INFAMOUS: The Death of John O'Keefe & The Trial of Karen Read

John O’Keefe, a 16-year veteran of the Boston Police Department, died of blunt force trauma and hypothermia on January 29, 2022, after being found on a fellow Boston Police Officer’s front lawn during a blizzard. His girlfriend, Karen Read, is charged with allegedly backing into John with her SUV, and leaving him to die in the cold after a night of drinking. But her defense team poses a different theory – a massive cover-up spanning law enforcement agencies across Massachusetts. Karen’s first case ended in a mistrial on July 1, 2024. Her second trial is set to begin in April 2025.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ashley Flowers?

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• 0:42Ashley Flowers?

  When you're out in nature, you learn to trust your instincts. You pay attention to the trail, your surroundings, and you stay alert to protect yourself from harm. But what if the biggest threat isn't the environment at all? On Park Predators, host Delia DiEmbra explores true crime cases that happen in national parks and remote wildernesses, the places we usually think of as safe and peaceful. Each episode reveals what happened and how much more there is beneath the surface. Listen to Park Predators now, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Brett. All right, you guys. This is a case that captivated the nation last year, like the kind of media circus you can't ignore.

• 1:25Ashley Flowers?

  And even if you weren't a crime junkie, you knew about this case and you had an opinion about this case. And I touched on it briefly in my Sirius XM show, but I never did a proper crime junkie deep dive because as we were getting into it, it was going to trial and I thought like, okay, things are gonna wrap up, we're gonna have a conclusion. Right. I have never been so wrong. The trial of Karen Reed for the murder of John O'Keefe was a six-week spectacle that had more twists and turns and theatrics than most legal dramas on TV. And it all ended with a mistrial. So it's happening again. Now, last time, I quite literally watched every minute of every day of trial because

• 2:08Ashley Flowers?

  this is a case where you have to know every detail to talk confidently about what happened. And this time around, I want the crime junkies to join in as well. So I'm gonna catch you up. I want to tell you everything we know about the death of John O'Keefe. Everything we know about the prosecution's case against Karen Reed and her defense's rebuttal, so that you can be fully prepared for the second trial that's starting soon. And I have a way for you to follow along with us through that second trial. We're gonna be doing a trial watch-along with my friend and fellow podcaster, Brandy Churchwell, who has become quite literally an expert on this case. Now, she's not a lawyer, she is a layman like you and me, like the jury,

• 2:50Ashley Flowers?

  and she'll be doing live watch-alongs and daily recaps on our new YouTube page, Crime Junkie Jury. But before we get back to court, I'm gonna present to you the two versions of the same story that we heard last time, and you get to decide which one is true. These are the stories of the death of John O'Keefe.

• 3:45Ashley Flowers?

  Here's what we know for sure about January 28th and 29th, 2022. On January 28th, 41-year-old Karen Reed met up with her 46-year-old boyfriend of two years, John O'Keefe. They met at this bar in Canton, Massachusetts called CF McCarthy's. Now, surveillance video shows Karen walking in, greeting John at 8:51 PM, and they're drinking there for about two hours until they walk over to another nearby bar, The Waterfall, where they meet up with a group of people that John knew, some of whom Karen knows-ish. But some of them were law enforcement, just like John, who is a Boston cop. Now, everyone's having a good time, like mingling, talking. No one person standing out more than another.

• 4:27Ashley Flowers?

  Video from that night shows that Karen was throwing back drinks. At one point in the night, she actually seemed to be like ordering shots and then pouring them into her mixed drink. I guess to like make them stronger. Actually, I just watched the documentary that came out on HBO. She says like it was a drink she didn't like, and so she got a shot and was pouring it in there. I don't know, either way, shots and drinks. And listen, it's not like everyone else is sober. This is a group that can put a few back and no one is ready to call it quits around midnight when the bar is closing. Despite the fact that it is already snowing and New England is about to get walloped by a nor'easter. John even still has a cocktail glass in his hand when he leaves the bar with Karen.

• 5:08Ashley Flowers?

  And they move the party over to a house about five minutes away at 34 Fairview Road. Becomes infamous at some point. Now, the house belongs to a couple in the group, this other Boston cop and his wife, so Brian and Nicole Albert. Now, it was their son, Brian Junior's 23rd birthday, and I guess Brian and Nicole basically invited everyone back to their house to join whatever like party he was having. Now, despite the copious amounts of alcohol that has been consumed, Karen climbs behind the wheel of her Lexus, John in the passenger seat, because she's gonna drive them over. Now, John didn't know Brian Albert super well, but he did know someone else in the group well, a woman named Jen McCabe. And she is actually sisters with Brian's wife, Nicole Albert, who owns the house.

• 5:53Ashley Flowers?

  So John and Jen exchange calls and texts along the way. It's now shortly after midnight, January 29th. At 12:14, John texts Jen McCabe where to. And then less than a minute later, she calls John back and they have this like 44 second conversation, presumably like giving, getting directions. Four minutes after that, at 12:18, John calls Jen for 36 seconds. Likely he's like getting some clarifying directions or whatever, because by this point, everyone is starting to arrive at the house. And like Jen is expecting John and Karen too, but they don't come rolling into the house after everyone. So Jen goes to the window and looks out. She actually sees a dark SUV that might be Karen, so she texts John at 12:27. Here?

• 6:39Ashley Flowers?

  When he hasn't replied two minutes later, she calls him again. John answers the call. It's a quick eight seconds and then he hangs up. But he still hasn't come in. At 12:31, Jen texts John, "Hello." At 12:40, she texts him again, "Pull behind me." At 12:41, John gets two missed calls from Jen and Jen texts, "Where are you?" 12:43, John gets a missed call from Jen. 12:45, Jen texts John, "Hello." 12:46, missed call from Jen to John. 12:47, missed call from Jen again. 12:50, missed call from Jen. Now, no one but the people who lived this story knows what happened next.

• 7:23Ashley Flowers?

  But there are a few things that we do know for certain. We know that John got out of Karen's car. And Karen's car data shows that she put her car in reverse and backed up at some point. Then she drove off, eventually ending up at John's place for the night. And she drove off pissed.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, wasn't she leaving like really, really angry voicemails like that whole night?

• 7:48Ashley Flowers?

  Well, not the whole night, but like after she left, like most certainly.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:53Ashley Flowers?

  And I actually want to play some of them for those who don't know what we're talking about.

• 8:01Speaker 02

  John, I'm going home. I cannot leave you sitting here. I need to go home. You're the only one who's using me right now. And I have a girl. She's sleeping next to me. You're a fucking loser. Fuck yourself.

• 8:16Ashley Flowers?

  So she's mad. She is also firing off texts at this point telling John that she's going back to her house in Mansfield. She's leaving his niece and nephew home alone. Now, John's niece and nephew both actually live with him because he took them in after his sister and his brother-in-law both died in short succession of one another. And listen, she's not actually going to end up leaving them alone, but this is what she's threatening to do. So she stays at John's and eventually falls asleep on the couch until about 4:30 in the morning, when she wakes up in a panic. Now, it's Karen who alerts people in the morning that John never came home. Like, she first wakes up his niece, asking her to call Jen McCabe, because John didn't come home, she needs to find him, but she doesn't have Jen's number. And she's reported to have sounded panicked.

• 9:02Ashley Flowers?

  And she was talking maybe about a fight that they'd gotten in. And when she finally gets on the phone with Jen at 4:53 in the morning, Jen says she doesn't know where John is, but she will help Karen look for him. So Karen is gonna meet Jen at Jen's place, and in the meantime, she calls another friend, Carrie Roberts. Carrie wasn't in the group that went out the night before, she's just a good friend of John's, but Karen just wants more people to help look for him.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, more people helping and trying to figure this all out.

• 9:30Ashley Flowers?

  Right, so on the phone with Carrie, she is so panicked that she's saying she thinks John is dead. So while Carrie makes her way to meet up with Jen and Karen, she is also calling, like, non-emergency police lines to ask if there's been any snowplow accident. She's calling local hospitals, but no one has any intel on John O'Keefe. Now, once all three women are back together, they drive back to John's. In that new documentary I told you I just watched, Karen says it was actually Jen's idea for them to go back and look, which didn't make sense to Karen, she said, but I don't know. Like, they didn't fully look. She said, "I was there, he wasn't," but like, I think Jen's probably thinking, like, "He could just be passed out somewhere," right? So they go back to his house, they look around, he's nowhere to be found.

• 10:13Ashley Flowers?

  So they head over to where Karen says she last saw him, outside of the Albert's home. Now, at this point, it's around 6:00 a.m., snow is still coming down, they've all had very little sleep, and Karen is in a full-blown panic in the backseat. Presumably made even worse when Jen says they never saw John the night before. And Karen starts going on about how drunk she was the night before, and that she doesn't remember anything, and that her taillight on her SUV is cracked. And Jen and Carrie find themselves being asked by Karen, "Could I have hit him? Did I hit him?" And when they near the Albert's house, Karen begins literally like kicking at the

• 10:57Ashley Flowers?

  door, shouting, there he is, he's right there. But Jen and Carrie can't see anything. I mean, they just see snow until Karen like launches herself out of the car and runs over to a spot in the Albert's lawn, like near this flagpole they have, where sure enough, after like brushing away about six inches of fresh snow, they find John. And Karen throws herself on top of him and is like lifting up their shirts to try and exchange body heat, warming him up. She makes a comment in the new documentary that she like pulls a piece of glass out of his face, which like, it's the first time she mentions this by the way, but like pulls a piece of glass out and he's bleeding. And she's just freaking out trying to figure out what to do.

• 11:39Ashley Flowers?

  And this is when Jen calls 911 at 6:04 in the morning.

