Center of the Storm

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Speaker 7 tonight on dateline.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 9 The wait is over. A verdict in the gripping, grueling Karen Reed murder trial.

Speaker 10 John O'Keefe was a good man.

Speaker 13 Boston police officer, she hit drunk.

Speaker 14 She hit him.

Speaker 10 She left him to die.

Speaker 15 John O'Keefe was not hit by a car. Their investigator was corrupted from the start.

Speaker 8 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 reed it did not happen

Speaker 19 karen reed is a warrior many women relate to her johnny was lost in this process We never got the opportunity to grieve his loss.

Speaker 9 Now, the jury has decided.

Speaker 22 Mr. Foreman, members of the jury, have you agreed upon a murder? Yes.

Speaker 9 Two different stories about that night, two dramatic trials, and one stunning ending.

Speaker 23 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 9 Here's Andrea Canning with

Speaker 5 Center of the Storm.

Speaker 18 It's a a case that transfixed the nation.

Speaker 6 She said, I hit him.

Speaker 10 I hit him.

Speaker 25 I hit him.

Speaker 15 There was no collision with John O'Keefe. There was no collision.

Speaker 18 A story of love and death and the search for justice. At its heart, Karen Reed.

Speaker 8 I felt like I was living in a nightmare.

Speaker 18 How did her boyfriend, a beloved Boston police officer, end up dead in the snow?

Speaker 26 Johnny is where the focus should be and not on the defendant. It should be about the fact that Johnny died.

Speaker 18 Did she kill him?

Speaker 26 She get justice for John?

Speaker 18 Or was she set up? Did you frame Karen Reed?

Speaker 17 Absolutely not.

Speaker 18 A disgraced former investigator speaks out. People see those text messages and they instantly jump to a conclusion about you.

Speaker 17 I can see how people make that leap.

Speaker 10 Three years, two trials.

Speaker 6 Thank you, Your Honor.

Speaker 18 And a verdict.

Speaker 28 On murder in the second degree. What say you.

Speaker 7 Sure, that's fine.

Speaker 18 We began covering this case more than two years ago. That's when my colleague, Dennis Murphy, sat down with Karen Reed.

Speaker 18 The story she told of one awful night in January 2022 launched a drama that endures. A nor'easter was blowing into town.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 8 We were happy, having fun, laughing, just very normal.

Speaker 29 So there comes a point where you're out of that place, huh?

Speaker 8 Yep, we left after about 90 minutes.

Speaker 18 And crossed the street to another bar.

Speaker 18 There they are joining friends.

Speaker 8 We walk in and it's, oh, hey, over here, how's it going? And you walk around, you say hi to everyone.

Speaker 29 The vibes, as we used to say in the old days, were good?

Speaker 8 The vibes were good. Yes.
Yeah, the vibes were good.

Speaker 23 And you're there for how long do you think?

Speaker 8 Till midnight. Just after midnight.
Till it closed.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 8 We're going to Brian Albert's house, which is. Brian Albert.
Yeah, which I had never been to. You're driving.
I'm driving. What are you driving?

Speaker 29 What's your vehicle?

Speaker 8 I have a Lexus LX, which is

Speaker 8 the full-size LX.

Speaker 7 That's a monster truck, right?

Speaker 5 Yes. Yep.

Speaker 29 How were you doing with drink at that point?

Speaker 8 Yeah, I'd had several.

Speaker 5 You probably. But I felt fine.

Speaker 8 I mean, I felt like I had had a couple drinks, but I...

Speaker 30 You didn't say I'm legless here. This is...

Speaker 8 No, I didn't feel impaired.

Speaker 31 So you get to this headdress, huh?

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 8 And I said, John, can you just run in there and like,

Speaker 8 you know, can we make sure

Speaker 8 we're welcome here and it's somewhere we want to be? He said, yeah, I'll be right back.

Speaker 8 And he got out of the car.

Speaker 31 Goes to the front door of the house?

Speaker 32 Yes.

Speaker 8 I see him go to the door and start to cross the threshold. And I look down at my phone, and in a matter of seconds, I look up and he's not there.

Speaker 8 And then I waited for him to re-emerge, 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.

Speaker 18 But that never happened.

Speaker 8 He didn't come back

Speaker 8 and it pissed me off

Speaker 8 because one i didn't really want to be there two i had to go to the bathroom but where is he yeah

Speaker 8 what happens next i left you're in your car will you say i'm out of here no i i kind of slow rolled it off the off the street um and i'm hoping that as i slowly edge my way down the street he's gonna 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

Speaker 18 Home was John's place.

Speaker 7 And what do you do?

Speaker 8 I laid on the couch and I just called him.

Speaker 8 I called him just over 50 times.

Speaker 7 50 times? Yep.

Speaker 8 Yep.

Speaker 8 And they would just go into voicemail.

Speaker 29 It's getting very early in the morning at this point.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I fell asleep.

Speaker 8 When I woke up after four, I knew...

Speaker 8 I knew something was wrong.

Speaker 18 She began calling John's friends and got a hold of Jen McCabe, Brian Albert's sister-in-law. Jen was at the after party.

Speaker 8 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,

Speaker 8 let me hang up with you and call my sister. This is Brian Albert's wife,

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 29 And she said, what?

Speaker 8 She said, you guys never came in.

Speaker 29 Your John never came in the door. Yep.

Speaker 29 Okay, so you're hearing the Twilight Zone music at this point.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I said, 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.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 18 She called the police.

Speaker 34 My name is Carrie. I'm calling because my friend's boyfriend did not come home last night.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 Carrie Roberts joined them.

Speaker 18 But John wasn't home, so the women got into Carrie's car with Karen in the back seat and drove to the Alberts.

Speaker 18 6 a.m., blizzard conditions. In the dark, they crept toward the house.

Speaker 8 And we turn a corner and I see him immediately. I see his body immediately.

Speaker 8 It was

Speaker 8 windswept

Speaker 8 lawn and there was just a heap.

Speaker 31 And this is on the front lawn of the after party house.

Speaker 8 Yeah, on the perimeter. I couldn't see his face or his hair, but I knew it was him.
I mean, he's a big guy. He's 6'2 ⁇ , 220.

Speaker 31 Do you run out of the vehicle and start screaming?

Speaker 8 I said, 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.

Speaker 29 Was he alive?

Speaker 8 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

Speaker 8 mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and chest compressions.

Speaker 7 911, what's your emergency?

Speaker 18 Jen McCabe called 911.

Speaker 35 What's going on?

