial, the defense came out swinging. It was a full-on battle of the experts as both sides clashed over science, strategy, and credibility. But the real showstopper? The blue paint experiment heard round the world. From dramatic cross-examinations to explosive new claims, tensions are rising—and the stakes have never been higher. Buckle up, because this recap breaks down everything you missed in one of the most chaotic weeks yet. 🔎Join Our True Crime Club & Get Exclusive Content & Perks 🔎 Join The Club: https://www.patreon.com/annieelise 🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to EXTRA deep dive episodes every week on Apple! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/serialously-with-annie-elise/id1519456164 Follow Annie on Socials 📸 🩷Instagram: @ _annieelise 💜TikTok: @_annieelise 🗞️ Substack: @annieelise 💙Facebook: @10tolife Shop Annie’s Closet & Must-Haves! 👗 Poshmark: https://posh.mk/Tdbki6Ae0Rb ShopMY: https://shopmy.us/annieelise Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/shop/10tolife?ref_=cm_sw_r_apin_aipsfshop_BKN1ZMCMEZHACVFQ2R75&language=en_US Disclaimer ‣ Some links may be affiliate links, they do not cost you anything, but I make a small percentage from the sale. Thank you so much for watching and supporting me. 🎙️ Follow the podcast for FREE on all podcast platforms! Apple:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/serialously-with-annie-elise/id1519456164 Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/6HdheEH8WeMTHoe5da34qU All Other Platforms: https://audioboom.com/channels/5100770-serialously-with-annie-elise Get Involved or Recommend the Case 💬 About Annie: https://annieelise.com/ For Business Inquiries: [e-mail] . *Sources used to collect this information include various public news sites, interviews, court documents, FB groups dedicated to the case, and various news channel segments. When quoting statements made by others, they are strictly alleged until confirmed otherwise. Please remember my videos are my independent opinion and to always do your own research. 

Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all new episode of Serialist Lee with me, Annie Elise, and we've got the Karen Reed trial recap. Now a lot has gone down this week. I'm sure that if you follow the trial you've been seeing social media clips just popping up left and right because I mean the true circus that is the trial, it's something like I've never seen before truly. So let me backtrack a little bit and Alaina's of course going to join again and she's going to recap everything because she just,

she does, she has a way of doing it in such like a magical seamless way to where it's like understandable, digestible, she doesn't leave out any detail so I don't have to worry about you guys like coming for me like you did last week where y'all, well you didn't even talk about how he changed the timeline, like I know, I thought that was implied, I'm sorry, I forgot. So Elena will be joining us and breaking down this week, but some of the big highlights of the week definitely were with Blue Man Group Smurf Guy. This guy did this full-on reenactment of the alleged car crash between Karen Reed and John O'Keefe.

And when I tell you, I was not only laughing through it, and not in a disrespectful way as to whatever happened to John O'Keefe, but more in like a the audacity, the nerve, like this makes no sense. And if you didn't see it, I highly encourage you to Google it, but like I said, it's been popping up all over social media. But basically this guy who identifies himself as an expert in accident reconstruction, in data, all of these things, he puts together this mock version of the accident, the collision. And let me just say this expert, he ends up saying that he got paid somewhere near like 400 grand for his participation in this. He got like a free Lexus to use during this reenactment and this reenactment was so unbelievable because

He didn't even reenact what the commonwealth is accusing Karen of doing they're accusing Karen of reversing at such a high speed of almost Like 30 miles per hour to where then he she reverses and clips John and he then goes flying So many feet into the yard and that's what then hits the back of his head, incapacitates him and then he of course, as we know, doesn't live and they have such egregious allegations and accusations against her so you would think, okay great, you're going to get this expert in to do this reenactment. You have the same vehicle that she was driving. You're on the road, all these things.

