Man Dead In Front of Powerful Family Home After “Blizzard Party” -Everyone Inside Has Motive To Kill

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They're calling it whiteout conditions.

That means you get in your car, you put the windshield wipers to the max speed, and you start driving, but you still cannot see what is in front of you.

A giant pickup truck could be 30 feet in front of you and you can't see it because the snow is coming down so heavy and the wind is so fast, these snow flurries are just shooting straight at your car.

But this is the Boston, Massachusetts area.

They get an average of 45 inches of snow every single year.

That's like more than half of my height.

They should be used to it.

But January 29th, 2022, it's getting pretty bad.

There have been more than 100,000 power outages reported in the area.

Some areas are experiencing wind gusts of 90 miles per hour.

I mean, thankfully, that's only a few spots, but just to give you an idea, an average person can be knocked over, moved over by 67 mile per hour winds.

90 miles per hour?

I mean, you're fighting against the wind as you're walking.

Thankfully, most areas are 35 mile per hour winds, but it's still not great.

This is a proper blizzard.

One weather forecaster warns the residents.

The storm emergency has been declared.

Boston residents need to be prepared for this one.

This is likely going to be an intense, dangerous storm with heavy snow, high winds, and whiteout conditions.

This has the potential to be a historic storm, a huge one.

This is likely to be an intense dangerous storm with heavy snow, high winds, and whiteout conditions.

Temperatures will be dropping into the single digit and below zero numbers.

We are talking about treacherous conditions, dangerous, sometimes life-threatening conditions.

Here in Boston, the best thing you can do is stay inside.

That is why a group of friends decide they're going to have a blizzard party.

They're going to to hit up all the local bars, then come back to this guy named Brian's house, Brian the Blizzard guy, and they're going to celebrate a little bit more.

So they all end up at Brian the Blizzard guy's house at around midnight.

And people from midnight to about 2:30 a.m., one by one, these partygoers, they start heading back to their own house, driving in the middle of the blizzard to get back to their beds.

By 2:30 in the morning, only the residents of the house are still there.

All the party goers, all the guests have left and gone, except for one.

On the front lawn, about six to eight feet from the curb, from the street, is the dead body of John O'Keefe, one of the guests that were invited to the blizzard party.

He will be found at 6 a.m.

in the snow.

Police arrive at the house where the blizzard party just took place.

They find John, this man, unresponsive in the snow.

He's bleeding from the back of his head.

He's missing a shoe.

There's scratch marks on his arm.

He's not even wearing a jacket.

There's injuries to his face.

He's just laying in the snow in the front lawn of this house.

There are three women standing around his unresponsive body, and all of them, they know this man.

They know John O'Keefe.

One of them went to high school prom with him.

Her name is Carrie Roberts.

Another one has been friends with him for almost a decade, Jen McCabe.

And the other one has been dating John O'Keefe for the past two years.

Her name is Karen Reed.

Karen Reed, the girlfriend, she's inconsolable.

I mean, she's running around this blizzard screaming.

She's throwing herself on John O'Keefe's body, lifting up her shirt, lifting up his shirt, trying to warm him up via body heat.

She has blood on her face from trying mouth-to-mouth CPR.

The woman that went to high school prom with him, Carrie Roberts, she's screaming at John's girlfriend, Karen.

She's like, shut the f ⁇ up.

We need to be able to like have, we need to get the blankets.

She's like, Karen, you're doing too much.

You need to sit down.

She's freaking out, and it seems like the calmest one at the scene is Jen McCabe.

John O'Keefe is ultimately rushed to the hospital and is pronounced dead.

Now, the officers want to find out what the hell happened here.

Karen Reed, John's girlfriend, tells the officers, I mean, she dropped him off at the blizzard party, drove back to John's house to go to sleep.

She woke up and he still wasn't home, so she got really worried.

She wanted to naturally come to the place where she last saw him, where she dropped him off, which is the Blizzard Party, and that's when she found him dead in the snow in the front lawn.

Jen McCabe says, I was at the Blizzard Party last night.

I was inside the house.

She said she saw Karen Reed's car pull up at around 12.30.

John O'Keefe's in the passenger seat, but neither of them ever came in.

So one of them is for sure lying.

Yeah, Carrie, well, you'll see.

Carrie Roberts, childhood best friend of John's and former prom date, she says she wasn't there at the party last night.

In fact, she doesn't even really know these people.

She only met Jen McCabe once, like seven years ago.

Karen Reed, I mean, she's been meeting her a few more times, but only through John.

Like she's besties with John O'Keefe.

The only reason she's here is because Karen, John's girlfriend, called her an hour ago in the middle of the night at 5 a.m.

screaming that John is dead.

Carrie says, you know, Karen, the girlfriend, she also mentioned a few odd things.

Something about a cracked taillight.

Karen also allegedly said something along the lines of, did I hit him?

Did I hit him?

Everyone involved in this incident has a very different story.

So what happened between 12 and 6 in the morning?

It seems like the people that would have the most clear answers are the people that were inside the house.

But their stories just don't make sense.

And they're starting to get very upset that people are accusing them of having anything to do with John O'Keefe being dead in the front lawn.

They say, whatever they've done to us is they've dehumanized us to the sense where we're not even real people anymore.

We're almost like caricatures.

We're just pawns.

In an interview, they're asked, have each of you been called murderers, like actual murderers?

Oh yeah, on a daily basis, you know, and we get down, we get depressed, and it's like, but this isn't the town we grew up in.

We didn't do anything wrong.

Why should we have to go anywhere?

Besides, someone else has already been arrested for the killing of their friend, John O'Keefe, his girlfriend, Karen Reed.

She has been arrested for intentionally hitting her boyfriend with her car in a drunken fight, leaving him for dead in the snow in the front lawn.

But why does nobody believe that?

Netizens don't believe it.

There were two trials and none of the jurors believed it.

They believe that Karen Reed is being framed by the group of friends.

Is it because every time their story is questioned, they start slipping up?

Is it because none of their cell phone records really match what they're saying?

Or does it have to do with the fact that every time they get up on that witness stand to testify, they start getting aggressive and they start having these collective bouts of amnesia as a friend group, where they cannot recall details that they should be able to recall?

This is the case of Karen Reed and why everyone thinks that she has been framed.

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A few disclaimers before we get started.

There are references to driving under the influence, alleged physical assault.

This is going to be the first episode in a four-part series of the Karen Reed trials, which I know sometimes this series can be a lot.

Please watch at your own discretion.

This case also spans over two trials.

So the first trial ended in a mistrial.

However, even following all of the legal proceedings, this case is incredibly divisive.

People say in the town of Canton, Massachusetts, this case is worse than politics.

You do not bring it up at dinner parties.

You do not bring it up in casual conversation with friends.

People in high school are not talking to each other because of this case.

Parents are not talking to their kids because of this case.

Wow.

It's very divisive, and our intention for this episode is not to sway anyone's opinion, but to present the facts of this case and the proceedings.

Altogether, we went through hundreds of hours of courtroom footage, courtroom transcripts, testimonies, and dash cam footage.

I did my best to include both trials throughout this series, but of course, for the sake of time and clarity, many quotes and statements from testimony and/or opening and closing statements have been shortened, condensed, or combined.

Any and all speculations, accusations, and allegations discussed are unproven and are representative of theories that you can publicly find online from numerous netizens.

These are not like things that I came up with in my basement.

These are discourse that's floating around in the internet.

We maintain that all individuals are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Most importantly, I want to be very clear that John Akif ultimately lost his life.

Our team in no way, shape, or form are purposely trying to shift importance off of his death.

Rather, and I think quite frankly, please be aware that John not being the primary focus of this case as a whole is more a reflection of how this case has been handled and presented by the authorities involved.

And with that said, I have also created this wall.

I was trying to explain to my husband a few of the people involved initially because as I'm researching, I do get a little like confused and I want to talk to someone about it.

And I'm explaining to him, okay, this is kind of the bare bones of the story.

I explained like two seconds and already he's like, I don't know who is who.

So you're going to need some pictures or something.

So, this is the wall of people.

Because I think with this case, the deeper you dig, the more everyone is connected.

It's not even just there's a lot of people, it's the fact that they're all somehow connected.

That's crazy.

And so, with that, don't stress out about the people yet.

We're gonna get to each of them.

And then I see like different colors and different color lines.

Yes, the colors do mean something eventually.

Wow, okay.

So, with that, let's get started.

There is one case in Massachusetts that was so heinous that residents decided they want to bring the government to bring back the death penalty.

They said, we don't care.

We want them dead.

There had been attempts before, but this one, it was practically a citizen-run campaign to get legislators to vote for the reinstatement of capital punishment by the state.

That case is the murder of 10-year-old boy Jeffrey Curley.

10-year-old Jeffrey was trying to buy a bike.

He doesn't have the money, but these two older men, they're like, we're going to promise you a bike bike and we're going to give you $50.

Instead, they kill him, essay him, and dump his body in a Tupperware container in the river.

This was the biggest case in Massachusetts at the time.

This was, I mean, especially because the two killers, they don't want to go down without fighting.

One of them specifically is trying to argue, yeah, I was there, but I wasn't the one that physically kidnapped, nor was I the one that physically killed the little boy.

It was the other guy, the lead prosecutor on this case, David Yannetti, he comes in swinging.

He's telling the jurors in the closing statement, when you boil it down, this case comes down to the fact that 10-year-old Jeffrey Curley left Cambridge one afternoon and never came home because two men killed him.

And they purchased two cigars for the ride to Jane's apartment to smoke along the way.

while the lifeless body of Jeffrey Curley lies in their trunk.

I ask you to find Mr.

Saqqari guilty of murder in the first degree and nothing less.

David Iannetti's closing arguments for this case was said to have been one of the most emotional closing arguments to take place in a Massachusetts courthouse.

He is known in the state of Massachusetts for this case.

But that case was decades ago.

In 2022, David Iannetti no longer works for the DA's office.

He's no longer a prosecutor.

He actually owns his own criminal defense law firm and he just took on a new client, Karen Reed.

Probably not the biggest case on his desk.

Woman potentially drunk driving in a blizzard, maybe hit her boyfriend with her car by accident.

I mean, it's bad.

It's really bad.

Her boyfriend John O'Keefe was found dead in the snow.

in someone else's front lawn, but it's not a murder case.

It's not, it's just a little tricky.

David says, at first glance, the whole thing seemed like perhaps a tragic accident until David Yannetti gets an anonymous phone call.

Hello?

David says the anonymous caller's caller's voice is very gravelly.

It sounds very scratchy and low.

He's very vague.

The man claims to have background as a Boston law enforcement officer, but he says something along the lines of, your client is innocent.

Look inside 34 Fairview.

Look at the people inside the house.

John O'Keefe was beaten up by Brian Albert, Blizzard Brian, the homeowner, and his nephew.

When John doesn't come to, Brian and a federal agent that happened to be at this party dumped John's body on the front lawn.

So the house is Brian's house.

Yes, Blizzard Brian.

This is Brian Albert's home and his wife, Nicole Albert's home.

This is where things get very strange.

David Yannetti eventually calls this anonymous tipster back for this very mysterious tip.

He wants more information for a longer interview, but the man starts backtracking.

He's saying, well, I don't know for sure.

I was just speculating based off the pictures that were released of John O'Keeffe's body because it just didn't look like injuries from a car accident.

But at the time that the anonymous tipster had called in for the tip, those autopsy pictures had not been released.

No pictures of John O'Keeffe's body after the fact had been released to the public.

So what does he mean he was speculating based off of those pictures?

He hasn't been able to see those pictures yet.

It feels like the anonymous caller gets spooked and starts backtracking.

Eventually, he flat out denies that that he ever said that to David Yannetti and he recants this entire tip altogether.

But David Yannetti and his client, Karen Reed, they decide we are going to take a look inside of 34 Fairview.

Did we find out who the caller is?

It seems like there is a strong lead of who it is.

Now,

I really hate saying this about cases, but it does feel like an Agatha Christie novel, only in the sense, not in the sense of like, it's a murder mystery, but in the sense of like every single person inside has the potential motive to want John O'Keefe dead.

And he is found dead on the lawn.

And everybody is sus.

January 29th, 2022, there is a birthday party inside of 34 Fairview Road.

It's not just a blizzard party.

And John O'Keefe is invited to that party.

By 6 a.m., he's found dead in the snow outside.

And every single person, they're weird.

First of all, people keep forgetting and omitting who was inside the house the night of the party.

It actually takes months for people people to find out exactly who was inside the house that night.

People keep conveniently forgetting other people.

One woman that was at the house that night starts googling at 2 a.m.

House long to die in the cold before anybody was even found in the cold.

And everyone leaves this so-called party and goes back to their homes.

And there's a series of suspicious phone calls between the partygoers.

They're calling each other up all night.

Suspicious phone calls that conveniently nobody recalls.

In fact, they say, say, you know what, that is strange.

And I don't recall those because it must have been a butt dial.

You are talking about over a dozen butt dials in one night between the partygoers.

Like from 2.30 to 6 a.m.?

Some of them are a little bit sooner than 2.30, but it's very weird.

Now, the night, you're talking about over a dozen butt dials the night that John O'Keefe was killed.

What are the chances of that?

Then there's the other small things, but I mean, they feel small at first, but it starts getting weirder.

It's believed that John o'keep's body was laying out in the snow since 12 45 a.m and yet every single person that leaves the party leaves this house drives past his body in the snow and does not see him in the front lawn

where did that 12 30 come from that body was in the snow at 12 30.

we're gonna get there okay yeah and it's debated if he was out there in the snow at 12 30 but it's just weird that nobody sees him in the snow because all the partygoers are saying yeah he was probably out there since karen left because she hit him with the car She left around 12.30, so he must have been laying out there since then.

And yet none of them see him in the snow when they drive past.

Then his girlfriend, Karen, she wakes up at 4 a.m.

to realize that he hasn't come home.

Now, one of the first places that she checks is 34 Fairview Road.

She sees him lying in the snow, bleeding from the face.

He looks like he's been in a fight.

She starts hysterically screaming while a fire truck, ambulance, and a multiple police cruisers arrive at the scene.

And the homeowners, they never come outside.

This is all happening.

Brian Albert, Nicole Albert, they never come outside.

They sleep through the whole thing is what they say.

Is it like a really big house or?

No.

So it's like a regular neighborhood?

Yeah, I mean, it's a nice house, but it's a regular residential house.

That's crazy.

It's not a mansion where the driveway is like 25 feet long and you're like, oh, well, that's a different zip code up there.

No, it's your front lawn.

Not only only that, one of the residents inside the house is a first responder.

When they find John's body outside unresponsive, nobody goes and knocks on the door to wake up the homeowners.

