The Night of the Nor'easter

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Speaker 7 Tonight on dateline.

Speaker 9 I look down at my phone, and in a matter of of seconds I look up and he's not there.

Speaker 10 My friend, boyfriend, did not come home last night.

Speaker 11 John's body was found in the morning.

Speaker 12 He was one in a million.

Speaker 8 The officer identifies himself as a detective with the Massachusetts State Police.

Speaker 14 I said, Dad, I need an attorney.

Speaker 16 The video shows nine drinks being consumed by the defendant.

Speaker 6 Witnesses said that they heard Karen say I hit him.

Speaker 18 Totally false.

Speaker 19 Maybe somebody else had a motive.

Speaker 20 There's just too many things here that don't add up.

Speaker 4 Conspiracies do exist.

Speaker 21 If you believe the conspiracy, you'd have to think that all of these people are complete sociopaths.

Speaker 22 You either think she was framed or you think John O'Keefe was the victim of Karen Reed being drunk and hitting him.

Speaker 24 Shame on you!

Speaker 12 I've never heard of a criminal case where the victim's family is harassed on their way to court.

Speaker 21 No matter what we have to deal with, justice for Johnny.

Speaker 25 I felt like I was living in a nightmare.

Speaker 27 What the hell happened?

Speaker 14 How did the night end up like this?

Speaker 7 A Boston police officer left to die in the snow. Was he killed by his lover or his friends?

Speaker 29 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 7 Here's Andrea Canning with The Night of the Nor'easter.

Speaker 6 It was just after 4 a.m., snowing hard.

Speaker 6 John O'Keefe still wasn't home.

Speaker 8 Nobody's heard from him.

Speaker 30 I haven't heard from him, and it's

Speaker 8 bad weather.

Speaker 6 Had the worst happened?

Speaker 21 You're just sitting there thinking, is this real life?

Speaker 6 Was she to blame?

Speaker 25 I felt like I was living in a nightmare.

Speaker 6 His death, a mystery.

Speaker 31 Her case, a cause.

Speaker 6 As all all eyes focused on the spectacle outside a Massachusetts courthouse, shame on you! And the bitter battle within.

Speaker 4 You don't ever, ever look the other way.

Speaker 6 The stakes are as high as they get for Karen Reed.

Speaker 22 As high as they get.

Speaker 6 The victim's family victimized.

Speaker 21 We would have to walk through these people screaming at us.

Speaker 6 The memory of the man who died almost lost in the war of words.

Speaker 12 There isn't anybody that knew Johnny O'Keefe that doesn't feel his loss.

Speaker 29 Sure, that's fine.

Speaker 6 We began covering this case in early 2023. That's when my colleague, Dennis Murphy, sat down with Karen Reed.
The story she told of one awful night in January 2022 launched a drama that endures.

Speaker 6 A nor'easter was blowing into town. Karen met her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe, for drinks at a bar in the suburb of Canton.

Speaker 6 That's Karen greeting John on security video.

Speaker 9 And John got up,

Speaker 13 offered his seat to me, and I said, I'm going to stand.

Speaker 36 So John stood with me, and we were happy, having fun, laughing, just very normal.

Speaker 38 So there comes a point where you're out of that place, huh?

Speaker 13 Yeah, we left after about 90 minutes.

Speaker 6 They crossed the street to the waterfall bar and grill.

Speaker 6 There they are walking in, joining some acquaintances.

Speaker 36 And one of them was a Boston cop, another cop, Federal Bureau, Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

Speaker 25 We walk in and it's, oh, hey, over here, how's it going? And you walk around, you say hi to everyone.

Speaker 38 The vibes, as we used to say in the old days, were good?

Speaker 28 The vibes were good.

Speaker 13 Yes. Yeah, the vibes were good.

Speaker 38 What time of night is it? Would you guess?

Speaker 13 We get there at about 10.45.

Speaker 41 And you're there for how long do you think?

Speaker 25 Till midnight.

Speaker 8 Just after midnight.

Speaker 28 Till it closed.

Speaker 6 John and Karen were invited to a small party by Jen McCabe, a friend of John's, who had been at the bar with them. There's John leaving with a drink in his hand.

Speaker 6 The party was at Jen's sister and brother-in-law's house. They'd also been at the bar.

Speaker 8 Her brother-in-law was a more senior Boston police officer who, ironically,

Speaker 25 you know, lived in Canton his whole life, two and a half miles from John's house, and yet we never socialized with him.

Speaker 41 His name is what?

Speaker 25 His name is Brian Albert.

Speaker 31 And he worked with John.

Speaker 36 He worked on the job, but

Speaker 8 they didn't really cross paths, I don't think, professionally.

Speaker 38 So it's closing hours and you're on your way to...

Speaker 8 Yeah, we're going to Brian Albert's house.

Speaker 28 Brian Albert.

Speaker 13 Yeah, which I'd never been to.

Speaker 28 You're driving.

Speaker 26 I'm driving.

Speaker 29 What are you driving? What's your vehicle?

Speaker 13 I have a Lexus LX, which is

Speaker 28 the full-size LX.

Speaker 41 That's a monster truck, right? Yes. Yep.

Speaker 38 How were you doing with drink at that point?

Speaker 28 Yeah, I'd had several.

Speaker 41 You probably. But I felt fine.

Speaker 13 I mean, I felt like I had had a couple drinks, but I.

Speaker 38 You didn't say I'm legless here. This is...

Speaker 27 No, I didn't feel impaired.

Speaker 6 The Albert house was about two miles from the bar.

Speaker 43 So you get to this address, huh?

Speaker 8 We get to the house.

Speaker 8 It didn't look like it was busting at the seams with people, and there was maybe one or two cars in the driveway, and I'm still on the street, and I have the passenger side facing the driveway.

Speaker 40 And I said, John, can you just run in there and like...

Speaker 36 you know, can we make sure

Speaker 25 we're welcome here and it's somewhere we want to be?

Speaker 13 He said, yeah, I'll be right back.

Speaker 28 And he got out of the car.

Speaker 44 Goes to the front door of the house? Yes.

Speaker 38 Did you see him go in the house?

Speaker 13 Yeah, I saw him approach the front door and put his hand on the door.

Speaker 38 In your memory, he's going towards the friend's house.

Speaker 44 How far do you see him go?

Speaker 42 I see him go to the door and start to cross the threshold.

Speaker 30 And I'm thinking, all right, let me look at my phone.

Speaker 13 And I no sooner.

Speaker 38 You don't see the door open. You don't see him greeted and going in.

Speaker 28 I see him open the door and put his head inside.

Speaker 8 And I'm like, all right, he's going gonna yell to me or he's gonna come out and get me

Speaker 9 and I look down at my phone and in a matter of seconds I look up and he's not there and then I

Speaker 30 waited for him to re-emerge which I assumed was gonna be in moments or that he'd yell to me from the front door okay it's good come on in yeah come on in but that never happened he didn't come back

Speaker 8 and it pissed me off

Speaker 27 because one, I didn't really want to be there.

Speaker 13 Two, I had to go to the bathroom.

Speaker 44 But where is he?

Speaker 30 Yeah.

Speaker 40 It's 12.30 and I'm waiting here in the snow, in the darkness.

Speaker 13 I don't know these people well.

Speaker 27 And what did you stay to have a beer?

Speaker 42 Why aren't you signaling to me?

Speaker 13 Soon thereafter, within Dennis, probably two full minutes, I start calling him.

Speaker 44 Are you getting ticked at him?

Speaker 14 Yeah, I am ticked at him at this time.

Speaker 25 Yeah.

Speaker 29 What happens next?

Speaker 44 I left.

Speaker 38 You're in your car. Were you saying I'm out of here?

Speaker 13 No, I kind of

Speaker 28 slow-rolled it

Speaker 25 off the street.

Speaker 13 And I'm hoping that as I slowly edge my way down the street, he's going to say, wait, Karen, where are you going?

Speaker 33 Okay, so there you are. You're headed home.

Speaker 25 Yeah, I went home.

Speaker 13 I was home within probably seven minutes.

Speaker 6 Home was John's place.

Speaker 45 And what do you do?

Speaker 8 I laid on the couch inside the front door.

Speaker 47 And I just called him.

Speaker 8 I called him just over 50 times.

Speaker 3 50 times? Yep.

Speaker 47 Yep.

Speaker 14 And they would just go into voicemail.

Speaker 38 It's getting very early in the morning at this point.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I fell asleep.

Speaker 25 When I woke up after four, I knew...

Speaker 25 I knew something was wrong.

Speaker 6 Where in the world was John O'Keefe?

Speaker 14 I didn't know what the hell...

Speaker 47 What the hell happened?

Speaker 14 How did the night end up like this?

Speaker 6 A monster storm had rolled into Canton, Massachusetts, and Karen Reed's boyfriend, John O'Keefe, was missing.

Speaker 6 She says she dropped him off at a party, and now in the early morning hours, he wasn't home, and he wasn't answering her calls.