This guy even cosplayed as John O'Keefe in such a freaking weirdo, crazy twist. And I get it, he was trying to set the stage. He was trying to paint a picture, but he dressed up as John O'Keefe, got the same Lexus, but then did not even reenact what they are accusing Karen of doing. Instead, the Lexus in his reenactment reverses at like two miles per hour or whatever it is. He has blue paint that he has painted on the tail light, her tail light that was then later smashed or smashed at the time, whatever you believe, and he positions his body in a way, and if you're watching the video version of this I'm going to

kind of just do the demonstration, but if you're listening to the audio version of this hopefully I'm explaining it well enough to where you can visualize it, but he basically stands in a way behind the car with his arm kind of at this 90 degree angle, just perfectly bent. Then the Lexus starts reversing into him with the painted tail light, bright blue, royal blue paint, and he like bounces off the tail light, does a full pirouette spin, and then kind of is like, aha, there you have it, see? And he shows his arm and he shows

that the paint transfer from the tail light goes onto his arm and he shows that the paint transfer from the tail light goes onto his arm in the same location as where we have seen those lacerations on John O'Keefe's arm. Some believe they're scrapes, some believe they're dog bites, whatever you believe them to be. He basically is illustrating, look, my impact with the car, then the transfer of the paint is in that exact same location as where the lacerations were on John O'Keefe's arm. Which, okay, but first of all, that's because you were positioned in a very specific way and held your arm in a very specific way so that the tail light paint would transfer on

that part of your arm. Also, the Lexus was only reversing at like one or two miles per hour when you're alleging that it was at, you know, 30, 20 times that, whatever the math would be. Then also, you're not the same height and build as John O'Keefe. You do this spin out, but you're saying he flew all the way to the flagpole. Like, nothing of it made any sense whatsoever, and it was comical to watch because it was like you're doing a finger painting project and it's like you're paying this guy 400 grand to do a reenactment to bolster your case but he's not even reenacting what you're accusing her of doing. It just it made absolutely no sense and the demonstration itself truly was laughable.

I get what they were trying to do, but it did not land. Especially because it's just like, how do you know he was standing in that position? How do you know that that's where he was? How do you know his arm was bent? And he's like, on the stand, he was like, well, we don't know. This is what we're calculating. This is what we're theorizing. And it's like, okay, well, I could theorize all the live long day then for my reenactment. I'll get a German Shepherd off the street, say, hey German Shepherd, let me have you attack this person right here, but only having them extend their arms, so that's the only place you can attack, and then let me show that demonstration.

It's like, are we cherry picking what we want to show here? It just, it was crazy. And again, Elena will explain it far better than I probably am, but it was one of the biggest takeaways this week. We also know right after that expert took the stand, the Commonwealth rested their case and that means they're done presenting their evidence. They're done presenting their case. They will of course, do cross examination on the defenses witnesses, but they had rested their case.

So now the defense is up and they started their case today. They started it right now. It's going down as we speak. Somebody who a lot of the chat is calling Dada Daddy is on the stand. And I'm just sorry, it's just people come up with the funniest names like crash daddies for the ARCA reconstruction experts now data daddy for this guy who's talking about all of the data and the triggering event in the car and I mean it's just This case again, it's so polarizing and People are involved for a multitude of reasons But anyway, so the defense has officially now begun their case and they're expected to present their case anywhere from a week and a half to two weeks. So it seems

like within the next couple of weeks, it's fair to assume we will then be going to verdict watch. So as I said, their first expert was up and data daddy, he's like talking about the triggering events, which Elena will go into in more detail and they're putting on their case now They still are saying no comment when it comes to if they're gonna call Michael Proctor as a witness Brian Albert Brian Higgins, they haven't definitively said yes or no either way I don't know if that's because they truly are undecided or if it's because they don't want to give the Commonwealth the jump of Knowing that they're not calling them. They like they don't want to give the Commonwealth the jump of knowing that they're not calling them, they don't want to give away their strategy, right? So we will see what happens, but as I said in my recap last

week, I wouldn't be surprised if they don't call Michael Proctor because right now they've already been able to enter in so much of the shadiness of Michael Proctor. The fact that he was fired, the fact that he was the lead investigator, and he's like disgraced now. His horrific text messages where he called Karen a see you next Tuesday and made fun of her body, where he texted how he didn't come across any nude photos yet. They've already entered that in, so the jury already would have these preconceived notions of who Michael Proctor is, right? Which is great for the defense. If they call him, it's almost as though you allow a door to

open to where maybe he can somehow elicit a little bit of sympathy or explain away his actions just enough to where the jury doesn't have such a horrible picture of him. So it depends what their strategy is. Is it too risky to bring him in? Maybe. I've heard that they also are going to bring in some of the people that Michael Proctor had text messaged and have them read the text messages similar to how they had Buchanek read Higgins' text messages with Karen. So we'll see how all of that goes. But they haven't announced formally, at least as of this recording, if they will call any of them as witnesses. We know that we will see the ARCA experts.

