289: Karen Read: Verdict Watch, Closing Arguments & Powerful Final Week

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Speaker 9 Karen Reed, accused of the January 2022 death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe, has consistently asserted her innocence, alleging a concerted effort by law enforcement to frame her.

Speaker 11 Charged with hitting her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe, with her SUV early Saturday morning and leaving him in a snowbank.

Speaker 10 The closely watched murder trial has ended in a mistrial.

Speaker 13 The prosecution is indicating that it will retry this case, and the question becomes one of how will they do it.

Speaker 8 Hey, True Crime Besties, welcome back to an all-new episode of Serial Asleep.

Speaker 8 Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialessly with me, Annie Elise.

Speaker 8 And we are in our Karen Reed recap era right now, but actually it's the end of an era because this more than likely is the last recap.

Speaker 8 The next episode you hear where I'm talking about Karen Reed will be the verdict.

Speaker 8 And let me just say, this trial, it went on as expected. They had forecasted eight weeks.

Speaker 8 Well, technically, I guess it may spill into nine, possibly, but it went on the full time, which kind of surprised me because it seemed like when we were at that halfway point that it might end up being under eight weeks.

Speaker 8 But this week was like a full banger of an ending because the defense continued to bring their witnesses.

Speaker 8 These witnesses really held their own and in my opinion, illustrated a lot of proof and a very compelling argument that John O'Keefe was never hit by a vehicle.

Speaker 8 And what was really interesting this week too, I feel like there were so many iconic moments, but Hank Brennan on his own cross-examination was kind of put into his place by some of these experts where he tried to challenge them or make them look stupid by asking, you know, well, isn't there something called a this, like a medical term?

Speaker 8 And I'm like, uh, I think you actually mean this. Like it was just, again, iconic.

Speaker 8 And there was one part midweek where they ended up calling for, the defense ended up calling for a mistrial with prejudice, meaning if it's with prejudice, they would never be, they wouldn't be able to file charges again.

Speaker 8 And they did that because during one of the cross-examinations with Arca, Brennan held up John O'Keefe's shirt and said, he asked the guy, like, hey, look, see all these holes in the the back of his shirt?

Speaker 8 Did you take any of this into consideration when you were doing your analysis? All of this.

Speaker 8 Come to find out, or not even come to find out, everybody who was watching it knew it at the time, except apparently Hank Brennan, but those holes were not caused from the incident or alleged incident.

Speaker 8 Those holes were cut after the fact. So then...

Speaker 8 The defense goes for a mistrial with prejudice, which then Brennan comes in and had to throw his tail between his legs, make this very uncomfy apology where he basically admits to Bev, the jury was out of the courtroom at this point, like, I made a mistake.

Speaker 8 This is really what it is. And to everybody's, I don't even want to say to everybody's disbelief, I think everybody could see it coming from a mile away, but Bev did not grant the mistrial.

Speaker 8 But it was a huge epic failure on the Commonwealth. And there's just kind of been a few of those, right? And the guilty poll that we have up, the public one, it went down this week.

Speaker 8 It went down back to 2%.

Speaker 8 So it'll be interesting to see what the jury's been thinking about all of this and what verdict they're going to come to.

Speaker 8 So Thursday, we had the charge conference, which is basically where they go over all the injury instructions.

Speaker 8 They make any last-minute motions or, you know, asks of the court of what to include in those jury instructions, what not to include. And then closing arguments was on Friday.

Speaker 8 And I got to say, nobody does a closer like Alan Jackson. It was strong.
It hit hard. And

Speaker 8 we're gonna see. They basically talk about many times too, and they've done this throughout the trial, how the Commonwealth's own medical examiner could not rule that John was hit by a vehicle.

Speaker 8 Some of the experts even saying he was not hit by a vehicle. It couldn't have happened, especially the defense experts saying that, saying his injuries are just not consistent with a collision.

Speaker 8 And that really needs to be the very first question that is asked in the deliberation room. Before we vote on, you know, is Karen guilty, not guilty? Let's vote on this.
Was John O'Keefe hit by a car?

Speaker 8 And if anybody votes no, case closed right there. You can't convict her because that is what the entire case is built upon.
That is the foundation.

Speaker 8 And I don't believe that the Commonwealth proved their argument in this. I don't.
I know I've been mentioning how I think it leans way more in the reasonable doubt category.