Speaker 6 Karen picks up her story with Dennis Murphy.

Speaker 14 I've never been more frightened.

Speaker 26 And

Speaker 8 it's blustery, it's blowing snow outside. And I called John's closest friends in the area and most people weren't answering their phones.

Speaker 6 But at 4.53 a.m., Jen McCabe answered hers. Jen had invited the couple to the party at her brother-in-law, Brian Albert's place.
They'd all gone there after the bar.

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 13 let me hang up with you and call my sister.

Speaker 8 this is brian albert's wife

Speaker 8 the homeowner of the property where i left jen is answering that phone call she's not in the house where the party had taken place no she jen says she's home and she calls me back in a few minutes and she says i i talked to nicole she said you guys never came in and she said what she said you guys never came in your john never came in the door yep

Speaker 37 okay so you're hearing the twilight zone music at this point yeah i i said what the hell happened was was there somebody else involved Did somebody else go pick him up?

Speaker 27 Another buddy?

Speaker 8 So she said, why don't you come get me? And we'll go searching for him. In the meantime, I called another friend of John's and she picked up.
And I said, her name's Carrie.

Speaker 42 I said, Carrie,

Speaker 30 you know, and I'm not saying it this calmly, but I don't know where John is and I can't find him and I'm worried.

Speaker 27 And she hung up with me and started calling around.

Speaker 13 She called the police.

Speaker 10 My name is Carrie. I'm calling because my friend's boyfriend did not come home last night.

Speaker 28 I think she might have called a couple hospitals.

Speaker 13 And I started feeling like

Speaker 47 he had to have gotten hit by a car or by a snowplow.

Speaker 13 And he had no coat.

Speaker 25 He never wore a coat.

Speaker 6 Just after 5 a.m., Karen drove to Jen's house and picked her up. Together, they went back to John's to make sure he wasn't there.
That's the two of them on ring video and Carrie Roberts joining them.

Speaker 6 But John wasn't there. So the women women got into Carrie's car with Karen in the back seat and drove to the party house.
6 a.m., blizzard conditions. In the dark, they crept toward the house.

Speaker 6 Karen was the first to spot John.

Speaker 13 And we turn a corner and I see him immediately. I see his body immediately.

Speaker 13 It was

Speaker 28 windswept

Speaker 26 lawn.

Speaker 13 and there was just a heap.

Speaker 43 And this is on the front lawn of the after party house.

Speaker 26 Yep, on the perimeter.

Speaker 8 it's on the front lawn of the alberts but it's very close to their neighbors there's a cluster of trees and he's in there that's him

Speaker 30 it didn't look like john i mean i couldn't see his face or his hair but i knew it was him i knew it was something that didn't belong on that lawn i mean he's a big guy he's 6'2 220.

Speaker 13 you run out of the vehicle and start screaming i i said there he is i said he's right there

Speaker 36 And

Speaker 8 Kerry goes, where? And Jen says, I don't see him. She goes, Karen, you're hysterical.

Speaker 28 I said, he's right there.

Speaker 13 And they don't, now we're going slow. It's bad weather.

Speaker 8 But she doesn't, Kerry doesn't stop the car.

Speaker 30 So I jump out out of the passenger side and I fell on the street.

Speaker 25 And I ran over to him and his eyes were swollen shut.

Speaker 30 He had blood dripping out of his nose.

Speaker 29 Was he alive?

Speaker 13 He seemed like he could be.

Speaker 8 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 50 911, what's emergency?

Speaker 6 Jen McCabe called 911.

Speaker 39 What's going on?

Speaker 10 There's a guy unresponsive in the snow.

Speaker 13 And maybe within 15 minutes,

Speaker 8 I don't know who arrived first, a ladder truck or a,

Speaker 13 I'm not sure, but they were there pretty in pretty short order.

Speaker 6 This dash cam video from one of the first responders vehicles shows Karen running back and forth, clearly agitated.

Speaker 6 John was rushed to the hospital.

Speaker 47 I actually texted my my father and I said I think John's dead.

Speaker 15 And he

Speaker 15 called me and I said, Dad,

Speaker 47 I don't want to be alive. Like I

Speaker 47 don't want to live.

Speaker 14 And I didn't know what the hell...

Speaker 27 what the hell happened.

Speaker 14 How did the night end up like this?

Speaker 6 Karen was also taken to the hospital that morning.

Speaker 8 And I am put under a psychiatric watch just two

Speaker 30 vestibules down from where they're working on John's body.

Speaker 13 And then eventually, just before noon,

Speaker 47 my father

Speaker 47 comes into the room that I'm in. And I said, Dad,

Speaker 47 how is he? And he said, he's gone.

Speaker 40 John's gone, Karen.

Speaker 8 And I just collapsed on the floor.

Speaker 6 A 16-year veteran of the Boston Police department dead his family reeling and asking one question that would unravel into countless others why

Speaker 21 thinking about johnny is no longer here you know how does this happen

Speaker 6 in the days weeks and months that followed everyone had questions

Speaker 40 starting with her could i have done something that knocked him out and and in his in drunkenness and in the cold didn't come to again.

Speaker 6 What would you say to Karen Reed?

Speaker 21 I just wish you would admit what you did.

Speaker 4 The evidence shows that this was a huge cover-up.

Speaker 22 You either think she was framed or you think that John O'Keefe was the victim of Karen Reed being drunk and hitting him.

Speaker 21 She has put my family through hell to save herself.

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Speaker 6 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 6 Investigators may find out how one of their own died in the Johnny to his family and friends, only 46 years old. His body discovered lying in front of another officer's house.
It made no sense.

Speaker 21 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 6 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 21 It was unfathomable. I couldn't even think

Speaker 21 that this could potentially be happening.

Speaker 6 How did you hear about John's death?

Speaker 34 I got a call from Johnny's brother.

Speaker 12 He told me,

Speaker 46 he said,

Speaker 34 we lost Johnny.

Speaker 43 I kind of knew, I knew what he meant, but I didn't really know what he meant. You know, I didn't want to know what he meant.

Speaker 6 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 34 Yeah, so he was just

Speaker 12 a great, great guy. And, you know, a great friend when we were six.

Speaker 34 He was a great friend when we were 46. So.

Speaker 6 You also say that he really connected people. He kept everyone together.

Speaker 12 Yes. he would text me you around all the time, you know, go have a beer, go get something to eat.

Speaker 33 And,

Speaker 34 you know, I think it's very easy as you get older that people don't kind of take those. But he always,

Speaker 46 always did.

Speaker 6 John always knew what he wanted to do with his life.

Speaker 18 I don't remember a time where he didn't want to be a police officer. He was set on he wanted to be a police officer.

Speaker 34 That's all he cared about.

Speaker 6 And a big part of being a police officer, of course, is helping people. Yeah.

Speaker 34 The way he operated his life was he always kind of put other people first.

Speaker 6 When tragedy struck, that's exactly what John did. In 2013, his 39-year-old sister, Kristen, learned she had brain cancer.

Speaker 21 Kristen was diagnosed in May of 2013

Speaker 21 and

Speaker 21 passed away Veterans Day of 2013.

Speaker 68 Oh my goodness, so fast.

Speaker 21 So fast. It was just a few months, and Johnny spent a lot of time at the hospital with her.

Speaker 6 Two months later, another death, this one almost incomprehensible. Kristen's husband had a heart attack.
How does your family deal with that?

Speaker 68 Two deaths so close together?

Speaker 21 It was,

Speaker 41 uh,

Speaker 21 it was a lot. 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 70 the children.

Speaker 21 What are we going to do?

Speaker 6 The young couple left behind a six-year-old girl and a boy, almost three.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Why did it go to the bachelor police officer who'd never been a parent?

Speaker 21 He was very, he was pretty insistent.

Speaker 6 It's the beginning of like a TV drama, right? Because the bachelor takes in the kids. Yes.

Speaker 3 Yep.

Speaker 71 A life-juggling work in kids.

Speaker 6 They called him JJ.

Speaker 18 The laps looks a little sticky.

Speaker 39 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So then we take marshmallow, right?

Speaker 6 He was up for anything.

Speaker 72 Maybe we can use the home sugar.

Speaker 6 TikTok challenges,

Speaker 6 silly dances,

Speaker 6 and ninja warrior gyms.

Speaker 21 He was the fun uncle. You know, he was always making jokes and trying to make

Speaker 21 the time really fun for them.

Speaker 6 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 13 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 6 Karen had been through her own challenges. including a diagnosis of MS.
Like John, she'd never married.

Speaker 6 She worked as an equity equity analyst and taught college courses in finance as an adjunct professor. At John's house, she was the fun bonus parent.

Speaker 13 We had theme nights. So we'd have like a fiesta night.

Speaker 25 We had a formal night where we all dressed up and ate at the dining room table with the fancy china.

Speaker 6 How did the kids take to Karen?

Speaker 21 They, you know, they liked her. They liked her a lot.

