Hi, crime junkies. Happy Friday.
Are you surprised to hear from me today?
Well, if you haven't heard yet, we recently had a very special announcement.
Over on Serious XM's app, we launched their very first ever True Crime Channel crime junkie radio.
It's your ultimate destination for 24-7 true crime.
But that's not all. We are also launching a brand new show called Crime Junkie AF, where each month I'll be bringing on a special guest to explore the latest headline cases with me that I cannot stop thinking about.
We've actually released our very first episode today, but I wanted to make sure that you guys didn't miss it.
And I wanted to make sure you knew what to expect every month here after.
So I'm dropping this first episode in our feed.
It is an episode with special guest who you guys know, Delia D'Embra, and her and I get to talk about something that is going on in True Crime right now that is one of the most wild cases I have come across in years.
I'm telling you, it is a doozy of a story.
And if you like this show, if you like the format, please head over to the Serious XM app and follow Crime Junkie AF so you don't miss this brand new show.
Brand new episodes are going to be dropping at the end of every single month.
And of course, I'm not going to leave my crime junkies hanging.
There's actually a promo code link in the show notes of this episode that will give you 90 days free access to Serious XM's app.
So make sure you use that code and I'll see you over there in the app.
But first, enjoy this episode.
Hi, everyone. I'm Ashley Flowers and welcome to my new show on Serious XM made by a crime junkie Ashley Flowers for people who are crime junkie AF.
My plan is to come here every month and share with you the cases you have to know about.
You have to be able to talk about beyond the click baity headlines but like really get into.
And I don't want to do that alone.
It's more than just storytelling.
I want to have conversations with other people, people who are experts in their field, journalists, different forensic experts, people who are actually connected to these cases.
So I know I'm probably should do like a bigger intro since it's the first show, but I'm just dying to get into the case that we're talking about today.
So my first guest, if you are a crime junkie, you know her, you love her.
Ms. Delia D'Ambra. Hi, I'm so excited to be here.
This is so awesome. I don't like you to do crime junkie stuff as much as I know.
I know. It's so fun to focus on this.
I am jazzed. For people who don't know you, we have been working together for five, six years.
Yeah. Oh my gosh. But a minute, Delia is one of the most tenacious investigative journalists I have ever met in my life.
She hosts the limited series Counter Clock, which is an investigative series.
You are currently working on season seven, but a season six is about to come out.
I know. Yeah, you know me.
I'm like, it's like making a movie.
I'm like years ahead. Yeah.
You also host park predators.
You had a new show come out with us, Dark arenas.
So you are very well known in the podcast field, very well known in the journals and field.
And you and I, because we've known each other a long time, I texted you as soon as I asked to come on.
And we get to play my favorite game with you, which is conspiracy or incompetence because every time you and I get in a case together, I'm like, it goes all the way to the top.
Yeah. And you're always like, they probably just don't know what they're doing.
I mean, I always want to be on the side of like, hey, you can't just like say the most like wild thing, but at the same time, like some of these cases, and this case that you, that we were going to talk about today, it is that it is the sense of like, does it go this far like this so deep?
And so that's definitely something that I'm like, I've had way too many redheads.
And before you knew we were coming here, did you know this case?
I did not know it like intimately, but the headline, like the headline, like I had remembered.
So this case happened in January, late January, 2022, which for those of you that don't know, you and I were having children, like literally birthing children at that time.
So postpartum, like I remember in those weeks after, you know, when when my son is sleeping, like hours a day, right?
And there's nothing to do.
I remember just kind of like peeking into the real world.
I mean, like what's happening?
And this headline was one that stood out probably on Twitter or probably on X or something like that.
And I just remember being like, what?
That seems really like wonky.
So I didn't have like anything, but like truly this year headline, which is really interesting.
And the headline is breaking news.
Karen Reed. Reed. Karen Reed is her name.
Charged with murder of January 2022 death for boyfriend, Boston police officer, John O'Keefe.
So Karen Reed, this woman in Boston, is accused of killing her boyfriend, John O'Keefe, who was a Boston police officer.
And it's interesting when you're talking about the headlines, because actually one of the first things that I read when I was really diving into this was a piece that was written by one of John O'Keefe's friends.
And it was all about the family's perception of this because this case has really grown beyond just what are the facts or the fact that she's going to trial.
It is taken on a life of its own.
The conspiracy theories are wild in this case.
And the thing she said is she said this has become about Karen and it is about Karen.
She's the one who's a child, but she said John has gotten lost in all of this.
Her friend has gotten lost and people are forgetting the real family that is behind this tragedy.
And they do believe that Karen's responsible.
They think the right person is going to trial.
And whether I agree with that or not, one of the things I took away from the article is this woman said everyone reads the headline.
Maybe they read a little bit beyond that.
But very few people actually have read the court documents and can speak to it that way and are forming their own opinions.
And so that's what I wanted to do coming into this is thanks to the Boston Globe, they actually have been the ones who have been going out requesting so many of these records, these court proceedings, these filings, these motions.
And they've made all of that available online.
So everything we're going to talk about today doesn't come from a flashy headline.
It comes directly from these very long, very legal court documents, but I want to try to put it all in a way that people understand.
Yeah, because the people that know this case, the absolute best at this point are the ones that have crafted these documents.
And so really like that is key to a case like this where there's so much going on.
Because like you said, there is so much that sort of polluted the space around this story and this headline.
So these documents are really the people who have been putting their heart and soul into this case for so long.
So I think that's where you get that level of credibility that is good.
And it's interesting because you get the narrative piece by piece.
Every filing, every document, you get one more thing that you can file away like, oh, this fills in that gap or oh, this contradicts that.
So I want to give you kind of an overview of the case itself or at least what the prosecution originally put forward in their like statement of the case.
So this all started in the very end of January 2022.
This is in Canton, Massachusetts, which is right outside of Boston.
And at the center of our story is John O'Keefe, the victim and his girlfriend Karen Reed.
That night they go out to a bar.
They're drinking. They're together.