We I'm sure will see a few of the people who were involved in the investigation that the state hadn't already called, but it's going to be interesting to see where this goes because we already had done, of course, some of those mass polls of where everybody's sitting. I think the highest percentage that we ever got of the public thinking Karen Reid is guilty was about 10%, give or take. That was when the Commonwealth was putting their best foot forward, putting on their case.

So now that the defense is coming in and they're putting on their case, will it look like they're grasping at straws and will that percentage increase or will that percentage decrease because they're now hearing so much more about it that had not been yet entered in through the Commonwealth? It'll be interesting to see and I'm curious still where you guys sit with all of this. So I don't know if this week changed any of your opinions or if you are still undecided. I have been saying for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks, and I'm going to say it one more time, but I have changed my mind a little bit. I've been saying for weeks that I am in my third bucket, which I say, I don't know what

happened at 34 Fairview, but I believe that there is too much reasonable doubt to convict Karen Reed. I also with that will just add on kind of like a caveat to that, I don't think she should have ever been charged with murder too. In no world on any planet should that charge have happened in my opinion.

Manslaughter if they truly thought she hit him by accident, I understand that. But anyway, I've been in the bucket of I think there is way too much reasonable doubt to convict her for months now, you could call it. I'm now starting to teeter a little bit more towards...I don't want to say framed, although I guess that would be the root of it, but I'll just say not guilty. Because it's very difficult for me, and I've been upfront with this from day one, it's very difficult for me to jump full stop to a 20 person conspiracy, all sorts of collusion, all sorts of cover up, all sorts of cover-up, things like that. It's just, it happens.

I know it happens. But it's difficult for me objectively to just rationalize that and think that that is possible. But the more and more I'm seeing certain things come out and the experts that the Commonwealth is bringing in and looking at the data and looking at what we know, which maybe the jury doesn't know about the basement floor is being redone, jackhammering cement out of the basement, the call in Albert and the history there, the injuries don't add up. People's stories have changed. There has been so much destruction and cover up with cell phones being disposed of the

day after they were told that they needed to not destroy their phones. There's been basement floors being redone a year after they had told that they needed to not destroy their phones. There's been basement floors being redone a year after they had already done them. There's been a house being sold under market value. The dog being rehomed. So many things to where I'm like, it's hard for me, yeah, to believe a conspiracy happened, but what else would you call this?

What else is going on? It would just be a laundry list of coincidences if it's not something bigger. So I'm not full stop full bore in that camp yet, but I would say I'm somewhere in between 100% too much reasonable doubt to convict, but also now teetering more to just like not even it's not even the reasonable doubt of why you shouldn't convict her, because she's not guilty. So I'll keep you updated too, as my opinion shifts and moves

while the defense is putting their case on, because I'm trying to be as objective as I possibly can, just like a juror would be, and hear everything and come to my own conclusion. So my opinion could very well change Monday. It could change Wednesday, I don't know. And I have no problem being transparent and letting you know where my opinion sits as well change Monday. It could change Wednesday, I don't know. And I have no problem being transparent and letting you know where my opinion sits as it moves around, so that's where I'm at. But anyway, this was a freaking

really long intro to the recap, so I'm gonna shut up now. I'm gonna pass it over to Elena, and she's gonna break down everything that went down this week, and then I will come back over here with you. Hey Annie, great to see you again. Now we've finally started the sixth week of the retrial on Tuesday, after that long five day break. The prosecution called their 38th and final witness Dr. Judson Welcher. He's like the prosecution's grand finale, if you will.