Speaker 8 I think also after this week, it was such a compelling week. I still am sitting now.
I'm leaning more towards just not guilty, that there's something else here.

Speaker 8 And we've been talking about that for weeks, too, right? That it seems like it would be such a common, easy explanation. She was wasted.
She hit John.

Speaker 8 He flew back, hit his head, was incapacitated, and then died in the snow.

Speaker 8 But then you layer in all of the other shady shit: the butt dials, the deleted search histories, the rehoming of the dog, the redoing of the basement, the lying about being in the Sally port, the this, the that.

Speaker 8 And it's like, you know, how do you explain all of that?

Speaker 8 Unless you are the worst investigators on on the face of the planet, which spoiler alert, you probably are, but it's like, how do you explain all of that away?

Speaker 8 I will be shocked if Karen Reed is found guilty. I think they do have a lot of grounds for appeal, and I'm sure they will file appeals if she is, but I would be shocked if she's found guilty.

Speaker 8 So we're going to be on Verdict Watch. I will let you know as soon as we have a verdict.

Speaker 8 interested to know what you think. But anyway, as I said, this was probably one of the most iconic weeks in the trial so far.
So I'm going to have Elena jump in.

Speaker 8 She's going to break down everything that went down this week for you, all the way through closings. And then we will be on Verdict Watch together.

Speaker 8 And just as an FYI guys, I know Elena is very, very smart and you can hear that in her voice, but she's a scientist. She went to MIT.
So she is like incredibly thorough and smart.

Speaker 8 So anyways, I just love when she breaks it all down, but I'll shut up now. Elena, take it away.

Speaker 4 Hey, Annie.

Speaker 14 Well, both sides have rested and it's all up to the jury now. Let's break down the testimony that they heard this week, since this will be the freshest in their mind as they go to deliberate.

Speaker 14 We kicked off the week on Monday the 9th.

Speaker 15 Now, this was a full day, but I gotta say, it was a lot of sidebars, a lot of wadiers, a lot of breaks, and not a lot of new testimony.

Speaker 14 First thing, we finished up Dr. Daniel Wolfe's testimony.

Speaker 14 On redirect, and then recross and re-redirect and then re-recross, They covered a lot of the same things that we already talked about last week, specifically about the different weights that were used in different tests.

Speaker 14 No, ultimately, neither the prosecution expert Welcher nor the defense expert Wolf know the actual weight of John's arm, and they both used a medium weight crash dummy, so it's kind of a wash in the end.

Speaker 14 But hey, at least Wolf actually tested different speeds and different arm positions and different collision types. That reason alone is enough for me to give my vote to Wolf over Welcher.

Speaker 14 Then, get this. We heard another motion for the defense for a mistrial with prejudice.
This is their third time asking for a mistrial in as many weeks.

Speaker 14 Do any of you guys have like a weekly chores list like me? Mine's like scrub the bathroom, take out the trash, hear the defense motion for a mistrial with prejudice, listen to Kanoni deny it.

Speaker 14 And that's exactly what happened. And all jokes aside, this one was actually a bit different and a bit more dramatic.
And it had to do with Brennan holding up John's hoodie to the jury.

Speaker 14 and then asking Dr. Wolf if the holes on the back of it could have been caused by him falling backward and hitting the road.

Speaker 14 Now, the issue here is that those holes were actually cut by the prosecution's own forensic scientist, Maureen Hartnett.

Speaker 14 They clearly had nothing to do with how John died, so it was really out of line for Brennan to bring it up and act like they could be.

Speaker 14 And shockingly, Brennan actually admitted to this mistake. He got up to the podium and characterized it as an honest mistake.
and said he simply didn't realize that Hartnett cut the hoodie.

Speaker 14 But the defense, they saw it very differently. A lessie for the defense said, quote, what could be more egregious? What could be more misleading?

Speaker 14 The prosecution picked the most opportune, sensitive time to pull this stunt.

Speaker 14 This is intentional, this is irremediable, and misses on the key issue of this case, whether there was any collision at all.

Speaker 14 Now, even after that, unsurprisingly, Judge Kenone denied the mistrial and instead gave the jury instructions that the cuts were made by Hartnett.

Speaker 14 But what's really bad though is that she totally snapped at the defense while they were trying to figure out what to say to the jury.

Speaker 14 Jackson and Alesi were talking amongst themselves about this jury instruction and it must have been at the same time that Kanoni was trying to speak because she did that thing that you might hear from your middle school teacher, you know, where the teacher is like, well, if you're not going to listen, I guess I just won't talk.