Speaker 34 There's a guy unresponsive in the snow.

Speaker 18 This dash cam video from one of the first responders vehicles shows Karen running back and forth, clearly agitated.

Speaker 18 John was rushed to the hospital.

Speaker 8 I actually texted my father and I said, I think John's dead.

Speaker 8 And he

Speaker 8 called me and I said, Dad,

Speaker 8 I don't want to be alive.

Speaker 8 I don't want to live. And I didn't know

Speaker 8 what the hell happened.

Speaker 8 How did the night end up like this?

Speaker 18 Karen was also taken to the hospital that morning.

Speaker 8 And I am put under a psychiatric watch. And then eventually, just before noon,

Speaker 8 my father

Speaker 8 comes into the room that I'm in. And I said, Dad,

Speaker 8 how is he?

Speaker 36 And he said, he's gone.

Speaker 8 John's gone, Karen. And I just collapsed on the floor.

Speaker 18 A 16-year veteran of the Boston Police Department, dead. In the months ahead, his family would ask one question.

Speaker 26 Thinking about Johnny is no longer here, how does this happen?

Speaker 18 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?

Speaker 37 There's nothing crazy about it.

Speaker 18 Did you crack the taillight to make it look a certain way?

Speaker 17 Absolutely not.

Speaker 18 All that would matter, really, was what 12 people believed about that night. About what one woman did or didn't do

Speaker 26 for the defendant it was a show for her lawyers and it was a show for her family

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 Investigators may find out how one of their own died in the Johnny to his family and friends, only 46 years old. His body was discovered lying in front of another officer's house.
It made no sense.

Speaker 26 We 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 26 It was unfathomable. I couldn't even think

Speaker 26 that this could potentially be happening.

Speaker 18 How did you hear about John's death?

Speaker 38 I got a call from Johnny's brother. He told me,

Speaker 32 he said,

Speaker 32 we lost Johnny.

Speaker 39 I kind of knew, I knew what he meant, but I didn't really know what he meant.

Speaker 38 You know what I mean?

Speaker 39 I didn't want to know what he meant.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 38 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.

Speaker 18 You also say that he really connected people. He kept everyone together.

Speaker 38 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.

Speaker 32 But he always,

Speaker 7 always did.

Speaker 18 John always knew what he wanted to do with his life.

Speaker 39 I don't remember a time where he didn't want to be a police officer.

Speaker 38 He was set on he wanted to be a police officer. That's all he cared about.

Speaker 18 And a big part of being a police officer, of course, is helping people. Yeah.

Speaker 32 The way he operated his life was he always kind of put other people first.

Speaker 18 When tragedy struck, that's exactly what John did. In 2013, his 39-year-old sister Kristen learned she had brain cancer.

Speaker 26 Kristen was diagnosed in May of 2013

Speaker 26 and

Speaker 26 passed away Veterans Day of 2013.

Speaker 18 Oh my goodness, so fast.

Speaker 26 So fast. It was just a few months and Johnny spent a lot of time at the hospital with her.

Speaker 18 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?

Speaker 26 It was

Speaker 18 a lot.

Speaker 26 It was a lot. And just the shock of the two of them passing so quickly, both under 40.
And then it was, you know, after the shock wore off, it was

Speaker 5 the children.

Speaker 26 What are we going to do?

Speaker 18 The young couple left behind a six-year-old girl and a boy, almost three.

Speaker 18 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?

Speaker 18 Exactly. The bachelor takes in the kids.
Yes.

Speaker 6 Yep.

Speaker 18 A life-juggling work and kids. They called him JJ.

Speaker 35 The last ticks are a little sticky. Yeah.

Speaker 16 So then we take marshmallow, right?

Speaker 18 He was up for anything.

Speaker 22 Maybe we can use

Speaker 18 TikTok challenges, silly dances,

Speaker 18 and ninja warrior gyms.

Speaker 26 He was the fun uncle. You know, he was always making jokes and trying to make the time really fun for them.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 18 Karen had been through her own challenges. including a diagnosis of MS.
Like John, she'd never married.

Speaker 18 She She worked as an equity analyst and taught college courses in finance as an adjunct professor. How did the kids take to Karen?

Speaker 26 They, you know, they liked her. They liked her a lot.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 26 She was screaming down the hallway, you know, is he dead? Is he dead? Screaming, screaming. Erratic to the point that

Speaker 26 they sectioned her, you know, because she was threatening to harm herself.

Speaker 18 The O'Keeffes 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.

Speaker 18 She'd been released from the hospital into her parents' care and wanted to see the children.

Speaker 26 I wasn't there, but I do know that she had sat with the kids for, you know, for a short time.

Speaker 26 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 two years that she had been in their lives what did the kids think as she just disappears the kids at that point were so

Speaker 26 um

Speaker 26 lost.

Speaker 18 The whole family was. They couldn't figure out how John ended up dead on a lawn.
And Karen seemed to be acting strangely.

Speaker 18 Beth's sister Erin later told investigators about a troubling call she'd had with Karen after Karen left the O'Keeffe home.

Speaker 26 And what Karen said to her was, we'll probably never see each other again.

Speaker 26 And, you know, Erin 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 26 The only word that can come to mind is just complete shock. You're just sitting there thinking, is this real life?

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Speaker 18 Karen Reed's meeting with the O'Keeffes 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.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 18 Karen says that's why she left and went straight to her parents' house.

Speaker 18 Later that afternoon, the lead investigator, Massachusetts State Trooper Michael Proctor, arrived with a colleague to talk about what happened the night before.

Speaker 8 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?

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 18 The troopers took her SUV and Karen called a lawyer. Boston attorney David Yannetti.

Speaker 15 She sounded young to me.

Speaker 2 My first thought was this is a teenager.

Speaker 20 I'm going to have to talk to the parents.

Speaker 2 But then as she started to tell me the situation she was in, I was thinking that,

Speaker 2 you know, she's probably going to need some help.

Speaker 18 He was right. Two days later, 7.30 p.m., police swarmed Karen's house.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 38 The nightmare had begun.

Speaker 18 Nathan Reed is Karen's brother.

Speaker 38 Someone was going to pay a cost for John losing his life. And so was I surprised that they would charge us?

Speaker 32 No, I wasn't surprised.

Speaker 18 The next morning, minutes before her arraignment,

Speaker 18 Karen met her lawyer in person for the first time.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 18 At the arraignment, prosecutor Adam Lally laid out a damning case. The prosecutor said troopers noticed something when they impounded Karen's SUV.