I mean, they're all very close friends, especially Jen McCabe.

She was at the party last night.

She doesn't go and knock on the door to wake up Nicole and Brian Albert to come help before the police arrive.

Yeah.

What's even weirder is that Karen Reed states that she did drop John off at the house and she saw him walk towards the front door before she finally drives off.

Now remember, everyone inside the house said he never came inside.

She said that she sees him walk towards the front door and in fact, John's Apple Health data shows that after 1220 a.m., which is around the time that his girlfriend drops him off, he takes 80 steps, which is the equivalent of half of a football field.

And it shows that he went up and down three flights of stairs, which would be impossible had he just gotten out of the car and been hit by Karen Reed.

But maybe the Apple Health data is wrong.

There have been some reports that sometimes it heavily under-reports the amount of stairs that you climb, which wouldn't really work in this case, but maybe it also over-reports sometimes.

Others say sometimes they drive up a hill and the Apple Health data will say that they climbed up the hill.

But it's also very strange.

Those are a lot of steps and those are a lot of stairs.

And it would make sense based on the data that he went inside that house.

But every single person is adamant and they say the same thing: John was never in the house.

So does that mean he made a U-turn somewhere else at the very last minute?

Or does that mean Karen Reed is lying?

I mean, it must be true because everyone in the house is saying the same thing.

John was never in the house.

They all say that except for one person.

During the trial for the murder of John O'Keefe, one person slips up.

She's talking about the timeline when another partygoer leaves the house and she says, He was not at the house when John was there.

So I drove him home when John was there.

So.

And people are wondering, did she just slip up on the stand that John O'Keefe was inside the house?

So yeah, maybe the anonymous caller, regardless of who they are, maybe they're on to something.

If you're gonna say things that you don't want anyone to know about, the last place that you should say those things probably is in a group chat.

In essence, a group chat is a bunch of people and a permanent transcript.

People will take screenshots of group chats, post them online, or sometimes these group chats will be read out loud in the middle of a cramped Massachusetts courtroom, and you're going to have to read every single word that was typed out to your friends when you thought nobody was going to read them.

Michael Proctor takes the stand, otherwise known in the group chat as Chip.

Michael says he's known a lot of these group chat members since he was, you know, in middle school, high school.

I mean, these are his childhood friends.

So from October 18th, 2021 to August 31st, 2022, about a year, there are 38,707 messages in this one group chat.

But the only ones that the court cares about really are the ones starting from January 29th, 2022, the day that John O'Keeffe is found dead in the snow.

Michael, aka Chip, in the group chat, gets a message from his friend.

It's just a link to John O'Keefe's Facebook page.

There's a quick conversation about John O'Keefe and his girlfriend Karen Reed, and he's texting in the group chat.

She's a babe.

Like, she's hot.

Wait, I'm so sorry.

Timeline-wise, this was after John O'Keefe was found dead.

Yeah.

Someone sent a link.

So everyone in the town is talking about it.

Oh, they're already talking about this death.

And then someone sent Karen Reed's.

John O'Keefe's Facebook link, but they're talking about Karen Reed because she's the girlfriend of John O'Keefe.

I see.

And this man, Michael Proctor, he says about Karen Reed, she's a babe, like she's hot.

Weird Fall River accent, though, saying that she's got a weird accent, and also comments, she's got no ass.

So his whole text reads:

Yes, she's a babe.

Weird Fall River accent, though.

No ass.

And of course, eventually there will be conversation about Karen Reed being arrested for hitting her boyfriend with the car because it's all anyone in the whole town is talking about.

And later, there's a picture sent in the group chat that is Karen Reed being arrested for hitting her boyfriend and she's being escorted into the state police barracks.

And one of Michael's friends texts in the group, is that chick a smoke?

Is that chick a smoke?

Question mark.

I respond, eh, nutbag.

She's got a leaky balloon knot.

It leaks poo.

I respond again, nut bag, as chief would say.

I also respond with, she's got a leaky balloon knot, leaks poo.

Michael Proctor said she has a leaky balloon bag.

Balloon knot, he's referencing her rectum.

Yeah.

And her medical condition.

So she has MS.

Now, on a later date, he texts in a group chat that people would find Karen Reed hot if you only, quote,

if you like women who shit themselves.

Michael also mentions that he's looking into Karen Reed and quote, no nudes so far.

No nudes so far.

Which these messages are really heinous, especially when they're read out in court.

Michael Proctor's ears are turning bright red.

But the problem is, Michael Proctor is not some random local incel still just raiding women in the group chat that they can never date with their high school buddies.

Michael Proctor is the lead investigator on the death of Jon O'Keefe.

And this is what he's texting his buddies.

He is a police buddies.

Yes, he's a state trooper for the Norfolk County's DA's office.

He's part of the homicide unit within Massachusetts State Police.

He's taking the lead on the investigation onto the death of Jotno Keefe.

And his main suspect is Karen Reed, where he is going through her phone after her arrest looking for nudes.

He texts his buddies, quote, no nudes so far.

That is fing crazy, which means they do that all day long.

Yeah.

On every single case.

He's also texted his supervisors that, and they don't reprimand him.

They don't admonish him in the group chat.

Yeah, it's because the supervisor probably does that too.

Then in other messages, Michael Proctor calls his main suspect in this case.

Yep, so these came from me.

From all accounts, he didn't do anything wrong.

She's a whack job.

C-U-N-T.

Objection.

So don't spell it.

You have to.

So these are your words.

Yes, Your Honor.

Go ahead and say them.

Then in a later text message, this time not with his boys, he texts his sister, Courtney Proctor, about Karen Reed.

again the main suspect that he's investigating he says to his sister I hope she kills herself

then a few months later

he texts his wife because Michael Proctor is married he texts his wife we're gonna lock this whack job up

and just like that February 1st, 2022, Karen Reed is arrested and charged with manslaughter, motor vehicle homicide, and leaving the scene of a personal injury or death.

The DA's office is saying that Karen Reed dropped John off at 34 Fairview Road and then ran him over with her car as she's backing up to leave the house and left his body in the snow on the front lawn.

His body is found Saturday.

She is arrested on Tuesday night.

Four months later, Karen Reed gets upcharged to second degree murder.

One person states, the line between gross vehicular manslaughter and second degree murder is very, very thin.

If you exhibit a disregard for the safety and the life of another person and they die as a result, you've got second degree murder.

So for example, vehicular manslaughter means you're driving in a way that's negligent, reckless, unlawful, but you have no intent.

Like, you don't go out like, you know what?

If I kill someone tonight, I kill someone tonight.

You have no intent to cause bodily harm.

By upgrading Karen Reed's charges from vehicular manslaughter to second-degree murder, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is now saying, We still believe everything we said before, but now we think Karen did this on purpose.

She ran her boyfriend over on purpose.

You had intent to kill or cause serious bodily harm.

Maybe you didn't plan on it, but in that moment, you had intent.

Karen's attorney, David Yannetti, the one that received the anonymous tip, he is more thrown off by this because this is strange.

He is a local attorney that has worked for the VA's office in Massachusetts for decades.

He says usually when prosecutors decide to upcharge someone, they will reach out to the attorneys.

It's just a thing they do.

I mean, they did that in the Sean Combs case.

It's just a thing they do to give them a heads up.

Not that he was upcharged, but you get the idea.

Especially an attorney like David Yannetti, who has worked for the DA's office for a very long time and has good relationships with prosecutors.

It's not the exact DA's office, but he's a well-known former prosecutor.

It doesn't make sense.

Why wouldn't they let him know?

Why wouldn't they give him a courtesy call?

That coupled with the anonymous tipster, David Yannetti is saying something's weird.

He said, it's so dirty and underhanded that they would go behind my back.

What exactly are they trying to say Karen Reid Reid did?

The prosecution states Karen Reid got drunk at the bar.

And when she got to drop off John O'Keefe at 34 Fairview, she gets into a fight with him in the car, backs up in her quick reverse to get out of that neighborhood, hits John O'Keefe, kills him, and leaves him for debt.

Then on January 29, 2022, a very intoxicated engine was angry and arguing about the relationship with John O'Keefe.

And after the fight was was over, she left, but she brought the fight back with hands in the front of her and she would she clipped him, he fell backwards, he broke his head.

The prosecution say they've got all the evidence to back it up, including every single person that was at 34 Fairview Road will tell you what happened and you will conclude that Karen Reed killed her boyfriend.

That's a really dumb way to do it if that's what she wanted to do.

Yeah.

Now, they're saying everyone at the party is going to let you know that Karen Reed did this.

So let's start with the residents residents at 34 Fairview, the homeowners, Brian and Nicole Albert.

These are the Alberts.

The Alberts are very important.

They're a very powerful, well-known, well-connected family in the town of Canton, Massachusetts, which is about a 30-minute drive to Boston.

But it kind of operates like a small town.

They've got a select board.

So this is a very small town hallmark.

You get a group of people that are voted in to directly oversee the town operations.

So instead of a mayor, like most major mid-range to big cities have a mayor, you get a select board, three to five members, and they control everything.

This all becomes important later, but in this small town of Canton, about population 24,000, the Alberts are a well-known, very big family.

You've got Brian Albert, the dad.

You've got Nicole Albert, the mom.

You've got their son, Brian Albert Jr.

Caitlin is also their daughter.

She's important later, but Brian Albert Jr., we're going to call him Birthday Brian because it was his 23rd birthday that night.

Wow, he's young.

He's young.

Now, Brian, Big Brian, he invites a ton of his friends over, including John O'Keefe, to the house.

Birthday, Brian already had a few friends over because it was his birthday.

They have other kids, but they're not really important right now.

And you have their dog, Chloe, a German-Shepherd mix.

Chloe is very important later.

So birthday Brian decides he's going to invite friends over.

Oh, I see.

The red ones are the Alberts family.

Well, the red ones are familial and/or normal connections.

Oh, I'm talking about the background.

The red background?

Ah, yes, yes.

The red background are one part of the Albert family.

One part, okay.

One part.

Okay.

Birthday Brian is like, hey, dad, mom, I'm gonna have people over for my little birthday party.

So, like, could you skedaddle for a few hours and maybe come back later?

So, the parents, they decide that they're gonna go to a local bar called the Waterfall.

Dad and mom, they're meeting up with their friends.

They leave their family house.

they get to the waterfall and they make an open invitation at around midnight because the waterfall is closing early and they're saying hey it's birthday brian's birthday if you guys want to come over get a few drinks i mean at the bar they've got family they've got friends they've got acquaintances they just make an open invitation anybody is welcome if you want to come over and keep the night going and it's a small town so no one's really a stranger but for example nicole albert will later testify that she wasn't really familiar with john o'keefe or his girlfriend karen reed They just happened to be at the bar and they all ran in similar circles.

So it's not like she's asking random strangers to come over, but she's not even well acquainted with them.

It's just an open invite.

They don't really do a head count at the bar.

They're just like, come over if you want.

And then they leave.

So John and Karen both were at the bar drinking.

Yes, they were invited.

Most of these people who went to the party later were at the bar already.

Yes.

Okay.

Unfortunately, a lot of people are driving while under the influence.

There is CC TV footage of all of them at the bar, and we're going to go into depth in later episodes, but just know the waterfall is like the last moment of peace, it seems like.

One local puts it, waterfall ended, everything went to chaos.

Those last few moments where everything was okay were all caught on video in this quiet little bar restaurant.

They get back to the house where birthday Brian is in the kitchen with a few of his friends.

Nicole says, I mean, that's my son.

So she comes in and she starts cleaning up the kitchen, checking the bathroom to make sure that everything is organized before the guests come over.

And in walks Matthew McCabe and his wife, Jen McCabe.

Jen McCabe is one of the three women to find John O'Keefe's body.

She's actually been friends with John O'Keefe for nearly a decade, but she's also sisters with Nicole Albert.

This blue line right here, that means they're siblings, related by siblings.

Any blue lines are sibling relation.

And it's kind of important.

So, I mean, Jen is basically an Albert, but not really.

She's kind of, they call them the McCabe Alberts online.

Okay.

So you've got Jen, who is sisters with Nicole Albert.

So she's going to her sister's house to say happy birthday to her nephew.

So she shows up.

She was at the waterfall with her husband.

She shows up with her husband.

When she gets a phone call, Jen McCabe gets a phone call from John O'Keefe.

He's in the car.

His girlfriend Karen Reed is driving and they're trying to find the house.

But it's just kind of unclear which house it is.

Jen starts giving him directions over the phone.

And now, side note, the homeowners know of John O'Keefe.

Like I said, they know Karen as John's girlfriend, but they know of John O'Keefe.

Like, they're not friendly with John O'Keefe, and Karen is even lesser to them because she's just his girlfriend.

Right.

Jen McCabe, however, is very friendly with John.

She's the one that invited them.

So she's like, oh yeah, let me give you the directions.

And she's telling him where the house is, which would indicate that he's coming over, right?

Jen says at one point she looks out the window of the house and she sees this big SUV, one that is presumably Karen Reids, and John O'Keefe is presumably in the passenger seat.

It's very clear that they've arrived at the right house.

They're here.

They're out in the front.

Jen says she goes to the window a few times.

She's texting him at corresponding times, being like, here, like you're here, right?

And she sees the car in a few different positions.

Like at one point, it's further away.

Now it's closer.

Now it's just like, it's just weird.

And then eventually the car is gone.

So she just assumes maybe Karen and John decided to call it a night last minute.

Perhaps they got into a fight.

Perhaps something happened.

But according to everyone in the the house, including Jen McCabe, neither John nor Karen ever make it inside.

So they just, they just leave?

I mean, that's what everyone's saying.

In fact, Brian Alberts says, John never came into my house that night.

He would have been welcomed and Karen Reed would have been welcomed with open arms had they had come in.

I wish they had come in.

I really do.

Which is kind of a weird thing to say.

Carrie Roberts is a close friend of John's.

Very, very close friend.

She's the one that went to prom with him.

She's like his childhood best friend.

She is the other woman that finds John O'Keefe's body along with Karen Reed and Jen McCabe.

She was not invited to the waterfall bar, she or even to 34 Fairview.

She's laying in bed away from the winter storm when she gets a phone call from Karen at like five in the morning.

And she had the opposite of a night of what everybody else had.

She went bowling with her daughter and her daughter's friend.

She comes home early because there's a storm coming.

She just wants to be home, but her husband is on his way out.

This is like 8:30.

She runs into him and she's like, Where are you going?

He's like, Oh, I'm going to the bar to meet John O'Keefe.

So, her husband is very close with John O'Keefe.

Who's her husband?

He's not on here, but his name is Kurt.

Oh, okay.

Kurt Roberts is a really close friend of John O'Keeffe's, and they end up meeting at a different bar.