• 11:44Speaker 03

  911, this is recorded, where's your emergency?

• 11:47Speaker 04

  No, this is dead, I'm not dead, I'm dead, I don't know.

• 11:51Speaker 03

  Hello?

• 11:52Speaker 04

  Yes, I'm sorry, can you come to 34 Fairview Road in Canton?

• 11:56Speaker 03

  34 Fairview?

• 11:57Speaker 04

  Yes, there's a man unresponsive in the snow.

• 12:01Speaker 03

  Okay, is he, uh, is he blue at all?

• 12:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, you've got to get here, okay?

• 12:07Speaker 03

  Okay, what's, what's going on? Is he face down?

• 12:10Speaker 04

  We, we just flipped him over.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  Okay. And who's that in the background? Is that someone related?

• 12:17Speaker 04

  That's, that's his, his girlfriend, his name is John Heath.

• 12:20Speaker 03

  Okay, how old is he?

• 12:22Speaker 04

  John is, um, 46 years old.

• 12:25Speaker 03

  Forty-six, how long has he been outside?

• 12:27Speaker 04

  I don't know, um, I, I don't know, he got out of the car and

• 12:33Speaker 03

  Is he breathing?

• 12:34Speaker 04

  A couple of hours. If he, Carrie, if he, I don't, I, um, I, I, um, I, I don't, I don't know if he's breathing. There are two women trying to do his body heat and they're hysterical.

• 12:47Speaker 03

  Okay, can you just try to ask him? I know it's tough, but we already have the fire department going, they just got to know if he's breathing.

• 12:52Speaker 04

  Is he breathing, you guys? No. I don't think he's breathing.

• 12:56Speaker 03

  Okay, do they know how to do CPR? Do they want to temp CPR?

• 12:59Speaker 04

  Can you guys, Carrie, can you guys do CPR? No, I guess he's gone.

• 13:04Speaker 03

  Okay, they don't feel comfortable doing so?

• 13:06Speaker 04

  No, I think he's passed away.

• 13:08Speaker 03

  Okay. All right, we have the fire department and the police department on the way. If everyone's declining CPR, then I can't, I'll hang up with you and uh, if anything changes, you can give us a call back. Where are you guys outside?

• 13:19Speaker 04

  Oh, right outside, it's a car. I know, I know, I'm on the phone with the ambulance, I know, I know, I know. I know, honey, I know, I know.

• 13:29Speaker 04

  Carrie, you gotta get off him, honey. Carrie, you gotta get off of him.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  Do you know if there was any uh alcohol or drugs involved?

• 13:40Speaker 04

  He, he, he, they had been out, um, they had been out.

• 13:46Speaker 03

  They've been out drinking?

• 13:48Speaker 04

  Yes, out, like I'm talking hours ago, maybe, and I, I, I don't know how long he's been in the snow.

• 13:54Speaker 03

  Okay, is there any bleeding or anything, maybe hit his head, hit his head out?

• 13:57Speaker 04

  Yes, possibly, there seems to be bleeding in the face.

• 14:01Speaker 03

  Okay, bleeding from the face, all right.

• 14:03Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 14:04Speaker 03

  And how big's the pool of blood, if there is any?

• 14:06Speaker 04

  Um, something's coming out of his nose, and one of the women is doing CPR.

• 14:10Speaker 03

  Okay, one of the women is doing CPR?

• 14:12Speaker 04

  Yes, they're both working on him.

• 14:14Speaker 03

  All right, if she's doing CPR, uh, just let me, just give us a call back, we become this response, all right? But we're on the way.

• 14:21Speaker 04

  Okay, thank you.

• 14:23Ashley Flowers?

  Now, I know that audio is a little hard to make out, but Karen is obviously panicking in the background. I mean, to the point that the dispatcher actually asks who he can hear in the background while he's trying to get all the details of what's going on. And Jen tells him it's John's girlfriend, so we know it's Karen that's yelling. And Jen also tells the dispatcher that they don't think John is breathing, and the dispatcher tells them to start CPR. So Karen starts that until Canton Police and paramedics get there, which is like a few minutes later. And they're all probably shocked to find out that the man lying in the snow is one of their own. Now, John isn't Canton PD, like I said, he is a 16-year veteran of the Boston Police Department, but he lives in Canton, and Canton is a small town where, like, most everyone knows each other.

• 15:08Ashley Flowers?

  So the pressure is on to try and save John. They rush him to the hospital and Karen is actually brought to the hospital too, because she is threatening that she might take her own life if John dies. But try as they might, John can't be saved. And by 7:50 in the morning, authorities deliver the heartbreaking news that John has died. And the investigation into his death officially kicks off with a man named Michael Proctor at the helm. And boy, would that turn out to be a mistake. Let's face it, if student loans are slowing down your financial goals, it might be time for a smarter strategy. That's where today's sponsor SoFi comes in. SoFi is helping you tackle student debt by refinancing your loans with flexible monthly payments that fit your budget.

• 15:53Ashley Flowers?

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• 16:38Ashley Flowers?

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• 16:43Speaker 01

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• 17:43Ashley Flowers?

  At the scene where John was found, Canton police officers battle continued snowfall as they try and sift through the inches of white powder on the ground to look for and collect evidence. Now meanwhile, state trooper Michael Proctor has already began talking to people and he's hearing bits and pieces of a fuzzy story. But the outline is there. Everyone's been drinking. It's a snowstorm. People are drinking and driving in a snowstorm. He's told that Karen dropped John off, but John never made it in. He needs to talk to Karen. I mean, lots of people are talking about Karen, about what they say came out of Karen's mouth that morning. But Michael needs to talk directly to Karen.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Right, because at one point, she's not just asking if she hit him. Like, she says she did hit him, right?

• 18:31Ashley Flowers?

  So according to a paramedic, yes. They say they actually heard her say it three times. I hit him, I hit him, I hit him. But cops don't know that yet. Now by this point, Karen has been released from the hospital and they did a blood test while she was in there and the results were that her BAC was 0.07 to 0.08%, which is just around the legal limit. And mind you, this is hours after she reportedly stopped drinking.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:56Ashley Flowers?

  But she's been released by this point. She's at her parents' place. Like, she had actually gone there after first going to John's house. I mean, that was basically her second home, but John's family was all there and she said, like, when she got there, she did not feel welcome. So like, mom and dad's house it is. So that's where Michael Proctor finds her and her SUV, which they seize as part of their investigation. She tells Proctor and another sergeant that he's with, that she and John were fine. Now, they did get into an argument that morning on the 28th over like, what she gave his teenage niece for breakfast, like, one of those dumb fights that couples have. And then that night, she and John met up at the bars. She dropped John off at the Albert Home, made a three-point turn, and then headed back home.

• 19:41Ashley Flowers?

  And then in the morning, she spotted a broken taillight on her car, but wasn't sure how it happened. Now, we know that this first meeting with Karen fed into investigators' brewing theory about her culpability. And the investigation Proctor leads over the next week or so only feeds the fire even more. Back at the scene, other officers have begun finding physical evidence around the area where John's body had been. When he was carted off, he was missing one shoe, but that got found nearby along with his hat, a cocktail straw, and pieces of glass that they believe came from that glass he was holding when he left the bar. They also find pieces of red and clear plastic, consistent with Karen's taillight, on Brian

• 20:26Ashley Flowers?

  Albert's lawn. So two days later, on January 31st, an autopsy is performed on John, and the medical examiner finds that John suffered a lot of injuries. Now, he's got several abrasions on his right forearm, small cuts above his right eye and on the left side of his nose, a two-inch laceration on the back of his head, multiple skull fractures that caused brain bleeding, and two black eyes. Now, aside from the abrasions on his arm, from the neck down, he does not have a single broken bone or fracture. But ultimately, they find that he died of blunt force trauma and hypothermia.

• 21:07Ashley Flowers?

  So Proctor looks at all of this evidence that police found: the taillight, the autopsy results, the way John was ejected from his shoe, the same way he's seen so many cases of vehicular homicides before. And it is his belief that all of it points right to Karen and the idea that she backed into John in her Lexus SUV and left him to die in the snow. So on February 1st, police arrest Karen at her home in Mansfield. She is arraigned the next day on charges of manslaughter, motor vehicle homicide, and leaving the scene of a deadly crash. When that happens, Karen retains attorney David Yanetti first, and local press catch him coming out of the courthouse, where he gives the public their first real insight

• 21:52Ashley Flowers?

  into the case and what's to come. Karen's gonna fight. He says she has no criminal intent and that she loved John and she is innocent. Karen was let out on a $50,000 bail that day. And Yanetti started to prepare what at first felt like a pretty straightforward defense. But then, on February 2nd, Yanetti gets this very strange call from an anonymous tipster that takes this seemingly straightforward case and transforms it into one of the biggest conspiracy cases I have ever come across. According to Boston Magazine, on this call, this anonymous tipster says something to

• 22:35Ashley Flowers?

  the effect of, "Your client is innocent. John was beaten up by Brian Albert and his nephew. They broke his nose and when O'Keefe didn't come to, Brian and a federal agent dumped his body on the front lawn."

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Who was the federal agent?

• 22:51Ashley Flowers?

  So, the federal agent is someone they were out with drinking at the bars that night, someone that went back to their place too. Now, to be fair, we don't know for sure this is who the anonymous tipster was talking about, but like, the federal agent we know was at the house that night was Brian Higgins, which I'm sure is a name you're familiar with. But he's an ATF agent, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and he's going to become central to this story. It's why you know his name. And he's actually one of the only people who knew Karen really well in that group. But, back to this call. So, this tipster ends up recanting everything he said. Apparently, police track him down and when they interview him, he says like JK, none of it's true. But, his tip has already gotten Karen's wheels turning.