Speaker 13 The rear right passenger side taillight was shattered, pieces missing from the red and clear areas.

Speaker 18 And at the scene, investigators found found plastic taillight pieces on the lawn where John's body was discovered.

Speaker 13 Also consistent with the broken taillight on the Lexus SUV.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 She backed into him, then drove off, leaving John lying there, badly injured.

Speaker 13 Approximately six bloodied lacerations varying in length on his right arm, the cuts extending from his forearm to his bicep.

Speaker 13 Both of the the victims' eyes were swollen shut in black and blue, approximately two-inch laceration to the back of his head.

Speaker 18 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.
Anyway, it was an accident.

Speaker 18 So, family's reaction to the arrest and finding out that there's been an arrest of Karen Reed.

Speaker 26 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

Speaker 26 on purpose. We just know something happened.

Speaker 26 She hit him and she left.

Speaker 18 It's hard to imagine that any family would have to go through something like this.

Speaker 26 Yes. You know, Johnny died on Saturday, and then Karen is arrested on Tuesday night,

Speaker 26 and they're at court on Wednesday. There is zero time to grieve.

Speaker 18 Days after the arraignment, John O'Keefe was laid to rest.

Speaker 26 The line to get into the church was probably about a half a mile down the street.

Speaker 18 Says so much about John.

Speaker 26 It does. It does.

Speaker 26 And then the procession to the graveside was

Speaker 26 was long. You know, we took a route through Braintree, where Johnny grew up,

Speaker 26 and

Speaker 14 then made our way

Speaker 26 to the grave.

Speaker 18 Very hard to say goodbye.

Speaker 7 Very hard.

Speaker 18 Karen wasn't at the funeral. She knew she was in a world of trouble.
Her attorney was already building his case.

Speaker 12 Maybe somebody else had a motive, and maybe somebody else would have caused the death of John O'Keefe.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 8 I had seen John and he was bloodied in the face and he had cuts that were bleeding on his face and

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 42 We were off and running.

Speaker 8 Yeah, we were off and running.

Speaker 18 But the case against Karen Reed was about to take another big turn.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 The prosecutor also presented toxicology evidence indicating Karen was drunk when she allegedly backed into John.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 She did this on purpose is the accusation.

Speaker 38 This just kind of took it to a whole, whole different level.

Speaker 39 Now it was just unimaginable.

Speaker 18 Is the anger building?

Speaker 26 It is. It is because

Speaker 26 it didn't have to happen.

Speaker 18 Karen insisted it didn't happen at all.

Speaker 8 The narrative was that I just became enraged and decided to nail him in the snow.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 37 She had not held out complete hope that I would make contact with her, but in point of fact, I was very interested.

Speaker 18 Alan Jackson joined David Yannetti on Karen's team. You come in as an outsider into this tight-knit community.
Do you tread lightly?

Speaker 37 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.

Speaker 18 Jackson did a deep dive into the digital data, And in 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 At 2.27, she did a search saying, How's long to die in cold? Presumably, how long to die in cold. Right.

Speaker 18 This is well before John's body has been found. Correct.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 13 It's hard to oversell this.

Speaker 15 It's that dramatic.

Speaker 18 What's more, Jackson said they found the search in a deleted file on Jen's cell.

Speaker 8 She basically turned it in, too.

Speaker 8 That tells me

Speaker 15 she thought that it was gone. It was clean.
100%.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 29 In backing up, did you bang into his car?

Speaker 5 Yeah, I did.

Speaker 8 Yep.

Speaker 7 Did you feel it? Did you hear it?

Speaker 8 Yeah, I felt a little

Speaker 8 and I.

Speaker 46 On your back right?

Speaker 8 On my passenger

Speaker 46 back right. Yep.

Speaker 18 Okay, so this is obviously not Karen Reed's SUV, but this is similar, similar taillight. So what do you think?

Speaker 37 It's similar size. There's a different make and model, but it's similar size and similar situation for the taillight.

Speaker 37 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.

Speaker 18 But it wasn't just that the taillight seemed unbreakable. The defense also concluded John's injuries were not consistent with a car accident.

Speaker 12 You cannot ignore

Speaker 37 the plethora of evidence that establishes that John was not struck by a car and left to die at 1231 a.m. or 1234 a.m.

Speaker 37 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 Karen's father Bill and brother Nathan.

Speaker 38 There's just too many things here that don't add up.

Speaker 7 You need

Speaker 7 a handful

Speaker 5 of

Speaker 47 powerful influential individuals

Speaker 47 in key positions

Speaker 47 to get this done.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 26 It's hard to keep any secret with that many people.

Speaker 26 You know, if it was one person, that would be one thing. But

Speaker 26 if the way we're looking at this conspiracy, it is everyone in the house. So it's just,

Speaker 26 you know, sometimes the truth is just the truth.

Speaker 18 But the conspiracy theory caught hold. And before long, people were turning out in droves to support Karen Reed, joining a crusade spearheaded by this man.

Speaker 48 We ain't got no quit. We ain't ain't got no quit.

Speaker 7 No return.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 The prosecution was just as quick to fight back.

Speaker 43 There's absolutely no evidence Mr. O'Keefe ever entered the residence at Fairview.

Speaker 18 That's when the case exploded out of the courtroom and into the social media feeds of thousands. Thanks to this guy.

Speaker 49 What's up, Loses? How's everyone doing tonight?

Speaker 18 Aiden Kearney, aka Turtle Boy.

Speaker 50 All right, guys, so big day today.

Speaker 18 He's a former high school teacher turned blogger, part reporter, part showman, part instigator.

Speaker 48 We ain't got no quit. We ain't got no quit.
No, we don't.

Speaker 18 He told NBC 10 Boston that he stumbled onto Karen's story in April 2023.

Speaker 50 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.

Speaker 18 He posted immediately, and he's been at it ever since, amplifying the defense theory like a relentless human bullhorn.

Speaker 35 To frame an innocent woman and cover up for the murder of a Boston police officer.

Speaker 18 Sue O'Connell is a commentator for NBC10 Boston.

Speaker 18 The social media on this case was off the charts, including, you know, of course, the main player who seemed to be Turtle Boy.

Speaker 19 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

Speaker 19 is

Speaker 7 a blogger.

Speaker 19 who doesn't operate by any regular standards of what you would call journalism.

Speaker 18 Cock killers!

Speaker 16 That's what they are. They're cat killers.

Speaker 18 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 Reed as the real victim.

Speaker 50 What we know for sure, 100%,

Speaker 50 was she did not run him over.