They go to another bar called the waterfall.
And that's where they meet up with some of John's acquaintances.
It seems like he knows one woman there, this woman named Jennifer McCabe.
And he knows Jennifer's husband, Matthew, and maybe one or two other people there.
Karen has only met these people like a handful of times.
Everyone's drinking. Even who's there that night, even the court documents say this in the like initial statement of filing that is happy.
No one's fighting. Everyone's having a good time.
The bars start to close down.
This is around midnight or everyone decides to go, but they're not ready to call it a night.
One of the people there, this man named Brian Albert, who is also with the, he's a police officer himself.
He heads up like a pretty big unit.
And he's like, you know what?
Everyone come back to my house.
It was his son's birthday or was about to be his birthday.
His son had some friends over.
He's like, we can keep it going there.
So they head out. They go back to Brian's house.
And there's some texts exchanged between Jennifer and John where he's like, hey, where are we going?
He calls to get directions.
They all head back and Karen and John are seeing like walking to her car.
She gets in the driver seat and presumably they make it because people who are at the house, Jennifer talks about this.
There has been Matthew talks about this.
They see a dark SUV, which is what Karen was driving right outside of the front door.
And she's even, Jennifer is even texting John like, are you coming in?
She even says, hey, pull up right behind me, meaning like pull up in the driveway.
At some point, the vehicle moves like one to one and a half cars length up.
So I mean, we're still right in front of the house.
And I don't know. Did you get a chance to look at Google Maps?
I did. I know. Of course you did.
I live on Google Maps. And this is where I, in the court documents, there's all this talk about, again, they break this down 15 different ways, 15 different times about when this car moves up.
And it goes, it says, you know, goes to the left of the property or whatever, by the flag pole and the fire hydrant.
And for some reason, when I'm reading this in black and white, I'm imagining that she's going around the side of the house, like not being seen by people.
And if you Google the address, it's, I mean, everything can be seen from the, yeah.
It's all visible. Yes. And it's not, it's not a huge property.
We're talking a regular neighborhood, an irregular subdivision.
So the car moves up a little bit.
But then John never comes in the house.
Karen doesn't go in the house either.
And the next thing anyone knows is they're getting calls from Karen saying that John didn't come home.
I'm worried that something happened.
I'm worried that he's dead.
I mean, what exactly she said and how distraught she was.
She's a little bit up for debate, again, depending on who's telling the story.
And she meets up. She goes to meet up with Jennifer McCabe.
They meet up with another friend, Carrie.
And the three of them go back to Brian Albert's house to see if they can find him.
That's the last way it's like in her mind, right, where I, that's where I left him.
Yeah. Now, on top of this, it is a blizzard.
Yeah. White out. White out, which is the timing of it.
If you put it in a novel, someone would be like, I don't know, it feels like a little much.
Yeah, it feels like it's just like a scene setting thing.
Yeah. Like a book. It had started snowing the night before, but we are talking full on blizzard almost white out conditions in the morning.
So when they're driving up, Carrie and Jennifer say they don't see anything, but almost right away, Karen says that she sees him.
She pulls open the van or were the vehicle door, whatever, like hops out and goes to him.
And he is. And she's playing there in the snow, they say there's like six inches of snow on top of them.
His phone is underneath him.
I don't know if they move him or what, but immediately two of them start performing CPR and one of them calls 911.
So 911 comes and there's a lot said people are saying that Karen is completely distraught.
One firefighter even says that she is saying, I hit him.
I hit him. Yeah, she's making these declarations that are like, whoa, what's going on?
And he is pronounced dead at the hospital later.
His injuries were mostly to his head and to his forearm.
So according to the autopsy, he had several abrasions to his right forearm, two swollen black eyes, a small cut above the right eye, a cut to the left side of his nose, a two-inch laceration on the back right side of his head, multiple skull fractures that resulted in bleeding of the brain.
And the autopsy will later note that he has his pancreas is a very dark red, which indicates hypothermia, which they say contributed to his death.
So he was injured. They say he's made incapacitated and that's why he's laying in the snow, but then he really died from hypothermia.
And then he has that snow on top of him, right?
The snowfall that's fallen that covered him.
So that's another indication that he has been out there for a period of time.
Six inches of snow on top of him.
Yeah. You can fall fast in the Boston area, but I think all of that, right?
Like you said, that plus his autopsy results showed that, you know, he was there and you very well could have been still trying to live.
And that's super heartbreaking for sure.
Now nobody comes out of the house from what's been said, reported, whatever.
Again, everyone wants to make a lot of that.
It's also a blizzard. Other neighbors aren't even coming out of the house to see what's going on with all the police there.
It's freezing. Sharon is taken to the hospital as well.
They end up pulling a blood sample from her and they're able to determine.
It's not in the morning by the time they pull that blood sample, but backtracking it, they think that her blood alcohol was somewhere between 0.13 and 0.29.
At the time she would have been dropping him off, which was I think about like between 1240 is 1245, like that time in the morning.
So what ends up happening pretty quickly, like within a couple of days of his body being found is they end up charging Karen with manslaughter, basically saying that she backed over him because she was drunk and he died of hypothermia and it's her fault.
Now do you want to talk about why they think that she backed over him?
I mean, there's been, I, there's been so many reasons, right?
But I mean, the issues with their relationship and the voice mails and stuff like that.
That's what the charge will get changed later.
But when the, there's a state trooper.
So originally, can PD comes, can PD gets conflicted out of the case because there's all these police officers there.
So they bring in the state police.
That state police officer goes to get Karen's statement after she's released from the hospital.
She's staying at her parents house and he says he notices that her tail light, her passenger side rear tail light is broken.
So that becomes part of their theory is that she backed into him, the tail light broke as a result of that.
And again, she was drunk.
This is a tragic accident.
So she's charged and at the time that she is charged, it all happens again, really fast.
She meets with her lawyer like while she's there at the court and then the lawyer comes out and says something to the press where like this is a tragic accident.
Like we're going to, you know, figure this out.