• 23:33Ashley Flowers?

  She says in an interview with Nightline that after the tipster came forward, she went on Facebook and started finding photos of the police who were investigating the case with people who were in the Albert's house that night. Now, it's unclear what exact photos she is talking about in that interview, but we know now that Michael Proctor is in multiple social media posts with members of the Albert family. So she starts to wonder if all of these people are connected and if she's being framed in some sort of cover up for something they did. And if that's the case, she knows that she needs a top notch defense team. So in September, she sends an email in which she says, quote, "I am fighting for my life against a blue wall."

• 24:18Ashley Flowers?

  And that email goes to Alan Jackson, not Alan Jackson, the country singer.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  To be very, very clear.

• 24:23Ashley Flowers?

  Was my first thought.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Same.

• 24:25Ashley Flowers?

  This is a high profile defense attorney from Los Angeles. And this idea that she's putting forward, this catches his attention. Now, he has a couple of follow up questions, but it doesn't take much. He's in. And no one's been able to say why exactly this next thing happens for sure. Is it because Karen seemed to be gearing up for a fight and they were hoping to intimidate her, push her into a deal? Or was it just because they continued digging and felt like the circumstances of the case had changed? You tell me. But by June 2022, a grand jury had indicted Karen on upgraded charges of second degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence of alcohol, and leaving the

• 25:09Ashley Flowers?

  scene of personal injury or death. Karen again pleads not guilty and posts bail again. This time it's $100,000. And this is really when the madness begins. Not when this thing goes to trial. No, no, no. That is not happening for two more years at this point. The pre-trial hearings and what played out on the internet was a spectacle on its own. Enough so that we all knew what each side's case was before even going to trial or before the first witnesses ever even took the stand. I mean, we already knew the prosecution side, right? Though they do fill in the story a little more with details along the way.

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• 26:47Ashley Flowers?

  My favorite time of the year for clothing is hands-down fall. Sweaters, sweatshirts, I am all about layering. And when it comes to layering, no matter the outfit, you are probably gonna find me in two things: Crime Junkie merch and Quince. Last year, Brit and I both got the same oversized blazer in textured brown. It looks good with everything and on everyone, which means it makes for the perfect gift. Actually, anything at Quince would make for a good gift, because Quince has a lot more than clothing. I have multiple friends who have the Quince sling bag. Or if you're really trying to impress, go with one of their 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters. It'll look like you broke the bank, but really, they start at just 50 bucks. My personal style, I like pairing the black cashmere sweater with the black midi silk skirt, black tights, and boots. I look super sharp and expensive.

• 27:32Ashley Flowers?

  You would think that I had lost my Midwest sensibility when it came to price, but no, ma'am. Everything at Quince is priced 50% to 80% less than similar brands. And that's because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen, so you can give luxury-quality pieces without the luxury price tag. Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was here on Crime Junkie. It's the best way to support the show.

• 28:08Ashley Flowers?

  Basically, they say that John and Karen's relationship was on its way out. John's niece had even heard him say as much, like his relationship with Karen had like run its course. And the day they all went out, John seemed pretty fed up with her. In one text, he told her he was tired of arguing all the time. But I mean, we know they also met up at the bar and he was trying to convince her to stay over for the weekend. So like, talk about mixed signals.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:34Ashley Flowers?

  But it seems like Karen might have had one leg out the door too, because she was texting another guy. And not just any other guy, that ATF agent, Brian Higgins. They had been pretty flirty over texts, even shared a kiss pretty recently at John's house when Karen walked Brian Higgins to the door. And listen, new fear unlocked. When this thing does get to trial, Brian has to take the stand and read these texts out loud, under the fluorescent lights of the courtroom, streamed on Court TV. And I have never suffered from secondhand embarrassment the way I did watching that day of trial. And I need everyone to know exactly what I mean.

• 29:18Speaker 05

  Defendant responded, "You're hot." I responded, "Are you serious or messing with me?" Defendant responded, "No, I'm serious." I responded, "Failing is mutual. Is that bad? When were you interested?" Defendant responded, "I don't know. You're just my type." I responded, "You think you can handle me?"

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the type of embarrassment that like wakes you up in the middle of the night, seven years later, and you just continue to cringe.

• 29:46Ashley Flowers?

  Yes. So, relationship status, complicated.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 29:50Ashley Flowers?

  Now, even though everyone at the bar said that the couple seemed fine, the theory is that they began fighting about something in the car. So that by the time John gets out of Karen's SUV, Karen is pissed. Exhibit A, her voicemails.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  Is that the real reason she didn't get out and go with him?

• 30:14Ashley Flowers?

  I don't know. It's hard for anyone to know why Karen didn't get out because Karen's own story about why she didn't get out has changed over time. More proof to the prosecution that she's lying. Like at one point she says, "Oh, she didn't get out because she had a stomach ache." And then at another point, she says it's because she didn't know if she and John were actually invited, so she sent him in to kind of like suss out the vibe. Either way, she doesn't go in. Instead, the prosecution alleges that John got out of the car and when he did, Karen intentionally backed up into him, which they say is proven by a few things. One, I mean, first and foremost, everyone in the Albert home says that John never came inside.

• 30:58Ashley Flowers?

  Hard stop. Two, there are no footprints in the snow leading from the Albert's house to John's body, so it seems like no one from the house walked anywhere near where John was found.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  But it was a blizzard. Like, would we even expect there to be footprints in the snow?

• 31:16Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, I don't think so. It's just like pointed out, so I felt like I had to throw it in here, but like, no, I don't know. Number three, we have some SUV data. So they have data from Karen's SUV that shows she backed up for 60 feet, driving 24 miles per hour that morning. But the vehicle's data doesn't specify exactly what time. Now, number four, they've got surveillance video that shows John leaving the bar, like I said earlier, with a glass in his hand, and they say that they find that glass shattered next to his body on the lawn. So they think that he was holding it when she backed up into him. And then, of course, number five, which is like the prosecution's clincher, you have her broken taillight found in the snow, which they reconfigure back together to show it

• 32:01Ashley Flowers?

  was hers. And the prosecution says that they even find pieces of plastic from the taillight, like somewhere within his clothing. And there's like debate about like wear in the clothing or whatever, but like, does it matter? I don't know, because they say they found DNA, John's DNA, on the taillight.

• 32:20Ashley Flowers?

  The sixth thing they point to is they've got a hair on the back of Karen's car that, when tested, is found to be consistent with John's DNA. And then finally, they have the autopsy. He suffers blunt force trauma after, as the prosecution says, being hit by Karen's car, and then she drives away, leaving him to get hypothermia and die because no one knows he's out there. Pretty cut and dry, right?

• 32:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, if only.

• 32:49Ashley Flowers?

  I know. So, in one of the early pre-trial hearings, Karen's defense attorney, Alan Jackson, announces how he's gonna defend Karen. By exposing a cover-up and a far-reaching conspiracy to frame Karen. And just to be clear, when I say conspiracy, I mean, we are talking about the legal definition of a conspiracy. One or more people conspiring with one another to carry out a criminal act. And man, whether it is truth, or just a combination of very bad police work and coincidence, what comes out is mind-blowing. So I need to address the turtle in the room.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Ah, the turtle.

• 33:33Ashley Flowers?

  So there is this blogger who goes by the handle Turtle Boy. Real name, Aiden Carney. And don't worry, if you don't like calling him Turtle Boy, he has given an alternate option, dubbing himself Journalism Jesus.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:47Ashley Flowers?

  So, do with that what you will. But basically, this guy covers what he calls anti-establishment news. Now, he's from the area, so he hears about Karen's story, and I didn't know at first, like, how he really, like, latches on to this. But, again, I just watched the doc this morning, and I found out it was actually someone from Karen's, like, family, friends, team, whatever, actually reached out to him. They had, like, followed him, liked what he did, and was like, "Hey, you should pay attention to this." They're the ones that actually point him in this direction. And he, like, fully leans in. He is fully bought into the conspiracy, and it basically becomes his whole personality, as seen from his website. And for better or worse, he is a really big reason why this case took off as much as it did.

• 34:33Ashley Flowers?

  Somehow, this guy was coming out with a ton of insider information on the case. Well, turns out, somehow, sometimes, it was because Karen was leaking stuff to him. Like, there was a state police affidavit that reveals that, over the course of a few months in 2023, Karen spent like 40 hours on the phone with him, allegedly feeding him confidential information. And listen, I'm all about independent journalism and alternatives to mainstream news, but he did a lot of things that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, which is why he has been such a polarizing presence in this case. Like, for example, he showed up at Jen McCabe's kid's soccer game and recorded himself asking her inflammatory questions.

• 35:16Ashley Flowers?

  And his so-called Turtle Riders did a rolling rally where they went house to house in a caravan of cars using a bullhorn and shouting about their cover-up allegations outside witnesses' homes, which, to be clear, like, those people have never been charged. And at this point, they were all considered witnesses in the case, which is why he ends up getting charged with witness intimidation down the line. And this group's protests are popping up all over, even out of state. But there is nowhere that they are more intense than right outside of the courthouse during trial. I mean, it is wild. Turtle Boy and his fans go in hard on the Free Karen Reed movement.

• 35:58Ashley Flowers?

  They're wearing Turtle Boy branded FKR merch and holding rallies outside the courthouse, like, to the point that the judge has to put up a 200-foot buffer zone. And on that documentary on HBO, someone had said that, like, I don't know if this is true or not, but they claimed that the jurors could actually, like, hear them, like, chanting "Free Karen Reed" while they were trying to deliberate. Like, I don't remember, like, even if you didn't watch every minute of trial like I did, like, this was all over the news. Yeah. It was a madhouse. And our reporter spoke with one of John's closest friends, and he told us that Free Karen Reed protesters were actually calling people cop killers on their way into court. And a bunch of officers and John's friends had to

• 36:42Ashley Flowers?