So, before the waterfall, John was at a different bar.

So, they meet there, and his wife is like, Okay, Carrie's like, I'm not going.

I'm just trying to be home.

And he also says, I don't want to go either, but John and another guy friend of theirs, they wanted me to come up.

And quote, they reached out, they were at McCarthy's,

the bar in Canton Center, and they wanted me to come up.

And I was saying, you know, I didn't want to, I wanted to stay in because there was a storm coming.

And then he referred and called me a pussy.

And I,

sorry.

No.

And I can't let that happen.

So

I had to go.

Paradigm.

Which I don't want to confuse you with too much timeline, but if it helps, John does meet up with a few friends at a separate bar called C.F.

McCarthy's.

That's actually where Karen comes to meet up with John.

Okay.

So she meets up with John and a few of John's friends.

And then the rest of John's friends, they decide to go home early.

John and Karen, they get invited to go to the waterfall bar.

And that's where they meet up with all the Fairview people, the McAlberts.

Yeah.

Did Karen say why she didn't want to go in after dropping off John?

Yes, she will explain later.

Okay.

Now, in both instances of both bars, Karen is mainly there for John.

And I mean, she's not really friends with anybody else at the bars.

Like, these are all kind of more so John's circle of friends, not hers.

So, Carrie's husband, Kurt, comes home early, right after the first bar.

He never gets invited to 34 Fairview.

They hit the bed, they fall asleep, and Carrie shoots up out of bed to her phone ringing at 5 a.m.

Because why the hell is Karen Reid calling her?

Carrie claims she picks up and she just hears Karen screaming, John's dead.

Carrie, Carrie, Carrie.

And then she hung up.

Carrie says she didn't even have the chance to have a conversation.

Like, what do you mean he's dead?

I mean, did you catch the timeline?

Because nobody found John's body until 6 a.m.

Carrie is saying Karen called her at 5 a.m.

screaming, John's dead.

Mm-hmm.

Weird.

Karen was screaming so loudly that Kurt Roberts, Carrie's husband, wakes up in the middle of the night and is like, who is that?

Why are they screaming at you?

He keeps asking Carrie, what the hell was that?

And she's like, I don't know.

She is jumping out of bed.

She's pacing the room.

She doesn't know if she should get dressed because what's happening right now, she says, I tried calling her a couple of times to be like, what is going on?

Karen finally called me back and she said, I'm afraid John might be dead.

So now it's, I'm afraid John might be dead.

He might have gotten hitting by a snow plow.

Like, you know, this big giant trucks that

plow the snow.

And this is still before six o'clock, right?

Like five something?

Yes.

Okay.

She did not come home last night.

I think something happened.

Carrie's trying to understand.

Well, where are you right now?

I'm driving.

Can I I come to your house?

Will you drive my car?

I don't remember anything from last night.

We drank so much.

I don't remember anything.

You're going to get a DUI if you were drinking all night last night and you don't remember anything.

You shouldn't be driving.

I'm going to come to your house.

Will you drive my car?

Carrie says after that she starts getting dressed and she says, quote, I think that's when my husband was like, where are you going?

I just said, I don't know.

Something happened.

John didn't come home.

Karen's worried.

So I'm going to go look, go help her.

And he said, you're not going anywhere.

It's a blizzard.

And I said, yes, I am.

I went downstairs.

I started the car.

So Carrie Roberts gets in her own car and starts heating it up, cleared it off, waits for Karen to get there, and she doesn't come.

So she's calling all these people.

And Carrie says that she's waited in the car for about 10 minutes, which there are a lot of interesting things about this part, which is, first of all, John is Carrie's husband's close friend now, too.

I mean, obviously, Carrie Roberts knew John for the longest, but she introduced her husband to John.

And they're close enough that John invites Carrie Roberts' husband to the bar last night.

Yeah, exactly.

He doesn't want his wife to go out in the storm, and yet she's sitting in her car for 10 minutes-like 10 full minutes.

He could have tried to stop her, he could have gone with her.

I don't know.

It's intriguing.

It's not particularly suspicious, but it is weird.

Now, Carrie says, after waiting, Karen doesn't show up.

Carrie's probably sitting in her car, getting more and more anxious every second.

So she finally picks up her phone, calls the non-emergency line for the local police department.

Sergeant Good from Canton Police picks up.

Canton Police, Sergeant Good.

Hi, my name is Carrie.

I'm fine because my friend's boyfriend did not come home last night.

We were at Waterfall and now she is calling me hysterical because she doesn't know where he is.

You didn't pick anybody up by the name of Jon O'Keefe, did you?

No.

I think he probably got a ride and passed out at someone's house, but I don't know.

Are you, is that the good I'm looking at?

Oh, yeah.

That is exactly the one you're looking at.

Sean Goode.

Sean Good.

Now, the operator tells her that he hasn't heard any news or anything of that sort.

Carrie says at that point, I wasn't super worried.

I mean, he didn't come home, but they were out drinking, so I assumed he's probably on someone's couch.

Finally, Karen calls Carrie back, and Carrie Roberts testifies later.

I said, Where are you, Karen?

I'm in the car.

And Karen said, I'm at Jen's house.

And I said, Jen, who?

She said, Jen McCabe.

She's going to drive my car.

And I said, okay, stay there.

I'll come.

We'll follow and we'll drop your car off.

Wait, so Karen is the whole time saying either asking Carrie or Jen to drive her car?

Yes.

Why is that?

Oh, she's so hysterical.

Oh, she's not good enough to drive right now.

Like, she's not well.

She's beyond hysterical.

Yeah, yeah.

Carrie is claiming Karen already knows that John is dead at 5 a.m.

before finding John's body.

That's what Carrie initially claims.

Hmm.

There's lots of changing claims as well.

And there's a lot of like, well, I didn't necessarily mean it like that.

Okay.

But we don't know what Karen said.

And also later when Karen does call back the second time, she's like, I think he might be dead.

So it could have been that she's so hysterical and she's just like freaking out.

He's dead.

He's dead.

But she doesn't know.

I mean, there have been some people arguing that.

There have been some people being like, no, Carrie is flat out lying about it.

We don't know.

We're not privy to the actual phone call.

I see.

So Karen is now telling Carrie that she's at Jen McCabe's house.

And Carrie is telling her, okay, well, just stay there.

I'm going to come to Jen McCabe's.

I'll follow you.

We'll drop your car off.

We'll just take my car and go look for John.

She says, I drove to Jen's.

I pulled in the driveway behind them and I was still on speakerphone.

Jen is driving.

Karen's in the passenger seat and we drove.

I said, Do you remember?

Like, look, did you go through John's house looking for John?

Could he be passed out somewhere in the house?

And she said, I don't know.

I didn't look.

So I said, let's just go do that.

Let's get into cars and we're going to go back to Meadows and we're going to go look inside of John's house first.

He could be passed out on the couch or on the floor.

Who knows?

So we went back to his house.

Now, as for Jen McCabe, Carrie says she's only met Jen once before.

So John is their link.

John knows both of them.

And John had taken both of them to get Reebok sneakers.

He had like a 50% discount at Reebok.

So he invited Carrie Roberts and Jen McCabe to go buy sneakers with him.

And Carrie says, we got the shoes and then we went to Hillside for lunch and that was it.

I wasn't friends with Jen McCabe.

Now that was like six, seven years ago.

Interestingly enough, she does happen to know exactly where Jen McCabe lives though because their kids would all hang out.

Or at least that's what she initially made it seem like.

Later, she clarifies, I didn't know where Jen's house was.

That's why I stayed on the phone with Karen.

Now people are suspicious about it, but nonetheless, Carrie says, I pull up in the driveway behind Karen's car.

Karen and Jen are still in the car talking.

I'm on Bluetooth.

And Karen said that she remembered leaving John at the waterfall.

at the bar.

So Jen was at the waterfall too.

And she's like, no, I literally saw you pull up to my sister's house.

What are you talking about?

Then at some point the conversation ends and Karen says something along the lines of, what about my taillight?

What about my taillight?

Karen says she looked out the front of her windshield and she's parked behind Karen's car so she can see Karen's taillight and the right passenger side taillight looks cracked.

It's missing pieces of the taillight.

So she's like, that is weird.

That's weird.

Who said that's weird?

I'm sorry.

Carrie.

She's like, that's weird.

So once they decide that they're going back to John's house, Jen McCabe and Karen drive Karen's car and Carrie Roberts follows her in her car.

So we've got two cars leaving Jen McCabe's house to John's house.

They pull up in John's driveway where Carrie says something very strange happens.

John is a super neat freak and she says, you do not wear shoes inside of John O'Keefe's house ever.

Carrie says, Jen and I both had taken off our shoes in the garage before we went into the mudroom.

We took our shoes off and Karen just walked in.

she remembers this because quote jen and i were standing there for about a good two minutes trying to get our boots off and she had already gone in the house people interpret this two separate ways this is why i'm saying this case is so divisive everybody has a different interpretation so one some people think that karen knows john is not coming back so she's not following any of his house rules anymore he can't get mad at her anymore because he's no longer around or others are arguing yeah because her freaking boyfriend is missing what do you mean she's gonna waste her time to take off her shoes yeah But Carrie claims it gets weirder.

They get inside the house.

Carrie claims she and Jen are looking everywhere for John.

And she says, quote, I started looking on the other side of the couches to see if maybe he had passed out somewhere.

And then I went upstairs and Karen was standing in John's room.

The bed was made.

She was just standing there, indicating that Karen is not looking for John.

This is interpreted in two ways.

Some people think, again, this is weird.

She knows not to waste her energy looking for John here.

She knows that John is dead.

Others say, what do you mean?

She doesn't get why they're searching that house.

She already indicated to the two women before, Carrie and Jen, why are we going back there?

I was just there.

I woke up from John's house.

It's not like I didn't never went to John's house.

Sure, I didn't search it, but I would have known if he came home.

So Karen had fallen asleep on the couch waiting for John to come home.

Yeah.

So she's saying, I would have known if he had come home.

Yeah.

What do you mean?

And that's assuming they're saying if Karen already knew John's not there That means she's doing all of this coming to these two women putting on a show Then she would have put on a better show if she's acting like she would have searched Yeah, she will search she will act she will do all of that But no, but she's just like standing and we don't even know if this actually happened Maybe she was searching maybe not right right, right

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Now, the three decide finally, after looking for John, they're going to head out because he's not in the house.

And that's when Carrie states that she sees Karen's taillight even closer now, because previously she was in her car looking at Karen's taillight, but now she's outside the car staring at the taillight, the rear passenger one, and it's smashed.

And she remembers there's like this one jagged piece of metal kind of sticking out.

She says, I remember looking at it, and the piece was sort of sticking out, and I thought someone's going to catch their sleeve on it or something.

This is very important later because John has mysterious claw marks on his arm that nobody can really pinpoint where it came from.

Some people think it looks like an animal mark.

Some people are arguing it's the taillight that scratched him up.

And Carrie's saying there was a jagged piece.

I thought someone was going to catch their coat on it.

But the plan from here is the three of them are now going to get into Carrie's car and drive back to 34 Fairview Road, where the party was last night.

Carrie says Jen and Karen wanted to go back there.

So they get into Carrie Roberts car.

It's Carrie Robert driving, Jen McCabe in the front seat, and Karen is in the back.

And she's losing her mind, which in turn is making Carrie Roberts lose her mind.

She says she's driving through the middle of this blizzard.

It's whiteout condition.

She can't see anything in front of her.

And Karen is freaking out in the back, going from the center console, like in between them, screaming, then leaned back to panicking, and then back and forth, back and forth.

She says Karen was frantic.

She wouldn't put her seatbelt on.

I was getting nervous because we're driving in a blizzard.

She kept leaning in between the two seats.

I think at some point she was texting in the back seat and then she'd be leaning and then she'd be texting.

And it was just frantic the whole morning.

Carrie says Karen was overall very frantic, but there were a few discernible conversations.

Karen was talking about Bella's mom.

Carrie says, there was some conversation about a woman I didn't know that was Bella's mom, and she said, Bella's mom never liked me.

I think Bella lived near Jen's sister.

So Bella's, So Bella's mom allegedly lives on the same street as Brian and Nicole Albert, Fairview Road.

Okay, and Bella is not on the map.

And this is important later just because she lives on that road.

Okay.

Karen is saying Bella's mom never liked her.

It's weird, Carrie thinks, you know, but she's just trying to focus on driving through the little blizzard.

Carrie says that she and Jen are looking out the window looking for anything that could indicate where John is.

And she says, Jen's giving directions, And it was really bad driving.

I was white-knuckling because it was getting slippery.

Karen wouldn't put on her seatbelt.

And Jen was telling me where her sister's house was.

I said, I don't know where Fairview is.

And she said, it's near Spring Lane.

And I said, oh, where the dance instructor lived.

John had once dated a dance instructor.

And then Karen said, do you think he could have gone there?

Do you think that's where he could have been?

No, I was saying I was just using it as a reference point.

She said it's near Spring Lane.

And I knew that the dance instructor lived on Spring Lane.

That's it.

So Carrie's trying to...

Well, Carrie is kind of inferring to the jurors that Karen is a very jealous woman.

But what we're getting from this is that on Fairview Road, there are two people that are interesting.

Bella's mom, who John allegedly dated before, and the dance instructor.

Oh, Bella's mom also dated John O'Keefe.

Yes.

And also a dance instructor.

Okay.

And Carrie is like, well, he dated the dance instructor like 10 years ago.

She thought it was so strange that Karen was like hung up on this, but she keeps driving.

And she says, we were looking for John walking or wherever he may be.

So I'm driving.

I'm looking at both sides.

And I think Jen was looking at both sides and Karen was.

She would been in the back seat.

And sometimes she was in between us and then back seat again.

I told her to shut up several times because I was trying to drive.

I couldn't concentrate.

I told her to sit back and buckle up because it was bad driving.

I didn't want to get into an accident and her not have a seatbelt on.

It was like you couldn't control her.

And I was trying to drive in a blizzard.

They start pulling down the hill on Fairview Road.

Carrie says, quote, Jen said, my sister's house is right up there.

And all of a sudden, Karen said, there he is.

There he is.

Let me the fuck out of this car.

And started kicking the door.

She's apparently kicking the door.

I mean, she wanted to get out of the car, but it was locked because once you start driving, the back doors are locked.

So I pulled over, I looked over, and I didn't see anything.

I looked at Jen and I said, she's crazy.

And then I turned around and watched, and she ran over to a mound of snow.

Carrie says the minute Karen gets out of the car, she's booked it to this mound of snow.

Carrie is just parked in the middle of the road watching.

She says at some point she realizes that this mound of snow is in the shape of a body.

Carrie says Karen lifts up her shirt, starts laying on John O'Keefe or the body.