Speaker 6 But all that ended on a cold January morning. John's family went to the hospital and identified his body.
Karen was there too under a psychiatric watch.

Speaker 21 She was screaming down the hallway, you know, is he dead? Is he dead? Screaming, screaming. Erratic to the point that

Speaker 21 they sectioned her, you know, because she was threatening to harm herself.

Speaker 6 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 6 She'd been released from the hospital into her parents' care and wanted to see the children.

Speaker 21 I wasn't there, but I do know that she had sat with the kids for, you know, for a short time. And then she and her father went upstairs

Speaker 21 to the bedroom, gathered a bunch of her belongings. And then Karen walked out the door with her father and her brother.

Speaker 44 So she just left.

Speaker 21 She just left. Never said goodbye.
And at that point, it had been almost two years that she had been in their lives.

Speaker 6 What did the kids think as she just disappears?

Speaker 21 So the kids, again, the kids at that point were so

Speaker 21 lost.

Speaker 6 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 6 Beth's sister Erin later told investigators about a troubling call she'd had with Karen after Karen left the O'Keeffe home.

Speaker 21 And what Karen said to her was, we'll probably never see each other again.

Speaker 21 And, you know, Aaron said to her, what do you mean?

Speaker 46 We're friends.

Speaker 21 And, you know, she didn't really have an answer to that. So it started to feel like something had happened.

Speaker 6 But what? The Massachusetts State Police opened an investigation and they began to develop an unsettling theory. that Karen was to blame for John's death.

Speaker 6 What's that like as that's sinking in?

Speaker 21 The only word that can come to mind is just complete shock. You're just sitting there thinking, is this real life?

Speaker 6 The meeting with the O'Keeffes took place only hours after John had been declared dead. Karen remembers it differently than the family.
She'd been alarmed by the mood at the house.

Speaker 8 I felt some some tension with John's mother.

Speaker 40 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 6 Karen says that's why she left and went straight to her parents' house.

Speaker 6 Later that afternoon, the lead investigator, Massachusetts State Trooper Michael Proctor, arrived with a colleague to question her.

Speaker 47 I wasn't asked about what happened at that house.

Speaker 13 Nothing about where did he go. Did he enter in?

Speaker 8 How did I come to find him?

Speaker 37 Who did I call?

Speaker 8 It was how much did I have to drink?

Speaker 30 And could you have done a three-point turn?

Speaker 13 And before they left, they took my phone and they asked for my car keys.

Speaker 6 The troopers took her SUV and Karen called a lawyer, Boston attorney, David Yannetti.

Speaker 19 She sounded young to me. My first thought was, this is a teenager.
I'm going to have to talk to the parents. But then as she started to tell me the situation she was in, I was thinking that,

Speaker 19 you know, she's probably going to need some help.

Speaker 6 He was right. Two days later, 7.30 p.m., police swarmed Karen's house.

Speaker 13 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 6 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 20 The nightmare had begun.

Speaker 6 Nathan Reed is Karen's brother.

Speaker 20 Someone was going to pay a cost for John losing his life.

Speaker 73 And so was I surprised that they would charge us.

Speaker 20 No, I wasn't surprised.

Speaker 6 The next morning, minutes before her arraignment,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 25 And we read them together.

Speaker 13 And there are a few things in there that stood out right away to me that worried me

Speaker 6 at the arraignment prosecutor adam lally laid out a damning case the prosecutor said troopers noticed something when they impounded karen's suv

Speaker 74 the rear right passenger side taillight was shattered pieces missing from the red and clear areas and at the scene investigators found plastic taillight pieces on the lawn where john's body was discovered Also consistent with the broken taillight on the Lexus SUV.

Speaker 6 The state's theory of 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 6 She backed into him, then drove off, leaving John lying there, badly injured.

Speaker 74 Approximately six bloodied lacerations varying in length on his right arm, the cuts extending from his forearm to his bicep. Both of the victim's eyes were swollen shut and black and blue.

Speaker 74 Approximately two inch laceration to the back of his head.

Speaker 6 Initial reports indicated John died from blunt force trauma trauma to the back of the head and hypothermia. Karen pleaded not guilty and was released on bail.
Anyway, it was an accident.

Speaker 6 Former Massachusetts prosecutor Katherine Loftus followed the story, but wasn't involved in the case.

Speaker 22 So I think when she was initially charged, those seemed like the appropriate charges to issue at that time.

Speaker 6 So family's reaction. to the arrest and finding out that there's been an arrest of Karen Reed.

Speaker 21 Relief. If she did this, she's going to, she's going to be held responsible for it.

Speaker 21 And at this point, we didn't think that it was necessarily

Speaker 21 on purpose. We just know something happened.

Speaker 21 She hit him and she left.

Speaker 6 It's hard to imagine that any family would have to go through something like this.

Speaker 21 Yes. You know, Johnny died on Saturday, and then Karen is arrested on Tuesday night,

Speaker 21 and they're at court on Wednesday. There is zero time to grieve.

Speaker 6 Days after the arraignment, John O'Keefe was laid to rest.

Speaker 21 The line to get into the church was probably about a half a mile down the street.

Speaker 6 Says so much about John.

Speaker 21 It does. It does.

Speaker 12 The police marched in kind of two by two to salute the casket, and that was an incredible moment.

Speaker 18 And you know, you could hear a pin drop when that was going through.

Speaker 12 And that line lasted, I don't know if there was a thousand police officers in that. It was just went on forever.

Speaker 21 And then the procession to the graveside was

Speaker 21 long. You know, we took a route through Braintree,

Speaker 21 where Johnny grew up,

Speaker 21 and

Speaker 21 then made our way

Speaker 76 to the grave.

Speaker 6 Very hard to say goodbye.

Speaker 70 Very hard.

Speaker 6 Karen wasn't at the funeral. She knew she was in a world of trouble.
Then a stranger called with a story that would turn the state's case on its head.

Speaker 19 Maybe somebody else had a motive, and maybe somebody else would have caused the death of John O'Keefe.

Speaker 6 It wasn't looking good for Karen Reed. She was facing prison time for manslaughter.
But her case was about to take a dizzying turn after a man called her attorney's office.

Speaker 19 And he had a very distinctive voice, very gravelly voice. He said, you know, Dave, you don't know me.
I want you to know your client is innocent.

Speaker 6 Intrigued, David Yannetti listened as the tipster, a a former sheriff's investigator, turned private eye, described a plot completely at odds with the state's theory of the crime.

Speaker 77 I didn't know what he knew or didn't know.

Speaker 19 I didn't know how he knew it.

Speaker 19 He was coy about that.

Speaker 19 But there's something else going on here, pointing to a potential other suspect.

Speaker 6 That potential other suspect was the man who'd hosted the party.

Speaker 19 You should be looking at the homeowner, who is a Boston cop.

Speaker 6 He was talking about Sergeant Detective Brian Albert, a 30-year veteran of the Boston Police Department. The tipster said John had been beaten by people at the party inside Albert's house.

Speaker 19 He believed that it was Brian Albert who had tuned up John.

Speaker 6 Karen says when she found John in the snow, it didn't occur to her he could have been beaten.

Speaker 13 I had seen John, and he was bloodied in the face, and he had cuts that were bleeding on his face, and

Speaker 13 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 19 That's a tough leap to make at that point.

Speaker 6 In at least three conversations spanning more than a month, Karen and her attorney say the tipster portrayed Brian Albert as someone who liked to fight, confirming their findings.

Speaker 6 They'd been working with their own private investigator who turned up this YouTube clip of a TNT show called Boston's Finest.

Speaker 8 Brighton was on a reality show that profiled his fugitive unit in Boston.

Speaker 13 He's in a boxing club and with other cops and he's lacing up and he's getting in the boxing ring and he's fighting.

Speaker 6 The tipster also seemed to have detailed knowledge of John's injuries, details that hadn't been made public.

Speaker 46 He said his injuries don't coincide with a car accident and that that added some validity.

Speaker 13 And it was inside information.

Speaker 60 Right.

Speaker 13 He knew what the body looked like too.

Speaker 6 But then suddenly, the tipster got cold feet.

Speaker 11 He got nervous.

Speaker 19 I was taking notes, and he did not like that. He started to back off sort of his basis of knowledge.

Speaker 6 And when police eventually interviewed him, he disputed Karen and Yannetti's story. The tipster said he learned details about the case from talking to them and insisted he had no inside knowledge.

Speaker 49 He's

Speaker 28 recanted.

Speaker 6 The tipster might have abandoned his own tips, but Karen and her attorney did not.

Speaker 19 I just had the feeling he knew more than he was telling us, and he didn't want to tell us how or why he knew it. I still feel that way.

Speaker 6 They had no idea if any of the tipster's story was true, and he didn't provide any proof. However, the information he gave them became the beginnings of a defense.

Speaker 19 We were off and running.

Speaker 25 Yeah, we were off and running.