  John's mom into the courthouse. Like this guy we're talking to is a marine veteran and he said the scene outside the courthouse reminded him of being in a combat zone in Iraq. And the chaos of all of this made everything 10 times harder for John's grieving family. And I was just trying to re-watch some footage to like really like wrap my mind around what was happening, like a reminder almost, because it does feel like forever ago at this point. And it was wild, the way that, you know, you see this, like we saw this with OJ, the way that people like wrap themselves around this and can get so like, you forget why we're all here and how tragic this is.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  It's almost like a, like a disconnection or dissociation with reality anymore.

• 37:23Ashley Flowers?

  They're like tailgating this trial and people were outside on lawn chairs, like watching it and chanting and it has become something so much bigger than the reason we're here and the reason we're here is getting lost. So you can understand why state officials don't give much credence to this blogger. And I say blogger, I know he says journalist, but there is a difference between like anything he hears just goes up online, like the vetting process doesn't seem to be there. And it's also no surprise really that the prosecution thinks that the defense's idea of a conspiracy is bonkers. I mean, the Norfolk DA, Michael Morrissey, makes a bold move and even issues a video

• 38:05Ashley Flowers?

  statement saying that there's a reason people are tried in court and not on the internet, which is like, that I agree with. But he also uses this video as an opportunity to defend the one and only Michael Proctor.

• 38:19Speaker 06

  Chuppa Proctor had no close personal relationship with any of the parties involved in the investigation and had no conflict and he had no reason to step out of this investigation. Every suggestion to the contrary is a lie.

• 38:34Ashley Flowers?

  Well, not so fast, my guy. Internal Affairs isn't so confident in how he's handled this case. They end up opening an investigation into Proctor's conduct. And it turns out, someone else is looking into his conduct too. While everyone is so busy saying the cover-up theory is outlandish and some scheme cooked up by the not-country singer Alan Jackson, in comes an unprecedented, and I do not use that word lightly, unprecedented bombshell. While attorneys are getting ready to call witnesses for the trial, someone else is reaching out to those same witnesses, the FBI.

• 39:17Ashley Flowers?

  That's right, the feds are getting involved. And they have their own case that ends up kind of giving the defense a leg up. Because all of a sudden, they've got access to like 3,000 pages of documents that the feds have collected in their investigation about this stuff. And it's like, almost every suspicion the defense has had gets confirmed and some. And like, I don't even know where to start. But like, high level, the defense's theory is that Karen and John drove to the Albert's house. John goes in, Karen leaves. There's some kind of altercation in the house specifically involving John,

• 40:00Ashley Flowers?

  Brian Higgins, Brian Albert, and Brian Albert's nephew, Colin Albert. Now, they think there was some kind of altercation in the basement of the home, and then they put him out in the front lawn where he died. And if you believe this theory and everything that's to come, they knew he was going to die. But let me really break it down. So here is the defense for Karen Reed. So they say that even if Karen and John were fighting earlier that day, they're fine by the time they get to the first bar. The people who were with them even testified that they seemed like they were getting along. So Karen and John meet up with everyone else at the waterfall. They get invited back to the Albert's house. Now, when they get there, by like the time of trial and stuff,

• 40:45Ashley Flowers?

  the defense is going with Karen's later story, that she just didn't know if they were really invited or welcome. So she waits in the car while John goes in for a vibe check. She doesn't see him go in, like she doesn't actually like watch him go in the door.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  But he, he gets out of the car.

• 40:59Ashley Flowers?

  She assumes he goes in.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:00Ashley Flowers?

  But then he doesn't come back out and she gets pissed and leaves him there. This is when Karen says she makes a three-point turn to turn around and go home. And the three-point turn, I think, is like her excuse for the data the prosecution has saying that she backed up. This is also when and why they say she left those nasty voicemails. And they think it's actually more proof that he went inside.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  John, I'm going home. I cannot be with Amy. I need to go home. Even you're on the [bleep] you and me right now. And another girl, she's sleeping next to me. You're a [bleep] loser. [bleep] yourself.

• 41:41Ashley Flowers?

  So the voicemails sound to me like she thinks he's with another woman.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, like she's clearly upset that he's not back, upset that he never is like, isn't responding to her.

• 41:52Ashley Flowers?

  Did she like do that on purpose? Like, right, like you've got both stuff.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  But there's so many.

• 41:56Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, I've heard there's like another woman who apparently like lived near the Albert's house that maybe John like knew or dated or something at some point. And so I don't know if she had a fear that maybe he like went there, would have walked there. And like, again, this, maybe this is where the plow thing comes in. Like she never says that explicitly, but maybe?

• 42:16Speaker 01

  Or maybe she's just like super jealous and like thinks he's capable of anything. And that's why she's calling him a pervert over and over again.

• 42:23Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, and so she thinks he's like, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:27Ashley Flowers?

  But you can see where the defense is coming from in this. So before she drives off and like leaves those voicemails, there is something I want to talk about. At about 12:23 a.m., a guy named Ryan Nagel pulls up outside the Alberts' house with friends to pick up his sister Julie Nagel. And they get there right around the same time as Karen's SUV. They actually pull up right behind it. Now, Ryan says in court that he didn't notice any obvious damage to the car, mainly, right, we're thinking about the taillight. But he also notes that it's late, he's been drinking. Now, he says he's out there for a few minutes, and he doesn't see anybody walking away from Karen's SUV toward the house. And he also doesn't see anyone laying in the lawn.

• 43:12Ashley Flowers?

  So his sister Julie comes out, and for some reason, she decides she's gonna stay. So even though Ryan, like, made this whole trip to come get her, he and his friends decide to leave. And as they pull, like, alongside Karen's SUV, Ryan clocks that the interior light is on, and there is a woman in the driver's seat. She is, like, looking ahead with her hands on the wheel. And this is the important part, he says that she's alone. And all that means is that, according to what Ryan saw and what he testified to in court, at 12:23, John wasn't in Karen's car, but he also wasn't dead on the lawn, and from what he knows, Karen's taillight wasn't cracked.

• 43:54Ashley Flowers?

  At 12:36 a.m., that's when Karen's phone data shows that she connected to the Wi-Fi in John's house. And in one of the voicemails that she's leaving him, like, yelling at him, specifically one at 12:42 a.m., you can hear her walking on hard floors. So this puts her at his house 12:36 to 12:42-ish. And this is important, because witnesses at the Alberts, who saw a black SUV, say that they saw it take off at around 12:45. And that's the time that the prosecution alleges she hit John, but it's not possible if she's at John's house by 12:36. Right. And listen, that doesn't mean that everyone's recollections are perfect. We're off by, like, 10 minutes, it's not huge. Yeah. But it is worth noting, if this is the prosecution's case.

• 44:39Ashley Flowers?

  Now, initially, everyone said they saw nothing outside. And I will- Say, to be fair, you've got this blizzard condition. It is late. Everyone's been drinking. Where John is found on the lawn is like over on the side of the yard towards the road and where everyone's driveway. And where I assume their cars would be are like in the driveway. So, you know, I'm like bundled up my coat face down when I'm like going out in an Indiana winter. I don't think they're looking for things. But still, no one says they saw anything when they were leaving that morning. And John should be laying right there, not yet covered in snow. Now, eventually Julie Nagel does say that she saw something. She ended up, like I said, staying and then gets a ride back with actually Jen McCabe and their family.

• 45:24Ashley Flowers?

  And she says that she maybe saw a five to six foot long black blob near the flagpole. Maybe.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 45:34Ashley Flowers?

  But if she did see that blob, she doesn't mention it to anyone she's in the car with. She doesn't mention it to Jen McCabe or her husband, Matt McCabe, who are in the car. She just doesn't say anything. And speaking of Jen, Jen's story was that she and her husband dropped them off and went home. And Jen says that she stayed up for a little bit. She was like on her phone, looking up a local basketball team that her daughter might be joining. And then she went to sleep. In fact, everyone was supposed to have been asleep until Karen started waking people up to go look for John. But the defense got their hands on everyone's phone records. And it gets really freaking weird. So Jen McCabe is the one communicating with John when they left the bar, right?

• 46:15Speaker 01

  Right. Calls, texts, directions.

• 46:18Ashley Flowers?

  Directions, all of that parked behind me. So at 12:29 a.m., she called John and the call lasted eight seconds. And then after that point, all of her calls to him go unanswered. And she makes her last one to him at 12:50.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  And was it Karen calling John like a million times too during that time?

• 46:35Ashley Flowers?

  Oh yeah, she called him like 50 times that night. But anyways, everyone has left the Albert House by like 2 a.m. Most to go home to sleep. But around 1:30, Brian Higgins actually goes to the Canton Police Department. Remember, he's not Canton PD, he's ATF, but he actually works out of an office at Canton PD. Except he's not on duty that night. Still, even though it's 1:30 in the morning and he's been drinking, he decides now is a good time that he's gonna go like knock out some administrative work and/or move his cars that he's been asked to move so that the parking lot could be plowed. He doesn't stay super long, ends up going home, eating something, going to bed. So everyone should be home, sleeping.

• 47:19Ashley Flowers?

  But that's not what phone records show. At 2:22 a.m. on January 29th, Brian Albert calls Brian Higgins. And then 17 seconds later, Brian Higgins calls Brian Albert back. And the call is answered. That call lasts about 22 seconds. Now, both men testified that they had been asleep at this time. So this is a problem, right? Because it shows at least one of the calls was connected.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:47Ashley Flowers?

  Both men, under oath, claim that this was just a butt dial. Both men have iPhones, by the way. I have butt dialed plenty of time.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Me, a lot, yeah.