When you say a mound of snow, is he covered by the snow or is he just kind of hidden behind the snow?

Okay, that is also heavily debated in this case.

Carrie is indicating he is covered in like four to six inches of snow.

Right.

A lot of people have testified or testified and put in anecdotal evidence online that there really wasn't that much snow that could have piled on top of John.

And even if he had passed away sooner, a lot of your body retains body heat.

So snow will actually melt quicker when it touches you.

So it won't pile as quickly on top of your body.

And so they're saying that she runs to this mound of snow that they didn't know because it was just snow.

But I will say that John is a 200-pound man.

It just seems unlikely that he would have been fully covered in snow.

I feel like something must have been peeking out, and he was wearing darker-colored clothing.

But you could also argue against Karen that it's really dark outside.

You can't really see that well.

So both sides have their arguments.

Now, by this point, it is near blizzard conditions.

It's cold.

It's less than 32 degrees.

There is about 3.9 inches of snow that should have accumulated in Boston.

But that's again in the Boston area.

That it's different depending on where you are.

It's different upon a lot of things.

And John's body would have been potentially warmer.

Yeah.

Carrie and Jen, they're in the car and they both state that they have no idea how Karen saw John's body laying in the snow.

No clue.

They didn't see anything until Karen was like, let me out.

And she jumped out the car.

Now, the lawn of 34 Fairview is quite spacious, but I would hardly call it a mansion or like an estate.

The driveway is a normal length, meaning the lawn is not that long, it's not that deep.

The edge of the curb, you know, in the house, it's not that far of a distance.

This is not like a Jeff Bezos residence.

It's a very nice family home, but the property is a little wide.

And at the edge of the property line is this flagpole with the American flag and a fire extinguisher and like an electrical box.

There's no light illuminating this area.

There's no like street light right above this section of the lawn.

There's no light on the flagpole.

There's no star and moon shining to illuminate the whole space.

It's just a frame of reference.

And that is where John's body is found.

But what's interesting for later, this is like later episodes, but if you like more information, the Albert's bedroom, the primary bedroom, faces that side of the house.

That side of the front lawn.

So if they look out the window, they could see the body.

Yeah, it's not like their bedroom faces the front, but on the other side, it's like, no, it faces the front, and it's the very last bedroom on that side.

And when there's all these people outside, how could they not hear anything?

Exactly.

Now, Carrie says, she's in the car.

She says, when I realized it was John or someone, I ran over.

I dug John's head out from the snow.

Carrie says John was completely covered in snow.

She's digging him out.

She didn't even know it was John until she dug him out.

I told Karen to get off him.

We were going to start CPR.

I yelled for Jen to get the blankets.

I don't know what I thought I was doing with blankets, but I wrapped them around his head, just thinking we're trying to warm him up.

I don't.

He was covered in snow.

He's wearing thin clothes, he's missing a shoe.

Meanwhile, Karen is laying on top of John.

Carrie's screaming at her to get off of him because, I mean, they're just this is very important because neither of them have any clue what they're doing.

Like, clearly, Karen is doing something that Carrie doesn't agree with.

Karen wants to move him to get him warmer.

Carrie doesn't because she's scared that he has a spinal injury.

Like, they're at odds.

They don't really know what to do.

She is CPR certified, Carrie, but it's she's definitely not a first responder.

Carrie says, he had blood coming out of his nose and his mouth and his right eye looked like a golf ball.

His left eye was fine, but the right eye looked like a golf ball.

He was bleeding in the back of his head.

So when I was wrapping, I don't know why, I was wrapping the blanket around the back of his head.

I just, I didn't know he had a cut on the back of his head.

Carrie doesn't recall where the cut was, but she remembers blood on the blanket that was on the back of his head.

Carrie says, I was doing CPR and I said, Jen, you need to call 911.

I started CPR, chest compressions, and then Karen was giving mouth to mouth.

Carrie says that she does have previous training in CPR and within minutes, maybe like under 10 minutes, the first officer arrives at the scene along with the firefighters and the paramedics.

Now, Carrie says this is where things get weird.

Karen is like running around the body while EMTs are trying to work on him, John, and she's just frantic, just saying things like, is he dead?

Is he dead?

Is he dead?

Eventually, the paramedics place John on a stretcher, bring him in the ambulance, and Carrie looks down at where John's body was, and there's blood, there's droplets of blood in the snow, as well as his phone.

Eventually, John is escorted to the hospital, and she says, at some point, Officer Goode, he shows up.

At some point, he shows up.

Yes, after John's body is already in the ambulance, Sean Goode, Officer Goode, shows up and he tells Karen to calm down because she was frantic.

And at some point, Jen and Karen are placed in the back of a police cruiser to warm up.

Carrie says, I was standing outside the car watching the ambulance.

I could see through the ambulance that they're they're moving things and working on John's body.

And Carrie turns and tells Karen because maybe she doesn't want Karen to freak out and be more frantic.

She says, I said they're working on him.

They're working on him.

And at one point, she grabbed the front of my shirt and said, are they working on him?

And I said, yes, they're working on him.

I can see tubes moving.

I can see them moving.

If he was dead, they wouldn't be working on him.

And then she said, let's hold hands and pray.

Who said that?

Carrie is saying that Karen is like, let's pray.

And then at some point, she's got blood on her hands.

Karen has blood on her hands.

And Carrie is saying, Karen told us that it was her period blood.

What?

Carrie's like, I think she was just in a state of shock, maybe.

So she's like, Jen McCabe looks at Karen and is like, no, that's not your blood.

So this is,

some people interpret this as something more sinister.

But like Carrie said, I do think that if Karen did say that, she's probably in a state of shock.

And even Carrie admits that she had John's blood in her hands as well.

So it's not like the most weird thing ever.

Eventually, the ambulance drives off to the hospital with John.

Jen McCabe finally goes inside her sister's house.

They had been in the front lawn this entire time.

Nobody had come out.

She goes inside.

Carrie is in the car with Karen.

And Carrie is calling out to John's parents because she's known him since they were kids.

So she's the closest to his parents.

She's calling Mr.

and Mrs.

O'Keefe, telling them that something happened to John.

And at that point, Karen, the girlfriend, she starts calling her potential like sister-in-law.

Okay, to make it a little more simple, John O'Keefe has a brother named Paul.

Paul is married to a woman named Erin.

So it's actually John O'Keefe's sister-in-law.

Yeah.

Karen is on the phone with Erin, and she is allegedly, according to Carrie Roberts, telling John's sister-in-law that John is dead.

But again, nobody knows that.

He's just been rushed to the hospital.

We don't know that he's dead.

He hasn't been pronounced dead.

And so Carrie says, I grabbed the phone from her and I said he's not dead.

He's in the back of an ambulance.

He's been in an accident.

And she said that Paul, John's brother, was going to go to the hospital and they were going to all meet there.

But she says, you know, she keeps kind of inferring that Karen kept telling everybody that John is dead when he's not dead.

Carrie's story is like almost casting suspicion on Karen.

on everything Karen does.

Her final version of events, because her first few version of events, a lot of stuff is not mentioned.

And I'm going to go through it.

But this is like her final version of events that she testifies to in trial two.

And she's finally like, yeah, this is what's happened.

And everything is like, that's sus.

That's weird.

I don't know why Karen did that, said that, act that way.

Yeah.

Eventually, John is declared dead at the hospital.

And they all start going through to discuss what happened the night before at the waterfall.

All of them, except for Karen.

Karen is not invited to these conversations.

So a few of the partygoers, they all get together and they start talking about, wait, what happened last night?

What happened last night?

A few of the partygoers remember they did recall seeing John and Karen walk into the waterfall bar with a cocktail glass from another bar.

So they're just like, she was very drunk.

They were being weird.

You know, Karen had showed them she thought it was funny that she brought over a cocktail glass from the other bar because you're not supposed to do that.

But Jen says, you know, there was something else.

Karen had shared a little bit of frustration because that morning, Karen is telling Jen, that morning, Karen and John had gotten into a fight.

Jen recalls during the conversation with John, her last supposed, supposed conversation with John, while he's asking for directions to the house to 34 Fairview, she said something along the lines of, go past Bella's house.

Her street, it's at the bottom of the hill.

kind of indicating maybe inferring maybe he had put it on speakerphone and she was like go past Bella's house and Karen just like flipped a switch and just blew up because it's on the same street as this woman you used to date.

And maybe she flew into a rage and that's why they didn't come in for the party.

And that is maybe why he's laying in the cold snow and he was dead.

They also share very different stories about what Karen said to them when she called them to wake them up from their sleep.

Remember, Carrie said that Karen was screaming that John is dead, John is dead, and that she was hysterical, which Jen is like, well, no, she told me something else.

She told me that she left John at the waterfall bar when she was on the phone with me.

And I told her, no, you didn't, because I saw you pull up to my sister's house.

But the alarming part of all these conversations is, well, the fact that they're having these conversations, because technically they're all witnesses, they shouldn't be having these conversations.

But the more alarming part is, as they're talking throughout the weeks, they start calling the investigators on this case, adding more to their versions of what happened that night.

Now they're talking to each other through phone call, text message, meeting up.

Meeting up.

But I think it's just interesting because it's,

I understand if you're calling back the investigators with these really small random details where you're like, hey, I didn't even think this was important, but I just remembered in the car, in the back seat, I had a bottle of Gatorade that was left open.

Like, it's like, maybe it could be connected, maybe it's not.

I don't know.

Like, those are typically the things that you would call back with.

But Carrie starts calling back with really important information.

Like, she does not initially tell the investigators that when Karen first called her at five in the morning, she said, John is dead, John is dead.

Like, that's very important, right?

You would think that's the most important thing.

She doesn't tell them until later.

And so, Carrie, her explanation for that is, well, Jen and I were re-going through everything that happened, and Mrs.

O'Keefe, John's mom, had advised us to make a timeline.

She said, This could be a while.

You guys aren't going to remember something years from now.

So, sit down, write down what you remember.

And I, at that point, you know, when she first called and we were going through it, Jen was like, Oh, yeah, remember?

You said that Karen said that he was dead.

I don't think you've told the investigators that.

So Michael Proctor calls, or either Michael Proctor was already on the phone with Jen, she doesn't recall that.

I don't even know.

And I said, Oh, could I speak to Michael Proctor?

So then I told him so that somebody could document it.

So it's just weird.

How do you not remember to tell him that?

That's the opening of how you even get involved.

In fact, one of the interviews that both Jen McCabe and Carrie Roberts had was at Jen's house while they were together.

So the investigators come to talk to both of them, two witnesses that should be interviewed separately, and they're both just at Jen's house, quote, making a timeline.

I think I was at Jen's house.

We were making a timeline together when two law enforcement showed up to question her, but I happened to be there, so they took us in separate rooms and questioned both of us.

Does that not sound like an overly complicated way of saying we were getting our story straight?

Because that's what a lot of people think online.

Now, all of John's family and friends believe that Karen Reed did in fact kill John O'Keefe.

John's brother Paul states that prior to all of this, he actually had a really good relationship with Karen, which made everything so much worse.

He testifies, I thought we had a good relationship.

I held her in very high regard.

I thought she was a good influence on my niece and nephew.

Now, this is very important, and we're going to go over it in the next part.

But John and Paul O'Keefe had another sibling.

She passed away, and then her husband passed away.

And so she left behind a daughter and a son.

Do you know what happened?

Was it she had cancer and then a few months later, her husband died of a heart attack.

Wow.

And it was a very like it was just a family tragedy.

And now there is a niece and a nephew who need parents, but Paul O'Keefe and Aaron O'Keefe, the brother-in-law and brother and sister-in-law, they already had kids.

So it was a lot to take on.

So John O'Keefe, single man, no kids decides he's gonna step up to the plate he's gonna take in his niece and nephew and he's gonna raise them by himself really so they live together yeah and that's why he's so close with Jen because his niece and Jen's daughter are close friends okay and then Carrie Roberts was already close friends with John O'Keefe but her son and his nephew that he took in are close

so they start helping Carrie John and Jennifer they're super close in through the kids through Through the kids.

So they're all like the parenting group.

Yeah, so they like, we'll do pickups, drop-offs.

They'll do the games together.

So that's how they maintain close.

But because she's close with the nephew, she's close with the niece, they don't really overlap as often.

Ah, okay.

Oh, and Karen helps take care of the kids.

So she works from home.

Yeah.

So she'll go to John's house and just watch the kids while he's at work.

What does she do?

She works in finance.

She's an asset manager.

And she also is an adjunct professor at, so she teaches university kids at night, I believe, online classes.

Okay.

So she'll go to his house and just watch the kids make them food.

How old are the kids, estimate?

16 and 13, I believe, when it happened.

Now, most people who are very close with John say they felt very disappointed because it was very clear to them that Karen had hit John O'Keefe with her car.

And they felt like she had flown into a drunken rage.

Why do they think that?

Well, after John is left dead, Karen drives off and before his body is found, so in the span of three to five hours, Karen calls John 52 times and she leaves him eight voicemails.

First one is at 12.37 p.m., presumably when she drives off without John in the car.

And she is screaming in the voicemail, John, I f ⁇ ing hate you.

John, I f ⁇ ing hate you!

1242 a.m., she sends another one, but it's just background noise, so it might have been a true butt dial.

Then 1:02 a.m.

A voicemail with more background noise.

Then 1.11 a.m.

Yeah, it's 1 in the morning.

I'm with your fing niece.

So she had gone back to John's house because the niece is alone.

The nephew is at a sleepover.

John's niece is alone in the house.

Yep.

She says, Yeah, it's 1 in the morning.

I'm with your fing niece and nephew.

The nephew's not in the house.

You fing pervert.

You're a fing pervert.

Yeah, it's 1 in the morning.

I'm with your fing niece and nephew.

You fing pervert.

You're a finger.

Then at 1.18 a.m.

She leaves another voicemail.

John, I'm going home.

I cannot babysit your niece.

I need to go home.

You are fing using me right now.

You're fing another girl while you're sleeping next to me.

You're a fing loser.

F yourself.

You, you are fing using me right now.

You're fing another girl.

Kim sleeping next to me.

You're a finger loser.

John's family, friends, every other partygoer, they believe, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, they believe that Karen was pissed that night when she dropped John off at that residence and because she was enraged, she backed into him full speed in a giant 6,000 pound SUV, drove off angry, leaving him these voicemails.

They believe that is the motive for the murder, to which netizens are divided.

Some say, yeah, that is the motive for the murder.

Others say, it doesn't really make sense.

The last thing someone is going to do is knowingly hit someone and then call them to leave angry voicemails to point themselves as an angry suspect who might have hit someone.

Another person agrees saying, if it had been a fake voicemail, it would sound like, hi, it's me, it's 1 a.m.

