Taking over the helm of NBC Nightly News, a 75 -year -old broadcast, it's a great responsibility.
Good evening, I'm Tom Yamas.
You have to go out there to bring people at home closer to the story.
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Evenings on NBC. Hey everyone, it's Jenna Bush Hager from Today with Jenna and Friends, reminding you to check out my podcast, Open Book with Jenna.
In this week's episode, I sit down with Adriana Trigiani and Isaac Fitzgerald.
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I ran over to him and his eyes were swollen shut.
He had blood dripping out of his nose.
I didn't know what the hell, what the hell happened.
The wait is over, a verdict in the gripping, grueling Karen Reed murder trial.
John O 'Keefe was a good man, Boston police officer.
She got drunk, she hit him, she left him to die.
John O 'Keefe was not hit by a car.
Their investigator was corrupted from the start.
The narrative was that I just became enraged and decided to nail him in the snow.
Was she to blame? What really happened that stormy night?
People love a conspiracy.
What do you want to say to anyone who believes that you framed Karen Reid?
It did not happen. Karen Reid is a warrior.
Many women relate to her.
Johnny was lost in this process.
We never got the opportunity to grieve his loss.
Now, the jury has decided.
Mr. Foreman, members of the jury, have you agreed upon a verdict?
Yes. Two different stories about that night, two dramatic trials, and one stunning ending.
I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.
Here's Andrea Canning with Center of the Storm.
Karen Reid! Reid! It's a case that transfixed the nation.
She said, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.
There was no collision with John O 'Keefe.
There was no collision.
A story of love and death and the search for justice at its heart, Karen Reid.
I felt like I was living in a nightmare.
How did her boyfriend, a beloved Boston police officer, end up dead in the snow?
No. Johnny is where the focus should be and not on the defendant.
It should be about the fact that Johnny died.
Did she kill him? We're here to get justice for John.
Or was she set up? Did you frame Karen Reid?
Absolutely not. A disgraced former investigator speaks out.
People see those text messages and they instantly jump to a conclusion about you.
I could see how people make that leap.
Three years, two trials.
Thank you, Your Honor.
And a verdict. On murder in the second degree, what say you?
Sure, that's fine. We began covering this case more than two years ago.
That's when my colleague, Dennis Murphy, sat down with Karen Reed.
The story she told of one awful night in January 2022 launched a drama that endures.
A Nor 'easter was blowing into town.
Karen joined her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O 'Keefe, for drinks at a bar in Canton, Massachusetts around 8 .30.
That's her greeting John on security video.
We were happy, having fun, laughing, just very normal.
So there comes a point where you're out of that place, huh?
Yeah, we left after about 90 minutes.
And crossed the street to another bar.
There they are joining friends.
friends. We walk in and it's, oh, hey, over here.
How's it going? And you walk around and say hi to everyone.
The vibes, as we used to say in the old days, were good?
The vibes were good.
Yes. Yeah, the vibes were good.
And you're there for how long do you think?
Till midnight, just after midnight, till it closed.
That's John leaving with a glass in hand.
He and Karen had been invited to an after party at the home of another Boston police officer, Brian Albert.
He'd been at the bar with them we're going to brian albert's house brian albert yeah which i'd never been to you're driving i'm driving what are you driving what's your vehicle i have a lexus lx which is the full size truck right yes yep how were you doing with drink at that point yeah it had several you probably but i felt fine i mean i felt like i had had a couple drinks but i i you didn't say i'm legless here this is no i didn't feel impaired so you get to this headdress we get to the house it didn't look like it was busting at the seams with people I'm still on the street and I have the passenger
side facing the driveway and said John can you just run in there and like you know can we make sure we're we're welcome here and it's somewhere we want to be he said yeah I'll be right back and he got out of the car goes to the front door the house yes I see him go to the door and start to cross the threshold.
And I looked down at my phone, and in a matter of seconds, I look up, and he's not there.
And then I waited for him to reemerge, which I assumed was going to be in moments, or that he'd yelled to me from the front door, Kay, it's good, come on in.
Yeah, come on in. But that never happened.
He didn't come back.
And it pissed me off.
Because one, I didn't really want to be there.
Two, I had to go to the bathroom.
But where is he? Yeah.
What happens next? I left. You're in your car.
Will you say, I'm out of here?
No, I kind of slow rolled it off the street.
And I'm hoping that as I slowly edge my way down the street, he's going to say, wait, Karen, where are you going?
Okay, so there you are.
You're headed home.
Yeah, I went home. I was home within probably seven minutes.
Home was John's place.
And what do you do?
I laid on the couch and I just called him.
I called him just over 50 times.
50 times? Yep. Yep.
And they would just go into voicemail.
It's getting very early in the morning at this point.
Yeah, I fell asleep.
When I woke up after four, I knew something was wrong.
She began calling John's friends and got a hold of Jen McCabe, Brian Elbert's sister -in -law.
Jen was at the after party.
And I said, Jen, where is John?
And she said, I don't know what's going on.
I said, he didn't come home.
And she said, let me hang up with you and call my sister.
This is Brian Albert's wife, the homeowner of the property where I last saw John.
And she calls me back in a few minutes and she says, I talked to Nicole.
She said, you guys never came in.
She said what? She said, you guys never came in.
Your John never came in the door?
Yep. Okay, so you're hearing the Twilight Zone music at this point.
Yeah. Like, what the hell happened?
So she said, why don't you come get me, and we'll go searching for him.
In the meantime, I called another friend of John's, and she picked up.
And I said, her name's Carrie.
I said, I don't know where John is, and I can't find him, and I'm worried.
And she hung up with me and started calling around.
She called the police.
My name is Carrie. Karen says she drove to Jen's house, picked her up, and together they went back to John's to make sure he hadn't returned.
That's the two of them at about 5 .30 a .m. on Ring Video.
Carrie Roberts joined them.
But John wasn't home, so the women got into Carrie's car with Karen in the back seat and drove to the Elberts.
6 a .m., blizzard conditions.
In the dark, they crept toward the house.
and we turn a corner and i see him immediately i see his body immediately it was it was wind swept the lawn and there was just a heat and this is on the front lawn of the after -party house yep on the perimeter i couldn't see his face or his hair but i knew it was him and he's a big guy he's 6 '2 220.
do you run out of the vehicle and start screaming i said there There he is.
So I jump out, out of the passenger side, and I fell on the street.
And I ran over to him, and his eyes were swollen shut.
He had blood dripping out of his nose.
Was he alive? He seemed like he could be.
I'm only out there for a minute or two, and then Kerry runs over.
And then Kerry and I take turns between mouth -to -mouth resuscitation and chest compressions.
9 -1 -1, what's your emergency?
Jen McCabe called 9 -1 -1.
I need someone to come immediately.
What's going on? There's a guy, unresponsive, in the snow.
This dashcam video from one of the first responders' vehicles shows Karen running back and forth, clearly agitated.
John was rushed to the hospital.
I actually texted my father and I said, I think John's dead.
And he called me and I said, Dad, I don't want to hear this.
want to be alive. Like I, I don't want to live.
And I didn't know what the hell, what the hell happened.
How did, how did the night end up like this?
Karen was also taken to the hospital that morning.
And I am put under a psychiatric watch. And then eventually just before noon, my, my father comes into the room that I'm in.
And I said, dad, how's, how is he?
And he said, he's gone.
gone. John's gone, Karen.
And it just collapsed on the floor.
A 16 -year veteran of the Boston Police Department dead.
In the months ahead, his family would ask one question.
Thinking about Johnny is no longer here.
How does this happen?
Karen Reed's defense team had a theory.