She's devastated. Whatever.
And that's kind of all it was.
And then I don't know that it would have made national headlines if it ended there, but it doesn't end there because shortly after her lawyer, this tipster had called his office.
And so after he goes and he gives this statement, he calls this tipster back.
And I'm going to read it directly.
It says, or what they say, this tipster said is, quote, your client is innocent.
John was beaten up by Brian Albert and his nephew.
They broke his nose and when O'Keefe didn't come to Brian and a federal agent dumped his body on the front lawn.
End quote. Now, it's worth noting where that was reported.
It said that an attorney for the man that this, like the man that was identified says that this did not happen.
The two serves lawyer. Yeah.
So a journalist did track down the like the actual tipster and the tipster's lawyer is like, nope, didn't say that.
So is it is it right? So right now, all it is is just this like kind of wild hair brain tip.
Yeah. But it kind of starts working its way into the back of everyone's mind.
And what Karen talks about on, she did an interview with Nightline is that she is up one night, she starts just going on Facebook because she can't even figure out, to me, big questions like, why is this even happening?
Like why? And she starts finding pictures of the police who are investigating the case connected to the people who were at the house that night.
Doesn't again, what's the motive?
What's the why? I don't know, but something feels fishy and is this some kind of cover up?
And so this is when things really start to explode a little bit.
And shortly after all of this too, so what was a manslaughter charge?
They end up changing. They end up coming and recharging her with second-degree murder and leaving the scene of an accident, which is, you know, it's kind of like, okay, duh, but it is an extra charge.
Now I didn't really understand why go out, you already had her on manslaughter.
You're saying she was drunk, you're saying this what, but like, so then why do that, why go to that extra step?
Like I don't get it. And I think something that sort of would make that make sense is if they continue to investigate and they discover issues in the relationship.
Which they did. Receiving the event.
And I think in this case, as they continue to work the investigation, whatever law enforcement officials were working the investigation, whether they were connected to some of the witnesses or not, they began to discover, hey, was this truly an accident?
And they started to ask the question of what preceded these events?
And I think that's what led them to go, hey, I think that maybe we can sell that more to a jury, right?
Like a second degree, they're having potential issues.
There is this moment of issue and passion and passion and heat of the moment kind of thing.
That's a lot easier to sell to 12 strangers, right?
Like when you're going to like take someone to court and like try and get, you know, a solid conviction, but if you just go with manslaughter of like, oh, this is tragic accident.
Like I'm thinking of where they were looking ahead to the future of court proceeding.
I get that. This is like the such the problem I have with the legal system.
It's like, it's not, I want to say it's not about winning.
It's about what happened.
And if what, if what happened was an accident, was drunk driving, charged her with that.
And listen, to be fair, they do find stuff, right?
There is a reason that they think that there was a motive.
So they say the prosecution says that they in looking at John O'Keefe, the victim's phone, they find a series of text messages leading up to his death.
Quote, leading up to the night at waterfall, the defendant and O'Keefe exchanged several text messages about their strained relationship in the voice mail that the defendant left O'Keefe on January 29th, 2022.
And that is like the morning, the early morning hours when he's found.
She stated, you are f***ing using me right now.
You are f***ing another girl.
You are a f***ing loser.
F*** yourself. She called him a f***ing pervert and she yelled at him, John, I f***ing hate you.
That right there, the discovery of that and when they discovered that, to me would feed into potentially why they changed that charge.
I think it was a factor. I don't think it was necessarily the entire factor, but that right there says something.
And I think that they're building out this story that there were clearly problems in their relationship and they get this from really John's niece.
So and again, to make sure John doesn't get lost in all of this, John had actually taken in his niece and nephew.
His sister had died and then his sister's husband died shortly after that.
That's a pretty tragic.
Yeah. The single man, he was the one to take them in.
And so they obviously live with him.
Karen didn't live with them, but she stayed the night.
Their house all the time and there was a story that was told or a couple, especially by the niece and nephew.
They said, you know, they were fighting a lot in the time leading up to it.
The niece had said, you know, there's this incident where basically John was like, I think it's, this isn't working out.
Like this is getting unhealthy, but Karen was really against ending the relationship.
She didn't want to leave his house.
There also is this story about them vacationing in Aruba on for like New Year's Eve, which would have been again, we're talking less than a month, yeah, higher and an incident where he had gone out, Karen said he had gone out drinking.
He doesn't come home until three in the morning.
She's, you know, bringing in the New Year with his niece and nephew and she comes out of the elevator and he's hugging someone.
She thinks maybe kissing someone.
They everyone says there was no kiss, but it's it was enough that it was an incident everyone talks about.
I think it just like whatever that story is again, the more law enforcement learns of things like that, the more they're going, let's widen out the scope of this very specific incident that we think we're looking at.
Let's widen now. And I think all those things really contribute to that.
And that's what makes it to like just very personal.
I think that's why people get interested in this kind of story, right?
Because a lot of people like everyone has relationships, everyone has drama in their life, but that's what kind of perpetuates, I think, to some of that interest is like, well, what about this and what about that?
And that's as wild. But what I what I have a hard time piecing together is how do you everyone says they were getting along that night or at least not fighting that night?
Everyone says everything was good that night.
And here, you know, what is Karen's memory?
I don't know because I will say again, first we get this story and it might have been her lawyer saying this was an accident.
She doesn't remember. And we have people who were initially with her, the two women in the car saying something to the effect of her giving them a statement.
I don't even remember going to Brian's like last thing I remember was being at the waterfall.
Like I don't remember last night.
Then she has a story, a memory.
So oh, and in the first story, by the way, she had didn't plan to go to Brian's even or I guess the second story when she remembered that they were going to go there.
I don't know. I was like, I was just going to drop him off and leave it.
I was having stomach issues, right?
I'm going to drop him off.
I'm going to leave him having stomach issues.
And then the second time around, it's her story is, and this is what she told nightline, was I didn't know if we were invited.
I didn't actually, again, we don't know Brian Albert personally.