Speaker 42 This man who knows what he knows somehow, he crystallized and confirmed our suspicions.

Speaker 19 That changed everything.

Speaker 6 But the case against Karen Reed was about to take a big turn.

Speaker 6 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 6 The prosecutor also presented toxicology evidence indicating Karen was drunk when she allegedly backed into John.

Speaker 6 In June 2022, she was arrested again on upgraded charges, including manslaughter while driving under the influence and second-degree murder. This is big.

Speaker 22 It's big because what we've gone from is essentially the Commonwealth alleging that this woman hit her boyfriend drunk by accident to a completely different theory that she has intentionally murdered him.

Speaker 6 She did this on purpose is the accusation.

Speaker 18 Yeah, up to that point, everybody had been kind of like,

Speaker 12 hey, it was an accident.

Speaker 43 And then this just kind of took it to a whole, whole different level.

Speaker 12 Now it was just

Speaker 12 unimaginable.

Speaker 6 But why would Karen murder John?

Speaker 78 My head's spinning.

Speaker 19 Like, what possibly could they have that would justify that charge?

Speaker 14 The narrative was that I just became enraged and decided to nail him in the snow.

Speaker 6 She was now looking at the very real possibility of spending the rest of her life behind bars.

Speaker 80 Hi, I'm Jenny Slate. And believe it or not, someone is allowing us to have a podcast.

Speaker 45 I'm Gabe Leidman.

Speaker 17 I'm Max Silvestri. And we've been friends for 20 years.
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Speaker 76 It's called I Need You Guys.

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Speaker 82 You should make sure that you subscribe so that you never miss an episode.

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Speaker 6 In June 2022, nearly six months after John O'Keefe's death, Your Honor, this is Commonwealth versus Karen Reed. His family was jolted by the news that Karen Reed had been charged with with his murder.

Speaker 6 Is the anger building?

Speaker 21 It is. It is, because

Speaker 21 it didn't have to happen.

Speaker 6 Karen insisted it didn't happen at all, but she wanted a fresh take on the facts. So she cold-called local law professors and got this advice from one.

Speaker 13 And he said one case that made some headway and was able to get charges dismissed was

Speaker 13 Kevin Spacey in Nantucket.

Speaker 13 The cell data was key.

Speaker 6 She learned that the actor was represented by a high-powered criminal defense attorney out of Los Angeles, a guy with a huge rep named Alan Jackson. Harvey Weinstein had also been a client.

Speaker 6 And years earlier, as a prosecutor, Jackson won the murder conviction of music producer Phil Spector. Karen reached out to him.

Speaker 4 She had not held out complete hope. that I would make contact with her, but in point of fact, I was very interested.

Speaker 6 That's how this connection was made. Correct.

Speaker 6 Alan Jackson joined David Yannetti on Karen's team. You come in as an outsider into this tight-knit community.
High-powered lawyer from Los Angeles. Do you tread lightly?

Speaker 4 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 6 Jackson did his signature deep dive into the digital data, and in early 2023, he struck gold on a cell phone that belonged to Jen McCabe.

Speaker 6 Remember, Jen McCabe was one of almost a dozen people at the party that night. She turned her cell over to police in the initial days of the investigation.

Speaker 6 A Google search on that cell made early morning got Jackson's attention. At 2.27, she did a search saying how

Speaker 6 long to die in cold, presumably how long

Speaker 6 to die in cold. Right.

Speaker 6 This is well before

Speaker 6 John's body has been found. Correct.
Jen told investigators she didn't know John was missing until Karen called her around 5 a.m.

Speaker 6 Jackson believed the timing of the Google search undermined that claim.

Speaker 4 It's hard to oversell this.

Speaker 52 It's that dramatic.

Speaker 6 The defense team met to discuss the finding.

Speaker 6 They speculated that Jen knew something happened at the party and started Googling as soon as she got home.

Speaker 4 She walked in, walked upstairs, and started Googling to try to figure out what is going to happen. Are we going to get implicated in the murder of a Boston police officer?

Speaker 6 Jackson said they found the search in a deleted file on Jen's cell.

Speaker 40 She completely turned it in too.

Speaker 13 That tells me

Speaker 8 it was clean. 100%.

Speaker 6 But at the heart of the case, the right taillight on Karen's SUV.

Speaker 6 It had been damaged, but how? The state said it shattered when Karen hit John around 12.30 a.m. The defense had an entirely different take.

Speaker 6 The taillight was cracked, not shattered, hours later when Karen went out looking for John. They said they had evidence to support that claim.
Video showing Karen backing up that morning.

Speaker 6 Karen told Dennis Murphy what happened.

Speaker 38 I have seen what looks like surveillance video of that car, I think that's a ring video.

Speaker 38 Backing out of your parking space?

Speaker 27 Backing out of a garage.

Speaker 44 Out of a garage.

Speaker 31 Is that at John's house?

Speaker 8 At John's. Yep.

Speaker 38 In backing up, did you bang into his car?

Speaker 44 Yeah, I did.

Speaker 45 Yep.

Speaker 44 Did you feel it? Did you hear it?

Speaker 28 Yeah, I felt a little

Speaker 27 and I

Speaker 29 on your back right on my passenger

Speaker 37 back right. Yep.

Speaker 8 You felt I hit John's back left.

Speaker 6 Okay, so this is obviously not Karen Reed's SUV, but this is similar, similar taillight. So what do you think about it?

Speaker 4 It's similar size. There's a different make and model, but it's similar size and similar situation for the taillight.

Speaker 4 One of the things that we noted right up front was how a taillight like this is manufactured on a late model SUV. This is all convex and it's hardened plastic.
Yeah,

Speaker 4 you're not going to break this easily. 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 6 When it came to John's injuries, the defense concluded they were not consistent with a car accident.

Speaker 4 You cannot ignore the

Speaker 4 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.
It's just not there. He had to have been killed in another way.

Speaker 4 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 6 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 6 Karen's father Bill and brother Nathan.

Speaker 20 There's just too many things here that don't add up.

Speaker 44 You need

Speaker 56 a handful

Speaker 33 of

Speaker 56 powerful, influential individuals

Speaker 73 in key positions

Speaker 44 to get this done.

Speaker 6 The Alberts, along with other partygoers and the O'Keeffe family, called the defense theory crazy. It's hard to keep a secret of that magnitude.

Speaker 48 It's hard to keep any secret that many people.

Speaker 21 You know, if it was one person, that would be one thing. But

Speaker 21 if the way we're looking at this conspiracy, it is everyone in the house. So it's just,

Speaker 21 you know, sometimes the truth is just the truth.

Speaker 6 But the conspiracy theory caught hold. And before long, people were turning out in droves to support Karen Reed, buying into this man's unrelenting crusade.

Speaker 83 We ain't got no quit.

Speaker 2 We ain't got no quit.

Speaker 2 No red.

Speaker 6 By the spring of 2023, more than a year after John O'Keefe's death,

Speaker 6 Karen Reed's lawyers were pushing their conspiracy theory at pretrial hearings.

Speaker 22 John O'Keefe was inside the house.

Speaker 6 And prosecutors were fighting back.

Speaker 32 There's absolutely no evidence Mr. O'Keefe ever entered the residence at Fairview.

Speaker 6 That's when the case exploded out of the courtroom and into the social media feeds of thousands. Thanks to this guy.

Speaker 83 What's up, Loses? How's everyone doing tonight?

Speaker 6 Aiden Kearney, aka Turtle Boy.

Speaker 71 All right, guys, so big day today.

Speaker 6 He's a former high school teacher turned blogger, part reporter, part showman, part instigator.

Speaker 83 We ain't got no quit!

Speaker 2 We ain't got no quit! No, we don't!

Speaker 6 He told NBC 10 Boston that he stumbled onto Karen's story in April 2023.

Speaker 71 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 6 He posted immediately, and he's been at it ever since, amplifying the defense theory like a relentless human bullhorn.

Speaker 39 To frame an innocent woman and cover up for the murder of a Boston police officer.

Speaker 6 Sue O'Connell is a commentator for NBC10 Boston.

Speaker 6 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 11 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 11 is

Speaker 11 a blogger who doesn't operate by any regular standards of what you would call journalism.

Speaker 83 Cock killers! That's what they are. They're cot killers.

Speaker 6 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 84 What we know for sure, 100%,

Speaker 71 was she did not run him over.

Speaker 6 He wowed his followers, urging them to join protests.

Speaker 79 Turtle Boy, without his voice, without his enthusiasm, his passion, we wouldn't all be here.

Speaker 49 How you doing? Nice to see you.

Speaker 83 And every other single person in that house who remains quiet to this day and participated in the life.

Speaker 6 A local murder story went national. Why do you think this story, this case, has grabbed the attention of so many people?

Speaker 11 We 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 71 So we're here to make our voices heard and the movement has grown as a result of that.