To John's family, to anyone who calls this a crazy conspiracy, what do you say to them?
There's nothing crazy Did you crack the taillight to make it look a certain way?
Absolutely not. All that would matter, really, was what 12 people believed about that night.
About what one woman did or didn't do.
For the defendant, it was a show for her lawyers and it was a show for her family.
we now know the name of the boston police officer whose body was found outside the awful news was spreading that winter morning in 2022 police officer john o 'keefe was dead investigators may find out how one of their own died johnny to his family and friends only 46 years old his body discovered lying in front of another officer's house it made no sense we didn't know I didn't know if he had, you know, passed out in the snow.
And, you know, at that point, we didn't know what had happened.
Beth is part of John's extended family.
She didn't want her last name used.
It's like that's not possible.
It's not. It was unfathomable.
I couldn't even think that this could potentially be happening.
How did you hear about John's death?
I got a call from Johnny's brother.
brother, he told me, he said, we lost John.
I kind of knew, I knew what he meant, but I didn't really know what he meant.
You know, I didn't want to know what he meant.
Tom Hubbard and John had been best friends since first grade.
You obviously thought very highly of John.
I mean, being friends with him for that long.
Yeah, so he was just a great, great guy and, you know, a great friend when we were six.
He was a great friend when we were 46, so.
You also say that he really connected people.
He kept everyone together.
Yes, he would text me, you around all the time, you know, go have a beer, go get something to eat.
And, you know, I think it's very easy as you get older that people don't kind of take those, but he always, always did.
John always knew what he wanted to do with his life.
I don't remember a time where he didn't want to be a police officer.
He was set on, he wanted to be a police officer.
That's all he cared about.
And a big part of being a police officer, of course, is helping people.
Yeah. The way he operated his life was he always kind of put other people first. When tragedy struck, that's exactly what John did.
In 2013, his 39 -year -old sister Kristen learned she had brain cancer.
Kristen was diagnosed in May of 2013 and passed away Veterans Day.
of 2013. Oh my goodness, so fast. So fast. It was just a few months and Johnny spent a lot of time at the hospital with her.
Two months later, another death.
This one almost incomprehensible.
Kristen's husband had a heart attack.
How does your family deal with that?
Two deaths so close together.
It was, uh, it was a lot.
It was a lot. And just the shock of the two of them passing so So quickly, both under 40, and then it was, you know, after the shock wore off, it was...
The children. The children.
What are we going to do?
The young couple left behind a six -year -old girl and a boy almost three.
So John stepped up.
He took a desk job at the police department and moved from Boston into his sister's house in Canton to raise his niece and nephew.
It's the beginning of like a TV drama, right?
Exactly. The bachelor takes in the kids.
Yes. Yep. A life juggling work and kids.
They called him JJ.
The last bit's a little sticky.
Yeah. So then we take marshmallow, right?
He was up for anything.
Maybe we can use the...
TikTok challenges, silly dances, and ninja warrior gyms. He was the fun uncle.
You know, he was always making jokes and trying to make the time really fun for them.
In 2020, when the pandemic struck, John reconnected with an old girlfriend, Karen.
They'd briefly dated in their 20s.
This time, it felt right.
I found him to be a very different person, but in a very interesting way.
There was more depth there after what he had been through.
Karen had been through her own challenges, including a diagnosis of MS. Like John, she'd never married.
she worked as an equity analyst and taught college courses in finance as an adjunct professor how did the kids take to karen they you know they liked her they liked her a lot but all that ended on a cold january morning john's family went to the hospital and identified his body that's when they heard karen who was there under that psychiatric watch she was screaming down the the hallway, you know, is he dead?
Is he dead? Screaming.
Screaming. Erratic to the point that they sectioned her, you know, because she was threatening to harm herself.
The O 'Keeffe's left, went to John's house to tell the kids, by then 14 and 11.
And then Karen arrived.
That's her on the Ring video.
She'd been released from the hospital into her parents' care and wanted to see the children.
I wasn't there, but I do know that she had sat with the kids for, you know, for a short time.
And then she and her father went upstairs to the bedroom, gathered a bunch of her belongings, and then Karen walked out the door with her father and her brother.
So she just left? She just left. Never said goodbye.
And at that point, it had been almost 2 years that she had been in their lives.
What did the kids think as she just disappears?
peers. The kids at that point were so, um, lost. The whole family was.
They couldn't figure out how John ended up dead on a lawn.
And Karen seemed to be acting strangely.
Beth's sister, Erin, later told investigators about a troubling call she'd had with Karen after Karen left the O 'Keeffe home.
And what Karen said to her was, we'll probably never see each other again.
And, you know, Aaron said to her, what do you mean we're friends?
And, you know, she didn't really have an answer to that.
So it started to feel like something had happened.
But what? The Massachusetts State Police opened an investigation.
And they began to develop an unsettling theory that Karen might be responsible for John's death.
The only word that can come to mind is just complete shock.
You're just sitting there thinking, is this real life?
dateline true crime weekly andrea canning and the dateline team cover breaking crime news around the country and now a special series with daily updates from the trial of sean combs i'll be talking to nbc news correspondent chloe malas every day after court about what she's seeing inside the witnesses the evidence and what it all means dateline true crime weekly listen now Now, wherever you get your podcasts.
For almost a decade, gospel music and the sermons of Pastor Roy Whited made the Sunday morning service sore.
He was a good preacher.
You know, he had the way with the word. In the first week of May 2024, something happened that seemed almost impossible to believe.
The 64 -year -old pastor vanished for White County Sheriff Steve Page.
Roy's case is personal.
Me and Roy are friends.
Sheriff Page says he will not rest until he finds Roy.
I believe somebody knows something.
They just haven't come forward yet.
Maybe you could be the key to solving his case.
Dateline Missing in America.
Available wherever you get your podcasts.
Listen now. Karen Reed's meeting with the O 'Keeffs took place only hours after John had been declared dead she remembers it differently than the family she'd been alarmed by the mood at the house I felt some tension with John's mother she seemed to be keeping her distance and it felt uncomfortable she wasn't really addressing me and she did not seem to want the kids near me Karen says that's why she left and went straight to her parents' house.
Later that afternoon, the lead investigator, Massachusetts State Trooper Michael Proctor, arrived with a colleague to talk about what happened the night before.
The questioning was very brief.
I wasn't asked about what happened at that house, nothing about where did he go, did he enter in, how did I come to find him, who did I call.
It was how much did I have to drink and could you have done a three -point turn.
and before they left, they took my phone and they asked for my car keys.
The troopers took her SUV and Karen called a lawyer, Boston attorney David Yannetti.
She sounded young to me.
My first thought was this is a teenager, I'm going to have to talk to the parents.
But then as she started to tell me the situation she was in, I was thinking that, you know, she's probably going to need some help.
He was right. Two days later, 7 .30 p .m., police swarmed Karen's house.
There was a good eight to ten cops.
They went all around my house, shining lights in, and started banging on the doors.
And then they all just flooded my house.
She was charged with John's death, three crimes, manslaughter, negligent motor vehicle homicide, and leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death.
Karen spent the night in jail.
The nightmare had begun.
Nathan Reed is Karen's brother.
Someone was going to pay a cost for John losing his life.
And so was I surprised that there were charges?
No, I wasn't surprised.
The next morning, minutes before her arraignment, Karen met her lawyer in person for the first time.
And David had one copy of the charging documents, and he held them through the bars, and we read them together.
And there are a few things in there that stood out right away to me that worried me.
At the arraignment, Prosecutor Adam Lally laid out a damning case.
The prosecutor said troopers noticed something when they impounded Karen's SUV.