I didn't hear him invite me or invite John.
So we're going there, but I didn't want to just like walk into the house like of someone I don't know.
I'm understandable. Yeah, I get it.
So she said, I told John, like go in and make sure it's cool for us to be here.
So she said she's waiting in the car and waiting in the car and he's not coming and not coming.
And so then she finally gets pissed and is like, oh, he just ditched me and forgot that I'm sitting here waiting for him.
And so she leaves. Do I love that the story changed?
Absolutely not. Do I understand if they're already having problems?
Can you picture her leaving that voicemail when she thinks he ditched her while she's waiting outside for him?
Yeah, those connections can totally be made.
And I want to go back and look at the situation where it is John texting Jennifer McCabe to coordinate the meeting up at Brian Albert Tows, like after the bar, I think some people on that face would go, well, wait a minute.
Like if Karen and John had these sort of issues about these things she's claiming in this voicemail, like John texting, you know, another woman even and friendly like, hey, we're all having a party come back to my house.
Like, you could see where that might escalate, right?
In a drunken state where it's like you went into this house, you didn't come back, you were texting this other person like this other woman.
I think that like right to your point, like that could all feed into I'm going to make these nasty voicemails and then peace out.
And you're drunk. We know you're nothing is better with alcohol.
Yeah, no. And late at night.
So she claims that she left that she was trying to text and call him.
She ends up falling asleep on the couch.
And then it's 4.30 in the morning when she again wakes up, realizes he's not there.
She goes to get his niece to call Jennifer McCabe and then, you know, everything else is pretty much the same.
All right. So I, I, we are living on time.
We have an hour. I could keep going and going in like the details of even those text messages and those times of the text messages because I think that becomes important later.
So maybe we'll hit it. But I want to go back to the physical evidence yet because we're still laying the scene to even get to the conspiracy stuff later.
So at the scene when we talk about physical evidence again, what do they have to even charge Karen?
So where John was found, they said that they found pieces of glass, which their story or the theory is he is actually seen on video surveillance when they leave the waterfall.
Whatever time that was, he actually takes a short, clear glass out with him.
He's seen on video. So they're thinking that's the glass that he was holding.
I think some of that glass is also found in her bumper, they say.
They also say that they find some pieces of red plastic and white plastic.
Whatever they think, like, oh, this could be tail light pieces.
Similar, similar to the tail light.
They're at the scene and some I laugh.
They found some patches of blood, spots of blood.
Here's where things get wild.
So the glass and the blood is collected first.
But Delia, I sent you a picture of how they collected the blood.
I actually didn't even know what I was looking at at first when you sent it to me.
But yes, the picture is a, like, brown grocery store bag.
And there's six red solo cups in the bottom that all have what appear to be little clumps of snow in them.
And then you told me what is in the clumps of snow.
That's the blood. In the solo cups.
So what? What? Yeah, these officers on the scene were.
And Graham, it again, it's a blizzard.
So you're in a race against time.
That's the only. But who's solo cups are these?
They're not the cups. I think they're in neighbors.
And I hope they're not used.
But what? Yeah. So what world does that make sense?
It doesn't, to me, but they collect the blood evidence in solo cups.
And that's all that they initially collect, right?
And again, so his phones underneath him, they obviously collect that as well.
This is where things start to get a little fishy in my mind because they go back again multiple times.
And it's even that same day or whatever.
But there is a point where they take a snowblower and they're blowing the top layer of snow off, looking for more things.
And the first time they found him, by the way, he's missing one of his shoes.
So this, the second time that they go back, they find his other shoe.
And that's when they start finding tail light pieces.
Why those red tail light pieces didn't stick out before is a big question to me.
Because you said that the Massachusetts State Police Investigator, like early on, noted that the tail light was broken.
So you would think that going back in additional searches, that would be like something you're actually looking for if you have this theory of, is this a hit and run?
Yeah. But you would also think that the first time that when you removed John's body and you found pieces of clear glass on the ground in the snow, you didn't find pieces of red plastic.
Yeah, I don't, that's a hard thing to wrap your mind around.
But I also just know and you know as well that whenever additional evidence is found on subsequent searches, that is so par for the course.
Like in terms of just happens all the time.
All the time. It does. And I mean, they went and again, there was so much snow that day.
They went back multiple times.
It's almost one of those things where it's like they keep finding more and more and more.
It's said that some of John's DNA was on a piece of tail.
They don't get specific though.
We don't have again, but this hasn't gone to trial yet.
So I don't have a lot of the details.
How much tail light, what piece of the tail light?
I haven't seen anything that said that any of the tail light was found on him, on his clothing, anything like that.
Would you point it out? Yeah, that would be to me if you have these little shards and pieces that are recognizable enough in snow, you would think that would be in his or on his clothing, the fact that he is on the ground and had been there a while.
That stuff probably wouldn't have moved.
So that's what I was really curious about.
So they obviously took her car.
They processed her car.
This happens on February 1st after they take like an initial, the Massachusetts state, police crime people or whatever.
They do the initial pass at her car.
They don't spot this, but then they bring in someone.
They bring in a forensic scientist named Marine Heartnet and she probably works like for them again, but she comes in and she's the one who ends up finding this hair.
It's referred to as hair.
So singular hair as far as I can tell on Karen's car and this is like what they keep pointing to them.
On the bumper. Yeah, that they're like, oh, like again, we don't, maybe we don't have the tail light on him.
They find this apparent hair on the rear passenger side quarter panel.
So all they have, so they had glass in her bumper, which was like again, that's not John on her bumper.
Right. But then they get this apparent hair and they're like, this is, this is the proof that like his head made contact with her car.
Now, this hair is talked about nonstop and it's, this case is getting litigated before it goes to trial.
I mean, in the media nonstop, these motions are becoming public.
They're fighting about these in hearings.
And this hair is something that they keep pointing to over and over again.
And at some point the defense is even like, well, we want to do our own testing, but then the state won't release it to them and it becomes this big point of contention.
We'll fast forward their Massachusetts state police, their lab.