• 47:57Ashley Flowers?

  What I haven't seen is a butt dial that goes unanswered, and then a butt dial that calls back, and then that gets butt answered while everyone is asleep.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  The butt answer is the question mark I have, for sure.

• 48:08Ashley Flowers?

  While you're asleep, you're not even claiming to be like moving around or walking.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:11Ashley Flowers?

  It does not add up. But they're not even the only ones whose phones, I will say, are up and around and moving at this time. At 2:25 a.m., two outbound texts are made from Jen McCabe's phone. Now, it's not clear to who or what they say. And is it weird that we don't know that information in 2022 and everything's recorded on a cellphone? Well, yes, yes, it is.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:35Ashley Flowers?

  I don't know why we don't have this. But I do know for sure that when police finally get her phone, she has deleted a huge chunk of calls from the 29th, which I think is super weird.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  And just calls, not texts, right?

• 48:49Ashley Flowers?

  Right, so that text is, as far as I know, that text is still there. But she does delete something else. So at 2:26, she deletes two screenshots. And then a minute later, at 2:27, she does an internet search, which she later deletes. The infamous internet search. Haas long to die in cold. Yep. Now, everyone believes it's supposed to be how long to die in cold, but how got mistyped to haas. And this goes on to be so heavily debated. Jen says that she didn't search that at 2:27. I mean, she shouldn't be. No one knows John is out in the cold yet, right?

• 49:30Speaker 01

  And she's asleep, right?

• 49:32Ashley Flowers?

  Well, maybe not. Like, this could be like as she's like winding down. She basically says that when she went and found John the next morning with Karen, Karen asked her to search, how long does it take for hypothermia to set in? Or like some version of that question. And she goes to type that into a browser that she said she opened at 2:27 a.m. And this turns into like a battle of the experts when it comes to trial, because each side has experts who take the stand and claim something different. If you ask the defense, that search itself was made at 2:27. If you ask the prosecution, that's just when Jen opened the tab.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  I don't understand how we can't know. Like, this feels like the data should be solid.

• 50:19Ashley Flowers?

  I know.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  What am I not getting out of this?

• 50:21Ashley Flowers?

  It's so messy to me. Like, the defense says that the prosecution, whoever they were using to like analyze the data, was like looking at the wrong like version of iOS or something. And so like the way they see it, they're like, you're not wrong based on how you see it, but like you're analyzing it wrong or something to that effect. And I don't think there is. It does feel like it should be black and white, but I don't think it is because come this second trial, the judge is going to allow both sides to use their experts again. So I don't think there is a definitive right answer yet. The defense also says that they have data to back up a claim that Jen deleted the search. But Jen swears that she never deleted it. So I don't even know what to think of that. What we do know is that the defense expert who said the

• 51:06Ashley Flowers?

  search itself was made at 2:27 a.m., like I said, is going to be allowed to testify in trial number two.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  So the defense theory has to be that this is evidence of them planning to put him out in the cold, right? Because like, they allege he's not even out there based on Lucky's testimony, right?

• 51:23Ashley Flowers?

  Ah, Lucky. Okay, so as I've said a thousand times, it's snowing hard in these early morning hours. The snow is basically like one of the leading ladies in this story. But because it's snowing so hard, plow trucks are getting out there early, like really early. And the defense found the plow driver who was on the Albert Street that morning. Now, it doesn't seem like the cops went looking for him during their investigation to confirm their theory. Apparently, they reached out to the town to see like, who was plowing in the area that night, but they didn't go too far down that investigative avenue. So, I mean, this is again where people ask like conspiracy or just like bad police work. I don't know. But what the defense finds by talking to Lucky is that sometime between 2:30 and 3:00 a.m.,

• 52:08Ashley Flowers?

  Brian "Lucky" Lachrin is on the Albert Street. Now, he doesn't just know the street. He knows the Alberts, though honestly, everyone in Canton does. But Lucky went to school with Brian's brother, Chris, and he used to deliver pizzas for Chris's restaurant. So like, knows them, knows the street, knows the house. And guess what he sees that morning?

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• 53:30Ashley Flowers?

  Lucky testifies that there was no body in the front lawn when he's out there, which shouldn't be possible if the Commonwealth is right and Karen hit John at 12:45.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  So my dad plowed snow, like a lot of winters growing up. And I feel like if you've never been in a snowplow, it's hard to describe. You can hardly see like what's right in front of you, let alone like the road, like what's off in a lawn next to you. That's not anything you're troubled with.

• 53:58Ashley Flowers?

  So this is something that the prosecution actually brought up and it gets argued. Like you're up high and it's not like he was in the road, right? Like he's in the lawn. So they're like, you just missed him. But no, no, no, no, Lucky says, because he's in a truck that is called the Franken truck, a reference to Frankenstein since it has a lot of different parts. And he says that his seat was actually raised up on the truck and that he had outfitted it. So it would be like, quote, "driving with a spotlight." So he is certain if there was a body there, he would have seen it. What he did see though, he says, was a vehicle parked outside the Albert house.

• 54:40Ashley Flowers?

  Lucky says that when he first passes the Albert's house at 2:45 a.m., there's no vehicle parked out front. But then when he comes back, like 30 or 40 minutes later, he sees a Ford Edge parked on the street, right in front of where John's body was found. Now this is relevant because the Alberts say that no one else was at their house that night after everyone left the party. So if this is true, whose car was that? Now there's a pretty quiet couple of hours between like 2:30 and 4:30 in the morning, where there's no phone activity. 4:30 is when Karen wakes up John's niece. She asks her to call Jen because she didn't have her number. And then she eventually calls Jen directly and that's made at 4:53.

• 55:24Ashley Flowers?

  And after that, Jen does try to call John at least once at 5:04. And some of those calls after that were part of the bunch that Jen deleted. Now, why is Jen calling? The simple explanation is that she just got news that her friend is missing and she's trying to reach him.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:42Ashley Flowers?

  But then why delete the calls?

• 55:43Speaker 01

  Right, like, looking for your friend is a good thing.

• 55:46Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, so the defense, who believes that she searched "how long to die in cold" at 2:27, they think she knows exactly where her friend is and maybe she was doing it because she wanted to make it look like she was concerned. Then again, I ask, like, why delete the calls?

• 56:02Speaker 01

  Right, and I know a big theory online is that she was calling to find John's phone, so then they could, like, plant it outside, near his body.

• 56:09Ashley Flowers?

  I heard that too, but then, like, why stop calling from 12:50 or like whatever her last call was till 5:00 a.m.? Like, it doesn't totally add up for me, but like, you'll see nothing in this story, totally adds up.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:22Ashley Flowers?

  Okay, so Karen called Jen again at 5:05, but doesn't get through. Jen calls her right back, they talk for 43 seconds, presumably making plans to meet up to look for John. Both of those call logs are also deleted by Jen. And apparently, on that deleted call, Jen and Karen agree that Karen will go pick her up. So Karen gets into her SUV, which was parked in John's garage, and his home security system catches her on surveillance backing out at 5:07 a.m. Now, John's SUV is in the driveway, and as she is backing out, his car moves ever so slightly. I mean, like, you gotta zoom, don't blink. But it's right as Karen's car would be getting close to hits.

• 57:07Ashley Flowers?

  And if Karen's car hit John's, it would have been her right side taillight that hit it. The same right side taillight that police allege she hit John with, so hard that it was cracked and left behind at the Albert's house. Was it already cracked before she ever even pulled into the garage? Would love to tell you, but there's no video footage from John's Ring camera showing Karen pulling in to John's garage that night. Why is there no video, you may ask? Because the footage is missing.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  How?

• 57:41Ashley Flowers?

  Another tech question that somehow there is no answer to. The prosecution has insinuated that Karen deleted that part of the video from the Ring app sometime like the day of John's death. Though there is no data backing this up, they just like pose this hypothetically. While the defense alleges that investigators deleted it before handing the video over to them. Also no proof of that.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 58:06Ashley Flowers?

  So whatever, okay, no problem. There's probably more footage, right? Somewhere along her drive home? All we have to do is show the taillight is cracked before she gets to John's that morning. And there is no debating this, like case over. Well, they found a camera on a local library that would have been on the exact route she took to John's house. It would have shown the right side taillight and everything. And police even collected it in time to get the footage from the time Karen would have been driving by on the 29th. But? But when that footage was turned over to the defense, it's missing a crucial two-minute window that would have shown Karen's car after leaving the Alberts.

• 58:51Ashley Flowers?

  Now, the prosecution says, well, that's just what we got. And we just turned it over how it was turned over to us.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  And we're just supposed to like, believe all that? Like that twice, the exact footage we need, including one from a local library is just, uh-oh, missing, sorry.

• 59:10Ashley Flowers?

  That's what they're telling us. So, back to our timeline. Karen pulls out at 5:07 to go looking for John on her own for like 20 minutes before she like goes to meet with Jen and Carrie. And I think like there's even video of her car like going in the direction of the waterfall bar, which is like confusing to me because she leaves him.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  Not there.

• 59:31Ashley Flowers?

  Not there. Like, what are you looking for there? Do you think that he could have gone back there? And it's really interesting because there is this moment in the trial where, the first trial where Jen McCabe is on the stand. And she even says that in one of her like first conversations with Karen, she's asking her like what happened, whatever. And Karen's like, oh. Like I left him at the waterfall bar and Jen's like, no, you didn't like.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  You left together.

• 59:54Ashley Flowers?