The rear right passenger side taillight was shattered, pieces missing from the red and clear areas.
And at the scene, investigators found plastic taillight pieces on the lawn where John's body was discovered.
Also consistent with the broken taillights on the Lexus SUV.
The state's theory of the case was simple.
John and Karen arrived at the party house following a night of heavy drinking.
John got out of the car.
She backed into him, then drove off, leaving John lying there, badly injured.
Approximately six bloodied lacerations varying in length on his right arm.
The cuts extending from his forearm to his bicep.
Both of the victim's eyes were swollen shut in black and blue.
Approximately two inch laceration to the back of his head.
Initial reports indicated John died from blunt -force trauma to the back of the head and hypothermia.
Karen pleaded not guilty and was released on bail.
So, family's reaction to the arrest and finding out that there's been an arrest of Karen Reed.
Relief. If she did this, she's going to be held responsible for it.
And at this point, we didn't think that it was necessarily on purpose.
We just know something happened, she hit him, and she left. It's hard to imagine that any family would have to go through something like this.
Yes. You know, Johnny died on Saturday, and then Karen is arrested on Tuesday night, and they're at court on Wednesday.
There is zero time to grieve.
Days after the arraignment, John O 'Keefe was laid to rest. The line to get into the church was probably about a half a mile down the street.
Says so much about John.
It does. It does. And then, the procession to the graveside was long.
You know, we took a route through Braintree, where Johnny grew up, and then made our way to the grave. Very hard to say goodbye.
Very hard. Karen wasn't at the funeral.
She knew she was in a world of trouble.
Her attorney was already building his case.
Maybe somebody else had a motive, and maybe somebody else would have caused the death of John O 'Keefe.
It wasn't looking good for Karen Reed.
She was facing prison time for manslaughter.
Then, her lawyer got a tip that would change the trajectory of her case, that John had been beaten by people at the party house, including Brian Albert.
Karen says when she found John in the snow, it didn't occur to her that he could have been beaten.
I had seen John, and he was bloodied in the face, and he had cuts that were bleeding on his face.
And his eyes were purple, but I didn't know when I saw him that he looked like he got beaten up.
I mean, I was just focused on trying to revive him.
The tipster would eventually deny to police any knowledge of what happened at the party house, but the story became the beginnings of a defense.
We were off and running.
Yeah, we were off and running.
But the case against Karen Reed was about to take another big turn.
The state had convened a grand jury and heard from John's niece and nephew that Karen and John argued frequently and that John wanted to end the relationship.
ship. The prosecutor also presented toxicology evidence indicating Karen was drunk when she allegedly backed into John.
In June 2022, she was arrested again on upgraded charges including manslaughter while driving under the influence and second -degree murder.
The news was an earthquake for John's family.
She did this on purpose, is the accusation.
This just kind of took it to a whole whole different level, and that was just unimaginable.
Is the anger building?
It is. It is, because it didn't have to happen.
Karen insisted it didn't happen at all.
The narrative was that I just became enraged and decided to nail him in the snow.
She wanted a fresh take on the facts, so she reached out to a high -powered criminal defense attorney out of L .A.
named Alan Jackson.
Jackson. She had not held out complete hope that I would make contact with her, but in point of fact, I was very interested.
Alan Jackson joined David Yannetti on Karen's team.
You come in as an outsider into this tight -knit community.
Do you tread lightly?
Yeah, I don't know how to tread lightly.
I tread toward the truth, period.
And if that ruffles feathers, so be it.
If that pisses people off, so be it.
Get over it. Jackson did a deep dive into the digital data.
And in early Early 2023, he struck gold on a cell phone that belonged to Jen McCabe.
Jen was one of almost a dozen people at the party that night.
She turned her cell over to police in the initial days of the investigation.
A Google search on that cell, made early morning, got Jackson's attention.
At 2 .27, she did a search saying Haas long to die in cold, presumably how long to die in cold.
Right. This is well before John's body has been found.
Correct. Jackson believed the Google search undermined what Jen told investigators.
That she didn't know John was missing until Karen called her around 5 a .m. It's hard to oversell this.
It's that dramatic.
What's more, Jackson said they found the search in a deleted file on Jen's cell.
She willingly turned it in, too.
That tells me she...
She thought that it was gone?
It was clean. 100%.
But at the heart of the case, the right taillight on Karen's SUV.
The state said it shattered when Karen hit John around 12 .30 a .m. The defense said it was cracked hours later, but not shattered, when Karen went out looking for John.
Karen told Dennis Murphy there it was on ring camera video.
In backing up, did you bang into his car?
Yeah, I did. Yep. Did you feel it?
Did you hear it? Yeah, I felt a little, um, and I...
On your back right?
On my passenger back right, yep.
Okay, so this is obviously not Karen Reid's SUV, but this is similar, similar taillight.
So what do you think happened?
Similar size. This is a different make and model, but it's similar size and similar situation for the taillight.
You can pound on this all day long, and you're not going to be able to break this with your hand, with your fist. You'll break your hand before you'll break this.
But it wasn't just that the taillights seemed unbreakable.
The defense also concluded John's injuries were not consistent with a car accident.
You cannot ignore the plethora of evidence that establishes that John was not struck by a car and left to die at 12 .31 a .m. or 12 .34 a .m. And the only other reasonable way for him to have been killed and suffer those injuries is for him to suffer a beating inside that house.
The defense team concluded that people at the party, all connected to law enforcement in some way, conspired to cover up the beating and frame Karen for John's death.
Karen's father, Bill, and brother, Nathan.
There's just too many things here that don't add up.
You need a handful of powerful, influential individuals in key positions to get this done.
A conspiracy? The Elberts, along with other partygoers and the O 'Keeffe family, called that theory crazy.
It's hard to keep a secret of that magnitude.
It's hard to keep any secret, let alone, you know, No, if it was one person, that would be one thing.
But the way we're looking at this conspiracy, it is everyone in the house.
So it's just, you know, sometimes the truth is just the truth.
But the conspiracy theory caught hold.
And before long, people were turning out in droves to support Karen Reid, joining a crusade spearheaded by this man.
We ain't got no quit.
We ain't got no quit.
No, we don't. Good afternoon, Your Honor.
Karen's team quickly got down to business, pushing its conspiracy theory at her pre -trial hearings.
John O 'Keefe was inside the house.
The prosecution was just as quick to fight back.
There's absolutely no evidence Mr. O 'Keefe ever entered the residence at Fairview.
That's when the case exploded out of the courtroom and into the social media feeds of thousands, thanks to this guy.
What's up, losers? How's everyone doing tonight?
Aiden Kearney, a .k .a.
Turtle Boy. All right, guys, so, big day today.
He's a former high school teacher turned blogger, part reporter, part showman, part instigator.
We ain't got no quit.
We ain't got no quit.
No, we don't. He told NBC10 Boston that he stumbled onto Karen's story in April 2023.
It wasn't getting much coverage.
And then I was just blown away that night when I read all the court documents and I just couldn't believe, is this really happening?
He posted immediately, and he's been at it ever since, amplifying the defense theory like a relentless human bullhorn.
To frame an innocent woman and cover up for the murder murder of a Boston police officer.
Sue O 'Connell is a commentator for NBC10 Boston.
The social media on this case was off the charts, including, you know, of course, the main player who seemed to be Turtle Boy.
There's never been, I think, a situation like this in the greater Boston or New England area where you have Turtle Boy, Aiden Kearney, who is a blogger who doesn't operate by any regular standards of what you would call journalism.
Copkillers! That's what they are!
They're copkillers!