It takes them a year to even examine it.
And I don't know if it just didn't become important then or I mean, over this year is when things really, the conspiracy theories really started to tick up.
I don't know, but over a year, whatever this next year, they look at the hair.
The Massachusetts state lab says that there is no human DNA detected when they finally examine it, which what?
Which is the app. This is your, if this is one of your piece of key evidence, like that's not even a human hair.
Yeah. So the prosecution, what they do, that's obviously not the results they want.
So they want to contract with an outside private lab, Bodhi.
The defense is like, okay, before you do that, we want to like examine it.
You might use up everything in testing.
That ends up getting denied.
And but if this was their only piece of putting John on the car, what do you have?
Nothing. So if we're still talking about John his injuries, again, how's the hair on the bumper?
The other thing I want to talk about, I, it's really hard for me to understand how his injuries come from being run over.
Again, if you want to say it's an accident, then she's going a few miles an hour backing up whatever.
If you want to say it was intentional, second-degree murder, maybe she was going a little faster, but nobody saw that.
More than anything, he's a tall guy.
How is her tail light meeting his head?
The only injuries he has really below his neck are his forearm is all cut up.
The people who think Karen Reed is innocent and being framed say it looks like a dog scratched or bit his arm.
Whatever one kind of comedian leaves out on Karen's ID, he's got these bruises on the back sides of both of his hands that they say look like defensive wounds.
Yeah. Explain it to me, Dealia.
I know. I can't. And I get the whole like, okay, sequence of events, right?
But from what I know from talking to a lot of forensic pathologists, when people have those impact and heavy pressure, getting run over by a car tire or getting side swiped, it doesn't necessarily look how we think it should look, which is that blunt force trauma injury.
But yeah, those scratches on the right forearm specifically are really significant to me.
And I think even in some of the images, they really stand out.
But the dog bite marks that is introduced by the defense and that really leads down and support the path and the theory of was it someone at that home's dog that did that?
And that brings a lot of questions in.
So yeah, the injuries are hard to wrap your head around, but there are some things that like a logical person could say, maybe.
In my mind, like for his injuries, you had brought up something to be the other day.
You're like, what if he got like stuck in like, or he was like getting out of the car and then fell?
Yeah. And that's what it is.
If he's getting out of the passenger side and stepping out, that passenger side door is going to be open.
The left side of his body is going to be more in the car, right?
And if he is standing in that space or getting out and the car begins to go in reverse, he's going to fall down more likely on his right side and he's going to get run over and potentially drag under that tire.
You're talking about snow.
Car tires don't just like peel out in the snow.
They behave differently.
And so I'm wondering if he got dragged for a little bit and then that pressure of being it sounds terrible, compress like, but that does not have a lot of problems.
Because he's not found in the street.
He's found in the yard. Yeah.
So that's another thing.
It's like, okay, where again, the sequence of events, where's the car oriented to him?
If in fact, this is how this happened.
Yeah. There's a lot of questions.
And it makes me like want to like the one thing that would convince me without a doubt would be video of some sort of things.
But in this case, you brought that up and I was like, wait, there's a video and you're like, well, there is.
And there is. So we can, we'll start to get into a little bit of this conspiracy because the video that we have, the video that has been introduced is video from John O'Keefe's house.
He's got a ring camera and he had two cameras.
One was at his front door.
One was over his driveway.
And we've got video from over his driveway of Karen Reed.
So she wakes up at 430. She's calling around at around 507 508.
She backs out of the driveway and this is her, she's on her way to go to Jennifer McCabe.
They're going to go look for John.
She backs out. And here's where things get really interesting is because John's car is in the driveway.
She was in the garage. She backs out and when you know it, that passenger side rear tail light comes awfully stinkin' close, if not potentially hits John's car.
We will have this video in the source material.
People have analyzed this to death.
But she backs up and people will say that you can see her and I can kind of see it.
You can kind of see her car just shake just ever so slightly back and forth when it potentially makes contact.
So when she pulls forward and drives away, that's when you can see on the camera her tail light is broken.
Now the prosecution specifically lays out in their statements like they even address it.
They're like she almost comes close to you but does not and then you see her tail light is broken because she broke it when she ran over John.
The defense says no, that's when her tail light was broken.
Now it would be really easy to solve this.
Let's just see when she came home that night.
If it's broken. But that video doesn't exist.
And we don't know why it doesn't exist.
So the prosecution, the cops have kind of alluded to, oh, well, you know, she had access to his ring system on her phone and on the app, maybe she deleted it.
I could say the same thing that, you know, anyone who had access to John's phone, I know it was in police custody could have deleted it because they basically said they have all these incidents between they've got 15 incidents between 6 p.m.
that night and then 6 a.m.
But they do not have her coming home.
It's super frustrating because I'm like, it completely destroys the timeline of the prosecution.
If her tail light is not broken when she gets home, if there could be proof of that, it destroys the timeline, right?
If it is broken, it doesn't just destroy the timeline, destroys their whole theory.
Yeah, it destroys the whole theory.
But then I'm also thinking we go back to this.
It was a blizzard. I know.
And I know because I have the same system at my home that like if there's like a spider web or like a lot of condensation or frost or whatever, that that technology doesn't always capture every single motion event that's happening.
It's super unfortunate that it doesn't capture this one thing.
But to your point, I want to know like in that app, like who can delete stuff?
Is there like a metadata trail for that?
Because that right there, it should be able to tell you like which user of the app just not register it.
Yeah. Or there's got there's got to be.
Yeah, this is 2024. Like how are we not or 2022 and this is happening?
Well, yeah, but come on.
We've got to be able to look at that.
And well, apparently they're using new technology as it pops up because if you want to pop to another big thing that people who believe in conspiracy theory point to is it goes back to tech.
So there is supposedly a search on Jennifer McCabe's phone at 227 in the morning, 227 is hours before Karen is supposed to have called her and said, John didn't come home.
Let's go look for him at 227.
There is a search on her phone that says quote, Haas long to die in cold.