Speaker 18 A local murder story went national. Why do you think this story, this case, has grabbed the attention of so many people?

Speaker 19 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?

Speaker 50 So we're here to make our voices heard and the movement has grown as a result of that.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 The O'Keeffe's watched the growing frenzy with horror, and they became targets themselves, reviled on social media by Turtleboy and his supporters, often forced to run a gauntlet when they went to court.

Speaker 26 His followers have got into all of our faces prior to for hearings. We would have to walk

Speaker 26 through

Speaker 26 these people screaming at us. We have all been called idiots and stupid for not believing her conspiracy theory.

Speaker 18 Turtle Boy called the family maggots.

Speaker 26 Yes.

Speaker 52 You are a disgrace to your brother, dude. A disgrace.

Speaker 38 I've never heard of a criminal case where the victim's family is harassed both online but on their way to court.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 27 Shame on you!

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 18 The O'Keeffe's 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 Reed Show.

Speaker 37 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.

Speaker 18 Did you bring Turtle Boy into all of this?

Speaker 13 Absolutely not.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 8 It was almost every day for like 20 minutes. Like, what do you make of this? Or what do you think? We talk about after court.
Oh my God, I can't believe the judge said this.

Speaker 18 In late 2023, prosecutors charged Turtle Boy with multiple counts of witness intimidation he pleaded not guilty

Speaker 18 as the karen reed 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

Speaker 7 Karen, do you think we're going to get a fair trial?

Speaker 18 Finally, April 2024, the trial was set to begin with a prosecutor determined to prove Karen's guilt.

Speaker 53 She said, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.

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Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 How anxious were all of you with this trial starting? So intense.

Speaker 26 It's so intense. It's the wanting to get it done with, to be able to just grieve Johnny in private,

Speaker 26 you know, not in front of everybody.

Speaker 18 And everybody, it seemed, was there in April 2024 at at the Norfolk County Courthouse for day one of testimony.

Speaker 5 Good morning.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 13 The defendant Karen Reed is guilty of murder in the second degree.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 14 Defendant responded, you're hot.

Speaker 14 I responded, are you serious or messing with me?

Speaker 14 Defendant responded, no, I'm serious. I responded, failing is mutual.
Is that bad?

Speaker 18 He was ATF agent Brian Higgins.

Speaker 14 The defendant kissed me.

Speaker 13 And how did she kiss you?

Speaker 6 Not like a friend.

Speaker 18 He says Karen is the one who initiated contact with him.

Speaker 19 Yep, Karen is definitely pursuing him. And 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.

Speaker 18 A state police investigator testified that in the hours leading to his death, John and Karen were fighting over text.

Speaker 40 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.

Speaker 13 And how does the defendant respond to that?

Speaker 40 So you're not into this anymore. And then John says, not into fighting all the time, correct.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 57 And I wish they had.

Speaker 4 I really do.

Speaker 18 Former Massachusetts prosecutor Katherine Loftus followed the story but wasn't involved in the case.

Speaker 20 The people in the house said John never came in the house, Karen never came in the house, they were outside in a vehicle.

Speaker 20 Where the witnesses say that they saw the vehicle was close to where John Aku's body was found.

Speaker 18 One of those witnesses was Jen McCabe. She described the dramatic call from Karen hours after the party broke up.

Speaker 27 She tells me that John didn't come home, they got into a fight, and that she left him at the waterfall.

Speaker 20 Jen McCabe had to remind her, no, you were actually in front of the house, but then you left.

Speaker 27 And I say, Karen, we saw you outside of my sister's.

Speaker 13 And what was her response to that?

Speaker 27 She told me that she didn't remember going there.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 And it was Karen who shouted the unthinkable as paramedics tried to save him.

Speaker 13 That's something that she said once or more than once?

Speaker 27 Three times.

Speaker 53 I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 27 At that point, she grabbed my hands and she said, Google hypothermia, Google how long it takes to die in the cold.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 My hands were shaking.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 58 The timestamp is not updated.

Speaker 18 The prosecutor kept mining the digital and physical evidence investigators collected in the case.

Speaker 41 So this is 10 seconds of data.

Speaker 18 This trooper focused on the data from Karen's SUV to show she hit him.

Speaker 41 So it's going straight and stops and it gets placed in reverse and then goes backward.

Speaker 19 The prosecution took data from the black box that they say shows that Karen backed up a number of feet.

Speaker 41 So the vehicle was traveling in reverse up to 24 miles per hour.

Speaker 18 And then there was the taillight. Trooper Michael Proctor, the lead investigator who would become a lightning rod, took the stand.

Speaker 17 The right rear taillight had large pieces missing from it.

Speaker 13 Those are all items that you recovered from the front lawn area, is that correct?

Speaker 6 Correct.

Speaker 13 Essentially the condition that they were in when you recovered them on that, on those respective dates.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 This was a crime committed when Karen rammed her SUV into John after a night night of heavy drinking.

Speaker 38 She retrieves a drink from the table and

Speaker 57 appears to consume it.

Speaker 18 Bar security video showed Karen drinking vodka sodas earlier that evening.

Speaker 29 The video shows nine drinks being consumed by the defendant.

Speaker 18 At the hospital, after John's body was found, her alcohol level was just over the legal limit for driving.

Speaker 30 This is the retrograde extrapolation report that I did.

Speaker 18 A state toxicologist extrapolated that data and calculated that Karen's blood alcohol level must have been three times higher when she hit John.

Speaker 32 The result was a 0.292 gram percent.

Speaker 18 The prosecutor argued that as Karen left the scene in a rage, she continued venting in a series of voicemails.

Speaker 13 With the court's permission, if I could play that to the jury.

Speaker 35 Yes.

Speaker 19 We only heard Karen Reed'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.

Speaker 18 Nobody knows what the f ⁇ you are, you f ⁇ ing pervert. These voicemails from Karen were intense.
She used a lot of profanity.

Speaker 19 You could see the jurors. I saw the jurors, some of them looking at Karen.

Speaker 8 You're a f ⁇ ing loser.

Speaker 59 F ⁇ yourself.

Speaker 19 And it was really a startling and stark experience for them.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 15 You were looking for naked photographs of Miss Reed as you sat in your office at 9:44 p.m.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 8 I swear, this is like, you do start to think, they're really trying to bleed me dry here.

Speaker 18 What is the point of all these witnesses?

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 28 Karen Reed was framed.

Speaker 28 Her car never struck John O'Keefe.