Speaker 14 That kind of thing. She totally did that.

Speaker 12 And honestly, I found it pretty rude, especially during this really important moment for the defense.

Speaker 14 After that whole thing, we did hear briefly from private investigator John Tiedemann.

Speaker 14 He made measurements at 34 Fairview, and he testified that the distance from the mailbox to the main door is 66 feet. The distance from the mailbox to the side door is 70 feet.

Speaker 14 And the distance from the mailbox to the garage door is 78 feet. And those are all less than the 84 feet that we know John took leading up to his phone locking for the last time.

Speaker 14 But he did admit that the distance from the flagpole through the street and then back up the driveway would be more than 84 feet.

Speaker 14 He also testified that the garage at 34 Fairview had concrete flooring and steps with a ridge, and the defense is implying that that's where John could have hit his head.

Speaker 14 But the judge told the jury to strike that part of the testimony, which basically means that they can't consider it. And then on Monday and into Tuesday, we heard testimony from Dr.

Speaker 14 Elizabeth La Posada, who's a forensic pathologist and a medical examiner.

Speaker 14 Before that though, Judge Kanoni ruled that a bunch of her testimony had to be excluded, especially the parts about dog bites and car crashes. And I thought this was disappointing because Dr.

Speaker 14 La Posada seemed very qualified to me. She's a professor of pathology at Brown University and she was previously the chief medical examiner for the entire state of Rhode Island.

Speaker 14 She's done over 3,000 autopsies and of those she said hundreds were on car crash victims and at least 50 were on dog bite victims. But Kanoni still didn't find her to be qualified.

Speaker 14 Now, after some back and forth with the lawyers, Kanoni did agree to at least let Dr. La Posada testify about animal bites, but not about dog bites specifically.

Speaker 14 Now, after all that mess with the lawyers, Dr. La Posada was still able to give some really powerful testimony for the defense.
She said, quote, Mr.

Speaker 14 O'Keefe went backwards onto something that had a little ridge. It had some sort of irregularity to cause the different scrapes.

Speaker 14 And when she was asked if the injuries were consistent with John hitting flat ground, she said, quote, it has to be a surface that has some ridges in it to make those little vertical patterns, end quote, which directly disagrees with what we heard from the prosecution expert, Dr.

Speaker 14 Isaac Wolf. La Posada also said that she looked at pictures of the lawn at 34 Fairview and she didn't see anything that would cause the type of skull injury that John had.

Speaker 14 and also that cut to John's right eye. She said it was consistent with being punched with a closed fist.

Speaker 14 She added that all of the injuries to his torso area, like those rib fractures and the bleeding to his stomach lining, were caused by medical chest compression, not by being hit by a vehicle.

Speaker 14 Now, Cross definitely got a little interesting. Dr.
Laposado was the first defense witness to really go toe-to-toe with Brennan, to give him a little bit of sass.

Speaker 14 And it started right off the bat when Brennan got to the podium a couple of minutes before noon and said, good afternoon, doctor. And she replied, uh, it's not afternoon for six more minutes.

Speaker 14 That really set the tone for the cross. And I didn't realize this before, but apparently Brennan and La Posada have some sort of history.
Not romantic history, obviously, but legal history.

Speaker 14 When Brennan was a defense lawyer, he himself hired Dr. La Posada at least a couple of different times.
But this week he said, quote, I don't use her anymore.

Speaker 14 I'm not going to disclose why I don't use her anymore, but I don't use her anymore. Weird verbiage, by the way, Brennan.
But the point is, these two have some bad blood, and it definitely showed.

Speaker 14 Now, as for the substance of Cross, there wasn't all that much because these two could not agree on anything. They argued about how quickly John's brain would have started swelling after the impact.

Speaker 14 They argued about when blood would have pooled under his eyes. They argued about the specifics of hypothermia.
They argued about whether or not this counts as a classic wound.

Speaker 14 They even argued about how similar the brain is to tofu. Brennan also tried to call her credentials into question by bringing up her work at the station nightclub fire in Rhode Island.

Speaker 14 She admitted that she received, quote, a flurry of negative press for showing up late to the scene, but she said it was without basis and she came as soon as she was called.

Speaker 14 Now in another line of questioning, Dr. La Posada did admit that a wound on a dead person wouldn't spurt blood, which calls into question if John was actually passed away when Karen found him.