Now like Shannon Burgess from last week, Welcher also works for the accident reconstruction firm Aperture. Now maybe after everything came out about Burgess's credentials, or lack thereof should we say, people might be skeptical of anyone from Aperture, but it does seem to me that Welcher is actually qualified, you know, he has his PhD, it's in biomedical engineering from USC. And on direct examination, Dr. Welcher testified about three main topics. The first had to do with data that he recovered from Karen's SUV.

He said that the event data recorder, or what we might know as the black box, it didn't show any collision on the night of the incident. But he said that that doesn't actually mean that the car didn't hit John, because the black box generally only records collisions between two cars, not a car and a pedestrian. He also testified to a specific trigger event on that car around 12 32 a.m. During this event he determined that Karen's car went forward 34 feet and then accelerated as it backed up 53 feet and

at the end of that 10-second maneuver, he said the car was at 74% throttle and moving at at least 23 miles an hour. Now using the clock syncing analysis done by Shannon Burgess, Dr. Welcher then calculated the time of this back-up maneuver to be between 12 32 a.m. and 4 seconds and 12 32 a.m. and 4 seconds, and 12.32am and 12 seconds, which he says is within the window when John's phone was last used. Now, I did find this area of Dr. Welter's testimony to be credible, but it's also worth noting that a good part of his conclusions rely on that analysis from Burgess.

So if you don't believe what Burgess said last week about sinking clocks, we might have a sort of snowball effect and we have to start questioning some of Welter's conclusions. Then Dr. Welter's second main area of testimony takes us back to that ring camera video that shows Karen pulling out of John's driveway to look for him at around 5am on the morning of the incident. That's the video that shows her bumping John's car with her right tail light. And of course, it's the defensive position that that's when she broke the tail light, not 5 hours earlier when allegedly crashing into John.

But Dr. Welcher disagreed. He testified about the great lengths he went through to analyze that ring camera video, and that included tracking the cars frame by frame, enhancing the video, and using this like laser grid type system. It was a lot. And in the end, he said that while John's car and Karen's car did make contact, quote, that impact did not break or crack that taillight. About John's car, he said, quote, So sure, it knocked the snow off, but it wasn't sufficient to cause damage to his vehicle.

And furthermore, he said that he saw nothing in the snow after Karen's car left the driveway. And finally, Welcher gave his opinion about how John's injuries were caused. And to do this, Welcher purchased a Lexus identical to Karen's, and he put himself quite literally in John's shoes. Now, Welcher has a similar height and weight to Jon, so he decided to play the role of Jon in this series of reenactments. And to really drive home the point, he also tracked down copies of the same shirt, jeans, hoodie, hat, and sneakers that Jon was wearing on the night of his death. And I get that as a scientist, Wiltcher wants to recreate

that scene as closely as possible, but I think cosplaying as a dead man, a potential murder victim, I don't know, it was a little odd. Maybe that's just me. Now in this reenactment, Wiltcher smeared some blue paint on the right tail light of his Model Lexus and then allowed it to drive into his body at around two miles per hour. And he showed that if the car hits him at this particular angle, his body sort of spins out, I think Annie called it a pirouette, and the tail light ends up hitting his right arm right around where John had those cuts. And he also testified that the Lexus bumper would line up with the scrape to John's knee and the rear bumper would line up with the scrape to John's knee, and the rear spoiler would line up with the cut to John's right eye. Now the obvious issue here is, well you just said the car was going at 23 miles per hour,

but you did your reenactment at 2 miles per hour, so how accurate could that really be? Now he did clarify and said that pedestrian injuries can be really difficult to model, so he said he wasn't trying to exactly replicate the accident and just show one possible way that the injuries could have occurred. Then when asked if colliding with John's arm would produce enough force to break Karen's tail light, Welcher said that it would, as long as the car was moving at least 8 miles an hour. Welcher also showed videos of dropping a test dummy backwards to show how John's head could

have hit the ground, and he testified that skull fractures can happen from heights as low as 40 inches and John was much taller at about 73 inches. Welcher also went on to explain the difference between a regular head-on collision and a glancing or sideswipe type collision, where the body is actually struck at an angle. And he said that in these sideswipe collisions, the pedestrians will often move or take a step or do something to regain their balance, which can cause the bodies to ultimately be found further away from the collision than you might expect. Then when he was asked if it's uncommon for a sideswipe victim to not have any injuries to the lower body, Woltcher said, quote, No, it's not uncommon.