Speaker 18 She did not cause his death.

Speaker 15 And that means that somebody else did.

Speaker 18 On cross, Alan Jackson asked the Commonwealth's crash investigator why he was so certain Karen hit John.

Speaker 15 If his

Speaker 60 arm, elbow,

Speaker 18 the brunt of that entire theft, how do you account for the fact that he won't suffer a broken bone?

Speaker 60 I don't know.

Speaker 37 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.

Speaker 37 It made no sense.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 8 It could be any blend object.

Speaker 59 It could also be the result of being struck with a large object object, such as a baseball bat or a barbell.

Speaker 14 It's possible.

Speaker 18 And independent experts in crash reconstruction testified about John's injuries.

Speaker 57 The fact that we only have that head injury is inconsistent

Speaker 57 in this case with being struck by that taillight.

Speaker 15 So, was the taillight damage consistent or inconsistent with striking it off?

Speaker 57 It's inconsistent for a number of reasons.

Speaker 18 But the defense still had a problem.

Speaker 53 Three times I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.

Speaker 18 Multiple witnesses said that they heard Karen say, I hit him.

Speaker 37 Totally false. 100% false.

Speaker 18 Karen didn't take the stand to explain herself. This is what she told Dennis Murphy.

Speaker 5 I said, could I have hit him? Did I hit him?

Speaker 14 How could that have been? I mean, you're dropping.

Speaker 35 I don't know what else could have been.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 35 You're a fing loser.

Speaker 59 F yourself.

Speaker 18 As for those angry voicemails, the defense argued Karen left them because John had abandoned her in the car.

Speaker 18 Then there was what happened at the bar earlier that night.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 15 It bothered you enough to send her a text that said,

Speaker 15 um, with six M's behind it.

Speaker 7 Okay.

Speaker 37 And his text to her was, well, um,

Speaker 37 as in,

Speaker 32 what about me? What about us? How about us?

Speaker 37 Where do I fit in all this?

Speaker 18 When they all went to the party, Jackson insisted John went into the house, too.

Speaker 18 The defense's digital forensics expert said John's iPhone health data showed he was using stairs inside.

Speaker 49 This indicates three sets of floors. That represents elevation change, so it doesn't indicate to us up or down.

Speaker 18 That was contrary to a prosecution expert who said that data showed John was in Karen's car on a hilly stretch of road.

Speaker 18 Jackson suggested those inside the house attacked John, maybe including Brian Albert, a former Marine.

Speaker 61 Did you have any training in hand-to-hand combat?

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 18 The defense attorney tried to pin him down.

Speaker 15 Obviously, any detective would be trained in techniques that culprits might use or suspects might use to cover up crimes to thwart investigations, correct?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 61 Never been trained in the fact that, I don't know, somebody might want to clean up blood at a scene.

Speaker 30 No.

Speaker 18 Then, a defense expert in emergency trauma testified John's arm had been mauled by an animal.

Speaker 20 Possibly a large dog.

Speaker 20 There's parallel lines. And those were inflicted by either teeth or claw mocks.

Speaker 18 At the time of John's death, the Alberts owned a German Shepherd mix named Chloe. The defense said that was covered up.

Speaker 15 Your family got rid of Chloe.

Speaker 24 Chloe was rehomed in May. 2020.

Speaker 15 Whatever words we want to.

Speaker 61 Rehomed, rehoused, whatever. But you got rid of her.

Speaker 13 She's no longer part of the Albert family, right?

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 37 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?

Speaker 37 That is all evidence of a massive cover-up.

Speaker 18 To John's family, to anyone who calls this a crazy conspiracy, what do you say to them?

Speaker 37 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 the course of the trial.

Speaker 18 But the defense saved its greatest firepower for trooper Michael Proctor.

Speaker 15 This case involves a

Speaker 15 Boston cop whose family you were actually connected to, correct?

Speaker 17 Loosely.

Speaker 18 Jackson took aim at the state's key evidence, the taillight, arguing it was corrupted by the lead investigator.

Speaker 18 He suggested Proctor could have smashed the taillight and planted the pieces at the scene.

Speaker 37 Well, who had access to the taillight? Michael Proctor. Who had access to the scene? Michael Proctor.

Speaker 18 Proctor denied manipulating evidence to frame Karen Reed.

Speaker 15 Trooper Proctor, you don't get to pick a suspect and then try to find evidence to support your choice, right?

Speaker 6 Correct.

Speaker 15 But in this case, it's exactly what you did, isn't it?

Speaker 17 Absolutely not.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 15 What did you write after you talked about going through the, quote, retarded client's phone?

Speaker 17 No nudes so far.

Speaker 15 No nudes so far, correct?

Speaker 35 Correct.

Speaker 15 You were looking for naked photographs of Ms. Reed on a Wednesday night as you sat in your office at 9.44 p.m.

Speaker 17 It was an inappropriate joke.

Speaker 15 Do you believe that your text messages were reflective of an objective investigator?

Speaker 17 I believe poor jokes have, in unprofessional language, have no bearing on the integrity and the the facts and physical evidence of this case.

Speaker 18 Jackson read Proctor's harshest texts. Like this one.

Speaker 15 Hopefully, she kills herself. You believed, Trooper Proctor, that your life would be much easier if Karen Reed was just dead, didn't you?

Speaker 17 No, not at all. I had said it was a figure of speech.

Speaker 17 My emotions got the best of me based on, you know.

Speaker 17 The fact that Miss Reed hit Mr. O'Keefe with her vehicle and left him to die on the side of the road.

Speaker 15 she's a bitch is that right yes a whack job correct yes no ass correct yes would you agree trooper proctor that you have dehumanized karen reed during the course of your investigation i would say based off that language um

Speaker 18 yes why out of the gate does he have this animosity for karen reed Why did he go so hard at Karen?

Speaker 37 The more emphasis that's on her, the less emphasis is on the homeowner.

Speaker 18 Could you see how the jury was reacting hearing those messages that Proctor sent?

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 18 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.
Your service is complete.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 15 We will not stop fighting. We have no quit.

Speaker 18 For others, like Michael Proctor, the battle was just beginning. Did you crack the taillight to make it look a certain way?

Speaker 17 Absolutely not.

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Speaker 18 Karen Reed would get another shot at clearing her name, but for lead investigator Michael Proctor, there was no do-over.

Speaker 18 Immediately after the mistrial, he was fired. His wife Elizabeth.

Speaker 45 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.

Speaker 18 Despite the defense portraying her husband as the villain in this case, she says that characterization is unfair. Who is Michael Proctor to you?