They believe that it was supposed to be how long to die in cold.
Why is Jennifer McCabe searching that at 227?
Well, why is her phone searching that?
Right. This alarming because we know now with the evidence in John's autopsy that there is this factor that he died out in the snow in the cold.
I don't love it. I think again, for people that support Karen Reed side of things, it would be indicative of there are people at that home who are in his company that are trying to figure out what to do with him, which is again, super disturbing.
But again, I go back to what I said about the driveway footage.
What is the metadata situation and what can investigate this is where it gets really messy because originally when the defense was given everyone's phone records, this search wasn't even included.
It comes out later. And what the prosecution is saying is, no, Karen asked Jennifer, as they're out there, pleat, search, see how long it takes.
Is he dying? Is he already dead?
And there are searches at 623 and 624 for that as well.
Now granted, the 911 call is 604 or something like that.
So it's like 20 minutes, the timing doesn't totally add up.
But they're like, no, it was just, there was a webpage that was opened at 227.
And then if you use that webpage, they had all these excuses for it.
And okay, fine. Here's the big thing that comes in.
So it comes out later that another software basically was used to do this phone extraction and that software, supposedly, and it's one done by the Feds says that it was at 227.
Like, we can stop talking about it.
That's what the defense says.
That search was made at 227 AM.
And I don't know how you explain that.
I don't think you can explain it.
I'll be very interested to see how it's explained in Core at trial.
I think that's absolutely something.
A jury is going to, if we're so hung up on it, that's what 12 strangers are going to go, let me find the answer to that question.
There's some other phone data that's really interesting too, so they, he had an iPhone and Jennifer McKaypad and iPhone and they've got the Apple Health data, so you know, always being launched and always being tracked.
And it says that John took some steps around the time that he would have, if Karen's story is true, he would have been going into the house.
And the defense says, look, that's proof that he left the car and didn't just, get run over right there.
He wouldn't have done that.
He climbed three flights of stairs.
He was in that house. But the prosecution says, no, it also says that he's taking steps after he's found dead at 6 AM.
Now, I say, of course it shows that it's taking, it doesn't know John is taking steps.
It's the phone is moving.
The phone had got collected.
It's getting moved from Department of Department as they're figuring out what to do with it.
So to me, him moving around after he's dead, that's not, of course that's not him.
It seems like a weird thing to even point out.
They also, the health data also says that Jennifer McKaypad is up all night like pacing.
She doesn't go to bed. She says she's woken up by a call from Karen that she can't find John.
But Apple Health data says, no, ma'am.
Yeah. And that, okay, that's not the best look for her.
But I go back to what I said, it's her phone that's pacing around.
So I'm always on the side of devices or devices.
And they are in the hands of whoever's holding it does not mean that that is the owner.
So I get not as hung up on that.
The search is what's, to me, of like great interest.
Someone is plugging that search in and they can find out what time and work.
You can explain the device thing to me, I guess, for Jennifer.
But everyone has agreed.
John's phone is found under his body.
So I don't know how, I, the activity before he dies, yeah, it's hard.
That's hard to wrap my head around as well.
Is he in the home? Is he walking around the yard?
Is he getting in and out of a vehicle?
Yeah, that's like, that's really hard to, to face.
So this is all the stuff that they're fighting about, right?
There's, you know, the defense is like there's no way his injuries were made this way.
The tail light, they're going so far as to accuse the lead investigator of planting the evidence.
I don't know where he got the tail light, but he planted the evidence.
They're making a lot of accusations.
He's covering up for them.
That sound wild. Now, it all sounds wild until it comes out that the federal government is conducting an investigation simultaneously.
Now what they're conducting in investigation into is not totally confirmed, but we know that they're calling all of the same witnesses.
So the defense at one point gets a, like rumbling stuff this, because the thing I'm not going into, that's like it is the, honestly, a huge part of this case is one of the biggest supporters of Karen Reed is this online blogger, YouTuber, who goes by the name Turtle Boy.
And there has been a ton of controversy around him.
He's been accused of harassing witnesses.
Like there's a, there's a lot of stuff there.
But so I assume that it's, you know, through all of that, the defense gets some kind of tip that, hey, your witnesses are being, there's been a grand jury that indicted Karen, but there is another grand jury that's happening that they're getting called for.
And it's, you know, it's not one of them.
It's all of them. And it seems like they're investigating the same thing you are simultaneously, which is really out of the norm to have a federal investigation happening simultaneously in tandem with a state investigation into a second degree, formerly manslaughter charge.
That right there raises the profile for me.
And everything that people are saying, this is unprecedented.
Yeah. Usually they let things play out.
And if there's something to look into, if it's prosecutorial misconduct, if it is something, I don't even think they would deal necessarily because there's also, at the same time, there ends up being an internal investigation into Michael Proctor, who's the lead investigator for how he handled it and did he have a conflict of interest and did he lie about that conflict?
Because he knew a lot of the witnesses at Brian Albert's house.
Yeah. But again, that's being handled by internal affairs.
Yeah. What is the federal government investigating?
So when the defense starts hearing this, they basically go to the prosecution, they're like, what is going on here?
Like if you're calling these, when something is happening that we haven't gotten in discovery and they do basically notice a discovery and the DA responds and is like, listen, we have no idea what's going on.
We don't know about a federal investigation.
So there's nothing for us to give you.
Well, so that's in December of 2023.
Not to Fox 25 had actually been working on a public records request, which they succeeded in getting.
And I don't know exactly like the days, but as they're getting this, the DA is like, oh, we found some things that we would like to give you.
And they are communications from back in May.
So they asked for this in December months before there are email communications from the district attorney's office, the Commonwealth to the United States attorney's office, where the United States attorney's office in May confirms, yeah, we're doing an investigation.
So they knew we're subpoenaing your witness.
And you know, if you need to disclose, oh, and like the emails are also just like shady themselves because the DA is like, you know, if you do anything, we're going to have to share it, which is basically like, don't mess it up.
We're going to share it with the defense.