Speaker 6 And that's not all that grew. A defense fund for Karen Reed, fueled by Turtle Boy's Crusade, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Speaker 6 The O'Keeffe's watched the growing frenzy with horror, and they became targets themselves, reviled on social media by Turtle Boy and his supporters, often forced to run a gauntlet when they went to court.

Speaker 21 His followers have got into all of our faces prior to for hearings. We would have to walk through

Speaker 21 these people screaming at us. We have all been called idiots and stupid for not believing her conspiracy theory.

Speaker 6 Turtle Boy called the family maggots.

Speaker 21 Yes.

Speaker 6 It was because she knew the trolls could come after her that Beth asked us not to use her last name. How do you all feel about him?

Speaker 21 For lack of a better term, a vile human being. That's how we feel about him.

Speaker 37 They threw him outside in the lawn like trash.

Speaker 21 For the things that he has said

Speaker 21 and continued to say and got his mob

Speaker 21 to say

Speaker 21 with this mob mentality,

Speaker 21 it's vile.

Speaker 85 You are a disgrace to your brother, dude. A disgrace.

Speaker 85 You are a disgrace. I'll I'll say whatever I want.

Speaker 12 I've never heard of a criminal case where the victim's family is harassed both online but on their way to court.

Speaker 21 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 86 Shame on you!

Speaker 11 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 6 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 4 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 6 Did you bring Turtle Boy into all of this?

Speaker 4 Absolutely not.

Speaker 6 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 13 It was almost every day for like 20 minutes. Like, what do you make of this? Or what do you think?

Speaker 25 We talk about after court.

Speaker 42 Oh, my God. I can't believe the judge said this.

Speaker 6 The state, for its part, believed its case was being hijacked. The district attorney went on camera to condemn Turtle Boy's tactics.

Speaker 87 The harassment of witnesses and the murder prosecution of Karen Reed is absolutely baseless.

Speaker 87 It should be an outrage to any decent person, and it needs to stop.

Speaker 6 In late 2023, prosecutors charged Turtle Boy with multiple counts of witness intimidation. He pleaded not guilty.

Speaker 6 As the Karen Reed trial approached, the judge ordered demonstrators to stay 200 feet from the courthouse. That didn't dent their enthusiasm.

Speaker 48 We just can't let, you know, roll over and let them just do this to an innocent person.

Speaker 64 It's the biggest cover-up, I think, that we've ever seen in this country.

Speaker 6 Finally, April 2024, the trial was set to begin with a prosecutor determined to prove Karen's guilt by using her own words against her.

Speaker 86 She said, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.

Speaker 80 Hi, I'm Jenny Slate. And believe it or not, someone is allowing us to have a podcast.

Speaker 45 I'm Gabe Leidman.

Speaker 17 I'm Max Silvestri. And we've been friends for 20 years.
And we like to reach out to kind of get advice on how to live our lives.

Speaker 76 It's called I Need You Guys.

Speaker 17 Should I give my baby fresh vegetables?

Speaker 80 Can I drink the water at the hospital?

Speaker 81 My landlord plays the trombone, and I can't ask him to stop.

Speaker 82 You should make sure that you subscribe so that you never miss an episode.

Speaker 45 I Need You Girl.

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Speaker 57 But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

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Speaker 62 There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zen.

Speaker 63 Check out zinn.com/slash find to find Zen at a store near you.

Speaker 66 Warning: this product contains nicotine.

Speaker 67 Nicotine Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

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Speaker 6 In April 2024, it had been more than two years since John O'Keefe was found dying in the snow and Karen Reed's trial was about to begin. How anxious were all of you with this trial starting?

Speaker 6 So intense.

Speaker 21 It's so intense. It's the wanting to get it done with, to be able to,

Speaker 21 again

Speaker 21 start the grieving process start to move on with you know with our lives and to be able to just grieve Johnny in private you know not in front of everybody

Speaker 6 but at Norfolk Superior Court a carnival of supporters was there to greet Karen we got fascinated with the trial we come to support Karen I traveled just under 1500 miles

Speaker 8 to be here.

Speaker 4 I thought somebody coming from Alabama was pretty extraordinary.

Speaker 6 Someone came from London, England.

Speaker 4 Australia, New Zealand, Russia, because this case has really struck a chord.

Speaker 11 John O'Keefe had done nothing wrong and wound up dead. And on a regular basis, he was just left out of this conversation.
And, you know, Karen would arrive and people had pom-poms.

Speaker 11 They would cheer her on.

Speaker 31 Good morning.

Speaker 6 Inside the cramped courtroom, 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 74 The defendant Karen Reed is guilty of murder in the second degree.

Speaker 6 He argued the crime happened as John and Karen's relationship was failing.

Speaker 11 The evidence definitely suggests that things were rocky. I mean, there definitely was a roiling in the relationship.

Speaker 22 One of the struggles likely arose around some jealousy issues. When they were in Aruba, Karen accused John of cheating on her.

Speaker 6 That Aruba group vacation happened about a month before John's death. A family friend testified that John hugged her in a hotel lobby and Karen freaked out.

Speaker 6 And she very loudly told me to go myself across the lobby. And I said, yeah, you too, and walked away.

Speaker 6 And just a couple of weeks after that trip, the prosecutor said Karen had been coming on to another man. He was ATF agent Brian Higgins, and he read their flirtatious text messages in court.

Speaker 72 Defendant responded, you're hot.

Speaker 72 I responded, are you serious or messing with me?

Speaker 72 Defendant responded, no, I'm serious. I responded, failing is mutual.
Is that bad?

Speaker 6 Higgins testified that as he was leaving John O'Keefe's house one night after a get-together, Karen did something that stunned him.

Speaker 72 The defendant kissed me.

Speaker 74 And how did she kiss you?

Speaker 70 Not like a friend.

Speaker 6 He says Karen is the one who initiated contact with him.

Speaker 11 Yep, Karen is definitely pursuing him, and there was definitely a plan in Karen's texting that they would have some relationship, and I might guess an off-ramp from her relationship with John O'Keefe.

Speaker 6 Then the prosecutor turned to that January night. Suspense gripped the courtroom when the man who hosted the party, Brian Elbert, took the stand.

Speaker 39 I do.

Speaker 6 The prosecutor tried to preempt the defense's allegation that Elbert was involved in John O'Keefe's death.

Speaker 74 How would you sort of describe your relationship with John O'Keefe?

Speaker 77 Although I didn't know him well, I considered him to be a friend, and our relationship was very, very good.

Speaker 6 Albert, who had also been at the bar, testified he never saw John after they all left.

Speaker 77 John never came into my house that night.

Speaker 78 He would have been welcomed and the defendant would have been welcomed with open arms had they come in.

Speaker 77 And I wish they had.

Speaker 54 I really do.

Speaker 22 The people in the house said John never came in the house. Karen never came in the house.

Speaker 22 They were outside in a vehicle where the witnesses say that they saw the vehicle was close to where John Roke's body was found.

Speaker 6 John's family looked on as the prosecutor hammered home a fundamental point in this case. If John didn't go into the house, then there was no murder there.

Speaker 21 If you believe the conspiracy that he walked in the door and was and was, you know, hit right away, and then all of a sudden everyone's back home an hour and a half later, resting comfortably, You know, you'd have to think that all of these people in this house are complete sociopaths.

Speaker 21 If you try and sit there and put together a timeline of this conspiracy, you can't.

Speaker 6 And it would say that they are all lying, that they're all in on it and no one's breaking.

Speaker 6 No one's turning on anybody.

Speaker 21 Exactly.

Speaker 6 The prosecutor argued that there was no conspiracy, that it was Karen who was lying and trying to cover it up.

Speaker 6 Some of the strongest evidence in the prosecution's case came from Jen McCabe, who'd invited John and Karen to the house. She recounted the dramatic phone call from Karen just before 5 a.m.

Speaker 6 when John was missing.

Speaker 86 She tells me that John didn't come home, they got into a fight, and that she left him at the waterfall.

Speaker 22 Jen McCabe had to remind her, no, you were actually in front of the house, but then you left.

Speaker 86 And I say, Karen, we saw you outside of my sister's.

Speaker 74 And what was her response to that?

Speaker 86 She told me that she didn't remember going there.

Speaker 6 She said Karen went further, apparently implicating herself in John's death.

Speaker 86 And then she was saying, did I hit him? Could I have hit him? And then she proceeded to say that she had a cracked taillight.

Speaker 6 If that's true, then that really puts into question that she broke her taillight where she bumps or hits John's car.

Speaker 22 Right. I think it's, you know, pretty strong evidence against Karen that her taillight was likely damaged beforehand.

Speaker 6 John's friend Carrie Roberts testified about the frantic call she too got from Karen just after the call to Jen McCabe.

Speaker 86 And she said,

Speaker 86 John's dead.

Speaker 70 Carrie, Carrie, Carrie.

Speaker 86 And then she hung up.

Speaker 6 She said Karen called back about five minutes later with a more nuanced story.

Speaker 86 And she said, I'm afraid John might be dead. He might have gotten hit by a plow.