Before long, Turtle Boy created his own series about the case called Canton Cover -Up, racking up tens of thousands of views, holding nothing back, portraying Karen Reid as the real victim.
What we know for sure, 100%, was she did not run him over.
A local murder story went national.
Why do you think this story, this case has grabbed the attention of so many people?
I think all the questions to this are what make it really intriguing.
Is it a romance that went wrong?
Is it a night of partying that went wrong?
Or did something else happen?
So we're here to make our voices heard and the movement has grown as a result of that.
And that's not all that grew.
A defense fund for Karen Reed, fueled by Turtle Boy's crusade, raised almost half a million dollars.
The O 'Keeffe's watched the growing frenzy with horror and they became targets themselves.
Reviled on social media by Turtle Boy and his supporters, often forced to run a gauntlet when they went to court.
His followers have got into all of our faces prior to, for hearings.
We would have to walk through these people screaming at us.
We have all been called idiots and stupid for not believing her conspiracy theory.
Turtle Boy called the family maggots.
Yes. You are a disgrace to your brother, dude.
A disgrace. I've never heard of a criminal case where the victim's family is harassed both online but on their way to court.
Johnny is where the focus should be, and not on the blogger and not on the defendant.
It should be about the fact that Johnny died.
Shame on you! Shame on you!
Regardless of what you think happened, the fact that these parents and siblings and friends and family of John O 'Keefe were not embraced, in a way, borders on criminal.
The O 'Keefes believed Karen and her lawyers were in on the act.
John's brother, he's essentially accusing you of producing, in his words, the Karen Reid show.
That's a joke. And when you have nothing else to say about the evidence, you just attack the person who's presenting the evidence.
Did you bring Turtle Boy into all of this?
Absolutely not. If they didn't bring him in, they certainly helped him along.
Karen admits she and Turtle Boy spoke on the phone 189 times in the year leading up to the trial.
It was almost every day for like 20 minutes.
Like, what do you make of this?
Or what do you think?
We'd talk about after court.
Oh my God, I can't believe the judge said this.
In late 2023, prosecutors charged Turtle Boy with multiple counts of witness intimidation.
He pleaded not guilty.
As the Karen Reid trial approached, the judge ordered demonstrators to stay 200 feet from the courthouse.
That didn't dent their enthusiasm.
We just can't let, you know, roll over and let them just do this to an innocent person.
It's the biggest cover -up, I think, that we've ever seen in this country.
Karen, do you think you're going to get a fair trial?
Finally, April 2024, the trial was set to begin with a prosecutor determined to prove Karen's guilt.
She said, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.
I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and I hope you'll join us for season four of Dateline Missing in America.
In each episode of Dateline's award -winning series, We will focus on one missing persons case and hear from the families, the friends and the investigators all desperate to find them.
You will want to listen closely.
Maybe you could help investigators solve a mystery.
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It had been more than two years since John O 'Keefe was found dying in the snow.
His girlfriend, Karen Reed, was about to stand trial for his murder.
How anxious were all of you with this trial starting?
So intense. It's so intense.
It's the wanting to get it done with, to be able to just grieve Johnny in private.
You know, not in front of everybody.
And everybody, it seemed, was there in April 2024 at the Norfolk County Courthouse for day one of testimony.
Good morning. Prosecutor Adam Lally opened with his long -held theory that Karen Reed was amped up on alcohol and anger and intentionally backed her SUV into John O 'Keefe, leaving him to die in the bitter cold.
The defendant, Karen Reed, is guilty of murder in the second degree.
He said the seeds for this crime were planted weeks earlier.
John and Karen had been arguing about their failing relationship.
She'd also been flirting with another man.
Defendant responded, you're hot.
I responded, are you serious or messing with me?
Defendant responded, no, I'm serious.
I responded, failing is mutual?
Is that bad? He was ATF agent Brian Higgins.
The defendant kissed me.
And how did she kiss you?
Not like a friend. He says Karen is the one who initiated contact with him.
Yep, Karen is definitely pursuing him, and there was definitely a plan in Karen's texting that they would have some relationship, and I might guess an off -ramp from her relationship with John O 'Keefe.
A state police investigator testified that in the hours leading to his death, John and Karen were fighting over text.
Ms. Reed says, you start a number of fights from your end.
John writes back, I've explained it a few times already, not doing it again.
And how does the defender respond to that?
So you're not into this anymore.
And then John says, not into fighting all the time, correct.
Correct. Then the prosecutor turned to that January night.
Brian Elbert testified to having drinks with friends, including John and Karen, at the Waterfall Bar before inviting everyone back to his place.
John never came into my house that night.
He would have been welcomed, and the defendant would have been welcomed with open arms had they come in, and I wish they had.
I really do. Former Massachusetts prosecutor Catherine Loftus followed the story but wasn't involved in the case.
The people in the house said, John never came in the house.
Karen never came in the house.
They were outside in a vehicle where the witnesses say that they saw the vehicle was close to where John O 'Keefe's body was found.
One of those witnesses was Jen McCabe.
She described the dramatic call from Karen hours after the party broke up.
She tells me that John didn't come home, they got into a fight, and that she left him at the waterfall.
Jen McCabe had to remind her, no, you were actually in front of the house, but then you left. and I say Karen we saw you outside of my sisters and what was her response she told me that she didn't remember going there and yet she testified it was Karen who insisted on going back to the Alberts in the middle of a blizzard to look for John it was Karen who found his body beneath a mound of snow and it was Karen who shouted the unthinkable as paramedics tried to save him something Something that she said once or more than once?
Three times. I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.
And as for Jen's misspelled how long to die in the cold Google search, the prosecutor anticipated the defense would bring it up, so he asked her about it.
She adamantly denied she did the Google search at 2 .27 a .m. and deleted it, insisting she did it after they found John's body and only because Karen asked her to.
At that point, she grabbed my hands and she said, Google hypothermia, Google how long it takes to die in the cold.
I believe I did it multiple times because as I was typing it, I don't know what else was coming up.
She was screaming. My hands were shaking.
A data expert had a simple explanation for the time discrepancy.
The timestamp reflected the time Jen first opened her browser tab, not when later searches were done.
The timestamp is not updated.
The prosecutor kept mining the digital and physical evidence investigators collected in the case.
So this is 10 seconds of data.
This trooper focused on the data from Karen's SUV to show she hit him.
So it's going straight, it stops, I think it's placed in reverse, and then goes back.
The prosecution took data from the black box that they say shows that Karen backed up a number of feet.
So the vehicle was traveling in reverse up to 24 miles per hour.
And then there was the taillight.
Trooper Michael Proctor, the lead investigator who would become a lightning rod, took the stand.
The right rear taillight had large pieces missing from it.
Those are all items that you recovered from the front lawn area, is that correct?
Correct. Essentially the condition that they were in when you recovered them on those respective days?
Yes. Medical specialists testified these marks on John's arm showed how the broken taillight would have ripped his skin.
Make no mistake, said the prosecutor, this was a crime committed when Karen rammed her SUV into John after a night of heavy drinking.
She retrieves a drink from the table and appears to consume it.
Bar security videos showed Karen drinking vodka sodas earlier that evening.
The video shows nine drinks being consumed by the defendant.
At the hospital, after John's body was found, her alcohol level was just over the legal limit for driving.
This is the retrograde extrapolation report that I did.
A state toxicologist extrapolated that data and calculated that Karen's blood alcohol level must have been three times higher when she hit John.
The result was a 0 .292 grand percent.
The prosecutor argued that as Karen left the scene in a rage, she continued venting in a series of voicemails.
With the court's permission, if I could play that for the jury.
Yes. John, I f***ing hate you!