Yeah. And it's been said that there was like some shady stuff, even on the other side.
And that the state's attorney is like, well, you don't have to share what you don't have.
But back and forth, the point is that they knew this was going on and all of that gets disclosed.
So there is this federal investigation.
And in doing so, the federal investigation, they didn't have to, but they ended up releasing like 3,000 pages of their investigation to the defense and to the prosecution.
Part of what they've gotten, and I've, you know, inferred this just from some of the dialings is testimony from their grand jury hearings where people are main people from their case are being asked about again, it's clearly about John O'Keefe's death or the investigation into it.
And this is how we learned that Michael Proctor, the lead investigator, for sure had a conflict of interest.
And not only did they have a conflict of interest, they went out of their way to make people believe he didn't.
I mean, did you see the video from the DA?
Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's a very bold, very bold thing for a discreturni to do because there were rumblings, right?
Even early on, like I said, very early on, Karen's trying to figure out who's connected to Hill.
Yeah. And the DA, I mean, it was firm.
He was like, there is no impropriety, basically.
There, like he has no conflict of interest.
This is all some wild fishing expedition.
But you know what perpetuates that, though?
And you keep a secret from the defense that a federal investigation is going on that could potentially result in exculpatory information for your client.
So if the defense is already going down this, what the prosecution is saying, a conspiracy theory, you're perpetuating that discreturni hiding by hiding and not being forthright.
So like, if that's what you're saying, then part of the blame could be on you in your office.
Like did the DA know? Like was Michael hiding for everyone?
Yeah. And it's very clear, so 10 days before John dies, Michael Proctor, the lead investigator, is texting with Julie Albert, who is related to Brian Albert, whose house it was about babysitting his child.
That is someone you know.
Yeah. No doubt. You trust with your kid.
More concerning is that two days after John died, there are text messages between Michael Proctor and Michael Proctor's wife.
And Michael Proctor's wife is relaying a message.
He says quote, just saw Julie, they're talking about Julie Albert, and Julie said when all this is over, she wants to give you dot, dot, dot, a thank you gift.
I don't know if the dot, dot, dot is leaving out things.
I don't know if it was a true like, dot, dot, dot.
And apparently he responded and said that the gift should be sent to his wife and not him.
I don't love communication like that because right, you could read into it 10 different ways, but I think what that says in the big picture is you're too close for comfort.
And because of that, again, you could be perpetuating a lot of questions in new windows and theories that ultimately bring your integrity into question.
And in a case that that is at the core of it at this point, that's super problematic.
Julie Albert actually comes into this a little bit more too because we haven't really heard much about her.
Was she there that night was her husband is earning Chris Albert were they there that night were they not there that night.
Nobody really seems to agree, which is really strange.
There is some grand jury testimony.
They're both at the waterfall.
We know that before Julie says she what goes home early with the headache.
Chris walked home when everyone left the bar.
The defense says that there is a February 21st report memorializing a statement that the officer whatever took from them back on the 10th.
So this is like his memory of a statement that happened days ago, but it says that they did go back to Brian Albert's after.
So the defense is like you didn't even point out this inconsistency in the original grand jury that indicted her were they were there were they not there.
So the only theory when I talk about motive because again, that's like the what the heck happened.
John barely knew these people.
The only theory I've seen anyone come up with is that he got into it with Brian's nephew.
Again, that's the original tipster said something happened with Brian and his nephew.
And so for for there to be a lot of questions was Chris there was Chris not there for his wife to be the one like we want to give you a gift when all this is over.
Very suspicious. Well, I think the question is is if you're looking at a in the moment something happened in that house, the question naturally is, okay, who had the beef?
Who had the beef with John O'Keefe, even if it was in the momentary split second, you know, you spilled a drink on me or something or is it something that preceded it where there's this kind of growing issue.
And I think that's where we need to get to the bottom of who was in the house.
When did they get there?
When did they leave all of that surrounding the timeline of when we know John dies?
It's hard. What they had always said is that everyone stayed for about an hour and then people left or went to bed.
This is also what's strange to me because you have people leaving the house at say one, one 30 like around that time.
Nobody sees John laying in the yard and this is not a big property.
I like I get my head around it.
Yeah. How can you not see that unless you're just black out which we know some of these witnesses were not, some were drunk, some were not black out.
But then yeah, how do you not see someone lying there because we know at one and even one 32, he's not covered in those six inches of snow yet.
So my question is are there external witnesses like people that were driving on that street or working the blizzard conditions, right?
There's supposedly a snow plow driver who was plowing the street at 2.30 who according to the defense is willing to testify that he did not see John out in the yard at 2.30 in the morning.
That's a good witness for sure.
But again, my mind goes to like video.
Can we strap some video cameras on these snow plows for the future so that they can start like more ring cameras.
I know. I'm shocked that there's nothing and maybe there's something that will come out in trial.
But I'm shocked that none of the neighbors have anything that is helping solve that or like piece that together.
Now you talked about who was in the house, who's not in the house.
What are these? Their witness is driving by but I think that's what's so loud me.
There are a lot of witnesses in that house.
There are a lot of people I said this early on who talk about seeing Karen's car.
One of the people in the house was another person in law enforcement whose name is also Brian.
And that's Brian Higgins.
And there's some strange communication.
So again, everyone says that they leave after hour or so.
Everyone's asleep. But then again, you have weird movements.
You have a phone moving.
There's also some calls reportedly between Brian Albert and Brian Higgins in those early morning hours.
The federal probe revealed that Brian Albert called him after 2 a.m.
and then Higgins called Brian Albert back.
Just men say that these were butt dials even though they also say that they were sleeping.
And they're were supposed to be together at the same house earlier in the night.
Well, earlier in the night, right, right, right, right.
They'd like left at this point and then they're calling each other.
So it doesn't totally add up.
I think that would raise questions, right?
Any communication between any members of these witnesses after the fact throughout that night should certainly be observed.
These stand out for a lot of reasons.