Speaker 14 Because remember, she said she pulled out a piece of glass from his nose and blood gushed out. And finally, after the prosecution went through all of that effort to get Dr.

Speaker 14 Lapicetta's testimony regarding car crashes thrown out, Brennan asked her about it anyway. He specifically asked if she knew how fast Karen's car was going at the time of the incident.

Speaker 15 And she replied, quote, well, it didn't hit him, so it doesn't matter.

Speaker 14 It was not relevant to my opinion. By looking at the body, I could tell there was no evidence of impact with a vehicle.
So whether a vehicle was going slow or fast was not relevant, end quote.

Speaker 14 And that was about it for Cross.

Speaker 14 I was surprised that Brennan didn't really press her on her most damning opinion, which were that John's injuries could not have been caused by falling backwards onto a flat surface, and that hypothermia did not contribute to his death.

Speaker 14 Now, I'm really interested how the jury will weigh the testimony from Dr. Laposada and Dr.
Russell against that from Dr. Isaac Wolf and Dr.
Scordy Bellow.

Speaker 14 Because in my opinion, all four of them were extremely reliable medical experts with some solid reasoning to back up their opinion.

Speaker 14 Then on Tuesday afternoon and into Wednesday, the defense called their last witness, Dr. Andrew Renschler, a biomechanist who's also from the reconstruction firm ARCA.

Speaker 14 Now, Dr. Renschler, he was a good witness for the defense, don't get me wrong.
The actual content of what he testified to was really important,

Speaker 12 but I didn't find him quite as, you know, calm, cool, and collected as the other defense witnesses.

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Speaker 14 He said some odd things, like he gave a shout out to his his kid for his birthday, which I don't think is appropriate at all for a murder trial. But anyway, I digress.

Speaker 14 And getting to his actual testimony, Runchler's main conclusion was that John's injuries were not consistent with being hit by Karen's car.

Speaker 14 He did searches in the literature, he looked at Aperture's report, and he did his own field testing to come to his conclusions.

Speaker 14 And he also considered if either a head-on collision or a sideswipe collision could explain John's injuries.

Speaker 14 He testified that a head-on collision would have caused much more damage to Karen's car than was actually found, while a sideswipe collision would have pushed John's body into a completely different position than it was actually found in.

Speaker 14 He said, quote, I've seen no evidence anywhere in this case that would suggest that if you get a glancing blow, that somehow would produce enough force to push you eight to 10 feet into a yard.

Speaker 14 He also pointed out that there are 36 injuries on the outside of John's arm, but only nine holes in the sleeve of of his hoodie, which doesn't make sense if he was injured while wearing the hoodie.

Speaker 14 He said that the lack of internal injuries to John's arms and legs is also significant.

Speaker 14 He said, quote, at these speeds, you would likely expect fractures, certainly to the hand and likely to the ulna and radius in the forearm, if the hand was struck by the rear of the SUV.

Speaker 14 And likewise, all of Renschler's testing showed serious damage to the dummy's legs, which John didn't have at all. Then he explained why the cut on John's nose is also inconsistent with a collision.

Speaker 14 He said, quote, the shard can't come out, make a hard right-hand turn, and then somehow embed itself on the left side of the nose, end quote.

Speaker 16 Then Dr.

Speaker 14 Brenchler also directly called Dr. Welcher's studies out.
He testified that during the blue paint experiments, Welcher physically pushed himself into the taillight area.

Speaker 14 and leaned into the impact, which is not at all how an actual pedestrian would act.

Speaker 14 He added that the paint test didn't didn't involve any force calculations, it didn't show how John's arm would have moved after this alleged collision, and it didn't show how the taillight would actually break.

Speaker 14 Brenchler said, quote, you have to explain how these things happened.

Speaker 14 If you don't have details, if you haven't performed a proper analysis, then you can't come to a conclusion that something happened. You can't depend on just your experience, end quote.

Speaker 14 Now after that, we moved on to cross, which was...

Speaker 14 tiring, I guess is the best word I can think of. Maybe I just have trial fatigue at this point.
Probably everyone does. I'm sure the jury does.
And don't get me wrong, again, Dr.

Speaker 14 Renschler, he did do a good job. There was just a lot of sidebars, a lot of objections, a lot of questions that weren't very relevant in my opinion.

Speaker 14 And all of that made it feel pretty tense and tiring.