  We saw you outside of my sister's house. So I don't know if that is like, like what, what Karen believed. Like all of her stories now, or she like remembers going, remembers him going in there. So like, was she making up a story? Does she not remember in the early days? Is everything a blur? Like, is everyone drinking so much that no one knows what's going on? I don't know. But she goes looking for 20 minutes, at least like in the, I mean, we've got her going in the direction of the waterfall. But then she like makes it back to Jen where they meet up. Jen, meanwhile, in this time, tries calling John's phone a few more times. 508, 509, both deleted later.

• 1:00:32Ashley Flowers?

  From 514 to 532, there are a bunch of calls between Karen's phone and Jen's phone and Jen to John's phone. Those all get deleted as well in Jen's call log. And Karen also tries to call John a few more times. By 546, the three women are at John's house, still trying to call his cell with no luck. And so they all head out at 552. They get to the Alberts and at 604, Jen makes the call to 911. Now, first responders get to the scene fast. And this is when some of them say that they allegedly heard Karen say, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him. Or like some variation of that. But interestingly, the defense makes a big point in court to show

• 1:01:15Ashley Flowers?

  that nobody put any of this in their reports from that day. Not the police, not the paramedics. This confession that everyone remembers so vividly only gets spoken about later. Which does feel odd that like, nobody mentions a confession of any kind. They're not arresting her for admitting that she hit him.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  Well, and if it's not in any notes, it's weird using this confession as that it actually happened. Not a misremembering of what she said or what she could have said.

• 1:01:48Ashley Flowers?

  And they like picket this at trial. They're like, this isn't like, just like a small detail. You have someone confessing to the crime. How does that not make it into any report? And they're just like, I didn't think it was relevant or like, there's a zillion reasons why they say they didn't put it in. But like, they swear on the stand, it happened. But the defense is like, did it? Now, the defense says Karen never said that at all. When Karen talks to 2020, she says it was preceded by "did" and "was a question." "Did I hit him?" But I'm like getting confused about this to begin with because this seems like one of the things like she has admitted to, like she admits on 2020, even in the beginning of this HBO doc, like she talks about it. But then towards the end of the doc, like, "I got all twisted," or "I think she's all twisted"

• 1:02:32Ashley Flowers?

  because she's like, "You know, I wonder if, if I even said that." Like, it's been so many people's stories and, you know, I, so much was going on, it was so chaotic. Like, maybe I just kind of, I don't know if these words are her words exactly, but like, "internalized it and made that my story." So I'm like, "Wait, we all agreed that you asked, 'Did I hit him?'" And now we're trying to say-

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  And now we're talking about if the words even came out of your mouth at all?

• 1:02:52Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, I don't know. You have to watch it. I don't know what to make of it.

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  Well, and didn't she like really early on, like, tell Carrie on the phone, like, "I think he's dead"? Like, right off the bat, she goes immediately to, "John is no longer alive." Maybe he even got hit by a plow or something?

• 1:03:07Ashley Flowers?

  She suggests a plow, which is like ultra-specific. Yeah, to me, like, that's not where my head would go. I'd be like, "Oh, he passed out at the place that I left him."

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  They've been drinking all night. Is he sleeping it off somewhere?

• 1:03:18Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, like, she says, when she's asked about this, like, she just knows that there's no world he would not come home to his niece and his nephew because she specifically, like, made the threat, "I'm not coming home." And she knows he's responsible and like, wouldn't leave them. So she says, like, "If he didn't come home, it has to mean something terrible happened."

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  But she's also kind of accusing him of maybe being with another woman in those voicemails, right?

• 1:03:39Ashley Flowers?

  I know. It doesn't-

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  It doesn't make sense, right?

• 1:03:42Ashley Flowers?

  It doesn't make sense. But, again, back to our timeline. Jen makes some additional calls that like, don't make a lot of sense with the story we've been told. And then she makes two searches at 6:23. "How long does it take to digest food?", which was like, I think, an auto-populated search as she's trying to type "how long to die," and then it like, da-da-da-da. And then she has one that's like, "How long TI die and kicked?" Like, again, they're all typos. It's freezing and she's like, trying to type, but the, the question's the same. But neither of those searches are "how long to die in cold."

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  Which is important here.

• 1:04:19Ashley Flowers?

  I think so, but whatever. So they're out on her sister's lawn with her friend dead on the ground. At this point, it makes sense to notify the people inside the house, right?

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:32Ashley Flowers?

  So she calls her sister Nicole Albert at 6:07 and 6:08. Both calls are answered, but only last a few seconds. Both are deleted from Jen's phone log. And this is interesting because Brian and Nicole never come out of the house. Like the whole time, ever. And according to all their statements, they were supposed to have been asleep until Jen came into their room to wake them up at 6:35 a.m. So who's answering the calls at 6:07 and 6:08? Jen says it's just all wrong and those calls weren't answered.

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  Wait, they were or weren't?

• 1:05:07Ashley Flowers?

  Jen says they weren't. The data says they were. Pick your favorite.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:05:12Ashley Flowers?

  I know. Even after they were awake, though, like I reiterate, they never came out.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  They never came out even after we know they were awake?

• 1:05:19Ashley Flowers?

  Right. And like some say that they didn't want to be in the way. I mean, Brian is an officer himself, right? Like better to stay put, let police come to you. Except they like, don't? I mean, it's Canton PD that is called to the scene that morning. And Sergeant Michael Lang is one of the first guys there. And he finally goes to talk to the Alberts after Jen McCabe wakes them up. But like, I don't even know if you could call what he does an interview? Cause he talks to them for a few minutes with Jen there. He doesn't record any of it and he doesn't like do any kind of search of the house. According to Lang's report, he talks to Jen again at 9 a.m. When she calls him back and is like, hey, by the way, I forgot to mention that I heard Karen say she hopes she didn't hit John.

• 1:06:04Ashley Flowers?

  If you ask Jen, though, she called him back over to say, hey, I actually heard Karen say, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him. Either way, everyone's doing this at 9 a.m.

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  Either way, how does no one remember this the right way? Like this feels extra critical.

• 1:06:18Ashley Flowers?

  I know, I know. I mean, and again, I go back to there is a lot going on. It feels like something I would remember. I have never been in this scenario.

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  True.

• 1:06:25Ashley Flowers?

  Now, fun fact, I haven't mentioned, you might already know this, a lot of people might know this, but Brian Albert's brother, Kevin Albert, is on the Canton PD force. But if that wasn't already a conflict of interest, Lang, who was one of the first people on the scene, has his own deep ties to the family. In 2002, when he was off duty, he allegedly got into a fight with two other people that Brian's other brother, Chris Albert, was having problems with. And Chris Albert, by the way, is Colin Albert's dad, so like, these are all the same people we're talking about. So like, Lang knows this family, but they do eventually recognize there might be some conflicts, so they recuse themselves, but also still help out.

• 1:07:08Ashley Flowers?

  And this is when they call in the state police, so enter Michael Proctor, who we covered at the top, and he has his own lengthy lists of conflicts of interest. But like I said, Canton's still being a pal, so even though the state police barracks are closer, when Karen's car gets seized that day, it is actually taken to Canton PD Sallyport. Apparently, police say there was like, more room there, it had heating, whatever. They have pics, it all adds up nicely, pieces of the taillight missing from the SUV, matched pieces of the taillight in the snow by John, it's, remember, the prosecution's proof. But we also have the defense saying that she hit her taillight in John's driveway. And what Karen told everyone was that she had a broken taillight, not like a fully busted taillight.

• 1:07:53Ashley Flowers?

  And all the video footage that could or should show that this is true-

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  Doesn't exist.

• 1:07:58Ashley Flowers?

  It's gone, oh darn. Well, that's okay, police say, we have a video of when we processed the car in the Sallyport of Canton PD, you'll see that we never even go close to the taillight, so we didn't like, break it and plant evidence, which is fully the defense theory, by the way, that the taillight evidence wasn't found at the scene at the time of John's body. They don't find it until like 5:30 or 6:00 that night, when like, an emergency response team comes to help with the search? Like, there's a little bit of conflicting reports on like, what time they find the taillight, but the first crime scene photos documenting pieces of it in the snow show that it's clearly dark outside. And this is like January, New England. So like the sun sets around like 4:55 that day.

• 1:08:39Ashley Flowers?

  But it takes kind of a long time before more pieces are found and they are found over the course of like the next few days. So the defense theorizes that the reason they didn't find it earlier is that they had to wait until they had Karen's car in their possession to get the taillight pieces and then plant them. So the defense has always thought it was planted. But again, police are like, oh my God, you guys are being like so dramatic. Look for yourselves. They even play the video in court to show that no one ever goes near the right taillight. Except in the actual most dramatic, oh my God, moment I've ever seen in like a real life trial, the defense team notices that the writing on one of the car's in frames,

• 1:09:23Ashley Flowers?

  not even Karen's car, it's like this one that no one's paying attention to, the writing is backwards, which means that the entire video has been like flipped.

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  Oh, like mirrored?

• 1:09:34Ashley Flowers?

  Inverted, yeah. So when it appears that Proctor is seen standing behind Karen's left taillight.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  It's actually the right taillight.

• 1:09:42Ashley Flowers?

  It's the right taillight.

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:09:44Ashley Flowers?

  Now, the problem still is you can't see what he's doing because the camera is on the other side. And there is a camera that would show what he's doing over there.

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  Don't tell me the video is missing.

• 1:09:55Ashley Flowers?

  Part of the video is missing.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  Of course it is.

• 1:09:57Ashley Flowers?

  But here's the thing. Why would Michael Proctor frame someone? Sure, he knows the Alberts, but like, he doesn't know Karen. That's a huge leap. He wouldn't have anything against her. Hmm, like, he shouldn't have anything against her. Yet that federal investigation found some legit terrible conduct on his behalf in relation to Karen. And the stuff that they found was like just the stuff he put in writing. Like, he had texts with his sister talking about the case very early on. And in one, he said that he hopes Karen would die by suicide. And he wasn't just talking to his family. Here is Michael Proctor reading texts that he sent about Karen and Brian Albert to a group chat that he had

• 1:10:42Ashley Flowers?

  with his high school buddies, and he's reading it here on the stand.