Wondering where you are.

I'm so worried, love you, call me.

Yeah.

Not who are you right now, you pervert.

Yeah.

That's what netizens are saying.

That almost definitely removes the planning part.

Yeah, it just doesn't make sense that she would leave those voicemails afterwards.

And there are lots of theories of why she left those voicemails.

I mean, surface theory is that she was mad because this is the same street that some of these women live on, but there's actually a weirder theory that we're going to go in part two.

Now, Karen's version of that night, she is adamant.

She says, quote, I did not kill John O'Keefe.

I've never harmed a hair on John O'Keefe's head.

She says, the narrative became that I became enraged and decided to nail him in the snow.

She says it's basically ridiculous.

Karen says, we get to the house.

It didn't look like it was busting at the seams with people.

So she's saying, after Waterfall Bar, they get to 34 Fairview.

They've never been to this house.

John's never been to this house.

And it looks like it's dead inside.

So she's like, um, hello?

Is this the right house?

And are we welcome?

Like, are you sure we were invited at the bar?

Because maybe Karen's like, these two people didn't invite us.

So are you sure we're welcome here?

Like, I don't want to walk into the, and like, my stomach hurts.

I don't want to, I don't really want to go.

And so she says, I'm still on the street.

She's parked on the street.

She's like, John, can you just run in there?

And like, can you just make sure we're welcome and make sure it's the right house?

And like, this is somewhere we want to be.

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

He got out of the car.

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

And I looked at my phone.

And in a matter of seconds, I look up and he's not there anymore.

So she's indicating he went into the house.

And then I wait for him to reemerge, which I assumed was going to be in moments or that he'd yell from me from the front door, like, it's good.

Come on in.

But he didn't come back.

And it started to piss me off because one, I really didn't want to be there.

And two, I had to go to the bathroom.

So she has medical conditions that require her to use the restroom at certain times.

She's like, so I leave.

She says she's slow rolling it.

He's still not coming out.

And yeah, she leaves those voicemails in a fit of rage because it's like, the way she's explaining it is she felt used.

Like he called her to the first bar, kind of should be like a D D, like designate a driver, maybe help take care of the kid.

Like she said it, it was just annoying.

They had fought that morning.

And the reason that they fought, people make it seem very ominous and suspicious.

It's because Karen had taken her niece to Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast.

And John was very upset that she gets to be the good parent and he always has to be the bad parent.

He's like the disciplinarian, but it's not even her kids.

So I think that she felt very unfair by this whole fight.

And then now she's called out to the bar.

She's just like driving him from bar to bar and now to this house.

And he's not even courteous enough to like come out immediately and let her know that, hey, you can come in.

Like we're going to stay.

Or maybe she's upset that he didn't ask her.

I don't know.

Okay.

But she's just upset and she leaves these very angry voicemails and she says she goes to John's house because the niece can't be there alone.

And she's getting more mad because now she's like a babysitter and maybe she did think that he's going to Bella's mom's house.

And so she's mad.

She's leaving these voicemails.

She falls asleep on the couch waiting for him to come home.

And presumably, I imagine if he walked through that front door, she would have like exploded and had another fight.

I'm not going to say that their relationship was not toxic.

It seemed toxic, but at no point did anyone report any violence or anything that was abnormally toxic.

I don't even know if toxic is the right word.

I think they had their sensitive spots for fights.

Some people think that Karen is just a crazy girlfriend, but she's not a killer.

So people have varying degrees of how they feel about Karen.

She says she falls asleep, wakes up, he's not home, and she starts, quote, I was worried that he might have gotten hit by a plow.

That was my first thought.

It's the only explanation I could think of for why John just disappeared into thin air.

And she says that she remembers dropping John off at the house, but if Jennifer McCabe is telling her that he never went in the house, then he's got to be somewhere else.

She says.

Wait, so she called at 1.18, right?

She left that angry voicemail, and then she went to sleep.

She like fell asleep somewhere around that time.

Okay.

And then she continues calling after she wakes up.

You say she called him 54 times.

Yeah.

So she calls him, leaves these voicemails, calls, calls, calls, falls asleep, wakes up, he's nowhere to be found.

So she's blowing up his phone.

Again.

Yeah.

And now these voicemails are, there's not many voicemails.

I think there's one where she's like, John, but these, it sounds like she's genuinely searching for him

karen is freaking out she's thinking snowplow the next thought she's thinking maybe he tried to walk back to the bars because he was so drunk and try to meet up with new friends i don't know and so then she's like no that doesn't make sense and then she's like well i saw him go near the front door maybe i dropped him off at the wrong house and the homeowners thought it was like an intruder or something happened and she just starts freaking out.

Eventually, she calls Jen to get it together.

She calls Carrie and they're going to go on this search.

They search John's house.

They drive the streets near the bars.

Then they go back to 34 Fairview where Karen allegedly, suspiciously, according to Carrie and Jen, find John's body where no one else can see him in the snow.

Which I will say, I don't know if her being able to spot John's body on the lawn is the strangest thing to me because personally, I feel like when I am adamant on looking for something, I'm a little more keen to that than maybe other people are.

I don't know because I think it's very subjective.

Like some people just cannot find Where's Waldo?

Like some people cannot find even a jar of pickles in the fridge, right?

It's kind of subjective.

Yeah.

And we don't really have the exact evidence to say, oh, he was completely covered in snow in pitch black darkness.

And if you're looking out the window and you know, this is the last place you saw him, you might be more attentive to details.

I don't know.

Yeah.

It's hard to see.

You know, snow is a lot brighter than you think, though.

Yeah, because the light radiates on a wild.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's why when you go snowboarding, you got to wear those really thick sunglasses.

So perhaps there's some street light or even the car light and he's wearing darker clothing.

It could have been that, but she finds him in the snow.

She says, quote, my eyes are peeled.

And I said, he's right fucking there.

I jumped out the passenger side and I fell into the street.

I've described to many people, it looked like a buffalo on a prairie.

It just looked like a heap and it looked wrong.

It looked out of place.

So she's trying, she's saying, like, it didn't look like, like, hey, there's John in the snow.

It just looked like something is there that is not supposed to be there.

And she's like, that's got to be John.

Yeah, like, that's like, she might have thought that he stumbled over drunk.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And she's like, I got to go.

It looked out of place.

In another interview, she said, we turned the corner.

I saw his body immediately because it was just a heap.

I couldn't see his face or his hair, but I just knew because he's a big guy.

His eyes were shut.

So this is after she gets to his body.

His eyes were shut.

He had spots of blood in different areas on on his face, but he was still, but he was not stiff.

He was still.

It was cold.

I felt cold, but it didn't feel dangerously cold.

And it was just an odd feeling.

So she starts trying to warm him up.

Karen is asked in a dateline interview, was he alive?

He seemed like he could be.

I'm only out there for a minute or two and then Carrie runs over and then Carrie and I take turns between mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and chest compressions.

Karen says she left those voicemails because she knew that John had dated another another woman that lived a few houses down.

So maybe he was going to go meet with her or something.

And she says, I thought he's got to be screwing around.

I didn't know that he was physically incapacitated.

Karen is asked, is it possible that you might have hit him unwittingly in your admittedly very large SUV?

She drives an Alexis SUV.

It's huge.

No, not possible.

Did I hit him?

How could that have been?

I mean, you dropped him all the time.

I don't know what else could have been.

It's very interesting because even that dateline interview will be used against her in her second trial.

This is a very interesting trial, the second one, of Karen Reed, where they use a lot of her media interviews as evidence against you.

Was the interview taken after the first trial or before first trial?

There's a lot that's taken after the first trial.

Now, trial one starts, and Karen's Reed case is one of the more divisive ones in the entire state.

People are coming into the trial with their minds made up already.

Some people are firmly on the prosecution side, including every other person at the Fairview residence the night of John's death, John's family and friends.

They all believe Karen is a killer without a shadow of doubt.

Others firmly believe that Karen is innocent and nothing about this case makes sense because Karen has been framed.

Which, why and how can the Commonwealth look at all the suspicious people involved, the ever-changing stories, the weird butt dials, the Google searches, and only think that Karen Reed is guilty?

Who are they protecting?

That's what the netizens want to know.

And the trickier thing about this trial is that this courtroom itself is extremely claustrophobic.

This looks nothing like a regular courtroom.

Most courtrooms have the way I've described it for even like the federal courthouse.

You've got the front where you've got the judge, the attorneys, the defendant.

You've got the jurors that are all gathered, and then the witness stand is there.

And then you have everybody in the back just facing their backs.

You know, you've got the family and friends pews, the public and press pews.

But this courtroom is kind of like an amphitheater setup, but on a tiny scale.

You've got all the attorneys in the center, and then everyone is sitting on the sides around them, facing them.

So to give you an idea, it's like, you know, those gladiator fights where everyone sits around the center stage.

It's kind of like that, but even smaller.

So everyone's within arm's reach.

The jury, the gallery, it's like a fishbowl.

For example, John O'Keefe's family are staring directly at Karen Reed's side profile the entire trial.

They're like two people away.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

It's just like a strange wedding dinner party arrangement.

It looks very uncomfortable and the seating is so tight that two of the jurors can't even see the witnesses' faces when they're testifying.

But they can see Karen Reed's face and everyone's got lots of opinions about it.

Some say she looks way too smug.

I mean, that she must have killed her boyfriend.

Others are saying she never looks sad that her boyfriend is dead.

Or people are commenting that she's wearing too sharp of suits, that all she cares about is how she's perceived on television because it's being live streamed.

Some people are commenting, only Karen Reed.

I mean, she looks great in her suits, but only she could have done this.

She's guilty.

Is this like the first trial sentiment?

Yeah.

Initially, members of John's family thought if she did this, she's going to be held responsible for it.

And at that point, we didn't think that it was necessarily on purpose.

We just know that something happened.

She hit him and she left.

But it would get really crazy.

The judge presiding over this case, which you guys know for the Sean Combs Diddy trial, it was Judge Arun Supermanium, which we called affectionately Father Arun because he was very nice and fair to both sides.

He was just a very fair judge.

He was like a dad presence in the courtroom.

This judge,

Judge Beverly,

everyone calls her Auntie Bev.

It's not an endearing nickname.

That's just kind of the nickname that's been assigned to her, not by us, but by netizens.

And we will get into that in the next few parts.

Wow.

Auntie Bev is the...

Netizens do not like her.

If you don't like Karen Reed, you like Auntie Bev.

Oh.

I would say that 90% of people don't like Auntie Bev.

Okay.

Yeah.

And both trial with...

Auntie Bev.

Wow, okay.

A lot of the defense did not want Auntie Bev to be the judge for this case, but she did not care.

She said, I'm staying no matter what.

Adam Lally is the lead prosecutor for the first trial.

They'll bring in another prosecutor for the second trial, and they'll pay him a lot more money.

So the first trial, it's Adam Lally.

The second trial, they bring in a new guy, Hank, and they pay Hank Hank half a million dollars.

Hey, the government does.

I guess the taxpayers must.

But Adam didn't get half a million dollars?

No, Adam gets paid like maybe $90,000 to $100,000 a year.

He's a special prosecutor.

Yeah.

Wow.

So Adam Lowley is the lead prosecutor in this case.

And his opening statements,

I can see why maybe they brought in a special prosecutor for this.

This opening statement has largely been regarded online as one of the worst opening statements in the history of justice, which I use the word justice with a giant question mark in regards to this case, but I digress.

Obviously, it cannot be the worst opening statement in history, but it's very bad.

They were given an allotted 45-minute opening statement, which is very difficult.

Okay, very difficult.

The opening statements for the Diddy trial were hours each.

They get 45 minutes.

That's a lot of information that they have to put in to 45 minutes.

This man, he lists 74 separate names.

These are not names, he says repeatedly, but 74 separate people are listed.

Even for this episode, guys, I have tried so very hard to keep down the list of names until you're very familiar with these group of people so that not to overconfuse you.

The total name count is going to be a lot more because he's repeatedly said Karen's name.

I don't know how many times, but 74 separate names are mentioned.

Introducing 74 separate people in a 45-minute opening statement sounded more like a graduation ceremony list of reading off people's names one by one.

He's not telling the jurors everyone that was in the house the night in question.

He's telling everyone, every single law enforcement officer involved, who's doing the paperwork, the bartenders at the bar.

It's like a town census.

There's no narrative element to even tell me what happened.

If the jurors were picked correctly, they should have no clue what's going on in this case.

This opening statement would have only made them more confused.

We extensively researched this case, and his opening statement still to this day confuses me.

It makes me feel like I don't know anything about this case.

He starts, John O'Keefe grew up in Braintree.

He was 46 years old when he passed.

He was the son of John O'Keefe Jr.

and Margaret, or Peggy O'Keefe.

He was a brother to Paul O'Keefe and his sister Kristen Furbrush.

You'll hear the testimony from the firefighters of Timothy Nuttall, Anthony Flamati, Matthew Kelly.

Francis Walsh, Katie McLaughlin, and Greg Wood.

You'll hear from Rebecca Trares, who was working as a bartender.

You'll hear from a couple named Nicholas and Karina, a friend of Mr.

O'Keeffe's named Laura Sullivan, as well as from her sister, Miss Marietta Sullivan, as well as two firefighters named Daniel Whitley and Jason Becker.

Damn.

Okay.

I will say the emotional part was the fact that John's niece was 14 when he passed away and his nephew was 11.

And this would be the third guardian that they lose in the span of a few years because their mother passed, their father passed, and then John took them in and then John passed.

Yeah, yeah.

And where are they now?

I believe Paul O'Keefe has taken them in.

The dad?

No, the brother.

The brother.

Valley is talking, and you do see John's mom in the back sobbing.

And it is pretty depressing because, like I said, her daughter passed away, then her son-in-law, and now her son, and she's got these two grandkids.

And I doubt that she even has time to really focus on her emotions.

That part is a lot, but everything else, this opening statement, I just need you to know it was very bad.

One of the top comments on the live stream is just, he sounds like he's very bored to be here.

He's got like 50 pages left.

How is this all in two pages?

Someone says, if I ever get prosecuted for a crime, I sure hope this is my prosecutor.

Others are not even focused on Lally.

They say, John's parents are sitting right there and Karen looks cool as a cucumber.

And everyone is just holding their breath for the defense team's opening statements.

And Karen Reed has a very interesting defense team.

First, she has David.

Yannetti, the attorney that we've been talking about, a local attorney.

Yannetti was chosen because Karen's dad is a devout Catholic.

He likes to go based off of his gut.

And he said that he googled criminal defense attorneys in the area, saw pictures, and said, this one looks like an honest man.

That's how he gets chosen to like one of the biggest trials in the nation in the past year.