Speaker 45 He is my best friend. He's an incredible father.

Speaker 18 He's loyal.

Speaker 45 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.

Speaker 18 She says her family has received death threats and ominous voicemails about kidnapping their dogs and their children.

Speaker 45 These last two two plus years have been a nightmare for our family.

Speaker 18 Was there a moment where you had to say to him,

Speaker 18 is there something to this? Is there something you need to tell me?

Speaker 45 Never. Nope, never.

Speaker 45 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.

Speaker 18 Elizabeth admits she was caught off guard by her husband's text messages. He talked to her about them before he testified.

Speaker 18 So, did he sit you down one night and say, There's something I need to tell you?

Speaker 45 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,

Speaker 45 There are some really embarrassing text messages that I have to read. And I said, Okay, well,

Speaker 18 own it.

Speaker 45 And

Speaker 45 when he was reading them, it was,

Speaker 45 you know,

Speaker 20 very uncomfortable.

Speaker 45 And I understand why it was shocking for everybody to hear that.

Speaker 18 You're his wife. How did it feel for you

Speaker 7 to hear?

Speaker 45 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

Speaker 45 he's incredibly remorseful. But, you know, I'm not making excuses for his behavior because it's inexcusable, the language that was used.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 45 Yeah. Yeah.
I absolutely can understand

Speaker 45 the

Speaker 45 public viewing it that way and at the end of the day,

Speaker 45 You know, it was the evidence pointed to her, not his bias.

Speaker 18 Did Michael ever ask for your forgiveness for what he did?

Speaker 45 Absolutely.

Speaker 45 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.

Speaker 18 Michael Proctor agreed to answer questions in the family's backyard. With everything that's happened, what is the most important thing to you that you want people to know out of all of this?

Speaker 17 I guess for people to know is that

Speaker 17 those text messages as

Speaker 17 juvenile

Speaker 17 as they are, it doesn't,

Speaker 1 it's not me as a person.

Speaker 17 I vented after being involved in an investigation of a police officer and

Speaker 17 used words that I regret.

Speaker 18 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,

Speaker 18 and I'm sure many other names.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 They just see those text messages and they immediately just assume I'm a bad person.

Speaker 18 What do you want to say to anyone who believes the narrative, the defense's narrative, that you are corrupt, that you framed Karen Reed?

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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 planting evidence and conspiring with witnesses.

Speaker 18 Did you crack the taillight to make it look a certain way? Absolutely not. Did you frame Karen Reed?

Speaker 17 Absolutely not.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 He is fighting to get reinstated as a Massachusetts state trooper. Why do you believe you should get your job back?

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 I still want to be a trooper.

Speaker 17 And I'm fighting for it. You know, I'm going through the appeals process now.

Speaker 18 And to anyone who thinks you should not get your job back because of this.

Speaker 17 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

Speaker 17 a pull-up, a judgment where you're just airing stuff out on your personal phone? You have an expectation of privacy in that little device.

Speaker 18 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'Keeffes.

Speaker 17 No one's kind of been struggling more, I imagine, than the O'Keeffe family, losing a loved one.

Speaker 51 You know,

Speaker 17 a son, a brother, a father figure.

Speaker 18 And the O'Keeffe struggle would continue as they waited for the next trial.

Speaker 26 No matter what we have to deal with, justice for Johnny.

Speaker 18 Meanwhile, Karen Reed wasn't going anywhere. Neither were her supporters.

Speaker 19 Some are directly giving Karen a gift certificate to to buy a certain suit,

Speaker 19 designer suit, that they want her to have it for herself.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 His reputation tarnished, with some still questioning whether he played a role in John's death.

Speaker 19 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,

Speaker 19 there's nothing, no direct evidence that ties him to anything that could have possibly happened to John O'Keefe.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 And so I think it's difficult to underestimate the impact that this case has had on some of the civilian witnesses' lives.

Speaker 18 Turtle Boy still faces witness intimidation charges.

Speaker 3 Six of them were dismissed, so I still have a handful left.

Speaker 18 As for Karen Reed, her hefty legal bills kept growing.

Speaker 20 Attorney Jackson asserted that her legal bills just for her attorneys was someplace close to $5 million.

Speaker 18 She sold her house and encouraged her supporters to keep fundraising. And this time, the Free Karen Reed movement got innovative.

Speaker 20 What they do is, you know, raffle off, you know, private dinners with Alan Jackson and Karen Reed, sort of inviting somebody into sort of the intimate, you know, conversations that they're having.

Speaker 20 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 just over a million dollars now.

Speaker 19 It is not normal for a defense attorney to fundraise with a client in a celebrity sort of way.

Speaker 19 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,

Speaker 19 designer suit that they want her to have it for herself, not just to pay for the

Speaker 19 defense team.

Speaker 18 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 docuseries that aired on id

Speaker 8 i don't think anyone

Speaker 18 with any logic would think 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.

Speaker 27 Exactly.

Speaker 18 Her first-hand account.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 And we wanted the evidence and we wanted the witnesses to tell the story of what happened that night.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 26 You know, again, no matter what we have to deal with, justice for Johnny.

Speaker 18 What would you say to Karen Reed?

Speaker 26 I just wish you would admit what you did.

Speaker 18 Through your eyes, she has put your family through hell.

Speaker 26 She has put my family through hell. She has put other people's families through hell to save herself,

Speaker 26 take accountability, and do the right thing.

Speaker 18 For trial number two, Karen Reed still faced charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter, and leaving the scene of an accident.

Speaker 19 Most people believe that Karen Reed was overcharged with murder. And here we are again, second trial, overcharged with murder.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 20 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 re-evaluated how are we going to try this case.

Speaker 20 Don't get into the defense theory. Don't call anybody that is unnecessary to the case.

Speaker 18 Nine months passed. Another explosive trial was about to get underway.
And this time it would be different. New evidence from Karen's car.

Speaker 28 There was a SD card or a macro SD card card that was on the circuit boards of one of the modules that was never looked at.

Speaker 18 And new information from John's phone.

Speaker 20 The phone battery temperature drops, drops, drops precipitously throughout the night.

Speaker 58 My opinion is that the device never moved far away from the fluck pole.

Speaker 20 The phone never went in the house.

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Speaker 18 Ready for the second round, Karen?

Speaker 18 From the outset, Karen Reed's second trial looked different from the first. Gone was the carnival-like atmosphere outside court.

Speaker 20 There was a buffer zone that was ordered by Judge Kanoni.