You could definitely have this type of impact and not have anything beyond, say, red marks to lower extremities, end quote. Now based on all this, Woltcher concluded that Karen did hit John with her car. But after several sidebars and arguments from the lawyers, he was forced to change his position and say that the damage to the Lexus is consistent with hitting John, and that John's injuries are consistent with being hit by the Lexus. But he's not allowed to explicitly say that Karen hit John with her car. Now if everything Welcher said is true, you have

to admit this is pretty damning evidence against Karen, but she seemed less than impressed with his testimony. She said quote, he backed into himself at 2.2 or something miles per hour, so he tried to dress identically to John but didn't do anything else to mimic what the Commonwealth is accusing me of." Now after a direct examination, Cross started up on Wednesday the 28th. I've talked before about witnesses who are tough to watch on Cross. Witnesses who just never want to give the other side an inch. Jen McCabe comes to mind, Yuri Bukinik is another one, but Dr. Welcher might just take

the cake for most difficult Cross. He and Alessi were going in circles, he would snap at Alessi, at one point he refused to close his laptop during questioning, and he would respond in this kind of snotty, I'm better than you kind of way. It was a lot. Now like I've said before, I don't necessarily think this means he's lying. And in fact, if you lean towards more the prosecution side you actually might think it's a good thing that the witnesses are really resistant to the defense. But my gosh is it difficult to

listen to. And in my opinion witnesses who are more willing to consider the other side's point of view, even if that means conceding some of their points, I think those witnesses come across as more forthcoming and trustworthy. I don't know if that's how the jury will see it, but that's my view. I think of Dr. Scordy Bello, Ian Whiffin to some extent, most people from the crime lab. Those to me were prosecution witnesses who, yes, they stood by their findings, but they were willing to admit, you know, the areas of ambiguity or other possibilities, at least to some extent. And I personally found them more credible

than Jen, than Yuri, and definitely than Dr. Wilcher. So after all that, what actually happened on Cross? Well first, Alessi took issue with Wilcher's claim that he, quote, doesn't have a dog in this fight, because it turns out that his firm was paid almost $400,000 by the prosecution for this testimony and that sounds like a pretty expensive dog to me. Alessi then asked Welcher to do some calculations to figure out how much force it would take to break or fracture a bone in John's hand. Now Alessi and Welcher, they went back and forth for a long time about this, again almost painful, but in the end Welcher went back and forth for a long time about this, again, almost

painful, but in the end, Welcher admitted that if John's hand had hit a specific part of the car, like the exhaust pipe, the license plate cover, or even the corner of the taillight, he said that it's possible that enough force could be generated to fracture the hand. Alessi and Welcher also argued if it were reasonable or possible for Karen's car to have either hit one of those parked cars at 34 Fairview or have driven up the lawn during this alleged backup maneuver. And again after a lot of squabbling Welcher eventually said it was possible but he couldn't say for sure without knowing where the car started when doing that backup maneuver.

Then the questioning turned to John's arm injuries. Well, Turr again said that his blue pain experiments were done at a much lower speed than the car was actually moving. And he admitted that he doesn't know several variables that could be important, like the exact speed of the car at the time of the collision, John's exact position on the road, John's posture, and where John was relative to the car. Now, on the subject of John's position, Alessi did make a good point that I hadn't thought about until he brought it up. Welcher said that John's body was found about 7 feet into the yard at 34 Fairview, while