That's how he gets hired.

And then the two of them are just in over their heads.

Before the trial even starts, there's so many roadblocks trying to get the basic evidence from the Commonwealth.

They just want geofence data that would identify every every cell phone at the Albert residence the night of John's death.

Things that they have every right to during discovery, and they're not getting it.

So Karen has no other choice.

She starts reaching out to other attorneys to add to the team.

She reaches out to an attorney from Los Angeles.

She's actually recommended to reach out to Alan Jackson primarily because she's trying to get cell phone data.

Alan Jackson smartly used cell phone data to get a groping case dropped against Kevin Spacey, which,

yeah, yeah.

He was also co-counsel for Harvey Weinstein, so there is that.

I feel like there is not a person that this man has not represented, including a Saudi prince, an NBA player, a Venice Beach hotel owner that was falsely accused of murder.

Now, prior to being a criminal defense attorney, he was also the deputy DA for LA County.

Wow, so he's kind of a

big shot.

Yeah, major prosecutor.

His peers have said that at one point during his time at the LA County's DA's office, he was one of the most well-respected prosecutors in the entire nation.

Not even just well-respected.

He had a 97% conviction rate over 85 jury trials.

And he's not a Fed.

Like that's LA County.

Right.

And it established him as one of the most successful prosecutors in the nation.

He was assistant head of the major crimes division in Los Angeles.

He's used to high-profile cases.

He gets hundreds of requests monthly for representation, which, if it's a numbers game, he's turning down most of the requests that he's getting every single month.

So how does he decide which cases to take on?

I'm so sorry.

This is still first trial, right?

Okay.

These three, Elizabeth Little works with Alan Jackson, so she's going to take the case with him.

These three are present for the first and second trial.

And I'm going to mix like first and second trial together here and there because a lot of the same people testify.

Yeah.

So it's not as pertinent.

I mean, we're going to see the first trial and the second trial through and you'll know exactly what happened, but a lot of the statements are going to be combined and stuff.

Yeah.

I'm just getting you familiar with the attorneys.

Now, these three are there for all three trials.

He gets an email one day in Los Angeles, and that email subject line just reads, murder of a Boston cop.

He clicks it.

It's from a woman named Karen.

Little snippets read, I am fighting for my life.

At this point, this is when he finds out, I mean, at this point, everyone already knew, but John O'Keefe is a Boston police officer.

Now he finds out Karen is accused of murdering her her boyfriend, who happens to be a Boston cop.

Karen's telling him, I'm fighting for my life against a blue wall, and therefore I'm marshaling whatever resources and advices that I can find.

She includes autopsy photos of John O'Keefe inside the email.

And when Alan Jackson clicks on them, he says, it just didn't smell right.

I knew pretty quickly some other forces are at play here to point the finger at her.

And it's because those forces want to point the finger away from somebody else.

He's saying, none of those autopsy photos look like someone who has been hit by a car.

The fact that anyone, especially a prosecutor, would even suggest that it was done damage from being hit by a car is fishy.

Alan Jackson looks into the case and ultimately he decides John O'Keefe was murdered.

No question.

He died at the hands of another person that was not Karen Reed.

He says there are people in that house that are actually responsible for his death and who murdered him.

And that is how he decides to take on the case.

He's going to travel from Los Angeles to Boston and he's going to fight for Karen Reed.

Just to give you an idea, Alan Jackson is an incredibly strong character.

I would say that he has the assertiveness of, I don't really know who to, maybe like assertiveness of Brian Steele, but maybe without the southern charm and like lay on the sweetness.

He's very charismatic, but he is an aggressive attorney.

Like he goes after what he wants.

I have two words.

Do it.

Do it.

I'd love that.

I'd love a shot.

I said, let's keep, not keep, you know, take personal shot.

That's not an objective.

That's not a personal shot, Mr.

Brennan.

I'm just saying, do it.

He's not trying to play nice all the time, which is why when he comes to Boston to take on this case, a lot of people feel like he's going to step on a lot of toes.

He's this big hotshot attorney from Los Angeles representing Karen Reed.

Before the first trial, most people did not like Karen Reed.

It's not going to go well.

And he's known to go into every case, guns ablazing.

And so he's asked about it.

And he says, I mean, I don't know how to tread lightly.

I tread towards the truth, period.

And if that ruffles feathers, so be it.

If that pisses people off, get over it.

Okay.

So very different from the prosecutor's opening statement.

The defense, they actually get David Yannetti up on the podium, which is pretty calculated.

They're not going to let the fancy big shot LA attorney do it.

They're going to let the local handle this case.

And his voice is loud, concise, and clear.

And the first words out of David Yannetti's mouths are: Karen Reed was framed.

Her car never struck John O'Keefe.

She did not cause his death.

And that means that somebody else did.

Commonwealth will instead try to persuade you that Karen Reed supposedly had a motive to kill John O'Keefe because they were not getting along.

You will conclude: the notion that Karen Reed chose the start of a snowstorm to suddenly become violent out of the blue for the first time and intentionally kill her boyfriend by hitting him with her car and leaving him there with a house full of people inside is patently ridiculous.

You will also learn that what's not ridiculous is that someone, not Karen Reed, ambushed John O'Connell.

Somebody probably didn't mean to kill him, but somebody went too far.

Nothing can really beat the defense team's confidence in the opening statements.

To say that your client was framed is a very bold statement to stay in front of jurors.

If you're going to say that, they're expecting you to back it up with a lot of evidence, with a lot of facts.

And so for them to say that, it must mean something.

Alan Jackson later says, I've never been more confident in anything I've ever said in a legal proceeding in my life.

Karen Reed did not do this.

There was no collision.

She's the victim of a botched and biased and corrupt investigation that was never about the truth.

Some netizens don't agree.

They write, Karen admitted to hitting him and then changed her story after obtaining big shot attorneys.

Others say, well, the prosecution was boring.

He was full of facts.

This guy, he's more interesting, but it's all emotion, no facts.

Others point out how Karen looks so smug, and it's so clear that she's excited to get away with this.

But others disagree.

They say it's natural for Karen to come across mad and bitter.

I mean, she was set up.

Do you want her to be remorseful as she's being framed?

Like, let's make it make sense.

But the biggest problem is there are testimonies that Karen says at the scene of the crime, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.

So, how do you go from I confessed to never mind, I was framed?

One of the firefighters at the scene, Timothy Nettall.

So, Timothy, he's not on the board, but he's important.

He's a paramedic.

He gets called out to John's body.

He says Karen was the most frantic of the entire group, just running back and forth, trying to press on John's chest, trying to wake him up, trying to talk to him to no avail.

And he says, Timothy says, as he's trying to get information out of Karen, like, do you have any information on who this is?

How did they get here?

Do they have any medication allergies?

He says he gets no information out of her, except, quote, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.

How clearly do you remember her words saying to you, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him?

I remember it very distinctly.

Timothy says he's trying to understand more of that, and he testifies that he's asking Karen all these follow-up questions.

Like, what do you mean you hit him?

Like, did you hit him with your hand?

Did you kick him?

What happened?

What do you mean you hit him?

Did you just confess to murder?

What do you mean?

She just keeps repeating, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.

Timothy says he recalls recalls those words coming out of Karen's mouth so distinctly.

Another lead firefighter says he recalls Karen saying the same thing, but he's the lead paramedic on site, so he's got to work on John.

So he tasks another person on his team on trying to get as much information out of Karen as possible.

Katie McLaughlin, a firefighter.

She needs to get information from Karen Reed.

Basic information.

Who is this man?

What is his date of birth?

What's his name?

How did he get here in the snow?

Does he have medical problems?

She needs to ask these and get the answers.

Katie says, at first, Karen is responding.

She's cooperating.

She's very distraught, but she's cooperating.

She says, quote, she was kind of moving around the scene a little bit.

So I was just kind of following her.

And then we came to a stop at one point.

And I continued to ask, or I asked one more question.

Katie says, the last question she asks Karen is, has there been any significant trauma that happened before this?

Katie testified that Karen says, I hit him.

Quote, she repeated it.

There was another woman standing across from her, Jen,

who I believe at that point said, you're hysterical.

You need to calm down.

You're hysterical.

But Karen continued to say, I hit him.

And there was a police officer who was also in the vicinity with us.

And he responded, you what?

She replied it one more time.

I hit him.

And that officer signaled to somebody, like, we got to get the sergeant out here, which would be

Sergeant Sean Goode.

Now, by this point, it's a cut and dry case.

She drove probably when she shouldn't have.

She was drunk.

He's found dead in the snow, the last place that they both were.

And now she's saying she hit him.

So you're saying three people at the scene.

One paramedic, one firefighter, and then another was service.

Firefighter, paramedic.

So they're all firefighter paramedics.

So far, three firefighter paramedics are saying that she said, quote, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.

Okay.

Even during Jen McCabe's testimony, she said that she did indeed hear Karen say that.

She declared it, not once, but three times.

I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.

How is that not a confession?

additionally carrie remembers karen pointing out her broken taillight in the driveway remember when they got to john's house she said karen did point it out at one point in the driveway karen pointed out and said look my taillight and i said she said do you think i hit him and i said no i don't think you hit him what are you talking about let's just go find him but the taillight itself the piece was missing and as you got closer there's a metal sort of square and one of the pieces was sort of sticking out.

Even later, when they find John's body, Carrie says Karen was frantic, running around saying, Did I hit him?

Did I hit him?

Is he dead?

Is he dead?

Carrie says she's screaming this more than once.

Katie McLaughlin is saying it was not a question.

It was, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.

But like, everything is weird.

I mean, this is weird too.

First of all, if that's what was said, why is it not in a single incident report?

Nobody included it in the incident reports.

The firefighters that testified that, well, they say, well,

we're writing the patient care reports.

That's why it's not on there.

Another firefight, Timothy, he says the fact that Karen said she hit him doesn't really contribute to providing life-saving care and they're just paramedics.

He says it didn't really help at the time.

Again, we weren't really, I wasn't able to chase anything down from that.

I just kind of took it, noted it, and moved on with my aspect of the life-saving measures.

But the defense is stuck on that because they're saying, what do you mean it doesn't matter?

Don't you want to know the cause of someone's injuries when you're trying to save their lives?

Isn't that very pertinent information?

And these firefighters, Katie McLaughlin is the one that dropped John O'Keefe off at the hospital, never mentioned to a nurse or a doctor that he might have been hit.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm wondering, like, what's the regular practice for anybody in the comments who's in this line of work?

When someone's in that kind of condition, are you supposed to at least say something or is this normal?

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And what's even weirder is, okay, a lot of people, a lot of medicines are like, fine, maybe the paramedics have a point.

However, Katie McLaughlin testified that one officer overheard and said, you what?

Officers should be putting that in their reports.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

But it's not.

In fact, Sean Good.

Sean Good was not there at that time.

He was called later, but it's a different officer named Officer Seraph.

And he says that he did not hear that.

He did not hear, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.

He says, I didn't hear, I hit him, I hit him.

She was just very visibly upset.

And she said, this is all my fault.

This is all my fault.

And she was hysterical asking, is he dead?

Which a lot of people are saying, well, that makes more sense in the sense of she left him when she shouldn't have.

Maybe she felt like this was her fault.

She's putting the guilt on her.

It's very different from, I hit him with my 6,000 pound SUV.

It's like a very different interpretation.

And when all of these people are asked, if you heard this, why didn't you put it in your incident report?

It's always some variation of, I didn't think it was that important.

Or, I mean, she, I heard her saying it to somebody else, or I wasn't in charge of the incident report, or a very popular answer during this trial, I don't recall.

So it's not in the incident report, and it's also not in the dash cam footage.

There's dash cam footage of a police cruiser that shows up, and I will say it's very windy.

Karen is screaming, she's running back and forth, but you don't hear her ever screaming, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.

But the part that netizens can't get over is fine.

It's not in your incident report.

Maybe you felt like you should leave it out.

Fine, it's not in the dash cam footage.

It was very windy.

But you're telling me that all the officers at the scene, the firefighter, the paramedics, they hear her say, I hit him, I hit him.

Her boyfriend is now laying, likely deceased, on the ground.

And it's not strange to you at all that they wouldn't arrest her on the spot,

that they wouldn't take her into custody on the spot, or at least interview her extensively on the spot, take her to the police station on the spot.

So the question is, if that's true, why would all these unrelated officers lie about something like this?

Are they just incompetent, not writing it down, and now they're trying to get the job done?

Like, what's the problem?

Well, maybe they're not all unrelated.

One very strange detail about this case is: John O'Keefe, a Boston police officer, is found on the front lawn of someone's residential home.

That home is never searched.

The homeowners are never formally questioned.

It's like they're not even people of interest.

Even though a lot of people believe that John's injuries look more consistent with a fight rather than a car accident, nobody questions them or searches their house.

Does that seem like normal protocol?

Yeah, and that allegedly is his his last time was alive.

And that's still their property.

It's their property.

It's their property.

Have you ever seen someone found deceased on a property and that property is not searched extensively?

It doesn't make sense.

Why?

During cross-examination, Katie McLaughlin, the firefighter that said that she distinctly heard Karen say, I hit him, I hit him, is asked by the defense attorney, Who's Caitlin Albert?

Homeowner's daughter.

I went to high school with somebody named Caitlin Albert.

So do you know Caitlin Albert?

I do.

You're friends with Caitlin Albert.

I would say more acquaintances, not close friends.

I would say that we have mutual friends, so we might see each other occasionally because of mutual friends, but we don't have, you know, one-on-one friendship or hang out regularly.

Who's your dad?

I don't know.

I can tell you, Caitlin's Albert's dad is Brian Albert, the homeowner.

How many years, you know, how long of a span have you known Caitlin Albert?

Since high school, so maybe 10.

And you know her family generally.

I don't.

You don't know anything about her family?

I don't know her family.

And netizens just feel like it's incredibly hard to believe considering there were only 214 students in her graduating class.

So she's saying, I went to high school with someone named Caitlin Albert, but also your class only has 200 people in the grade.

That's a weird thing to say.

If you're asking me someone I know that I went to, I would just say, oh, I went to high school with them.

Yeah.

I wouldn't say I went to high school with someone named.

Have you ever been to her house?

Not that I recall ever being there.

Not that you recall or you haven't.

Those are two different things.

I don't recall ever being there.

Okay.

So you might have been there, you just don't recall.

I don't recall ever being there.

A lot of people don't like the evasiveness.

If you haven't been there, just say, I haven't been there.

Or just say, I might have been there maybe once, like 10 years ago.

Yeah.

Okay, if I were to ask you if you've ever been to her house, yes or no, you cannot answer that because you don't recall.

You cannot recall, correct?

I would say, I mean, I lean towards no.