We only heard Karen Reid's voice in the courtroom a couple of times.
We hear these loud, screaming, chaotic, frantic, vulgar, angry voicemails of Karen's that she left for John.
Nobody knows what the f*** you are, you f***ing pervert.
These voicemails from Karen were intense.
She used a lot of profanity.
You could see the jurors, I saw the jurors, some of them looking at Karen.
You're a f***ing loser.
F*** yourself. And it was really a startling and stark experience for them.
The prosecution rested.
It was the defense's turn to stun the jury.
Karen's lawyers had their case to present with a different theory.
a different cast of villains.
You were looking for naked photographs of Miss Reed as you sat in your office at 9 .44 p .m. A few weeks into her trial, as Karen Reed drove to court with her attorneys, the sheer number of prosecution witnesses appeared to be taking its toll.
I swear this is like, you do start to think, they're really trying to bleed me dry here.
What is the point of all these witnesses?
In court, David Yannetti said the case wasn't just about John O 'Keefe or Karen.
It was about overzealous prosecutors, corrupt investigators, and people at the party house with a lot to hide.
Karen Reed was framed.
Her car never struck John O 'Keefe.
She did not cause his death.
And that means that somebody else did.
On cross, Alan Jackson asked the Commonwealth's crash investigator why he was so certain Karen hit John.
If his arm, elbow took the brunt of that entire impact, how do you account for the fact that he didn't suffer a broken bone?
I don't know. He got hit in the arm and somehow got spun around, just the arm, by the way, and spins his entire body around, 217 -pound man, and launches him that way.
It made no sense. Responding to another of Karen's attorneys, even the state's own medical examiner couldn't say what exactly caused the gash in the back of John's head.
It could be any blunt object.
It could also be the result of being struck with a large object such as a baseball bat or a barbell.
It's possible. And independent experts in crash reconstruction testified about John's injuries.
The fact that we only have that head injury is inconsistent, in this case, with being struck by that that tail light.
So was the tail light damage consistent or inconsistent with striking an arm?
It's inconsistent for a number of reasons.
But the defense still had a problem.
Three times. I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.
Multiple witnesses said that they heard Karen say, I hit him.
Totally false. 100 % false.
Karen didn't take the stand to explain herself.
This is what she told Dennis Murphy.
I said, could I have hit him?
Did I hit him? How could that have been?
I mean, you dropped him off at the house.
I don't know what else could have been.
I thought, did he somehow try to flag me down and maybe trip?
and I ran over his foot and then he passed out drunk.
I mean, I didn't think I hit him, hit him.
You're a f***ing loser.
F*** yourself. As for those angry voicemails, the defense argued Karen left them because John had abandoned her in the car.
John, I f***ing hate you.
Then there was what happened at the bar earlier that night.
ATF agent Brian Higgins was there.
Even though Karen had been flirting with him, she snubbed him.
Jackson implied that was a motive to hurt John.
It bothered you enough to send her a text that said, um, with six M's behind it.
Okay. And his text to her was, well, um, as in, what about me?
What about us? What about us?
Where do I fit in all this?
When they all went to the party, Jackson insisted John went into the house too.
The defense's digital forensics expert said John's iPhone health data showed he was using stairs inside.
This indicates three sets of floors.
That represents elevation change, so it doesn't indicate to us up or down.
That was contrary to a prosecution expert who said that data showed John was in Karen's car on a hilly stretch of road.
Jackson suggested those inside the house attacked John, maybe including Brian Elbert.
a former Marine. Did you have any training in hand -to -hand combat?
Yes. The defense attorney tried to pin him down.
Obviously, any detective would be trained in techniques that culprits might use or suspects might use to cover up crimes to thwart investigations, correct?
No. Ever been trained in the fact that, I don't know, somebody might want to clean up the blood at a scene?
No. Then a defense expert in emergency trauma testified John's arm had been mauled by an animal.
Possibly a large dog.
There's parallel lines.
And those were inflicted by either teeth or claw marks.
At the time of John's death, the Elberts owned a German shepherd mix named Chloe.
The defense said that was covered up.
Your family got rid of Chloe.
Chloe was rehomed in May, 2024.
We can use whatever words we want to.
Rehomed, rehoused, whatever.
But you got rid of her.
She's no longer part of the Albert family, right?
Right. Jackson argued there was more evidence of a cover -up.
Albert and Higgins called each other around 2 a .m. Albert said they were butt dials.
Why was there a 2 .22 a .m. call between Brian Albert and Brian Higgins?
Why, five minutes later, was Jen McCabe Google -searching how long it takes to die in the cold?
Why was all this happening?
That is all evidence of a massive cover -up.
To John's family, to anyone who calls this a crazy conspiracy.
What do you say to them?
There's nothing crazy about it, and conspiracies simply mean agreements.
There were agreements to hide evidence, to obscure evidence, that were all brought out during this course of the trial.
But the defense saved its greatest firepower for Trooper Michael Proctor.
This case involves a Boston cop whose family you were actually connected to, correct?
Loosely. Jackson took aim at the state's key evidence, the taillight, arguing it was corrupted by the lead investigator.
He suggested Proctor could have smashed the taillight and planted the pieces at the scene.
Well, who had access to the taillight?
Michael Proctor. Who had access to the scene?
Michael Proctor. Proctor denied manipulating evidence to frame Karen Reed.
Trooper Proctor, you don't get to pick a suspect and then try to find evidence to support your choice, right?
Correct. But in this case, it's exactly what you did, isn't it?
Absolutely not. The most explosive moments in the trial came as Jackson nailed Proctor on text messages he'd sent about Karen soon after his investigation began.
What did you write after you talked about going through the, quote, retarded client's phone?
No nudes so far. No nudes so far, correct?
Correct. You were looking for naked photographs of Ms. Reid on a Wednesday night as you sat in your office at 9 .44 p .m.?
It was an inappropriate joke.
Do you believe that your text messages were reflective of an objective investigator?
I believe poor jokes have, in unprofessional language, have no bearing on the integrity and the facts and physical evidence of this case.
Jackson read Proctor's harshest texts, like this one.
Hopefully she kills herself.
yourself. You believed, Truper Proctor, that your life would be much easier if Karen Reed was just dead, didn't you?
No, no, no. Like I said, it was a figure of speech. My emotions got the best of me based on, you know, the fact that Ms. Reed hit Mr. O 'Keefe with her vehicle and left him to die on the side of the road.
She's a bitch. Is that right?
Yes. A whack workman.
Correct? Yes. No ass.
Correct? Yes. Would you agree, Trooper Proctor, that you have dehumanized Karen Reed during the course of your investigation?
I'd say based off that language, yes.
Why out of the gate does he have this animosity for Karen Reed?
Why did he go so hard at Karen?
The more emphasis that's on her, the less emphasis is on the homeowner.
Could you see how the jury was reacting hearing those messages that Proctor sent?
For me, watching the jury, it was probably the most compelling days where the visible disgust on many of the jurors' faces was completely apparent.
After eight weeks, the case was in the hands of the jurors.
They were out for days.
Then, a stunning announcement.
They could not reach a verdict.
verdict. Your service is complete.
I'm declaring a mistrial in this case.
For Karen, the mistrial meant more time, months to plan a new strategy for a new day in court.
We will not stop fighting.
We have no quit. For others like Michael Proctor, the battle was just beginning.
Did you crack the taillight to make it look a certain way?
Absolutely not. lot.
For almost a decade, gospel music and the sermons of Pastor Roy Whitehead made the Sunday morning service soar.
He was a good preacher.
You know, he had the way with the word. In the first week of May 2024, something happened that seemed almost impossible to believe.