• 1:10:46Speaker 07

  Yep, so these came from me. From all accounts, he didn't do anything wrong. She's a whack job. C U N T.

• 1:10:53Ashley Flowers?

  And here he is, reading a text that he sent to his bosses while supposedly searching Karen's phone for evidence.

• 1:11:00Speaker 07

  Uh, no nudes so far.

• 1:11:03Speaker 06

  No nudes so far, correct?

• 1:11:06Speaker 07

  Correct.

• 1:11:07Speaker 06

  And you said that to your bosses?

• 1:11:09Speaker 07

  Yes, sir.

• 1:11:11Ashley Flowers?

  Alan Jackson hammers Proctor over these texts, which were sent well before Karen's been charged, by the way. And they are the worst. This guy is the worst. And I think we all should be making a big deal about these text messages from a law enforcement official who has got the lives of people literally in his hands. But for me, personally, I did have to roll my eyes a little bit for one reason in particular.

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• 1:12:38Ashley Flowers?

  The person who was lecturing Proctor about the way he viewed women, the way he viewed Karen Reed, was maybe not the right person to stand on that soapbox. Like, I think maybe Alan Jackson should have left that part to his co-counsel, Yanetti, or even like there were other lawyers that were working with them too. Because it was a little hard for me to really buy his outrage and disgust when it wasn't all that long ago that Alan Jackson was defending Harvey Weinstein.

• 1:13:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:13:06Ashley Flowers?

  So like, tip for trial number two, maybe leave the grandstanding to someone who hasn't been on the wrong side of history when it comes to the Me Too movement. I don't know, what do I know, I'm a podcaster. Still, Proctor defends his investigation. He calls his texts juvenile and regrettable, but says that they didn't have any impact on how he investigated John's death. But Proctor's own texts implied that he didn't really look at anything objectively. I mean, when a friend asked him if the homeowner, meaning Brian Albert, will quote, "receive some [BLEEP]" Proctor responded, "Nope, homeowner is a Boston cop too." And only 17 hours into his investigation, when one of Proctor's friends text him,

• 1:13:49Ashley Flowers?

  "She's [BLEEP], right?" He replied, "Correct." But Proctor testifies that he meant the, quote, "overwhelming amount of evidence," end quote, already showed by then, that Karen hit John. Proctor's texts weren't the only thing Jackson called into question. Proctor had testified under oath that he didn't know any members of the Albert or McCabe families, but when Jackson asked him directly, Proctor admits that the Alberts have been over to his parents' house before, and that he's even been at his parents' house when the Alberts were there. Oh, and just fun fact, Colin Albert was once the ring bearer in Proctor's sister's wedding.

• 1:14:26Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:14:26Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, and again, like, it goes deep. Proctor even asked Brian Albert's sister-in-law, Julie, to babysit his son as recently as 10 days before John died. So like, they are clearly more than just even acquaintances, like you're trusting with your kid.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  They're kind of like just in the same circle.

• 1:14:42Ashley Flowers?

  I know, and even after that, Julie and the Proctors like keep talking, so like, it gets kind of weird. Three days after John died, there are texts between Proctor and his wife, in which his wife says that she just ran into Julie, and she writes, quote, "Julie said, when all this is over, she wants to give you..." Dot, dot, dot, "a thank you gift." And apparently Proctor responded that the gifts should be sent to his wife and not him. So that is who is doing the investigation. And the people who collected all the evidence that they wanted to use to like prove this case that this investigator is making, honestly, they didn't do much better. This part is less conspiracy and more just sloppy.

• 1:15:25Ashley Flowers?

  To get to John and all the evidence, they used a leaf blower.

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, what?

• 1:15:30Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, they used it to like blow off all the fresh snow and get down to like the layer, like they presumed it was all on the ground, I don't know, where John died, which like, yes, I get it, but no, I don't. And it's on the ground where they find all those like clear pieces of glass, which they later assume is from that cocktail glass that he walked out of the bar holding. They also find some like blood in the snow. Obviously, they want to collect all of this as evidence, right?

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:15:55Ashley Flowers?

  But like, oh, no, they don't have any evidence bags. So for some reason, they go knocking on a neighbor's door, not even the door of the homeowner whose lawn they are on, who, let me remind you, is a cop.

• 1:16:06Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:16:06Ashley Flowers?

  No, they just go knocking on some random neighbor's door. And apparently, they ask if they have anything they can use to collect evidence. And that neighbor gives them a like sealed package of red solo cups that they start using to like scoop everything up in.

• 1:16:20Speaker 01

  Like red solo cups, like beer pong cups?

• 1:16:22Ashley Flowers?

  Fully, but like, don't worry. Once the evidence is in those cups, they store the cups super securely because they put them inside a brown paper grocery bag from a Stop & Shop.

• 1:16:32Speaker 01

  Wonderful.

• 1:16:32Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, I know. And so while we're on the topic, though, of evidence, let's talk the autopsy. So just a reminder from earlier, so the medical examiner found that John suffered a lot of injuries. We have several abrasions on his right forearm, cuts to the left side of his nose and above his right eye, two inch laceration on the back of his head, multiple skull fractures that caused bleeding in his brain, two black eyes. Now, he has those injuries on his arm, but he doesn't have any broken bones or fractures from the neck down. And the ruling was that he died of blunt impact injuries to his head and hypothermia.

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  This is what I could never like wrap my head around. Like, how are all the injuries so high up if she hit him, assuming he's Standing like with her car.

• 1:17:15Ashley Flowers?

  Well, at the time, the prosecution, or at least in the first trial, was like, I think, arguing that Karen hit him. This sent him like flying back and he maybe hit his head on the ground. Like that is what would cause the gash on the back of his head. In the documentary, I've seen some other people, not the prosecution specifically, but other people saying like, another theory could be that like, she hit him, the taillight breaks and like that caused the like abrasion in his arm. And then he's like disoriented and moves around and then falls. So I don't know what we're going to hear in the second trial, if that's going to play into it, or if they're going to stick with what they did the first time. But the defense says that the reason it doesn't look like other cases where a person was hit by a vehicle was because he wasn't hit by a vehicle.

• 1:17:58Ashley Flowers?

  Some of their last witnesses that the defense calls are crash reconstruction experts who will honestly become a very hot topic down the road here. These experts had been part of the federal investigation and they were presented at the time as impartial witnesses in this case. Meaning they said on the stand that they weren't paid by the defense for their testimony. It was completely like unbiased, right? So these experts testify that John's injuries were not consistent with being hit by a vehicle. The defense argues that John's head injury and black eyes come from some sort of fight. And that the marks on his arm weren't caused by being hit by a car at all.

• 1:18:37Speaker 01

  Dog bites.

• 1:18:38Ashley Flowers?

  The dog bites, yes. According to another of their witnesses, an expert in emergency trauma, the injuries on John's arm, they say, are likely teeth or claw marks. In their opinion, John had likely been mauled by an animal, possibly a large dog.

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  Which the Alberts had a German Shepherd mix.

• 1:18:56Ashley Flowers?

  Right, Chloe. So Jackson argues that at some point that night before, during, or you know, after whatever altercation happened at the Alberts' house, Chloe, the dog, attacked him.

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  And I feel like that's what like has fed into the conspiracy stuff is like they got rid of the dog. I mean, as a dog person, that's impossible to understand.

• 1:19:18Ashley Flowers?

  So the Alberts say that they didn't rehome Chloe until four months after all of this, though. Not because of anything related to John, they say. They said that they sent Chloe to live in Vermont because she had gone after like another neighborhood dog or or multiple neighborhood dogs. And I think it's worth noting that like apparently Labtechs did not find any canine DNA on swabs from John's sweatshirt, which had tears through it in the spots, like the same spots as the arm.

• 1:19:44Speaker 01

  It lined up.

• 1:19:45Ashley Flowers?

  You know, if like a dog is like coming at you, their slobbery is all get out.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:19:49Ashley Flowers?

  So that doesn't really help the dog by argument. But they did find pig DNA? So experts who testified at trial say that that could have come from a food product, like maybe a pork-based dog treat.

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  Okay, aside, you or another friend like messed up a doggy DNA test for the same reason. Like it came back like completely bovine.

• 1:20:11Ashley Flowers?

  Oh, that wasn't me.

• 1:20:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, someone that did like a dog DNA test and the test came back as like not dog because they had to give their dog a treat to do the swab.

• 1:20:20Ashley Flowers?

  No way.

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:20:21Ashley Flowers?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:20:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, so like that like in my mind like bears some credence, but also Albert sold their home around this same time too, which like the combination of the two things, the defense, I think, finds pretty suspicious.

• 1:20:33Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, Nicole says, Nicole Albert, says that they had planned to move long before John's death and they had reached out to a realtor in like 2021 and then the sale was finalized in 23. So again, like weird coincidence, they say. And I don't want to make of that. There's a lot of things I don't know what to make of, right? So like the federal investigation, I think that we can like label this like area of the episode stuff I think is weird, but didn't know where to fit in the episode.

• 1:20:58Speaker 01

  Question marks.

• 1:20:58Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, so there's just like little bits of things I want to hit on at a high level. And I'll just give you like the bullet points because we got a trial to get two people and I don't want to keep you here till tomorrow. So here are some fast facts. One, the feds found out that Brian Albert destroyed his cell phone a day before he received a protective order to preserve that phone and its contents. Now, he says this is just a coincidence. He was due for an upgrade, so he traded it in. Okay, fine, been there. Brian Higgins, the phone stuff is harder for me to digest. So he apparently asked another. Federal agent for advice on extracting phone data. And then, months later, drove to a military base,

• 1:21:41Ashley Flowers?

  disposed of his phone and destroyed his SIM card. He claims this was because the target of an unrelated investigation had his contact info. Seems like you could maybe just like change your number, not destroy your phone on a military base that state officials couldn't get access to, but like, whatever.