Speaker 14 Now we kicked things off with the whole debate over a sandwich. Seriously.

Speaker 14 Basically, Brennan asked Dr. Renschler if he communicated with the defense after the first trial, and he said that he had a ham sandwich with them.

Speaker 14 Now, I guess this was to show that ARCA isn't impartial at this point.

Speaker 16 You know, they're buddy-buddy with the defense.

Speaker 14 But hey, Aperture isn't impartial either. Now, after Sandwich Gate, Dr.
Renschler said he was aware of studies that say crash dummies shouldn't be used to study soft tissue injuries.

Speaker 14 But he argued that he didn't actually do that in his analysis.

Speaker 14 He also admitted that he determined that John didn't have any internal arm injuries just by looking at x-rays, which can only show fractures and breaks.

Speaker 14 They don't show things like muscle tears or nerve injuries. Although I will say if those injuries had been present in John's arm, I do think the medical examiner Dr.

Speaker 14 Scordy Bella would have documented them. So I think it's fair to say that John didn't have any internal injuries to the arm.

Speaker 14 Ben Brennan spent a lot of time pressing Renschler about his opinions on Dr. Welcher in kind of a bizarre way.
He basically kept saying, well, how can you say that Dr.

Speaker 14 Welcher didn't do a good job if he wasn't even trying to reenact the collision? Brennan asked this in like six different ways.

Speaker 14 And each time Renschler was like, uh, well, if your expert wasn't trying to replicate the collision, then what the heck was he doing? What's the purpose of his studies?

Speaker 14 And I agree with Renschler here. It's so odd to me that Brennan would try to discredit Renschler by making his own witness look bad.

Speaker 14 Brennan also repeatedly asked if Renschler knew specific details about the collision, like the angle and the position of John's body, things like that.

Speaker 14 And each time Renschler was like, no, I don't know, because there was no collision. He really got to drive that point home, even in cross-examination, that he believes there was no collision at all.

Speaker 14 And given that, I'm not surprised that the defense used Renschler as their last witness. We know that no collision is the cornerstone of their case.

Speaker 14 And I think Renschler made that point well for them.

Speaker 16 And with that, the defense rested their case.

Speaker 14 And then, get this, after spending all of that time filing so many motions to get their rebuttal witnesses in, the prosecution decided not to call any of them.

Speaker 14 Not their dog bite experts, and not even Dr. Welcher.

Speaker 14 This really surprised me. I thought for sure Brennan would be chopping out the bit to get Welcher back up on that stand.

Speaker 14 He must have either been so confident in Welcher's original testimony that he doesn't feel like he needs him again.

Speaker 14 Or on the other end of things, he felt like Welcher already got torn apart by Renschler, so he didn't want to bring him back and leave a sour taste in the jury's mouth.

Speaker 14 I don't know which one it is, and I'm not even going to try to get into Brennan's head and guess.

Speaker 14 But either way, both sides are done with testimony, and the last thing that the jury heard a witness say was that there was no collision, and I think that might really stick with them.

Speaker 14 Now, comparing all of this witness testimony from this trial to the first trial, a couple of things stick out to me.

Speaker 14 Both trials were similar in length, but I felt that both sides put on a stronger case this time. And I think the biggest reason for that is that they both focused on experts instead of eyewitnesses.

Speaker 16 There's a whole host of characters who testified last time that we didn't hear from at all this time.

Speaker 14 Obviously, the ones that stick out are Michael Proctor, Brian Albert, and Brian Higgins. But we also didn't hear from Colin Albert, Matt McCabe, Allie McCabe, Nicole Albert, Caitlin Albert.

Speaker 14 Most of the gang was missing. And I think that was strategic on both sides.
Think about it.

Speaker 14 If you're the defense, you probably don't want to call a bunch of eyewitnesses who are going to say your client did it.

Speaker 14 And if you're the prosecution, you probably don't want to call a bunch of witnesses who are sketchy as hell. It's going to make you look untrustworthy.

Speaker 14 Instead, both sides honed in on a couple of key eyewitnesses. Carrie Roberts and Jen McCabe for the prosecution, and Lucky Lochron and Karina Kalakithithis for the defense.

Speaker 14 And then they made up the bulk of their cases with expert witnesses and members of law enforcement, which I do think was smart on both sides.

Speaker 14 And then on Friday morning, we heard closing arguments for both sides. Alan Jackson gave what I thought was a really great closing statement for the defense.