The 64 -year -old pastor vanished.
For White County Sheriff Steve Page, Roy's case is personal.
Me and Roy are friends.
Sheriff Page says he will not rest until he finds Roy.
I believe somebody knows something.
They just haven't come forward yet.
Maybe you could be the key to solving his case.
Dateline Missing in America.
Available wherever you get your podcasts.
Listen now. Karen Reed would get another shot at clearing her name.
But for lead investigator Michael Proctor, there was no do -over.
Immediately after the mistrial, he was fired.
His wife, Elizabeth.
Within two hours, a major from the state police called Mike when we were both here and said, you need to turn in your badge, you need to turn in your gun.
Within two hours. Within two hours.
Despite the defense portraying her husband as the villain in this case, she says that characterization is unfair.
Who is Michael Proctor to you?
He is my best friend.
He's an incredible father.
He's loyal. He's a hard worker.
And it's so frustrating as his wife to see that he's painted one way and who I know him as and his family and his friends know him as is the complete opposite.
She says her family has received death threats and ominous voicemails about kidnapping their dogs and their children.
These last two, two plus years have been a nightmare for our family.
Was there a moment where you had to say to him, is there something to this?
Is there something you need to tell me?
Never. No, never. It never would have crossed my mind that he would do anything unethical with his job because I know how much he does the right thing and how much he cared about this job and cared about getting justice for Officer John O 'Keefe.
Elizabeth admits she was caught off guard by her husband's text messages.
He talked to her about them before he testified.
So did he sit you down one night and say, there's something I need to tell you?
He didn't tell me the extent of what was said in the text messages because he didn't remember the specific details of it.
But he did say, there's some really embarrassing text messages that I have to read.
And I said, okay, well, own it.
And when he was reading them, it was, you know...
very uncomfortable.
And I understand why it was shocking for everybody to hear that.
You're his wife. How did it feel for you to hear?
I know what he said was immature, stupid, juvenile.
So I wasn't deeply offended by his words.
But it's still, you know, I would be lying if I wasn't mad.
We've had many conversations since then and it's he's incredibly remorseful but you know i'm not making excuses for his behavior because it's it's inexcusable the language that was used it's one thing to be juvenile and say things to your buddies when he's saying these things about her and he's the investigator you know that side of it looks really bad yeah yeah yeah i absolutely can understand the the public viewing it that way and at the end of the day you know it was the evidence pointed to her not his his bias.
Did Michael ever ask for your forgiveness for what he did?
Absolutely. He did, you know, when he came home from when he testified and even over, you know, this last year he has because he saw what the text message, the text messages have done to our entire family.
Michael Proctor agreed to answer questions in the family's backyard. With everything that's happened, and what is the most important thing to you that you want people to know out of all of this?
I guess for people to know is that those text messages, as juvenile as they are, it's not me as a person.
I vented after being involved in an investigation of a police officer and used words that I regret.
Right. People see those text messages and they instantly jump to a conclusion about you that you must be biased, you must be a bad person, and I'm sure many other names.
Yeah, yeah. I could see how people make that leap because that's all they know about me.
They don't know who I am.
They don't know the kind of person that I am.
They just see those text messages and they immediately just assume I'm a bad person.
What do you want to say to anyone who believes the narrative, the defense's narrative that you are corrupt, that you framed Karen Reid?
I laugh because it's such a ridiculous accusation.
There's not one piece of evidence or fact to support that because it did not happen.
I would never do something like that.
Alan Jackson, instead of arguing the facts and data, he's creating this Hollywood tale calling me the boogeyman saying I was running around town playing evidence and conspiring with witnesses.
did you crack the taillight to make it look a certain way absolutely not did you frame karen reed absolutely not proctor believes he should not have been fired for those text messages he points out they were found on his personal phone obtained from his iCloud account he is fighting to get reinstated as a Massachusetts state trooper why do you believe you should get get your job back in 12 years I've never had a single complaint I've never been the subject of any disciplinary actions all my employee evaluations are either outstanding or excellent and I still love the job I still want to be a trooper
and I'm fighting for it you know I'm going through the appeals process now and to anyone who thinks you should not get your job back because of this I would say what's in your phone what's in your private phone your personal phone private conversations.
Have you ever had a moment of a pull -ups, a judgment where you're just airing stuff out on your personal phone?
You have an expectation of privacy in that little device.
He says even though these past few years have been tough for him and his family, he knows it's been far worse for the O 'Keeffe's.
No one's kind of been struggling more, I imagine, and then the O 'Keeffe family losing a loved one, you know, a son, a brother, a father figure.
And the O 'Keeffe struggle would continue as they waited for the next trial.
No matter what we have to deal with, justice for Johnny.
Meanwhile, Karen Reed wasn't going anywhere.
Neither were her supporters.
Some are directly giving Karen a gift certificate to buy a certain suit, designer suit, that they want her to have it for herself.
As Karen Reed's second trial approached, the fallout from the first one continued to ripple through the community.
Ryan Albert had taken an early retirement from the Boston Police Department.
His reputation tarnished, with some still questioning whether he played a role in John's death.
No, I think that's a very loud but small group of people who are forwarding this idea of him being a suspicious character.
But at the same time, there's nothing, no direct evidence that ties him to anything that could have possibly happened to John O 'Keefe.
It's difficult to take this sort of off your reputation, you know, who you are, anywhere you go, that anyone specifically locally is going to know who you are, what was alleged.
And so I think it's difficult to underestimate the impact that this case has had on some of the civilian witnesses' lives.
Turtle Boy still faces witness intimidation charges.
Six of them were dismissed, so I still have a handful left. As for Karen Reed, her hefty legal bills kept growing.
Attorney Jackson asserted that, you know, her legal bills just for her attorneys was someplace close to $5 million.
dollars. She sold her house and encouraged her supporters to keep fundraising.
And this time, the Free Karen Reid movement got innovative.
What they do is, you know, raffle off, you know, private dinners with Alan Jackson and Karen Reid, sort of inviting somebody into sort of the intimate, you know, conversations that they're having.
There's a lot of people who want to engage in that and therefore donate money to the raffles.
And so she has a legal defense fund that is is just over a million dollars now.
It is not normal for a defense attorney to fundraise with a client in a celebrity sort of way.
Alan Jackson cooks for the small group of people for these high -money donors.
And some are directly giving Karen not just money for her defense fund, but a gift certificate to buy a certain suit, designer suit, that they want her to have it for herself, not just to pay for the you know the the defense team Karen didn't let up on her media campaign continuing to push her side of the story talking to Vanity Fair Boston 25 News I've seen the more information the public has the more they they understand what we already know and appearing in a docu -series that aired on ID I don't think anyone with any logic would think I I killed John on purpose by hitting him.
John O 'Keefe's family found it hard to watch. They would have preferred to hear Karen tell her story in the courtroom.
It's okay for TV, not for the courtroom.
Exactly. Her firsthand account.
Exactly. I think that's also a big part of the defense is let's get a narrative out there, you know, and see what we can do and see who grabs hold of it.
We wanted to do our talking in the courtroom.
And we wanted the evidence.
And we wanted the witnesses to tell the story of what happened that night.
As the prosecution prepared for the next trial, John's family was ready.
And the family is 100 % on board with that.
We are indeed. You know, again, no matter what we have to deal with, justice for Johnny.
What would you say to Karen Reed?
I just wish you would admit what you did.
Through your eyes, she has put your family through hell.
She has put my family through hell.
She has put other people's families through hell to save herself.
Take accountability and do the right thing.