Karen's car was obviously on the road. And the height difference between the road and the lawn, meaning, you know, the height of the curb that would separate the two, it's about four inches. And Welcher didn't account for that when he did the injury reenactments because he was hit while he was still standing on the road flush with the car. Also, under Welcher's theory, John's arm would have to maintain some contact with the moving car for some time to create those big cuts, but he admitted that he doesn't have enough information to figure out exactly

how long that contact would be. Now as for the injuries to John's head, Alessi took issue with Welcher's direct testimony that head injuries are the most common injuries in pedestrian collisions. Apparently, the study that Welcher used to make that claim was published 45 years ago in 1979. And to give some context to where that falls in the history of car safety, that's actually well before seatbelts were even required by law. And according to Alessi, more modern studies show that now, with improved safety, injuries to the lower extremities are actually the most

common injuries in pedestrian collisions, and we know John didn't have any of those. Then cross-examination continued into Thursday, after Judge Canone ruled that the defense cannot question Dr. Welcher about findings from Dr. Scordi Bello or Trooper Joseph Paul, even though Welcher referenced both of those people in his PowerPoint presentation. Now like I said, Cross on Wednesday was hard to listen to. Cross on Thursday might have been even worse. We had a little informal survey going on in the livestream chat about the craziest cross examinations of this trial.

The choices I gave were Jen McCabe, Yuri Bukinic, Shannon Burgess, and Judge Shin Welcher. And on Wednesday, Burgess had the most votes by far. But by the end of the day Thursday, almost everyone had changed their vote to Welcher being, you know, the craziest, cringiest cross. At one point, even Alessi lost his cool, and he's usually very even-tempered. Alessi said something like, Judge, he keeps saying I'm doing something with my hand. I'm not doing anything with my hand. Make him stop. It was really bad, honestly. They sounded like two preteens arguing.

And I say this as a fan of Alessi. It was really hard to watch on both sides, in my opinion. So anyway, what actually happened in the cross? Well, Walsh admitted that the Ring camera that he analyzed at John's house in October of 2024 and used for his testing, that camera he said was different than the ring camera that actually filmed the contact between Karen and John's car in January 2022. And Walsh admitted that one camera was angled slightly more to the right than the other, but he argued that his laser grid system was able to account for that difference. But he also admitted that he

didn't actually measure the difference specifically between the two cameras, nor did he even know the make and model of either camera to be able to really compare them. Alessi also asked about the hydraulic suspension system on Karen's Lexus, specifically the distance between the body of the car and the ground. Alessi argued that that distance can vary by as much as five inches on this particular model of Lexus, so he asked Welcher what suspension height was used during the blue paint testing. And Welcher didn't know and eventually admitted that he just assumed it was the same height it was when the car was with the police department.

Now, after that painful cross-examination, the prosecution played a final interview clip from Karen's ID docu-series. I'm going to read the entire quote because I think it's important. This is essentially the final words that the prosecution is leaving with the jury before their closing statements. In the clip, Karen says quote, So I thought, could I run him over? Did he try to get me as I was leaving and I didn't know it? I've always got my music blasting. It's snowing, I've got the wipers going, the heater blasting. Did he come and hit the back of my car and I hit him in the knee and he was drunk and passed out and fixated or something? And then when I hired David Unetti, I asked him those

questions. The night of January 29th, like, David, what if, I don't know, what if I ran over his foot? What if I clipped him in the knee and he passed out or went to care for himself and threw up and passed out? And David said, yeah, then you would have some element of culpability. End quote. Then after that clip, we got the all-important announcement that we were all waiting for. The Commonwealth has rested their case. After six long weeks, 38 witnesses, over 100 pieces of evidence, and who knows how many of those interview clips, the prosecution is done, except for their closing statement of course, and if they bring back rebuttal witnesses.

So what do we think of the prosecution's case overall? In my opinion, I don't think they did a great job of proving the second degree murder charge. I think they have very little evidence that if a collision did occur, it was intentional. Now they did try to introduce some motive by arguing that Karen could have been jealous, you know, showing those text messages of Karen asking John if he was seeing someone else, but overall I think very little to show murder, and I do expect the jury to vote not guilty on murder. Then that other charge that's very rarely mentioned, that's the leaving the scene of a collision resulting in death charge, I also don't think that was very well proven because to find her guilty of that, the jury would have to find that Karen knew Jong was injured or killed at the time of this collision,