Speaker 18 Even wider than the one in place a year earlier.

Speaker 19 People were not allowed to have shirts on or signs or gather in any way around the courthouses.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 18 New rules applied inside court as well. Reporters and bloggers competed for seats through a lottery system, sidelining outspoken figures like Turtle Boy.

Speaker 3 So I haven't been able to get in the courtroom as much, and so that's why you haven't seen me.

Speaker 18 Also missing from the action, previous high-profile witnesses, Brian Higgins, Ryan Elbert, and Michael Proctor.

Speaker 6 Thank you, Your Honor.

Speaker 18 Special Prosecutor Hank Brennan would not be putting them on the stand. A tactical shift in the Commonwealth's case.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 25 And you're going to hear from her own lips of many of her statements, her admissions to extraordinary intoxications, her admissions to driving the arrest,

Speaker 25 her admissions to being angry at dawn that night.

Speaker 18 He played clips from that docuser that aired on ID.

Speaker 8 I have had a few cocktails.

Speaker 8 I didn't black out. John and I argued the morning of the 28th, Friday morning.

Speaker 18 And this one from her dateline interview.

Speaker 22 I didn't think I didn't hit him, but could I have clipped him? Could I have tagged him in the knee and incapacitated him?

Speaker 18 But the heart of his case lay in new evidence recovered from Karen's SUV and John's cell phone.

Speaker 10 How close is the phone to that flagpole?

Speaker 58 I believe very close.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 58 There's a temperature sensor built inside the phone within the battery.

Speaker 18 He testified John's iPhone battery was 77 degrees when he and Karen were in the SUV. Then the battery temperature dropped.

Speaker 20 What the Commvault wants you to take from the battery temperature is that you can almost see when he gets out of the vehicle and the phone battery temperature drops, drops, drops precipitously throughout the night.

Speaker 58 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 flat pole.

Speaker 20 So, really, what the point of that testimony is to show that the phone never went in the house, right?

Speaker 20 That it was in the front lawn, that it was on John O'Keefe, that he never went anyplace else but that front lawn.

Speaker 18 A digital analyst for the prosecution testified he made a critical discovery in Karen Reed's Lexus.

Speaker 28 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.

Speaker 18 The prosecutor said that tiny card yielded a massive clue about the timing of the crime.

Speaker 28 When the vehicle is powered on, this clock starts to run.

Speaker 18 By comparing the clocks on the Lexus and John's iPhone, the analyst deduced the time he believed Karen hit John.

Speaker 28 The time of that event with the clock variant suggested is between 1232.04 and 1232.12.

Speaker 20 There was real strength to what he evaluated on that SD card, and it really enhanced the credibility of the Comwell's argument.

Speaker 18 Morning. Good morning, sir.
Then the prosecution's key witness took the stand.

Speaker 11 I'm an accident reconstructionist and biomechanical engineer.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 11 So that's the vehicle, the Lexus pulling forward.

Speaker 11 And then it accelerated in reverse.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 11 The vehicle is going backwards. approximately 23.9 miles per hour.

Speaker 18 The prosecution expert said hitting John at nearly 24 miles per hour was more than enough speed to break the taillight.

Speaker 10 Have you reached an opinion whether the defendant's Lexus struck Mr. John O'Keefe on January 29, 2022 around 1232 a.m.

Speaker 11 Yes, based on the totality of the evidence, meaning with a regional degree of scientific certainty, that is what happened.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 11 What we know is that when it first came to a stop, right before that, it was going about 0.7 miles per hour.

Speaker 18 He said that was too slow to break the taillight.

Speaker 10 In any of the videos that you have that show Mr. O'Keefe's vehicle after the defendant's Lexus touches it,

Speaker 10 do you ever see any remnants or shards or fragments of taillight on the ground?

Speaker 14 I do not.

Speaker 18 To explain John's arm injuries, he went low-tech. Blue paint on a replica Lexus.

Speaker 11 And then I have backed up

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 20 If the Commonwealth is saying this is what happened, it does help to see

Speaker 20 a real visual, physical representation of it.

Speaker 11 I show the paint transfer onto my arm. The approximate location of the taillight lines up with the approximate location of the lacerations.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 And a state crime lab analyst examined fragments that came from his clothing.

Speaker 8 One clear piece of plastic, as well as several pieces of red plastic.

Speaker 18 She determined they matched Karen's taillight.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 18 The prosecutor argued the pieces could only have ended up there if Karen had smashed her SUV into John, likely in a jealous fury.

Speaker 18 He replayed her angry voicemails.

Speaker 18 Jen McCabe said infidelity was very much on Karen's mind when they later searched for John.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 27 I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.

Speaker 10 Your Honor, the Commonwealth rests.

Speaker 18 The prosecutor rested the Commonwealth's case, and the defense was ready to attack all of it.

Speaker 15 Did the vehicle control history record whether there was any history of a collision on that car ever?

Speaker 18 No.

Speaker 18 As the marathon trial shifted to the defense, more of Karen's supporters gathered to cheer her on.

Speaker 8 I think the video speaks for itself.

Speaker 18 Reporters scrambled to get her daily take on the proceedings.

Speaker 20 How are you feeling after today? I feel very good. Thank you.

Speaker 7 Karen, I feel great. Karen, I feel great.

Speaker 17 How do you feel about the defense case so far?

Speaker 8 I feel strong.

Speaker 15 There was no collision with with John O'Keefe.

Speaker 18 Karen's team finally was telling its story to a second jury that she was framed for murder and hounded by a corrupt investigator.

Speaker 15 This case carries a malignancy.

Speaker 15 One that is spread through the investigation. It spread through the prosecution from the very start, from the jump.
A cancer that cannot be cut out. A cancer that cannot be cured.

Speaker 15 And that cancer has a name.

Speaker 15 His name is Michael Proctor.

Speaker 18 But the defense would not be calling Proctor to the stand. Instead, it would introduce his infamous texts through other witnesses.

Speaker 18 It would also present its own scientists, testing, and data to prove Karen's innocence.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 62 If you fell back on grass,

Speaker 62 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.

Speaker 18 The defense didn't call Brian Elbert or Brian Higgins, but did nod to the conspiracy theory that John was likely beaten inside the Albert home and attacked by their dog.

Speaker 57 Good afternoon and welcome back, Dr. Russell.

Speaker 18 The defense asked this dog bite expert if her opinion on what caused those marks had changed since the first trial. It hadn't.

Speaker 33 They were inflicted as the result of a dog attack.