I have no recollection of ever being at her house.

The defense shows a picture of Caitlin Albert and Katie McLaughlin on the beach.

They've gone on trips together with big friend groups.

When was it though?

She makes it seem like she hasn't seen her since high school, but there are pictures just months before the incident of John's death where they were at a baby shower together, where there's pictures of them,

and there's just copious pictures of them socializing together.

And she states, Well, that's because her friend group is friends with some of my friends of my friend group, but we're never really like friends.

We never really hang out.

But it's just

the way I think it's, it's less about the photos.

It's less about like the photographic evidence.

It's more so, she's being so evasive.

It's almost like she wanted to say that Karen is guilty and that family has nothing to do with it.

Don't even mention their name because I don't know them.

Yeah, so it's that's why people are saying it's weird.

She's like the main one testifying that Karen said, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him at the scene.

And turns out she's acquainted at the very least with Caitlin Albert.

And now this is the part that's going to get confusing.

I'm going to go over it now, but I will revisit it every time because it becomes very important.

So don't get stressed if you don't recall everything.

But we have the Alberts.

Now, I've never been to Canton, but I feel like after this case, if the population of Canton, Massachusetts is 100 people, half of them are Alberts or related to the Alberts.

So let's start with the Albert original siblings, the main siblings.

Brian Albert is the eldest of seven.

Only like four of the siblings matter.

Brian is the top dog.

He's married to Nicole Albert, who happens to be Jen McCabe's sister.

Now, Brian and Nicole, they have kids together, but the ones that matter are Caitlin and birthday Brian, Brian Jr.

They also have a dog, Chloe.

Very important.

Then Brian

has a brother

named Chris Albert.

Okay.

Chris Albert is married to Julie.

Julie happens to be best friends

with Jen McCabe.

Julie and Jen McCabe are best friends.

Okay.

And Jen McCabe is Nicole's sister.

Right.

They're best friends.

Okay.

They've been best friends for a really long time, and it's not because they're distantly related.

They're genuinely best friends and they're family.

Now, Chris and Julie also have a few kids, but the only one that really matters is Colin Albert.

They,

Chris, Julie, Colin, used to live two houses down

from John O'Keefe.

Used to.

Yeah, and this is very important.

Used to as like when this crime happened or years before the crime happened.

They moved away one year before the crime.

And this is very important later because Karen will later say the only person she's ever seen John have problems with

Colin Albert.

Teenager neighbor leaving drunk beer bottles on John's property.

I see.

Then there are two other main Albert brothers we'll get into.

Well, I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry.

Was Colin Albert at the party?

They find out that he was

months after.

In the initial reports,

nobody lists him.

Wow.

Oh, yeah.

Colin's going to be like the focus of the next episode.

Wow.

Colin's a huge focus later.

Now, this is important also because Michael Proctor, no nudes yet, Proctor, he's the main investigator.

Well, one of the main investigators, right?

Yeah.

His sister is Courtney Proctor.

Yes.

Who's best friends with Julie?

Okay.

So they're all best friends.

Yeah.

This whole house is a best friend party.

Yeah, they're all related or they're all best friends.

This is crazy.

Yeah.

Small town is so scary.

Michael Proctor's mom even said in like a social media post that the Alberts are like the Proctor's second family.

When she got married, when Courtney Proctor got married, Colin was the ringboy.

Colin Albert is basically Michael Proctor's ringboy?

No, Courtney Proctor.

But aren't they married?

Oh, sister.

I'm so sorry.

Yeah, his wife is Elizabeth.

She's not on here right now.

But

yeah.

Geez, okay.

So there is a death outside the Albert family house.

And this man's sister is best friends with Julie Albert, who's best friends with Jen McCabe, and they're all related to an Albert, or they're married to an Albert.

And there's a death outside, the man investigating the case is very close with the Albert family.

So close, in fact, that they call them the second family to the proctors.

And yet he does not recuse himself.

He does not pull out for a conflict of interest.

Nothing.

In fact, his sister is so close with Julie Albert that during the initial investigation into John O'Keefe's death, they call each other non-stop.

And she, Julie, will not recall what was discussed in any of those conversations.

Courtney's brother is in charge of figuring out everything, what happened.

Meanwhile, Julie Albert is like tapping that phone like non-stop.

Yeah.

Okay, and I will say lead investigator is a little misleading.

He does have a supervisor, Buchanik, that's going to be a huge huge part of the next episode, but Buchanik is also not a good person.

But this guy, he's a huge, he's the one that is searching through.

Karen Reed's phone.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So lead investigator, but like you get it.

Now, Karen's attorney says, you'll learn that right from the jump, Michael Proctor predetermined the outcome of this case and never stepped foot inside the Albert home on January 29th, 2022.

He never checked out if there were signs of a struggle inside the home.

He never called crime scene technicians and other specialists to look for blood or other trace evidence within the home.

He never asked Brian Albert for permission to go into the home and look around.

Michael Proctor never applied for a search warrant to go in that house.

Instead, he focused immediately and exclusively on Karen Reed, the outsider.

No one in the Proctor family had ever called the Reed family their second family.

No one in the Proctor family had been in a wedding party with anyone else from the Reed family.

There are pictures of the Proctor family and the Albert family dating back to 2012.

But these are not the only strange connections.

Carrie Roberts lives on the same block as one of the paramedics that responds to the scene.

But that's normal.

It's a small town.

Everyone lives next to everyone.

But what's interesting is that there are many investigating bodies on this case.

So, just to not get it confused, some of the main police officers that first arrive at the scene are Sean Goode, Paul Gallagher, and Michael Link.

Okay.

These are Canton police officers.

Okay.

Michael Proctor is a state police officer.

Canton is the town.

State police.

They just have different jurisdictions, but they don't, nobody's above each other, right?

They don't work together.

No, they do kind of work together because they all operate in Canton.

He kind of works with them too.

So they all kind of know each other for sure.

Right, okay.

But different jurisdictions, different departments.

Now, Carrie Roberts' daughter is best friends with Michael Lank's daughter, Officer Lank.

In fact, the day right after January 30th, 2022, Carrie and Jen McCabe, Reebok sisters that have never seen each other since six, seven years ago when they went to buy sneakers at Reebok, suddenly they're hanging out the next day.

They go to John O'Keefe's house to talk to Mr.

and Mrs.

O'Keeffe, and then they stop by Michael Lank's house.

They say it's to drop off Carrie's daughter, but it's strange, isn't it?

They both went to drop off Carrie's daughter.

Mm-hmm.

Michael Link is also best friends and grew up with

Chris Albert.

Wow.

So right when the call was, when the 911 call was submitted, it went to Sean Goode, Canton Police.

So this is the local jurisdiction.

Canton, Sean Goode, Gallagher, Link.

They're all Canton.

Yep.

The troopers eventually get involved.

Tully, Buchanick,

and Proctor.

But they're still going keep working with the Canton police.

In fact, they're gonna bring Karen.

I'm so sorry.

But why did these troopers get involved eventually?

Do you see this guy, Kenneth Berkowitz?

Yeah, he's the chief of the Canton Police Department.

Okay.

He says we should probably recuse ourselves for conflict.

Huh.

Why?

How so?

Because it's too related?

Too close?

Do you remember I was talking about the town select men?

Yes, Brian Albert.

No?

No.

Oh.

Just the town select You got like three, five people that are acting like mayors.

Yeah.

Chris Albert is a town selectman for Canton.

Okay.

Kenneth Berkowitz

endorsed Chris Albert.

Chris Albert

and the other selectmen oversee the police department.

They oversee the budgets.

They oversee administration.

Dang.

They oversee public safety.

I thought Brian Aubert is also a town select man.

No.

Oh.

What does Brian do again?

Brian Albert?

You're going to tell me later?

Okay, okay, okay.

So he's a town select man.

Kenneth Berkowitz endorsed him.

Right.

And they all just kind of know the Alberts.

So they're like, maybe we should recuse ourselves, call in the state troopers.

But the state troopers, they don't really stop working with the Canton Police Department.

In fact, when they tow Karen's car, they bring it to the Canton Police Department and storage it there.

But that doesn't make sense, like you're saying, because all these cops, why are they protecting Brian Albert?

Especially when the victim is a cop.

Like, it just seems strange.

Do they just love the guy?

Or does it have to do with the fact that maybe they love Chris and Brian is Chris's older brother?

Well,

Kevin Albert, another Albert brother, is also a police officer, a detective at the Canton Police Department.

So now these Canton police officers, their only connection to Brian Albert is not just Chris Albert.

It's also Kevin Albert, who has been working for the Canton Police Department for 18 years.

Right?

They're all colleagues.

They're all colleagues.

But still, the victim is also a police officer.

Why would they prioritize distant connections over a police officer who is deceased?

Michael Proctor's text messages get read in court, and during the investigation, one of his childhood friends asks him along the lines of, with a dead body in the front lawn, the homeowner in this case is probably going to catch a lot of grief.

Like, they're probably going to have a lot of legal troubles, lots of investigations happening.

Michael Proctor responds with just one word: nope.

And then he texts again and he explains why the homeowner, Brian Albert, is not going to catch a lot of grief.

He says, quote, the homeowner is a Boston cop, too.

They're all cops.

So this is not just a Blizzard blizzard party.

Wait, so Brian Albert.

They're all cops.

John O'Keefe has been a Boston cop for 16 years.

Uh-huh.

Brian Albert is also a cop with the Boston Police Department.

Same police department, Boston.

But he leads the fugitive unit.

So this is like a big cop.

There's four main law enforcement bodies that you need to know for this case.

Let's just make it easy.

First, Boston PD.

Brian, fugitive unit.

And John O'Keefe has been there for 16 years.

John works under Brian?

Not under him directly, but he works in the sex offender registry department.

Okay.

Brian works fugitive.

Okay.

This is like big boy cop.

Then you have the Canton Police Department.

This takes place in the town of Canton, not Boston.

So Boston PD don't have jurisdiction, even though it's one of their own, and the death happened right outside another one of their own's house.

Okay.

Then you have Canton Police Department.

They're the ones investigating first because it's in their jurisdiction.

You've got Chris Albert being heavily connected, being the town select man, being friendly with the chief of the Canton Police.

Then you have Kevin Albert, who's part of the Canton Police Department.

You also have a potentially suspicious neighbor.

So right across the street from Brian Albert's home

is another Canton police officer, Tom Keller.

And he conveniently says that his ring footage did not catch anything of importance that night, so he deleted the footage.

You're fing

me.

Who deletes ring camera footage?

Does anybody do that?

Not that I know of.

That's crazy.

So the Canton police chief is like, maybe we need to recuse ourselves because we've got way too much conflict going on.

Michael Link is best friends with Chris.

Everybody's buddies.

So they call in Massachusetts State Police, which

are these three.

You got Tully, Buchanick, and Proctor.

Proctor's got deep connections with the Alberts.

And then you have, that's the third body.

Then you have the fourth body, the feds, because the FBI has opened an investigation into John O'Keefe's death.

I mean, they've opened an investigation into the investigation of John O'Keefe's death.

Is that after the first mistrial or?

It's actually before the first mistrial.

Really?

Everything is so strange with this case.

There are so many layers of suspicion, but let's just go the surface level.

So, is that why Michael Proctor's text messages, all things are released, is because of the feds?

Yes, so the feds they actually give it to the defense in the Commonwealth the text messages.

Wow.

I don't think they would have gotten this.

So the feds are kind of the one that's helping in a sense.

In a sense, yeah.

One more thing.

Like I see the colors, right?

I kind of see the I see all these cops in the navy blue, I guess.

And then I see the lighter shades of blue.

Are they both cops or?

Okay, yes.

So let me go through my colors.

We've got the red for the Albert Albert family, the main Alberts, Big Albert.

Okay.

And then he's the light shade of blue.

So light shade of blue are any law enforcement personnel that are not investigating the case, that are involved but not investigating.

So Brian Albert, John O'Keefe, right?

And then you've got Kevin Albert, Chris.

He's not, I mean, he oversees the police department, so law enforcement.

The dark navy are people that have actively investigated the case.

They're all law enforcement.

So the red is big Alberts.

The orange are the secondary Alberts.

That is so interesting.

So Kevin Albert is part of the same department.

Yes.

He's not investigating.

No.

But he's still like talking to them every day, right?

He was getting daily updates.

Yeah.

Even when Canton PD recused themselves.

That's freaking crazy.

And that's just his brother's home.

Straight up brother.

Brother's home.

And he's like talking to his buddies about the investigation.

Oh, and the chief of police?

Kenneth?

Guess what the

select men?

They have control over appointing chief of police for Canton.

And then you've got the McCabes that are in yellow.

So it's like red, orange, yellow, right?

And then the green are prosecution and auntie Bev.

Pink is anyone

working with Karen.

Through Karen.

Okay.

And then purple is anyone that's important

just for the events, but not necessarily um

part of the alberts or mcacabes and then white is not that important and we might replace them we're gonna add more people onto this as this goes on so that's crazy because this is looks like you put you go to kentum and then you pull the most connected or influential family yeah together and that's it that that's this is the

whole family run the town and then someone is investigating not them but someone is found deceased outside their home and so let's get into the first layer of suspicion before I leave you, before the second episode, because I know it's getting long, but there are a lot of conversations about the initial 911 call, mainly because John O'Keefe is missing, and to the point where Karen is frantic and hysterical, yet she never calls 911.

Some people think that's weird.

Some people think that it's not weird because imagine calling 911 on your cop boyfriend, and then he just ends up drunk at someone's house, and now you're embarrassing him, and everybody else involved, and you're like the hysterical girlfriend.

But isn't, didn't they also say that you can't call until like 24 hours or something?

You can't call for 24 hours.

Like the best you could probably do is lie that they're elderly and have like a medical condition, but you probably shouldn't lie to the cops at all.

But like they really don't care.

They'll say he's an adult.

He could be sleeping with his mistress right now.

There's no missing person's case

at all.

Blah, blah, blah.

But some people kind of critique Karen for that.

Other people critique the actual 911 call, which was placed by Jen McCabe.

And they say, she's weird.

The 911 call goes, what's your emergency?

Yes, I need someone to come to 34 can't

34 F Road and Canton Math.

There's a man pass out in the snow.

Canton, hold on.

If you have to go to the kid, please call me.

He said, you connected to Nolan, okay?

Yeah, I don't know why I did that.

Stand on the line.

I think he's dead.

You need to, oh, like, you got to get here, ASAP, okay?

Let me transcend the line.

I'm going to try to stay again.

Karen's in the background screaming, Jen!

Jet, I know, I know.

Where are the blankets?

I don't see the blankets.

So Jen is trying to get the blankets from Carrie Roberts' car.

Jen, I know, I know.

Where are the blankets?