Speaker 6 Soon after, when the women went to search for John, something else seemed suspicious.

Speaker 6 Carrie Roberts and Jennifer McCabe testified that as they were driving up to the house through the blizzard in the dark, Karen was in the back seat and managed to spot John's body where both of them couldn't see it.

Speaker 22 Yes, they couldn't see anything, but that Karen immediately saw something, ran to where John's body was subsequently discovered.

Speaker 6 Which could look like she knew he was there.

Speaker 22 What the Commonwealth wants you to believe is the reason why she knew that John's body was there is because she knew that she hit him.

Speaker 6 As for Jen McCabe'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 6 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 86 At that point, she grabbed my hands and she said, Google hypothermia, Google how long it takes to die in the cold.

Speaker 86 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 86 My hands were shaking.

Speaker 6 By that time, first responders were on the scene. Some testified Karen was not questioning if she'd hit John.
She was outright confessing that she had.

Speaker 68 So she said, I hit him.

Speaker 68 She repeated it.

Speaker 1 I hit him. I hit him.

Speaker 74 Oh my God, I hit him.

Speaker 6 Jen McCabe said she was right there and heard the same thing.

Speaker 74 That's something that she said once or more than once.

Speaker 86 Three times. I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.

Speaker 22 We have a lot of inconsistencies in her statements because if you saw him walk up to the house and into the door and you left,

Speaker 22 why would the thought that you hit him ever come into play?

Speaker 6 As the trial unfolded, the prosecutor said it wasn't just Karen's changing stories that proved she was guilty.

Speaker 6 He also had a trove of data, including voicemails he said would show Karen Reed was in a red-hot fury when she killed John.

Speaker 39 You're a fing loser. F yourself.

Speaker 6 As the weeks went by in that tiny courtroom, every day was an ordeal for John O'Keefe's family sitting just feet from Karen Reed.

Speaker 21 And someone has has to stare at her face every single day. And we had to sit and we had to watch the defense table giggling and laughing, you know, at times.

Speaker 6 And it was all carried live.

Speaker 21 It was somehow lost that this was a murder trial

Speaker 21 and that it wasn't a social engagement. People lost the fact that the reason we were there was because Johnny was killed.

Speaker 6 But you didn't lose sight of that.

Speaker 21 No, we never forgot the reason we were there.

Speaker 6 As prosecutor Adam Lally pressed his case, he would roll out piles of physical and digital evidence to show Karen killed John. He said her motive could be found in her phone messages.

Speaker 18 So at 2.32 p.m., she says, then why would you start with me this morning?

Speaker 6 A state police investigator testified that hours before John and Karen went out that night, they exchanged angry text messages.

Speaker 18 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 74 And how does the defender respond to that?

Speaker 18 So you're not into this anymore. And then John says, not into fighting all the time, correct.

Speaker 6 The prosecutor argued Karen's churning anger in those texts was the fuel for what happened next.

Speaker 89 So this is 10 seconds of data.

Speaker 6 A police crash investigator used data recorded by Karen's Lexus SUV to show what followed when John got out of the car.

Speaker 89 So it's going straight and stops and then gets placed in reverse and then goes backward.

Speaker 11 The prosecution took data from the black box that they say shows that Karen backed up a number of feet.

Speaker 89 So the vehicle was traveling in reverse up to 24 miles per hour and approximately 62 feet.

Speaker 6 The investigator said the accelerator pedal was still pushed down when there was a sudden slowdown and the SUV's steering wheel shimmied.

Speaker 74 What, if any, Hype of fluish is that data set consistent with and why?

Speaker 89 Yeah, there's a point in there where it appears to be consistent with a pedestrian strike.

Speaker 6 The prosecution argued Karen had to know she hit John from the onboard cameras. The investigator testified John's injuries were also consistent with being hit by Karen Reed's SUV.

Speaker 6 He pointed to gashes on John's arm.

Speaker 89 The lacerations of the arm from the taillight,

Speaker 44 the

Speaker 89 dent with the scratches, those are something that would be consistent with strike in Alexis.

Speaker 74 You were also made aware that there was injury to the back of Mr. O'Keeffe's head.

Speaker 45 Yes.

Speaker 89 There was asphalt curbing, which could have somewhere he could have struck his head in there. He got projected and got spun counterclockwise due to the

Speaker 44 where he got impacted the vehicle.

Speaker 11 The Commonwealth

Speaker 11 needed to explain that John O'Keefe was struck by Karen Reed in her car, pivoting him around. putting him up in the air and having him slam down and bang his head

Speaker 11 on the ground, resulting in blunt force trauma.

Speaker 6 As images of John's body were displayed in court, it was especially hard on John's family and friends. Were you in constant contact with the family during the trial period?

Speaker 6 Were you checking in on them?

Speaker 7 Yeah, to hear it

Speaker 12 brought out around his injuries, it's gut-wrenching and they had to kind of sit there.

Speaker 6 Seven weeks into the trial, lead investigator Trooper Michael Proctor took the stand. He showed the jury evidence central to the case that Karen backed her SUV into John.

Speaker 73 The right rear taillight had large pieces missing from it.

Speaker 74 Those are all items that you recovered from the front lawn area, is that correct?

Speaker 70 Correct.

Speaker 74 Essentially, the condition that they were in when you recovered them on that, on those respective dates.

Speaker 41 Yes.

Speaker 6 There's also pieces of

Speaker 6 what are believed to be from her taillight, micro pieces in John's shirt.

Speaker 22 So I think that that really was the strength of the Commonwealth case, because if you don't believe that that evidence is planted, then you otherwise have to explain, well, how did it get there?

Speaker 6 As the trial unfolded, the prosecutor presented damning evidence of what he said was a major factor in the crime. How much Karen had to drink.

Speaker 24 She retrieves a drink from the table and

Speaker 16 appears to consume it.

Speaker 6 A police investigator described bar security videos showing Karen drinking vodka and sodas before she got in her car and drove John to the party house.

Speaker 74 In total from those two videos, how many drinks did you observe the defendant consuming over her time?

Speaker 16 The video shows nine drinks being consumed by the defendant.

Speaker 6 When she was tested at the hospital later that morning, more than eight hours after John got out of her SUV, Karen's blood alcohol level was just over 0.09.

Speaker 6 The legal driving limit in Massachusetts is 0.08.

Speaker 89 This is the retrograde extrapolation report that I did.

Speaker 6 A state toxicologist extrapolated the data to calculate Karen's blood alcohol when she and John arrived at the house.

Speaker 74 With regard to the maximum, what, if any, result did you get from your mathematical calculations?

Speaker 89 The result was a 0.292 gram percent.

Speaker 6 He figured Karen's blood alcohol level could have been more than three times the legal driving limit when she allegedly backed into John.

Speaker 11 So you can imagine in a world where you're in a relationship and by all accounts, you've been out drinking all night long and then something happens, some bit of information comes in that sets someone off to cause an angry exchange or argument between two people.

Speaker 6 Something happened, argued the prosecutor, because soon after John got out of the car, Karen called him in a fury.

Speaker 74 With the court's permission, if I could play that to the jury. Yes.

Speaker 11 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 50 Nobody knows what the f ⁇ you want, you f ⁇ ing pervert.

Speaker 6 These voicemails from Karen were intense. She used a lot of profanity.

Speaker 11 You could see the jurors. I saw the jurors, some of them looking at Karen.

Speaker 39 You're a f ⁇ ing loser.

Speaker 10 F ⁇ yourself.

Speaker 11 And it was really a startling and stark experience for them.

Speaker 6 But as strong as the case against Karen Reed seemed, her defense team was ready to unleash their story of what happened. Just when you think this case couldn't get any crazier, you find pig DNA.

Speaker 6 Right.

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Speaker 6 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. More than 60 would testify.

Speaker 42 I swear this is like, you do start to think, are they really trying to bleed me dry here?

Speaker 6 What is the point of all these witnesses? As exasperated as Karen seemed to be, commentator Sue O'Connell says the person she saw every day in court was a fighter.

Speaker 11 The first thing that struck me about Karen was just how involved she was in her own defense.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I mean, Karen Reed is fighting for her life.

Speaker 11 If you are Karen Reed and

Speaker 11 you're charged with murder, you're going to do everything you can.

Speaker 6 Her attorney emphasized to the jury that this wasn't just about John O'Keefe or Karen. It was about overzealous prosecutors, corrupt investigators, and people from Canton with a lot to hide.

Speaker 77 Karen Reed was framed.

Speaker 74 Her car never struck John O'Keefe.

Speaker 4 She did not cause his death.

Speaker 6 And that means that somebody else did.

Speaker 6 To prove that, the defense pushed back on the prosecution's case that Karen deliberately backed her SUV into John and left him to die in the cold.

Speaker 6 On cross, Alan Jackson asked the Commonwealth's crash investigator why he was so certain Karen hit John. If his

Speaker 45 arm, elbow

Speaker 6 took the brunt of that entire impact, how do you account for the fact that he wouldn't suffer a broken bone?