Speaker 14 And he focused on the same two main prongs that he started with in opening statements. First, that there was no collision.
If there was a motto for the defense, that would be it.

Speaker 14 There was no collision. There was no collision.
There was no collision. He said it three times, just like that.

Speaker 14 And he added, they cannot and they will never be able to prove that John was struck by a vehicle.

Speaker 14 Jackson pointed out that not a single medical expert on either side of the case has ever testified that John was hit by a car.

Speaker 14 The prosecution's own medical examiner said she didn't see any evidence of an impact site, and she refused to conclude that the death was a homicide.

Speaker 14 And John's arm, that one that was supposedly hit by a 6,000-pound car, no brakes, no fractures, not even a bruise.

Speaker 14 How about those test from aperture? Jackson says all they prove is that John was tall enough for his elbow to hit the taillight.

Speaker 14 He added that every single test done at every single speed shows damage that's inconsistent with what was found on Karen's car.

Speaker 14 The internal diffuser in her taillight was very badly damaged, and no expert on either side could produce a test that showed that level of damage.

Speaker 14 But John's DNA was on the taillight. What about that?

Speaker 14 Well, Jackson said, remember, it was only on the outer smooth part of the taillight housing, where John could have brushed against it doing anything. It was not on the taillight shards.

Speaker 14 In fact, those shards didn't have DNA or blood or human tissue at all. And speaking of the taillight shards, how did they make 36 cuts in John's arm, but only nine cuts in the sweatshirt?

Speaker 14 Now, Jackson's second main point was that former trooper Michael Proctor ruined the investigation from the start.

Speaker 14 Remember eight weeks ago when I said that in his opening statement, Jackson was giving the jurors glasses to view the case with? Those are the Proctor is biased glasses.

Speaker 14 And now Jackson is asking the jurors to put those glasses back on and view all the evidence during deliberations through that lens, through the lens of whatever the prosecution might have, it can't be trusted

Speaker 14 because it was collected by a biased source. a source that's now fired for his conduct in this case.

Speaker 14 Jackson said, quote, their investigation was flogged from the start because their investigator was corrupted from the start.

Speaker 14 He reminded us about some of those nasty texts that Proctor sent his friends and even his boss. She's a whack job C-word.

Speaker 14 There will be some serious charges brought on the girl. Zero chance she skates.
No nudes yet.

Speaker 4 How about the homeowner?

Speaker 12 Is he going to get in trouble for all this?

Speaker 14 Proctor says, nope. Homeowner is a Boston cop too.

Speaker 14 Jackson added, quote, he was fired for this blatant bias.

Speaker 14 If the Massachusetts State Police can't trust him, how can you trust him with the investigation, with your verdict, and with Karen Reed's life?

Speaker 14 And about that taillight evidence, Jackson reminded us that not a single piece of taillight evidence was found at the scene until after Proctor had access to Karen's car.

Speaker 14 He said, quote, this is the man who touched every single piece of important evidence in this case. All the evidence that was brought before you in this trial went through his hands one way or another.

Speaker 14 Remember that. The shirts, the shards, all in Michael Proctor's possession.

Speaker 14 Jackson also emphasized the sketchy behavior of Brian Higgins, and he pretty clearly pointed the finger at him for John's death, and he laid out exactly how he thinks it happened.

Speaker 14 He reminded us about Higgins' text with Karen, his motioning to John in the bar, and him coaxing John to 34 Fairview.

Speaker 14 Then once he got to 34 Fairview, remember John took 84 steps in a westerly direction toward the house. That's from Ian Wiffin, the prosecution's own witness.

Speaker 14 Then at that point, Jackson says, remember that John's phone battery? It dropped 20 degrees in temperature over an hour. I mean, it stayed constant at 50 degrees for four hours.

Speaker 14 Jackson says that's because John was not outside at all.

Speaker 16 Quote, he was someplace warmer, like a basement or a garage.

Speaker 14 And Dr. LaPosada confirmed that.
She said, quote, he did not die of hypothermia because he was not outside.

Speaker 14 So if not hypothermia, how did John die? Well, according to Jackson, the injury to the back of John's head and his eyelid show that he was punched and fell backward.

Speaker 14 And then at some point, Chloe, the Alberts German Shepherd, she must have gotten involved.

Speaker 14 Jackson pointed out that no medical expert from the prosecution disputes that John's arm injuries are from a dog.