I don't see blankets, Carrie.

You know what's interesting about this?

You know who probably has copious amounts of blankets?

The homeowners?

Your sister, Jen?

If you can't find the blankets, why wouldn't you go to your sister?

Or your brother-in-law who's sleeping, I don't know how many feet away from you because he's a first responder and you know that.

And I also think it's very strange because I feel like every family has that one person that when shit really goes down, you call that one person and it appears to be Brian Albert in this family.

And he's sleeping right there and you don't wake him.

That is freaking crazy.

I feel like every family has that one person you call for everything.

Yeah.

But nevertheless, she gets transferred to Canton 911.

What's going on?

There's a guy unresponsive in the snow.

So it went from there's a man in the snow to now there's a guy in the snow.

A lot of netizens are critiquing.

It feels like a lot of distancing language.

Jen says, I'm just trying to communicate effectively with the police.

Instead of saying, my friend, my buddy, my guy named John, she's saying she's trying to be very assertive with how she's talking.

I mean, just the fact that she's not calling her sister or brother-in-law, that alone makes her more, way more suspicious than Karen, in my opinion.

Yes.

And what's even more suspicious is that as she's calling 911, you can hear like Carrie and Jen arguing about what to do.

So the whole time they're arguing about, do we flip him over?

No, we can't flip him over because he like might get a spinal injury.

Like, you don't hear the words exactly, but later they'll all testify that this is what happened.

And at one point, Karen is trying to warm him up with her body heat.

Carrie's getting mad, and she's like, Shut up, Karen.

Like, there's so much going on.

Would you not just be like, Hey, both of you guys, shut up?

I'm going to get a first responder.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The phone with the ambulance.

I know, I know, I know, I know, honey.

I know, I know.

Carrie, you gotta get off him, honey.

It's not like they've got it down, Pat.

It's not like they know what they're doing.

You're saying, like, this whole thing all night long until the body gets taken away.

Nobody talked to Brian and Nicole all night.

No.

Well,

there is a phone call made

from Jen McCabe to Nicole.

At what time?

Right at six in the morning, like right around the time that they're supposed to be coming.

They're supposed to be coming.

234 Fairview.

On the way there.

Yeah, and...

And they pull up to the house.

They say it's a butt dial.

But still, did anybody ask Jen why didn't you just knock on your brother or your sister's door?

I don't recall.

Everything is, I don't recall.

That is crazy.

Now, John O'Keefe is found laying in the snow at approximately 6 a.m.

So far, nobody says they saw him in the snow prior to this, but Karen, she did in fact leave the house, and that's verified at around like 12.30-ish.

So that means his body would have been out there from 12.30 1230 to like 6 in the morning.

So why is Jen McCabe Googling at 227 house long to die in the cold?

There is a Google search from 227 a.m.

H-O-S.

So typo, house long to die in the cold.

Jen McCabe says that that's not what happened.

She claims that when she got home after leaving the Albert residence, she was laying in bed, opened up a Safari tab, and started looking at basketball game results for her daughter's high school basketball game.

Then she put her phone down, maybe with the tab still open, went to sleep.

And then she's awakened by Karen's calling her non-stop.

And then in front of 34 Fairview, Jen says, as the paramedics are pushing John into the ambulance, Karen is looking at her and is saying, can you Google hypothermia?

She says, we held hands, we prayed, she had blood on her hands, and she said, maybe I've gotten my period.

And she was just kind of all over the place.

And then at one point, she grabbed my hands and she said, Google hypothermia.

Google how how long it takes to die in the cold.

And so I had my phone out and it was cold and my hands were frozen and I have MS.

Jen has MS as well.

They bonded over that.

I mean, before this.

And I took my phone out while she was screaming and shaking my arm.

And I attempted to Google how long it takes to die in the cold.

Jen claims that's the first time she ever Googled it around six in the morning.

She said she typed it multiple times because Karen kept shaking her arm and her hands were cold, but nothing came out of the Google search.

They just moved on so she didn't address it anymore now the prosecutors they bring in a forensic expert that testifies that perhaps sometimes it happens you open a tab and when you research on that same tab it'll log it as the time that you open the tab the defense brings in an expert that's like you're crazy your phone does not log the time that you open a tab your phone logs the time that you search something Your searches are logged.

You don't log when a tab is open.

That is crazy.

That's like the most boomer explanation of how freaking google history works

but what's crazy is that this entire trial i was thinking that the way that all of them fullheartedly just like try to sell this butt dial story like this is such boomer energy because you cannot tell anyone under a certain age like my mom would believe it my mom would be like it does make sense that they would butt dial and then everyone younger is like no it doesn't like how how when was the last time you butt dial someone yeah while everyone's butt dialing each other like that's crazy and conveniently the exact people that were involved last and then also this tab search timestamp thing we just invented internet like what are you talking about both jen mccabe and carrie testify that karen asked jen to google that at the scene jen mccabe obviously has incentive to say that karen told her to google it but carrie roberts why would she say that she's not even friends with jen mccabe during carrie roberts's cross-examination alan jackson is asking have you ever said or testified that miss reed asked you to pray and that Miss Reed said to Jennifer McCabe to Google hypothermia?

No.

You never said that.

I've never said that.

Is it your testimony that you have never said that Karen told you to Google hypothermia or that you don't recall saying that?

I don't recall saying that.

But at the grand jury hearing, that's exactly what Carrie testified to.

Then you were asked a question at the grand jury hearing.

What, if anything, did she, Miss Reed, ask Miss McCabe while they were sitting in the back of the cruiser that you heard?

Did you recall that?

I did not hear the question about Google being asked.

That's not my question.

In response to that question at the grand jury hearing, you testified at one point she asked her to Google hypothermia, correct?

Mm-hmm.

I'm sorry?

Yes.

You'll agree that that's a very detailed and specific recount of an event.

You recounted where you were in the back of a cruiser and around that time you thought they were lifting John up, scooped him up in the gurney.

You're so detailed that you talked about where you were standing next to the cruiser at the open door, correct?

Yes.

What the others are doing, holding hands, praying?

Yes.

You'll agree, at least for that purpose, you painted a very, very detailed picture in front of the grand jury, didn't you?

Yeah.

Except it's not true, is it?

I did not hear her ask that.

I was told she asked that.

The answer to my question, Miss Roberts, and it's not a trick question, what you told the grand jury was not true.

You never heard her, my client, ask anyone to Google anything, did you?

I did not.

And yet, that's what you testified under oath, under penalty of perjury in front of the grand jury, didn't you?

I did.

And the reason that you did that, and the reason that you said that false statement, was because someone told you to say it, correct?

Nobody told me to say it.

I knew it happened at that time, which if I said it.

How did you know that it happened, Ms.

Roberts, if no one told you it happened?

Because we wrote a timeline.

We already spoke about that.

Jennifer McCabe helped influence your testimony.

You testified to the grand jurors to that statement that you've never heard, correct?

Yes.

Here's another interesting thing.

The federal investigation into the investigation of John O'Che's death cannot be mentioned during the trial.

Auntie Bem said, you can't talk about it.

You can't bring up the feds, but you can allude to it.

You can say another investigating party.

Okay?

So now there's two grand juries.

There was one for this trial, and then there's another one for the federal case that happened.

And what's interesting is all these witnesses suddenly are a little more forthcoming with the feds because you know that you should not lie to the feds there was another grand jury oh hearing carrie roberts at the grand jury hearing for this case she's like i heard karen reed ask

the grand jury for the feds

none not a peep because she tells the feds that she did not hear Karen Reed ask Jen McCabe that.

But she does say that she saw Jen McCabe on her phone.

She says, I saw McCabe on her phone.

But you did not hear Karen ask Jennifer to Google anything.

Correct.

So what you told the grand jurors was in fact false.

I misunderstood

Mr.

Lally's question.

The question was, what if anything did she, Miss Reed, ask Miss McCabe while they were sitting in the back of the cruiser that you heard?

I misunderstood the question.

You misunderstood the question?

Yes.

What did you misunderstand about that question?

I didn't know it was what you heard.

So I was explaining what happened in the back of the car.

I see.

So you ignored the part, literally the part of the question where he said, what did you hear her say?

That's your testimony?

I didn't hear it.

I obviously got the question wrong.

I did not hear anybody ask about a Google search.

And that was a false statement, wasn't it?

Technically.

Technically?

Yes, technically.

What do you mean technically?

Technically, I was under oath, and I did not hear Jen, Karen asked Jen to Google it.

And yet, under oath.

But I knew it happened at that time.

And yet, under oath, you said you did.

Correct.

And that was a lie, correct?

Was that a lie?

Did you lie?

I did.

Not intentionally.

But you did.

Not intentionally.

Okay, that's the end of the question.

I understood the question, Mr.

Jackson.

All right.

Is there any other question or was that it?

I didn't know what she just said.

I said I misunderstood the question, Mr.

Jackson.

Is it that aggressive?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh gosh.

That's what you're saying now, correct?

That's what happened.

Can I ask one more question?

In that quote, you said at one point she asked Jen to Google hypothermia and how long?

And then you corrected yourself and finished with Google hypothermia.

What did you mean by how long?

What were you about to say?

I don't recall.

Had someone told you something about a phrase that started with how long?

I don't recall.

For instance, how long to die in the cold?

I don't recall.

I don't recall.

I don't recall.

I don't recall.

Like, for instance, I don't recall.

So, suddenly, not a lot of recollection happening.

Carrie Roberts is a little odd.

Some people think that Jen's energy is also very odd.

So, both of the other women that were there, I mean, some people think Karen's energy is odd.

So, everybody is suspicious to some, but it's weird that the Alberts never go outside.

Attorney Little, Elizabeth Little, asks Nicole Albert, and inside your house you had plenty of blankets and other items that you could have been comfort to a man laying in the snow, correct?

Yes.

And you were lying next to a first responder?

Yes.

And neither you nor your husband came outside to help Johnny, correct?

We did not go outside because we had no idea what was going on.

We were sound asleep until my sister came into my bedroom.

Brian and Nicole are adamant that one, they did not hear anything.

They were woken up because after John O'Keeffe's body was taken to the hospital, Jen was instructed by those officers to go wake up the homeowners.

They're adamant on that.

And two, they're adamant that by that point, John was already taken to the hospital.

So they didn't feel like they needed to rush down and outside and try to save him.

In fact, Brian Albert Sr.

says, I was just woken up out of a cold sleep from hanging out the night before.

By the time I came downstairs, the police were already in my house.

John was already gone.

There was nobody to save.

I mean, I would have taken a bullet for John O'Keeffe because he was a fellow cop.

That's the most ridiculous question that people always ask.

It made zero sense.

What am I supposed to do?

Run out the front in my underwear, running yellow tape around the fire hydrant.

I didn't see that there was a reason to go outside like that.

The police had already been in my house.

They had already talked to us about what was going on.

It was a snowstorm at that point.

They were trying to conduct an investigation that I didn't want to interfere with or have anything to do with.

He continues, at that time, there was no victim in front of my house, so there was no first aid for me to give.

There was nothing else I could do.

But

they have a member of their family that they both testified sleeps in their bedroom, the very front window facing the flagpole.

And this family member, people have testified and reported Chloe is not good with humans, not good with strangers, and not good with other dogs.

You're telling us she did not bark.

She did not wake up the Alberts.

Right.

They just slept through it all, all three of them.

We're going to go into a lot more of the suspicious stuff in the second episode, such as Brian Higgins, who happened to be in the house that night, who also had a crush on Karen Reed.

So that's going to get very complicated.

But while Carrie Roberts is being interviewed for the second time inside of Jen McCabe's house, right after they made a timeline of events, Jen McCabe is in a family group chat with Brian Albert, Nicole Albert, the homeowners, and her husband, Matt McCabe.

And they start messaging.

Matt McCabe texts into the group chat because Chris Albert apparently reported to all of them that troopers had come into his place of business, so his wife owns a restaurant, and they're asking about the case.

So Matt is saying, tell them the guy never went in the house.

Brian Albert responds, exactly.

Matt McCabe is updating the family on where the troopers are in their neighborhood.

you know, coming to talk to Jen and Carrie.

He says, troopers back out front, but in front of the Asian house and looks like more has been dug up there, or at least looks like it.

Wait, what does that mean?

Like maybe they're digging more into the case.

Now, Jen texts, Carrie is going over the timeline, which indicates that she's listening to Carrie talking to a trooper during her second interview.

So Jen is listening.

Carrie is going over the timeline.

Matt responds, very weird that she's barely been interviewed.

The whole dead comment was just told.

The whole dead comment.

What's that comment?

Karen called and said, John is dead.

The whole dead comment was just told.

I was supposed to have them talk last night and forgot to tell Proctor to call them.

So I don't know what that means, but you're just going around telling cops to call people to investigate.

Is he like listening in on their interviews?

It seems like it.

They'll deny it.

He's giving a live broadcast of what the police is getting right now.

Yeah, but they'll say that they were just in their kitchen eating dinner and they heard bits and pieces, bits and bobs, but people don't believe it.

Brian Albert responds to that.

Hope they don't think she's making it up after the fact for some reason.

But if they barely interview Carrie, that's on them.

Matt responds, yes, she was hardly interviewed and I think just answered what was asked.

Jen responds, Are you listening?

Cops here again.

Nicole tells her sister, call us after.

Matt responds, this girl could write a book non-stop talking about Carrie Roberts.

She's talking a lot.

Yeah.

And Jen McCabe responds,

I love it.

What?

What does that mean?

Like.

Then another text.

She's telling them everything.

Nicole responds with just one word.

Good.

That is so.

Chilling.

And that is where I leave you with part one of this case.

because none of this makes sense.

And in part two, everything we thought we knew about this case flipped on its head again and again and again.

And there's so much, like, it doesn't make any sense.

What are your thoughts on this so far?

Have you heard of this case?

And I think one of the main reasons that we found it really hard to get into it was everybody has such strong opinions.

And I felt this was the first time where you could have such differing forensic analysis, forensic experts testifying testifying to the same exact thing.

Like, how is it up in the air whether or not a Google search was conducted at 227 a.m.

Yeah.

But the fact that everything can be interpreted in different ways for this case just makes it weird.

So it really does feel like a lot of emotions play on how people decide on whether or not they think Karen did it or not.

But one thing's for sure, I would not trust these people.

I would not trust these text messages.

I will say Karen reads voicemails.

Yeah, they're crazy, but I don't think it's, it doesn't make sense for her to leave those voicemails.

But in the next episode, we're going to go into the supposed broken taillight.

We're going to go into Brian Higgins and the affair.

And there's just lots of other things that we have to cover.

So let me know in the comments: what are your thoughts?

And with that, I will see you in the next one.

Hi, it's Stephanie Sue.

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