Speaker 35 I don't know.

Speaker 4 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 4 It made no sense.

Speaker 6 Responding to another of Karen's attorneys, even the state's own medical examiner couldn't say if a car or something else caused the gash in the back of John's head.

Speaker 28 It could be any blunt object.

Speaker 90 It could also be the result of being struck with a large object such as a baseball bat or a barbell.

Speaker 72 It's possible.

Speaker 6 And independent experts in crash reconstruction testified about John's injuries.

Speaker 24 The fact that we only have that head injury is inconsistent in this case with being struck by that taillight.

Speaker 4 So, was the taillight damage consistent or inconsistent with striking an arm?

Speaker 24 It's inconsistent for a number of reasons.

Speaker 6 They said that it appeared he did not suffer those injuries from getting hit by a car.

Speaker 19 Correct.

Speaker 4 And conversely, the damage on the vehicle was not the result of hitting a human body.

Speaker 6 But the defense still had a problem.

Speaker 86 It was crystal clear. I hit him.

Speaker 6 Multiple witnesses said that they heard Karen say, I hit him.

Speaker 4 Totally false. 100% false.

Speaker 6 Jackson pointed to the first responder's dash cam video.

Speaker 4 Isn't it interesting that not one

Speaker 4 second of audio picks up the word, I hit him. Not one.
She never said that.

Speaker 6 Karen didn't take the stand, but she gave her own explanation to Dennis Murphy.

Speaker 37 I said, could I have hit him?

Speaker 30 Did I hit him?

Speaker 24 How could that have been? I mean, you're driving.

Speaker 30 I don't know what else could have been.

Speaker 14 I thought, did he somehow try to flag me down and maybe tripped and I ran over his foot and then he passed out drunk? I mean, I didn't think I hit him, hit him.

Speaker 6 As to whether Karen and John were on the outs that night, Dennis asked her about that too.

Speaker 38 There's an innuendo here that you guys had really been going at it. And this was sort of had like a last date element to it.

Speaker 47 Was that going on?

Speaker 40 That was not going on.

Speaker 25 John made it clear to me, I'm never breaking up up with you.

Speaker 47 You know, not never that we're in this good or bad, but you're the best person I've ever been with.

Speaker 39 You're a f ⁇ ing loser.

Speaker 28 F ⁇ yourself.

Speaker 6 The defense argued the reason Karen left those voicemails was because John had abandoned her in her car and she got angry.

Speaker 6 Then there was what happened at the bar. ATF agent Brian Higgins was there.
Even though Karen had recently been flirting with him, she didn't speak with him that night.

Speaker 4 Treated you sort of like a stranger.

Speaker 70 I don't feel that way, no.

Speaker 68 I don't know.

Speaker 4 I didn't upset you that she ignored you or didn't pay attention to you?

Speaker 72 I did not feel ignored and didn't

Speaker 72 upset me at all.

Speaker 4 It bothered you enough to send her a text that said,

Speaker 4 um, with six M's behind it.

Speaker 44 Okay. And,

Speaker 4 well,

Speaker 90 correct?

Speaker 72 Well, it wasn't like that. It was, um, well.

Speaker 4 That's it. And his text to her was, well, um,

Speaker 4 as in,

Speaker 4 what about me? What about us?

Speaker 46 What about us?

Speaker 4 Where do I fit in all this? You walk in here right in my face with this guy after flirting with me and texting with me.

Speaker 6 The defense implied Higgins had a motive to hurt John when they all went to the party house.

Speaker 6 On the fundamental point, whether John went inside, the defense turned to its digital forensics expert and John's iPhone health data to suggest John was using stairs inside the house.

Speaker 84 This indicates three sets of floors. That represents elevation change, so it doesn't indicate to us up or down.

Speaker 6 That was contrary to a prosecution witness who said the data showed John driving on a hilly stretch of road.

Speaker 6 Jackson set out to persuade the jury that those inside the house attacked John. This retired pathologist testified for the defense.
John's injuries suggested a beating.

Speaker 6 What would their motive be, though?

Speaker 4 You don't have to have some deep-seated hatred for someone to to get into an argument that leads to a fight, especially when people have been drinking.

Speaker 6 People such as Brian Albert, he implied.

Speaker 4 Sir, you were in the Marines before you were a police officer, correct?

Speaker 29 Yes.

Speaker 4 Did you have any training in hand-to-hand combat?

Speaker 44 Yes.

Speaker 6 The defense attorney tried to pin him down.

Speaker 4 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 31 No.

Speaker 4 Never been trained in the fact that, I don't know, somebody might want to clean up blood at a scene.

Speaker 6 No. And there was something else.
A defense expert in emergency trauma was certain John's arm had been mulled by an animal.

Speaker 42 Possibly a large dog.

Speaker 22 There's parallel lines, and those were inflicted by either teeth or claw marks.

Speaker 6 If that's from a dog, that was one nasty dog.

Speaker 4 It's from a dog.

Speaker 6 What's more, lab techs had found something truly bizarre on John's shirt. Just when you think this case couldn't get any crazier, you find pig DNA that plays right into your theory.

Speaker 6 Jackson's theory was that the pig DNA came from a dog treat made from pork,

Speaker 6 chewed by the Albert's dog Chloe, a German Shepherd mix with a mean street.

Speaker 6 The dog also played into his thinking that there'd been a cover-up.

Speaker 89 Your family got rid of Chloe.

Speaker 78 Chloe was rehomed in May 2022.

Speaker 4 We can use whatever words we want to.

Speaker 4 Rehomed, rehoused, whatever. But you got rid of her.
She's no longer part of the Albert family, right?

Speaker 31 Right.

Speaker 6 The defense argued there was more evidence of a cover-up from before John's body was discovered. Albert and Higgins called each other around 2 a.m.

Speaker 6 Albert said they were butt dials.

Speaker 4 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 4 That is all evidence of a massive cover-up. Where were you at 6.03

Speaker 4 on the morning of January 29, 2022?

Speaker 44 I was sleeping in my room.

Speaker 6 Jackson implied it was suspicious that even after John's body was discovered, Brian Albert, a trained first responder, did nothing to help.

Speaker 4 During that entire event, after you were awakened,

Speaker 4 all that chaos on your front lawn,

Speaker 4 you never came out of your house. to assist or investigate in any manner whatsoever, did you, Mr.
Albert?

Speaker 39 No.

Speaker 6 To John's family, to anyone who calls this a crazy conspiracy, what do you say to them?

Speaker 4 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 6 Jackson was just getting started. The most dramatic moments of the trial were about to unfold.

Speaker 4 You were looking for naked photographs of Miss Reed as you sat in your office at 9:44 p.m.

Speaker 6 The demonstrators outside the courthouse treated Karen Reed and her lawyers like rock stars.

Speaker 6 What was it like going in and out of court every day with all those supporters, all the fanfare?

Speaker 4 That was

Speaker 4 a trip.

Speaker 4 I've been involved in a few high-profile cases here and there where there's public interest, but this was truly this was next level.

Speaker 6 As the trial went into its seventh week, its most viral moments played out when Alan Jackson took aim at the police who investigated the death of one of their own. That's correct.

Speaker 6 When you think about it, an officer is dead. I mean, you would think that you would want to go overboard

Speaker 6 to make sure that everything was done correctly, properly.

Speaker 6 Collect whatever you can in that moment.

Speaker 4 Exactly. So the first thing you need to do is walk in and make sure that you lock everything down.
You freeze the scene, as it were, the interior of the house and the exterior of the house.

Speaker 4 None of that was done.

Speaker 6 And investigators didn't protect the evidence, he said.

Speaker 4 Do you think it's standard practice for a police department to borrow red solo cups from a neighbor to gather evidence?

Speaker 2 Objection.

Speaker 68 You can go ahead and answer that, Lieutenant. Of course not.

Speaker 64 Nothing about the scene was standard.

Speaker 4 Those solo cups were put in grocery bags, not evidence bags, not grocery bags. That evidence is obviously very important.
Somebody else's blood might be in that evidence.

Speaker 6 When lead investigator Michael Proctor took the stand, Jackson rained fire on him, insinuating he was not just incompetent, but corrupt.

Speaker 4 This case involves

Speaker 4 a Boston cop whose family you were actually connected to, correct?

Speaker 73 Mostly.

Speaker 6 The trooper admitted he'd known members of the Albert family for years. He was friendly with one of Brian Albert's brothers and had worked with another.

Speaker 4 You further testified that you never have gone to any supervisor at Massachusetts State Police to disclose even a potential conflict of interest in this case that you might have, correct?

Speaker 44 Correct.

Speaker 6 Jackson then urged jurors to look at the state's key evidence, the taillight.

Speaker 6 He argued it was only cracked when Karen backed out of the garage, but it was smashed into pieces after Trooper Proctor impounded her SUV. The evidence?