For trial number two, Karen Reed still faced charges of second -degree murder, manslaughter, and leaving the scene of an accident.
Most people believe that Karen Reid was overcharged with murder, and here we are again, second trial, overcharged with murder.
This time, a special prosecutor was brought in to lead the team.
Hank Brennan is a former prosecutor turned defense attorney who defended infamous crime boss Whitey Bulger.
I think that he was able to come in, look at what happened during trial number one, look at the evidence in the case, and really reevaluated.
How are we going to try this case?
Don't get into the defense theory.
Don't call anybody that is unnecessary to the case.
Nine months passed.
Another explosive trial was about to get underway.
And this time it would be different.
New evidence from Karen's car.
There was a SD card or a micro SD card that was on the circuit boards of one of the modules that was never looked at.
And new information from John's phone.
The phone battery temperature drops, drops, drops precipitously throughout the night.
My opinion is that the device never moved far away from the flagpole.
The phone never went in the house.
You ready for the second round, Karen?
From the outset, Karen Reed's second trial looked different from the first. Gone was the carnival -like atmosphere outside court.
There was a buffer zone that was ordered by Judge Canone.
Even wider than the one in place a year earlier.
People were not allowed to have shirts on or signs or gather in any way around the courthouses.
It really brought a level of gravitas to the trial that it should have had, I think, from the beginning, that this was a murder trial.
New rules applied inside court as well.
Reporters and bloggers competed for seats through a lottery system, sidelining outspoken figures like Turtle Boy.
So I haven't been able to get in the courtroom as much, and so that's why you haven't seen me.
Also missing from the action, previous high -profile witnesses, Brian Higgins, Ryan Elbert, and Michael Proctor.
Thank you, Your Honor.
Special Prosecutor Hank Brennan would not be putting them on the stand.
A tactical shift in the Commonwealth's case.
From, I think, Attorney Brennan's perspective, if the defense wants to, you know, call Brian Albert, if they want to call Michael Proctor, if they want to question individuals inside the House, they can do that, but they're not necessary to my case.
And you're going to hear from our own lips of many of our statements, her admissions to extraordinary intoxications, her admissions to driving the arrest. but her admissions to being angry at Dawn that night.
He played clips from that docuseries that aired on i -D.
I have had a few cocktails.
I didn't black out.
John and I argue the morning of the 28th, Friday morning.
And this one from her Dateline interview.
I didn't think I'd hit him, hit him, but could I have clicked him?
But the heart of his case lay in new evidence, recovered from Karen's SUV and John's cell phone.
How close is the phone to their flagpole?
I believe very close.
The prosecution's cell phone expert used a unique way to track John's movements after the couple arrived at the house.
His iPhone battery temperature.
There's a temperature sensor built inside the phone within the battery.
He testified John's iPhone battery was 77 degrees when he and Karen were in the SUV.
Then the battery temperature dropped.
What the Commonwealth wants you to take from the battery temperature is that you can almost see when he gets out of the vehicle in the phone battery temperature drops, drops, drops precipitously throughout the night.
The battery temperature data never indicates that the device went from a cold environment to a warm environment.
My opinion is that the device never moved far away from the flagpole.
So really what the point of that testimony is to show that the phone never went in the house, right?
That it was in the front lawn, that it was on John O 'Keefe, that he never went anyplace else but that front lawn.
A digital analyst for the prosecution testified he made a critical discovery in Karen Reed's Lexus.
I discovered that there was a SD card or a micro SD card that was on the circuit boards of one of the modules that was never looked at.
The prosecutor said that tiny card yielded a massive clue about the timing of the crime.
When the vehicle is powered on, this clock starts to run.
By comparing the clocks on the Lexus and John's iPhone, the analyst deduced the time he believed Karen hit John.
The time of that event with the clock variance adjusted is between 12 .32 .04 and 12 .32 .12.
There was real strength to what he evaluated on that SD card, and it really enhanced the credibility of the Commonwealth's argument.
Good morning, Your Honor.
Good morning, sir. Then the prosecution's key witness took the stand.
I'm an accident reconstructionist and biomechanical engineer.
Using an animation he created from the SUV's black box, he detailed the moment Karen allegedly struck John.
There was her Lexus arriving to the party house.
So that's the vehicle, the Lexus pulling forward. And then it accelerated in reverse.
The prosecution's theory was the same as in the first trial.
Karen kept her foot on the gas, accelerating to about 24 miles per hour when she hit John.
The vehicle is going backwards approximately 23 .9 miles per hour.
The prosecution experts said hitting John at nearly 24 miles per hour was more than enough speed to break the taillight.
Have you reached an opinion whether the defendant's Lexus struck Mr. John O 'Keefe on January 29, 2022, around 12 .32 a .m.?
Yes. Based on the totality of the evidence, I mean, with a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, that is what happened.
What's more, he used 3D laser scans to show Karen could not have broken the taillight when her Lexus bumped John's car about five hours later.
What we know is that when it first came to a stop, stop right before that.
It was going about 0 .7 miles per hour.
He said that was too slow to break the taillight.
In any of the videos that you have that show Mr. O 'Keefe's vehicle after the defendant's Lexus touches it, do you ever see any remnants or shards or fragments of Are you aware of taillight on the ground?
I do not. To explain John's arm injuries, he went low -tech. Blue paint on a replica Lexus.
And then I have backed up sideways, side -shuffled into the Lexus with my arm out.
Basically where someone of Mr. O 'Keefe's height's arm would contact the rear taillight.
If the Commonwealth is saying this is what happened, It does help to see a real visual, physical representation of it.
I show the paint transfer onto my arm.
The approximate location of the taillight lines up with the approximate location of the lacerations.
This time around, the prosecution made a bigger deal out of what John was wearing.
Brennan said John's hoodie had holes in the right sleeve caused by the jagged edges of the broken taillight.
And a state crime lab analyst examined fragments that came from his clothing.
One clear piece of plastic, as well as several pieces of red plastic.
She determined they matched Karen's taillight.
It ultimately, really from my perspective, does come down to the physical evidence.
It does come down to the microscopic pieces in his sweater that were discovered.
The prosecutor argued the pieces could only have ended up there if Karen had smashed her SUV into John, likely in a jealous fury.
He replayed her angry voicemails.
Jen McCabe said infidelity was very much on Karen's mind when they later searched for John.
And at that point, she had asked if John could be cheating on her.
I didn't know what the hell she was talking about.
She said her shock was quickly overshadowed by what came next, Karen's reaction after finding John's body.
Jen repeated her testimony from the first trial.
The prosecutor rested the Commonwealth's case, and the defense was ready to attack all of it.
Did the vehicle control history record whether there was any history of a collision on that car, ever?
No. As the marathon trial shifted to the defense, more of Karen's supporters gathered to cheer her on.
I think the video speaks for itself.
Reporters scrambled to get her daily take on the proceedings.
How are you feeling after today?
I feel very good, thank you.
How are you feeling today Karen?
I feel great. I feel great.
How do you feel about the defense case so far?
I feel strong. There was no collision with John O 'Keefe.
Karen's team finally was telling its story to a second jury, that she was framed for murder and hounded by a corrupt investigator.
This case carries a malignancy, one that has spread through the investigation, it's spread through the prosecution from the very start, from the jump.
A cancer that cannot be cut out, a cancer that cannot be cured.
And that cancer has a name.
His name is Michael Proctor.
But the defense would not be calling Proctor to the stand.
Instead, it would introduce his infamous text through other witnesses.
It would also present its own scientists, testing, and data to prove Karen's innocence.
since. We are kind of back to an old -fashioned trial where we are seeing the defense just trying to bring enough reasonable doubt in every single pillar to hope the jury finds not guilty on all the counts.