and knowingly chose not to help him. And I don't think we saw too much evidence of that. Again, if a collision did occur, I don't think there's much evidence that Karen knew about it at the time. Now on the other hand, manslaughter, I think it's a totally different story. I know there's a large group of people who think that the prosecution has nothing and they're expecting, you know, a quick not guilty verdict for manslaughter. And I actually don't agree. I might be in the minority here, but I do think the prosecution has presented a decent case for manslaughter. Now I'm not saying that I personally believe she did it

or that the jury should find her guilty. I don't think that at all actually. But what I'm saying is that I think there's a case here and I think it could go either way, guilty or not guilty. But I certainly don't think that the deliberation will be quick or a landslide. I think the jury's going to have a lot to consider here and I think it's gonna come down to these fine details. How they weigh the credibility of Aperture versus Arca. How they weigh say that tail light evidence against the sketchiness of Proctor. How they weigh an investigative statement like could I have hit him? How do you weigh that against a declarative statement like I hit him, I hit him, I hit him. I think all of those things are going to come into play and I think it's going to be close.

Then the defense officially kicked off their case on Friday the 30th and they opened with a motion outside of the jury's presence for a required finding of not guilty on the charges of second degree murder and leaving the scene of a collision resulting in death. And they mentioned some of the same elements that I just talked about, particularly that the Commonwealth didn't seem to show any intent from Karen's part to cause John's death. Now, saying a required finding of not guilty does sound pretty dramatic, but it's actually pretty common for defenses to do, especially in these high stakes murder cases, and they do it after the prosecution rests, and they do it also knowing that it'll

probably be denied, but it keeps the door open for and they do it also knowing that it'll probably be denied, but it keeps the door open for an appeal later down the road. Now of course this was denied, but it was pretty cool to hear Alan Jackson argue why the charges should be dropped because it was kind of like a preview to the points that we can expect to hear during the defense's case and closing arguments. After the motion was denied, the defense called their very first witness Matthew DeSogra, who works for the accident reconstruction firm Delta V. Now just like Shannon Burgess and Judson Welcher, DeSogra is primarily being called for the

purpose of establishing when Karen's car did that backup maneuver and how that time compares to when John's phone was last used. And the defense was clever about this. They didn't have De Sogra really do any of his own testing or measurements or anything, but they actually had him review reports from Bergus and Welcher and point out some holes in them. And I say that's clever because this way they don't have to actually show that De Sogra's measurements or methods or analysis are any better than apertures

because he's using their own data. He's taking the prosecution's own reports and saying here's what your experts didn't get right about them. Now to really boil down to Sogra's testimony, he took data from both of Burgess's two reports as well as Walsh's slides and he compared or displayed every possible scenario that they came up with. Now, what do I mean by every possible scenario? Well, Aputure did the clock syncing between the Lexus and John's phone in two different ways. They did it by looking at phone call logs and also data from a three-point turn.

And then there's also this issue of the time difference between point turn. And then there's also this issue of the time difference between pushing the button to start the car and when the infotainment center in the car actually powers up. And there's some debate over what that delay is and how it should be accounted for when syncing the two clocks. So basically what De Soaker did was list out every possible combination of clock syncing values that you could possibly get from either doing the phone call log method or the three-point turn method and then either considering or not considering this key-on delay. And by doing that, de Sogra ends up with 30 possible values for the time difference between these two clocks. And he argued that basically all of the 30 are equally valid. There's no scientific reason to think that one or some of these 30 are any more likely to have occurred

than any others. Now, assuming that John's phone was last used at 12 32 a.m. and nine seconds, it turns out that 25 of these 30 possible values would mean that John's phone was last used after Karen's backup maneuver. Two of the possible values would mean that John's phone was last used at the same time as Karen's backup maneuver and only three of the 30 possible values, 10%, would mean that John's phone was last used before Karen's backup maneuver. Now remember, this is based off Aperture's own data. The prosecution's own reports show that 25 of the 30 possible values would mean that John's phone continued to be used after Karen's car backed up.