Speaker 6 This police video of the impounded SUV with a twist.

Speaker 4 I established that the video was inverted. We were able to establish that they had manipulated evidence and literally presented it as true.
And it was not true. It was completely backward.

Speaker 6 He said the video told a different story when it was played the right way around.

Speaker 4 And what it did show is the person that was toward the actual right rear taillight was Michael Proctor.

Speaker 6 Jackson suggested Proctor could have smashed the taillight. But that didn't explain the plastic shards police were finding back at the scene.
How could they be there if Karen hadn't hit John?

Speaker 6 What about all these pieces at the scene, pieces on the road? The pieces that were seen continued to find over the following days.

Speaker 4 Over the course of three weeks, actually.

Speaker 4 Interesting. How is it that those pieces, 46 or 47 pieces of taillight, were found over the course of three weeks?

Speaker 6 He suggested it was Proctor who planted the pieces.

Speaker 4 Well, who had access to the taillight? Michael Proctor. Who had access to the scene? Michael Proctor.

Speaker 6 Proctor denied manipulating evidence. Jackson didn't buy that.
He said it was all about law enforcement protecting its own.

Speaker 4 I believe that Michael Proctor and his cohorts erected a tall blue wall. And what I mean by that is the visual of this insular community where they protect themselves, they protect each other.

Speaker 4 And if you're an outsider, you're not invited in.

Speaker 4 And Karen Reed was very much an outsider. You didn't say that, did

Speaker 6 Perhaps the most explosive moments in the trial came as Alan Jackson got Proctor to read text messages he'd sent soon after his investigation began.

Speaker 4 What did you write after you talked about going through the quote retarded client's phone?

Speaker 1 Jackson.

Speaker 41 Allow it.

Speaker 44 No nudes so far.

Speaker 4 No nudes so far, correct?

Speaker 39 Correct.

Speaker 4 And you said that to your bosses.

Speaker 39 Yes, sir.

Speaker 4 You were looking for naked photographs of Miss Reed on a Wednesday night as you sat in your office at 9.44 p.m.

Speaker 73 It was an inappropriate joke.

Speaker 4 Do you believe that your text messages were reflective of an objective investigator?

Speaker 73 I believe poor jokes have, in unprofessional language, have no bearing on the integrity and the facts and physical evidence of this case.

Speaker 6 Why out of the gate does he have this animosity for Karen Reed?

Speaker 4 Why did he go so hard at Karen? The more emphasis that's on her, the less emphasis is on the homeowner.

Speaker 6 Jackson didn't let up, quoting more of Proctor's texts about Karen Reed.

Speaker 4 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 2 Objection.

Speaker 41 I'll allow it.

Speaker 73 No, not at all. I had said it was a figurous speech.

Speaker 73 My emotions got the best of me based on, you know, the fact that Miss Reed hit Mr. O'Keefe with her vehicle and left him to die on the side of the road.

Speaker 4 She's a bitch.

Speaker 18 Objection.

Speaker 4 Is that right? Yes. A whack job, correct?

Speaker 70 Yes. No ass, correct?

Speaker 44 Yes.

Speaker 4 She's f according to you, right?

Speaker 70 Yes.

Speaker 4 Would you agree, Trooper Proctor, that you have dehumanized Karen Reed during the course of your investigation?

Speaker 73 I would say based off that language,

Speaker 70 yes.

Speaker 6 Could you see how the jury was reacting hearing those messages that Proctor sent?

Speaker 11 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 6 After eight weeks of testimony, both sides rested. By that point, Karen Reed had been called nearly every name in the book.
All that mattered now was what the jury called her: guilty or not guilty.

Speaker 6 June 2024.

Speaker 6 It had been an epic courtroom battle to determine if Karen Reed was guilty of second-degree murder, manslaughter while driving under the influence, and leaving the scene of a fatal accident.

Speaker 6 A guilty verdict could send her to prison for life.

Speaker 74 The defendant drove her vehicle in reverse, struck Mr. O'Keefe, causing those catastrophic head injuries, leaving him incapacitated.

Speaker 6 The prosecution and defense made their final bids to sway the jury.

Speaker 4 He got hit, punch went through, and he fell to the ground, fracturing his skull. At some point during that altercation, the dog got hold of him.

Speaker 6 Finally, after more than 70 witnesses and theatrics inside and outside the courtroom. You may now retire and deliberate your verdict.
The case went to the jury.

Speaker 22 How are you feeling?

Speaker 21 We were thinking it would either be a hung jury or we thought that she would be found guilty. We did not think that there was any way that this jury was going to acquit her.

Speaker 4 I thought for sure that we were going to walk away with an acquittal.

Speaker 6 The jury begins their deliberations. Do you feel the tension?

Speaker 11 When the jury begins their deliberation, the crowds outside grow even more.

Speaker 6 John's supporters also turned out.

Speaker 11 I can imagine the level of stress that that put on the jurors.

Speaker 6 The days start to tick by. One, two, three, four.

Speaker 49 Right.

Speaker 6 The jury continued deliberating, but by the end of the week, was at an impasse.

Speaker 68 I'd ask you to clear your heads, have lunch, and begin your deliberations again.

Speaker 6 Jurors took the weekend, but when they came back on Monday.

Speaker 68 Despite our rigorous efforts, we continue to find ourselves at an impasse. Our perspectives on the evidence are starkly divided.

Speaker 44 They're hung.

Speaker 11 They can't come to a conclusion.

Speaker 68 Your service is complete. I'm declaring a mistrial in this case.

Speaker 6 The judge comes back and tells the courtroom that she is declaring a mistrial.

Speaker 21 We were deflated. We had that hope that this is going to come to an end and we're going to be able to basically move on.

Speaker 21 And

Speaker 21 then there's the thought of, oh, God, we have to do this again.

Speaker 6 And it's over just like that.

Speaker 4 That switch was thrown. It was done.
It means that the prosecution didn't win. That's a win for the defense to a certain degree.
It wasn't the win that we were looking for, though.

Speaker 4 We will not stop fighting. We have no quit.

Speaker 6 In the days following the trial, Jackson got an unexpected boost. He said five jurors approached his team with a startling revelation about deliberations.

Speaker 4 Every one of them have indicated that

Speaker 4 the jury was unanimous for not guilty on count one, count one being the murder charge, and they were unanimous for not guilty on count three, leaving the scene with injury or death.

Speaker 6 Karen's team tried to get those two charges thrown out. Their motion was denied, and they are appealing.
As for the O'Keeffes, they're regrouping. John's parents are raising his niece and nephew.

Speaker 6 The family has sued Karen for damages in civil court as they brace for a retrial. Did the prosecution talk to the family after this

Speaker 6 mistrial was reached?

Speaker 21 They said, we'll be ready to do this again.

Speaker 6 And the family is 100% on board with that. We are indeed.

Speaker 21 You know, again, no matter what we have to deal with, justice for Johnny.

Speaker 6 Brian Albert retired from the Boston Police Department more than seven months before the trial. Both Albert and Higgins declined to speak with Dateline.

Speaker 6 Through their attorneys, they denied any involvement in killing John O'Keefe. The state police and the district attorney's office also declined to comment.

Speaker 6 But before the trial, the DA forcefully rejected the conspiracy allegations.

Speaker 87 There was no fight inside that home.

Speaker 71 John O'Keefe did not enter the home.

Speaker 87 These people were not part of a conspiracy and certainly did not commit murder or any crime that night.

Speaker 6 As for trooper Michael Proctor, he has been suspended without pay for his conduct. And Turtle Boy is awaiting trial on witness intimidation and other charges.

Speaker 6 And Karen?

Speaker 6 She's hoping her supporters will stick with her at her new trial scheduled for January.

Speaker 6 Hi, Karen. So far, they've raised more than a half million dollars for her cause.
What would you say to Karen Reed?

Speaker 21 I just wish you would admit what you did.

Speaker 69 Through your eyes, she has put your family through hell.

Speaker 21 She has put my family through hell. She has put other people's families through hell to save herself.

Speaker 21 Take accountability and do the right thing.

Speaker 6 For now, John's family and friends are holding on to memories. and thinking of what might have been.

Speaker 6 He should be with his family.

Speaker 21 Yep, you know, he loved his family. He loved his friends.
Johnny just loved being there and being a role model.

Speaker 6 Do you ever go to his grave?

Speaker 33 I do, yeah.

Speaker 12 I guess what I do there is

Speaker 12 between me and him.

Speaker 6 How much do you miss him?

Speaker 12 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 45 And

Speaker 43 yeah, I miss him.

Speaker 12 There isn't anybody that knew Johnny O'Keefe that doesn't feel his loss.

Speaker 7 That's all for this edition of Dateline, and check out our Talking Dateline podcast.

Speaker 7 Andrea Canning and Blaine Alexander will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, available Wednesday in the Dateline feed wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 7 We'll see you again next Friday at 9 8th Central. I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News.

Speaker 23 Good night.

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