And then we also know that Brian Higgins, apparently, according to the defense, stops responding to Brian Albert at some point after all of this happens.
He kind of goes dark. And I want to read something from one of the hearings from the defense.
Quote, you're on her. There's only one way to interpret that.
Brian Albert was panicked that Brian Higgins had flipped on him.
Brian Albert enlisted his Canton police officer brother to contact Higgins to try and find out if that was the case.
So I said early on that Canton PD got conflicted out.
Well, that's because Brian Albert's brother, Kevin, was a Canton police officer, apparently, when the federal investigation is going on, Kevin Albert reaches out to Brian Higgins to be like, Hey, why won't you talk to Brian Albert?
And they're saying the only way you can interpret that is like, we need to like get our story straight.
Yeah. And for me, I think you have to look at what the defense is saying.
They're saying, Hey, this is all interconnected.
This is all really problematic.
And when you have communications like this, that really supports that, especially when those communications could be interpreted as them, not only discussing what happened, but this federal pro that's happening simultaneously that is everyone's a little worked up about, right?
It's not everyone's story seems to have changed, including Karen's.
Karen's story seems to have changed a little bit.
And is that time? Is that people getting together and making their stories match?
Is it, is it misremembering?
Is it, is it hard to remember something that's not the truth?
Or what? And it's the influence too of all of this sort of circus around it in that small community, right?
Like people begin to get much more on edge.
And I know that in some of the source material, it's pointed out that the Albert's like moved away.
They got rid of their dog.
Yeah. So that again, you can go either way with this.
So the conspiracy people will say, okay, he replaced his floors, like moved out of his house and got rid of his dog shortly after this happened, like all of the things.
And by the way, Brian Albert's house was never searched at the time that all this all went down.
They will say, they said they've talked to Nate.
Like it's already, it was planned for them to move before this happened.
Their dog got in a fight with another dog.
Like none of this has ties to the case, but it looks bad.
And you had even pointed out, I'd move too because you go back to the turtle boy and all of Karen supporters.
There was a point where they had a group of people, protesters, like a hundred people who were driving by all these key people's homes and like shouting with megaphones.
I would move too. Yeah. You're witness at a trial like you should as much as you can remove yourself from things.
But I also, again, just to speak to that circus element to it, I know in this trial that's like playing out right now, there's a buffer zone around the courthouse, which of course, as a journalist and someone who's like, no, let me in there.
You know, I'm not a demonstrator.
I'm always like, no, don't keep the people out.
But at the same time with where this case is now, it's clearly necessary or there's a reason right because of all this background and back history of what's been going on.
So that really stuck out to me for sure.
I was like a buffer zone around a public courthouse for public proceedings, but that just tells you the level that it's gotten to.
And I feel for John's family because they have received so much hate, which is to me disgusting because like again, they do believe that Karen is responsible.
Karen supporters have been very vocal that somehow they're bad people.
This is their truth and they're what they want it to play out in court.
And I think it will play out in court.
And again, not that I necessarily even agree with them, but they have already been victimized.
I think about John's mom who already lost her daughter and now she lost her son.
You've got his niece and his nephew.
Like these are real people feeling real pain.
And this is, I just can't imagine how this is adding to all of that.
There is so much to this case, like I could go on for another hour.
We didn't get into like there was another witness who says that they were parked behind Karen in the driveway.
There is, Julie Albert has two different stories of why or when she learned about John's death.
The stories don't add up.
When you talk about a case, we're supposed to talk about it in reasonable doubt.
Do I know if Karen did this?
Do I know if anyone else did this?
I don't know. I do think.
There is a lot of reasonable doubt with what's been put forward in the filings so far.
I do think that the federal government wouldn't be looking at this unless there was something to look at.
They wouldn't be setting this precedent.
A federal nexus is what they have to be looking at, which goes to much bigger things that have to be observed, right?
And that has to do with processes, public entities, people that hold certain positions, how are their offices managing things?
The federal government is not looking into whether the prosecution is sharing discovery with the defense.
They are looking at what happened on a federal level that violated a federal law potentially by these characters or players on either side.
And that, to me, is of great interest, and I think I kind of want to know what the outcome of that's going to be either at the same time or maybe before even a trial verdict.
Which is going on right now.
So Karen's trial has started.
They've gone through jury selection, at least at the time of this recording, which is why I wanted to make sure everyone is up to speed on what had happened so far, what we're all walking into because I think we're going to find out so much more once the trial begins.
Are you officially on the conspiracy train?
Are you, are you, it goes all the way to the top?
Are you here? I'm officially on.
This could be its own limited series train, which is my wheelhouse.
Yes. So send me to Boston.
Yes. I'm there. I've heard that Netflix has like already been following and planning a doc.
It's, I mean, there's, there's stuff planned for this.
Yeah. I, this is one of the stories that like deserves to have a very hard look at it.
Obviously some of the elements that are in play, I'm super familiar with and it's hard for me not to like make that leap because I've seen it myself.
I was just going to say so this has a lot of parallels, not necessarily the federal investigation.
You've kind of had to do the overall investigation, but the season you have coming out, season six of counter clock, do you want to talk about that for like just a second?
Because it's, it's a wild intertwined case.
Yeah. So it's a case that involves different law enforcement agencies, conflict of interest of certain individuals.
It involves, you know, a death that could be looked at from a lot of different ways of, is it just an accident?
Is it something intentional?
So which is how it started?
I mean, much like this case, you got in with this one man's death.
Was it an accident? Was it murder?
And then it grew and grew and grew.
All the way to the top. So actually counter clock, season six, the trailer comes out today, the first day that we're launching this show, you can listen to the trailer on the series XM app or wherever you get podcasts.
Don't forget to follow this show and counter clock and crime junkie at it to your library.
We're going to have a brand new episode the last Friday of every single month.
But if you can't wait head to crime junkie radio for your 24, 7 true crime fix.
You can follow me at Ashley Flowers on Instagram, Dilia at dilia.dmbr.w on Instagram.
And you can follow crime junkie at crime junkie podcast.