And the last point on direct is that De Sogra said that there was no evidence of Karen's car being in any sort of collision on the night of the incident. No evidence on the airbag control module and no evidence in the text stream data. Now I do want to say throughout my recaps I've tried to steer clear of commenting on the judge too much, but even I've got to say she was not making it easy for the defense here. There were like 25, maybe even 30 objections that were sustained just during the first direct examination. And sometimes an objection

would come and be sustained before Jackson could really even get his question out. And then on Cross we definitely got to see a different side of Brennan from the prosecution. Remember, Brennan spent most of his career as a defense attorney, so cross is probably where he has the most experience, and we definitely get to see his feisty side, shall we say. He first got De Sogra to admit that he's not saying that Karen's car never got into a collision on the night of the incident, he's just saying that none of the tech stream data events were triggered by a collision. And Asogra also admitted that he's not an expert in mobile forensics, nor did he conduct

any independent testing in this case. We know he just analyzed and critiqued reports from others. And then Brennan takes Asogra down several paths about different assumptions that he might have made when doing the analysis. Like for example, what if he incorrectly assumed that some of the phone call logs used for the syncing were between the Lexus call system and an iPhone instead of between just two iPhones. And the conclusion here is that yes, if there were incorrect assumptions made, or if there were errors in the dataset, the dataset that was made by the prosecution experts,

by the way, then yes, then some of the 30 variance values should be excluded from that list of possibilities. But it doesn't change the overall conclusion that the vast majority of these possible clock sync values do show John's phone being used after the backup maneuver. Now despite what the prosecution established during Cross, I do want to point something out about De Sogra that I think could make his testimony go far in the minds of the jury. Something that's completely separate from credibility, separate from how many degrees someone has, all that stuff.

And that's understandability. Now, I think that compared to Welcher and Burgess, De Sogra's testimony was much more digestible to a non-expert, to a regular person on the jury. His slides were cleaner, his answers were shorter and more straightforward, and I do think the defense had a good way of asking questions in a way that, you know, there was a line of logic to follow. And I think that understandability, digestibility, things like that, those are really powerful tools in a case that's this complicated. I think even if you lean towards the prosecution, even if you don't like what De Sogra has to say, if you can say it in a way that makes sense, that's clean, that's straightforward, I think that can go far. Then at the end of the day we heard brief arguments from the lawyers outside of the jury's presence about whether Michael Proctor's friend should be called as a witness so that the defense can introduce into evidence those text messages

that Proctor sent to his friends about the case without actually calling Proctor himself. But we don't know the judge's ruling on this issue quite yet. Now the defense is set to continue first thing on Monday morning. And remember, the defense is only expected for their case to last about a week or two. And that's actually not uncommon, and it doesn't mean that the defense doesn't have a strong case. For example, Casey Anthony's team

only had about six days of testimony for the defense compared to 18 days during the prosecution, and we know how that worked out. Not to say that Casey and Karen are the same in any way, but it just drives home the point that a long case doesn't necessarily mean a good one. But anyway, all of this means that we're quickly approaching the end, but there's still a lot of questions to be answered. Like will the judge allow him these text messages from Proctor's friend? And if not, will the defense be forced to call Proctor himself? What about Brian Higgins?

Brian Albert? Still a lot to come, and I can't wait to see you guys next week to break it all down. Thanks, Annie. Guys, I just love when Elena joins because she is so well spoken and she just breaks it down like, so clearly, right? So that's where we're at this week. Next week is going to continue with the defense putting on their case. We will see what other witnesses they call and let me know what you guys think. Let me know in the Spotify section on Q&A or in the Apple section, in the review section or on YouTube in the comments.

All right, guys, I'll be back with you next week and I have a brand new deep dive coming for you Monday. It's a wild one. It's a name that I never thought I was going to be uttering again, but here I am. I'm talking about it. And when I just say the audacity of this woman, it is, I don't even want to say unhinged or unbalanced. It is like, I don't know, diabolical, but in a whole sense of unhinged.

And that makes no sense, right? It's like an unhinged diabolical sandwich, but that is who I believe this woman to be. So we are gonna be back talking about her in a very big way on Monday. Stay tuned for that. All right, guys, thank you so much for tuning in. And until the next one, be nice, don't kill people,

don't use any blue paint during your reenactment and i don't know don't go to waterfall girl definitely don't do that just stay away from all of them as air on the side of caution all right guys bye Thanks for watching!