Speaker 14 All right, well, now John is dead. What does Higgins do? Well, according to Jackson, he takes that late-night trip to Canton-PD to mess around with some evidence.

Speaker 14 And then later, Higgins and police chief Ken Berkowitz, they're in the garage with Karen's car for, quote, a wildly long amount of time.

Speaker 14 At least that's what Officer Kelly Devers said before the police chief told her to do the right thing.

Speaker 14 Then Jackson outlined why some of the other main players for the prosecution can't be trusted.

Speaker 14 We've got Matt McCabe texting, tell them to say the guy never came into the house, and Brian Albert agreeing, exactly.

Speaker 14 We've got Jen McCabe googling how slong to die in the cold and then deleting it. We have Carrie Roberts admitting to incorrectly testifying that Karen told Jen to Google that.

Speaker 14 We've got Jen not going inside to the Alberts house to her sister's house to see if they were okay.

Speaker 14 Jackson says, quote, the only way that makes sense is if she knew what happened already.

Speaker 14 We also have the Sallyport video shown completely inverted, so it looks like Proctor didn't go near the right taillight, but he did.

Speaker 14 We have Dr. Welcher leaning into the impact during his blue paint tests.
We've got Brennan holding up John's hoodie to the jury, saying this happened on January 29th, but we know it didn't.

Speaker 14 Jackson says all of those examples and more show why you can't trust the prosecution.

Speaker 14 And Jackson also reminded the jurors about the meaning of reasonable doubt, that they must be absolutely certain beyond all reasonable doubt of all of the facts in this case to convict Karen.

Speaker 14 He reminded them that if they think it's likely, even very likely that the prosecution is right, that's not enough. They have to be certain.
And he said in this case, it's impossible to be certain.

Speaker 14 There are, quote, dozens and dozens of holes of reasonable doubt.

Speaker 16 Then Brennan gave his closing statement for the prosecution.

Speaker 14 And if the prosecution had a motto, it would be, quote, she was drunk, she hid him, she left him to die.

Speaker 14 Brennan started by reminding us of the person that John was. He was only 46 years old when he died.
He was described as someone who was kind, hardworking, and quick to help.

Speaker 14 He took in his niece and nephew when they had no one else and they had lost both of their parents.

Speaker 14 And he said that when John, John, who was someone who was always quick to help others, when he himself was laying in the snow dying and needed help himself, Brennan says Karen didn't help him.

Speaker 14 Brennan painted a pretty bleak picture of Karen and John's relationship. He played those voicemails of Karen saying, John, I effing hate you.

Speaker 14 He recalled the testimony from John's niece who said that their trip to Aruba was ruined by Karen's jealousy. And Brennan said that it's that jealousy that was the motive for the murder.

Speaker 14 And after that, Brennan spent a lot of time laying out the prosecution's timeline of the case, calling it impenetrable, and based on data that can't be disputed.

Speaker 14 Brennan also relied a lot on clips from Karen's interviews to support his arguments.

Speaker 14 To try to show that even Karen herself knew she was too impaired to drive, Brennan played a clip where she said, quote, well, I've had a few drinks and I drive.

Speaker 14 I always drive extra slow, so I know my alerts aren't as sharp as they should be, and I shouldn't have been driving.

Speaker 14 To try to show the prosecution's theory that Karen knew she made contact with John, Brennan played a clip where she said, quote, could I have clipped him?

Speaker 14 Could I have tagged him in the knee and incapacitated him? He didn't look mortally wounded as far as I could see.

Speaker 14 Then along a similar vein in the next clip, Karen said, quote, and I was looking to find him on the side of the road. I was expecting I'd find him.

Speaker 14 And finally, to try to discredit the defense's theory that the eyewitnesses were mistaken about what Karen said at the scene, Brennan played a final clip where Karen says, quote, I know I said I hit him, but did I really say it as many times as law enforcement's claiming I said it?

Speaker 14 Now, when it comes to the inconsistencies in John's injuries, like the lack of an impact site, Brennan argued that car accidents affect every person differently.

Speaker 14 And the lack of lower body injuries doesn't necessarily mean that no impact occurred.

Speaker 14 Brennan also admitted that Proctor's conduct, it was deplorable, but he argued that the Commonwealth doesn't even need Proctor to prove their case.

Speaker 14 He said, quote, it's distasteful and dishonorable, but it doesn't give a read a free pass. When you read those text messages, they're hard to look at.
It's unfair.