The team called a new medical expert to the stand.
A forensic pathologist said John's head injury did not indicate a fall to the ground, as the prosecution claimed.
If you fell back on on grass, you would tend to see, you might see grass in the wound, or you would tend to see an irregular kind of crisscross pattern of the flattened grass.
And that's not what we have here on Mr. O 'Keefe.
The defense didn't call Brian Albert or Brian Higgins, but did nod to the conspiracy theory that John was likely beaten inside the Albert home and attacked by their dog.
Good afternoon and welcome back, Dr. Russell.
The defense asked this dog bite expert of her opinion on what caused those marks had changed since the first trial.
It hadn't. They were inflicted as a result of a dog attack.
And through either the action of the dog or the decedent pulling away, the teeth made these abrasions.
The defense also rolled out a parade of crash experts.
I practice in the field of accident reconstruction.
The first testified that data on the newly discovered SD car didn't prove the timing of a collision.
And he said there was no data showing Karen's SUV even hit John.
Is there a data recorder on the SUV 570 that's designed to record impact?
Yes. Did the vehicle control history record whether there was any history of a collision on that car?
Ever? No. This is the lift gate taillight assembly.
This expert conducted tests using a Lexus like Karen's and a dummy dressed in clothing exactly like John's.
What were you trying to find out?
What happens when you impact an arm with a Lexus taillight at various speeds?
So you're looking at a top -down drone video with the Lexus here on the left that will accelerate in reverse up to 24 miles an hour.
He testified, at 24 miles per hour, the dummy's arm broke the exterior plastic of the taillight, but not the underlying layer, the way it was broken on Karen's SUV.
There is a very small crack right here in the underlying diffuser, but all of the remaining part of the diffuser, in terms of this portion here and here, are all intact, and same with this portion of it.
What the defense did here, I think, is took a warts and all, scientific experiment and said, sure, taillight could have been cracked at this speed.
But in order for it to be broken to the amount that the Commonwealth alleges, it would have been going faster than Karen Reed's vehicle traveled.
Based upon the test results, it's inconsistent with striking an arm.
After seven weeks of trial testimony, the defense's final expert witness took the stand.
I do biomechanics, so I look at injury causation.
He said if Karen Reed's Lexus had struck John O 'Keefe at 24 miles per hour, more damage would be evident in John's arm X -rays and autopsy photos.
Would you expect to see bruising, at least bruising, all over the arm at the points of contact?
Absolutely. Did you see any trauma on John O 'Keefe's arm that was suggestive of an impact of that nature, of that size, of that force?
There was no trauma, there were no fractures, there was nothing at the alleged point of contact which would indicate an impact that produces thousands of pounds of force on the arm.
No evidence of it whatsoever.
He testified the 36 scratches on John's arm should have caused a corresponding number of holes in John's hoodie.
How many defects were noted by the crime lab in Mr. O 'Keefe's right sleeve?
Nine defects. In your opinion, were any of the injuries that you saw suffered by John O 'Keefe consistent with having been struck by the subject Lexus?
No, they are not. On cross, Prosecutor Brennan attacked the expert for ignoring what was found in the snow on that freezing January day.
Do you know how this taillight light shard got there?
That wasn't part of my analysis.
did you do any analysis how these broken taillight shards got into mr o 'keefe's clothes no i did not mr o 'keefe's hat did you consider how that hat ended up on the ground in front of 34th fairview no sir do you add a little bit of common sense in the equation when you're considering the evidence it's considering all of the evidence right you look at the physics it It tells you what it is.
I mean, if you don't like it and you don't think it fits, well, sorry, it is what it is.
That's the science.
It was time for closing arguments.
Then the case would be in the jurors' hands.
Karen, once again at their mercy.
You had said before you have butterflies at this stage.
Are you feeling those?
Yeah. for seven weeks jurors watched a battle of titans top tier attorneys arguing over how john o 'keefe died that evidence now each side had a final shot to persuade the jury what can we expect to hear all the facts all the truth the defense went first there is no evidence that John was hit by a car.
None. How much more reasonable doubt could there be?
Jackson attacked the police investigation, especially lead investigator Michael Proctor.
This case was corrupted from the start, and most fatally, it was corrupted by a lead investigator whose misconduct infected every single part of this case from the top to the bottom.
The prosecution was quick to counter by focusing on the data, saying everything else was a distraction.
We know exactly step by step where they were.
We know in that window she hits him because he never moves again.
Brennan insisted her actions added up to second -degree murder, that it didn't matter if Karen wanted to kill John.
All that mattered was that she knew her actions could be deadly.
She doesn't even have to know she hit him.
But she did. She did.
And she left a man who was kind and generous and thoughtful.
She left him alone.
She left him alone to die.
Finally, after 49 witnesses and theatrics inside and outside the courtroom.
You may retire and deliberate your verdict.
The case went to the jury.
Stand to the side, please.
While jurors deliberated, the crowds outside grew.
I'm here to support Karen and her entire family.
I mean, it's been hell the last three and a half years, watching this poor family be tortured.
The victim here is John, and he's being forgotten about.
And I think that justice needs to be served for John.
Then, on the fourth day of deliberations, a verdict.
Karen Reed would finally learn her fate.
Murder in the second degree.
What say you? Is the defendant of the bar guilty or not guilty?
Not guilty. Operating under the influence of liquor?
by operating a motor vehicle with a blood alcohol level of .08 or greater.
So say you, Mr. Foreman?
Guilty. Leaving the scene after accident resulting in death, defendant not guilty or guilty?
Not guilty. So say you, Mr. Foreman?
Not guilty of murder, only guilty of operating under the influence, the least serious charge.
The judge sentenced her to one -year probation and a mandatory driver alcohol education program.
Three and a half years after John O 'Keefe died, Karen Reed walked out of court a free woman, she and her team giving the love sign to a mob of adoring fans, jubilant over the jury's decision.
I could not be standing here without these amazing supporters who have supported me and my team financially and more importantly emotionally.
No one has fought harder for justice for John O 'Keefe than I have. Beth, a member of John's extended family, was outraged by that claim.
The defendant did not fight for justice for Johnny.
She and her family have not fought for anything except for Karen Reid.
It was not what you were looking for.
It was definitely not what I was looking for.
You know, it's been three years that we've been hopeful and patient and trusting the process.
And, you know, to hear the verdict was heartbreaking.
Does it make you mad, sad?
You know, at first there's grief, then it's anger.
It's anger that outside sources, outside people can influence what happens in a courtroom and can impact the results of a pretty cut -and -dry case.
One good thing you told me about this is that you can finally have this chapter of all of this behind you.
A positive is Johnny can be at peace and the family and friends can grieve.
And you have each other.
It's very true. Homeowner Brian Elbert and others accused of trying to frame Karen Reed released a statement.
Today, we mourn with John's family and lament the cruel reality that this prosecution was infected by lies and conspiracy theories spread by Karen Reed, her defense team, and some in the media.
I'm happy. I'm happy.
Karen isn't finished with the justice system.
John's family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against her.
So then we take marshmallow, right?
So now, John's family and friends hold on to memories and think about what might have been.
He should be with his family.
Yep. You know, he loved his family.
He loved his friends.
Johnny just loved being there and being a role model.
Do you ever go to his grave?
I don't, yeah. I guess what I do there is between me and him.
How much do you miss him?
You kind of go your whole life and you hope you make a couple good friends, and he was one of them, and he was one in a million, And, yeah, I miss him.
There isn't anybody that new Johnny O 'Keefe that doesn't feel his loss.
That's all for now.
I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.