Speaker 33 And through either the action of the dog or the decedent pulling away, the teeth made these abrasions.

Speaker 18 The defense also rolled out a parade of crash experts.

Speaker 11 I practice in the field of accident reconstruction.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 15 Is there a data recorder on the SUV 570 that's designed to record impact?

Speaker 11 Yes.

Speaker 15 Did the vehicle control history record whether there was any history of a collision on that car ever?

Speaker 18 No.

Speaker 57 This is the liftgate taillight assembly.

Speaker 18 This expert conducted tests using a Lexus like Karen's and a dummy dressed in clothing exactly like John's.

Speaker 15 What were you trying to find out?

Speaker 57 What happens when you impact an arm with a Lexus taillight at various speeds?

Speaker 57 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 57 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.

Speaker 19 What the defense did here, I think, is took a wartz and all scientific experiment and said, sure,

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 57 Based upon the test results, it's inconsistent with striking an arm.

Speaker 18 After seven weeks of trial testimony, the defense's final expert witness took the stand.

Speaker 57 I do biomechanics, so I look at injury causation.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 15 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

Speaker 15 an impact of that nature, of that size, of that force?

Speaker 57 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.

Speaker 57 No evidence of it whatsoever.

Speaker 18 He testified the 36 scratches on John's arm should have caused a corresponding number of holes in John's hoodie.

Speaker 15 How many defects were noted by the crime lab in Mr. O'Keefe's right sleeve?

Speaker 57 Nine defects.

Speaker 15 In your opinion,

Speaker 15 were any of the injuries that you saw suffered by John O'Keefe

Speaker 15 consistent with having him struck by the subject lexus?

Speaker 57 No, they are not.

Speaker 18 On cross, Prosecutor Brennan attacked the expert for ignoring what was found in the snow on that freezing January day.

Speaker 10 Do you know how this taillight shard got there?

Speaker 57 That wasn't part of my analysis.

Speaker 10 Did you do any analysis how these

Speaker 10 broken taillight shards got into Mr. O'Keefe's clothes?

Speaker 57 No, I did not. Mr.
O'Keefe's hat.

Speaker 10 Did you consider how that hat ended up on the ground in front of 34th Airview?

Speaker 57 No, sir.

Speaker 10 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?

Speaker 57 You look at the physics. 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.

Speaker 18 It was time for closing arguments. Then the case would be in the jurors' hands.
Karen, once again, at their mercy.

Speaker 29 You had said before you have have butterflies at this stage.

Speaker 7 Are you feeling those?

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 18 For seven weeks, jurors watched a battle of titans, top-tier attorneys arguing over how John O'Keefe died.

Speaker 18 Now, each side had a final shot to persuade the jury.

Speaker 20 What can we expect to hear?

Speaker 8 All the facts, all the truth.

Speaker 18 The defense went first.

Speaker 15 There is no evidence that John was hit by a car.

Speaker 11 None.

Speaker 15 How much more reasonable doubt could there be?

Speaker 18 Jackson attacked the police investigation, especially lead investigator Michael Proctor.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 18 The prosecution was quick to counter by focusing on the data, saying everything else was a distraction.

Speaker 10 We know exactly step by step where they were. We know in that window, she hits him

Speaker 10 because he never moves again.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 17 She doesn't even have to know she hit him.

Speaker 17 But she did.

Speaker 10 She did. And she left a man

Speaker 10 who was kind

Speaker 10 and generous and thoughtful. She left him alone.
She left him alone to die. Very close.

Speaker 18 Finally, after 49 witnesses and theatrics inside and outside the courtroom, you may retire and deliberate your verdict. The case went to the jury.

Speaker 18 While jurors deliberated, the crowds outside grew.

Speaker 64 I'm here to 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.

Speaker 63 So the victim here is John, and he's being forgotten about.

Speaker 63 And I think that justice needs to be served for John.

Speaker 18 Then, on the fourth day of deliberations, a verdict.

Speaker 18 Karen Reed would finally learn her fate.

Speaker 22 Murder in the second degree. What say you? Is the defendant the bar guilty or not guilty?

Speaker 25 Not guilty.

Speaker 22 Operating under the influence of liquor by operating a motor vehicle with a blood alcohol level of 0.08 or greater. So say you, Mr.
Foreman?

Speaker 6 Guilty.

Speaker 22 Leaving the scene after accident resulting in deaths. Is the defendant not guilty or guilty?

Speaker 7 Not guilty. So say you, Mr.

Speaker 18 Foreman. Not guilty of murder.
Only guilty of operating under the influence. The least serious charge.

Speaker 18 The judge sentenced her to one-year probation and a mandatory driver alcohol education program.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 63 I could not be standing here without these amazing supporters who have supported me and my team financially, and more importantly, emotionally.

Speaker 63 No one has fought harder for justice for John O'Keefe than I have.

Speaker 18 Beth, a member of John's extended family, was outraged by that claim.

Speaker 26 The defendant did not fight for justice for Johnny. She and her family have not fought for anything except for Karen Reed.

Speaker 18 It was not what you were looking for.

Speaker 26 It was definitely not.

Speaker 26 What I was looking for, you know, it's been three years that we've been hopeful and patient and trusting the process.

Speaker 26 And,

Speaker 26 you know, to hear the verdict was heartbreaking.

Speaker 18 Does it make you mad, sad?

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 18 One good thing you told me about is that you can finally have this chapter of all of this behind you.

Speaker 26 A positive is

Speaker 26 Johnny can be at peace and the family and friends

Speaker 7 can grieve.

Speaker 18 And you have each other.

Speaker 26 It's very true.

Speaker 18 Homeowner Brian Elbert and others accused of trying to frame Karen Reed released a statement.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 8 I'm happy. I'm happy.

Speaker 18 Karen isn't finished with the justice system. John's family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against her.

Speaker 16 So then we take marshmallow, right?

Speaker 18 So now, John's family and friends hold on to memories and think about what might have been.

Speaker 18 He should be with his family. Yep.

Speaker 26 You know, he loved his family. He loved his friends.
Johnny just loved being there and being a role model.

Speaker 18 Do you ever go to his grave?

Speaker 7 I do, yeah.

Speaker 38 I guess what I do there is

Speaker 39 between me and him.

Speaker 18 How much do you miss him?

Speaker 38 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.

Speaker 39 And

Speaker 39 yeah, I miss him.

Speaker 40 There isn't anybody that knew Johnny will keep that doesn't feel his loss.

Speaker 23 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 9 Thanks for joining us.

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