Speaker 14 But it has nothing to do with justice in this case. It just doesn't.
There was not one piece of evidence that was tampered with, planted, or distorted.

Speaker 14 Then Brennan looked to call the credibility of the defense witnesses into question.

Speaker 14 He pointed out that one of the defense's star witnesses, Dr. Wolf, used signal and deleted his text messages with the defense.

Speaker 14 Brennan also implied that Sergeant Nicholas Barrows changed her story for attention to ride on the fame of this case. Similarly, he said that Dr.

Speaker 14 Marie Russell inserted herself into the case and didn't use reliable methods when assessing the dog bites.

Speaker 14 And Brennan pointed out that Dr. Russell and Dr.
La Posada, they don't even entirely agree about the dog bites.

Speaker 4 Dr.

Speaker 14 Russell said that John's arm didn't have any puncture marks,

Speaker 14 while Dr. La Posada said it had many.
Then Brennan described what it takes to get a second-degree murder conviction and clarified exactly what the Commonwealth is accusing her of.

Speaker 14 Brennan said that Karen intended to put her car in reverse and impact John.

Speaker 14 He says, if the jurors believe that she intended to hit her car's accelerator, then that's second-degree murder. He added, quote, it's not a matter of intending to kill.

Speaker 16 It's not a matter of intending to hit.

Speaker 14 It's the conduct of the operation. Did her conduct create a clear, plain, strong likelihood of death?

Speaker 14 And he ended by reminding us of the prosecution's theory of the case. She was drunk.
She hit him. She left him to die.

Speaker 16 And now it's all in the hands of the jury.

Speaker 14 My guess is that it could take a couple of days to hear the verdict, even into late next week, because I think the jury has a lot to consider.

Speaker 14 How are they going to weigh the different medical examiners? How are they going to weigh the different reconstructionists? Are they going to take these interview clips from Karen as admissions?

Speaker 14 Are they going to see the entire investigation as botched or just Proctor as one bad character? There's really a lot for them to comb through.

Speaker 14 It's going to be really interesting to see what happens with the verdict. Now, my personal opinion, I do think the prosecution has some decent circumstantial evidence against Karen.

Speaker 14 I think the taillight evidence, plus the three witnesses who say that Karen said I hit him, plus her interview, plus that text stream data that shows that John's phone locked for the last time sometime around when Karen backed up.

Speaker 14 All those things together, on the surface, I think they make an okay case.

Speaker 14 But when you look deeper at the damage to the taillight and the injuries to John, I think there is reasonable doubt as to if they collided.

Speaker 14 And I also think that the investigation was so botched from the beginning that it's hard to trust really any of the evidence from the prosecution.

Speaker 14 And for those reasons, I personally think that Karen should be found not guilty on all three charges. But I don't really think any verdict here would be true justice for John.

Speaker 14 And I really hope that through all of this, we don't lose sight of John and the person he was and what he meant to his family. And with that, it's been a a long eight weeks for everybody.

Speaker 14 But I'm so grateful to Annie for having me on for these recaps and I'm thankful for all of you who've been so welcoming.

Speaker 16 Thank you guys and stay safe.

Speaker 8 Well, there you have it. So we are officially on verdict watch.
We will see what the jury comes back with. I am curious to know how you would vote and we'll see what happens.

Speaker 8 We'll see where we go from here. And we need to figure out what the next trial is we're covering.
I know we're covering Idaho, but I feel like, you know, I'm not ready to say goodbye to Elena.

Speaker 8 I love having her on here every week. All right.
Thank you guys so much for tuning in to today's Karen Reed recap. All right, guys, thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Seriously.

Speaker 8 Please don't forget to take five seconds out of your day.

Speaker 8 If you would be so kind to leave a rating and review of this podcast in the review, if you would just let me know what content you want to hear more about, if you want me to do more deep dives on cults, on family vlogging, on anything, let me know in that review section because I really do want to cater the content to what you guys want to hear about.

Speaker 8 So please, that is a perfect place to let me know. And I I really appreciate you guys tuning in to today's episode.
Thank you so much.

Speaker 8 I will be seeing you back bright and early on Thursday for headline highlights. And then of course, every Monday morning with a deep dive on a brand new case.

Speaker 8 All right, guys, thank you so much for tuning in and I will talk with you very soon. Signing off.
Bye.

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