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:00Ashley Flowers?

  Now, obviously, at some point, this flurry of texts and calls we had with everyone in this group, like that they were doing during the first day, like, stopped. But the defense alleges that this group of conspirators was still in communication in the early days to coordinate and, quote, "get their story straight." And they use one example in particular. So, on the stand, Jen reiterates the big beats of the case that we've talked about already. But during her cross-examination, something new comes out. Jen says that on January 30th, so this is the day after John dies, she was with Carrie Roberts, who, reminder, she's the third woman who was there when John was found. Carrie and Jen go to drop Carrie's daughter off at a friend's house,

• 1:22:43Ashley Flowers?

  a friend whose father is Canton PD Sergeant Michael Link, who testified about evidence collection at the scene. And apparently, when Carrie and Jen go to the house, Link's wife came out to talk to Carrie, and she got into the car with them and stayed in the car for an hour, talking to them about John's death.

• 1:23:02Speaker 01

  So this isn't like a quick little chat?

• 1:23:04Ashley Flowers?

  No, not at all. And Jackson points to that, like, he says this is something that Jen never even mentioned until a pre-trial meeting in the DA's office. Now, Jen claims that this is just a situation where two friends, Carrie and Link's wife, were talking about a traumatic event that just occurred. But the defense views this as another example of conversations that Jen and others were having in the aftermath of John's death, where they might have all been trying to, like, get on the same page. And I want you to remember, the defense doesn't have to prove what happened, right? Like, the burden of proof is fully on the Commonwealth. But I think that Karen and her team knew that they needed to put forward an alternate theory, because her hitting John feels like the obvious answer to most people.

• 1:23:48Ashley Flowers?

  So their theory, as I told you before, revolves around the allegation that some sort of fight ensued between Brian Albert, Brian Higgins, and Colin Albert. And at first, nobody says that Colin Albert was even at the house that night. And there's no phone data putting him there at the house that night because investigators never collected his phone data. But eventually, he tells police that he was there earlier in the night, but he says that he never saw John. And here's another weird little ditty. Like, I told you from the get, prosecutor's theory is that John never entered the house, right? Like, that's been everyone's consistent story.

• 1:24:25Speaker 01

  Right. No one saw him after he left Karen's car.

• 1:24:27Ashley Flowers?

  So here's this weird thing. So apparently, when Brian Higgins testified before the federal grand jury, he said that he might have seen a tall, dark-haired man come into the Albert's house. And John O'Keefe was a tall, dark-haired man. So a lot of people think that Higgins was describing seeing John in the house that night, like, just in case it comes up that he was there, so he didn't, like, lie in front of a grand jury. But later, when Higgins gets grilled about this on the stand, he says that he could have been talking about maybe the brother of somebody at the party when he said that. But anyways, back to Colin. At the time of John's death, Colin was still in high school. By the time it goes to trial, he's in college.

• 1:25:08Ashley Flowers?

  And he comes to court to testify and says that he had gone to his Uncle Brian's house that night around 10:30 or 11:00 to celebrate his cousin's birthday. He had a few beers, again, like, red cop's house, he's in high school, like, not awesome, but whatever. He said he listened to some music, hung out, and then he texted a friend for a ride home, and he left around 12:30 a.m. That friend who picked him up was Jen McCabe's daughter, Ally McCabe. Ally says that she picked Colin up before any of the adults got back from the bar, and that she was home from dropping him off by 12:30. But Karen's lawyers have pulled data from the app Life360, which I don't know if you've used that for your kids, but like I'm very familiar with it.

• 1:25:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, like every crime detective knows Life360, right?

• 1:25:51Ashley Flowers?

  You should. Anyways, it basically like, it's a tracking app for teens or whatever. And this app shows that Ally was driving around until like 1:30. Now, in court, she just offers like, well, maybe her excuse is like, the data is off. She's like, I wasn't connected to wifi at the time.

• 1:26:09Speaker 01

  But that can't be the excuse for everything. The data isn't wrong, those calls weren't answered. The data is wrong, like, I wasn't driving around.

• 1:26:17Ashley Flowers?

  I know.

• 1:26:17Speaker 01

  The data was, like, that's just a blanket excuse at this point.

• 1:26:20Ashley Flowers?

  I know, this is what I'm saying about this case. Like, you can make sense of like one or two things that are like wonky or like weird, but like, all the footage can't be missing, all the data can't be wrong, like, all at the same time.

• 1:26:33Speaker 01

  Well, and I can't figure out why. Like, I still don't get the motive.

• 1:26:39Ashley Flowers?

  I don't know, I think it's because there isn't a strong one. I mean, they bring up those texts between Karen and Brian Higgins. They kind of suggest that maybe Brian Higgins might have felt like Karen was blowing him off that night. It got under his skin, like, they've been having this flirtation over texts, they even kissed. Like, it felt like all of this was building to something. But then Karen shows up at the bar he's at with his friends, with John. And then she doesn't pay much attention to Brian. Though, I mean, worth noting on the stand, when they asked Brian about all this, he's like, whatever. Like, yeah, we texted, but like, no hard feelings, it wasn't serious, like, I don't know. So, maybe feelings are just like bubbling under the surface more than anything. And again, I don't even think they're like thinking this is motive, like he was going after John. I think they're just trying to show some like animosity, like, why would he maybe jump into something else that happened?

• 1:27:23Ashley Flowers?

  Though they don't say that explicitly. They focus mostly on Colin as the possible, like, catalyst to all of this. And it's important to note that Colin had reportedly had issues with John in the past. Colin's family lived near John, and in the spring of 2020, John's security alarm went off. And when he woke up and he went downstairs, he found Colin and several other teenagers in his front yard. And Colin yelled at John and like, apparently had Some choice words for him. Now, John never called the police, but Karen says that there was bad blood between Colin and John after that. Now Colin says that they never had any beef, but it's the defense's position that Colin had a history of being a hothead

• 1:28:06Ashley Flowers?

  and was part of an assault on John that happened inside the Albert house. And that the Bryans then after this brought John out into the snow. And to like, try and like, form this picture, Jackson actually pulls up what he insinuates is proof that Colin threw some punches that night. He finds a photo of Colin out with his friends like weeks after John's murder, in which you can see that his knuckles are like red and raw. Now Colin says that he had slipped on ice, which like, everyone's like, at the time, I remember when this like came up in trial, everyone's like, how do you, when you fall, like,

• 1:28:46Speaker 01

  You fall down.

• 1:28:47Ashley Flowers?

  I've never fallen knuckles first.

• 1:28:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:28:49Ashley Flowers?

  It doesn't make sense to me. I don't know. And I have a problem with this like alternative theory. Like, we know that part of what contributed to John's death was hypothermia. And I know like a ton of people aren't on board with what I'm about to say, but like I have a hard time believing that a group of people who were either friends with or like barely knew a guy, would like take him out to the snow to let him die if something else happened. But I also, like, and don't get me wrong that I'm saying like, like I totally believe everything that they're saying. Because like, I think it's very clear that people are lying. So then the question to me more than anything is like, what are you lying about?

• 1:29:33Speaker 01

  Well, and didn't they make like a big deal about the Apple Health data during the trial? Like John specifically, like where he moved and when he moved and all of that?

• 1:29:44Ashley Flowers?

  Yes. I mean, I think everything they put forward about that, like a lot of stuff in this case could go either way. Because what the data shows is that after 12:20, around the time Karen says that she dropped him off, it says that John took 80 steps, which is like half a football field's distance, and then either went like up or down three floors. And that could be because he entered the house. The problem with that is GPS data from his phone apparently shows that he was in the car a half mile away from the Albert's house when that movement was actually logged. Honestly, like, I probably should have known this already, but like, I feel like tech isn't nearly as reliable as I thought it was for tracking stuff like this.

• 1:30:25Ashley Flowers?

  Like, this case has made it scary to me, and it's like, almost like a beware ye future jurors, not just on this case, but like, any.

• 1:30:32Speaker 01

  Well, and I was thinking when you were saying like, the steps and how long it was, like, my devices think that I am running a marathon.

• 1:30:40Ashley Flowers?

  Because we're doing this in talking.

• 1:30:41Speaker 01

  And I'm knitting, because my hands and wrists are moving, and it's like,

• 1:30:45Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:45Speaker 01

  Oh, wow, you're getting your steps in, and I was like, oh, dear.

• 1:30:48Ashley Flowers?

  I know.

• 1:30:49Speaker 01

  I am not.

• 1:30:50Ashley Flowers?

  I know, so like, what does the data mean? How does it all come together? How does this puzzle fit?

• 1:30:56Speaker 01

  If it does.

• 1:30:57Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, because like, I've spiraled every which way I can about this case. Like, did he go into the house and something happened? Call it a fight, call it an accident, whatever? And then maybe like, did they tell him to like, get out of here? Not realizing how bad off he was, and then he collapsed in the snow? But like, that doesn't explain all of it. Did Karen really hit him, accidentally or otherwise? And then the investigation was super sloppy, maybe even corrupt? Proctor trying to make like, an easy win? And then everything else was about covering up the nonsense?

• 1:31:26Speaker 01

  But that also doesn't really explain everything.

• 1:31:29Ashley Flowers?

  Nothing explains all of it. Oh, one of the other pieces that I think is worth mentioning, because like, it's huge when it comes to the prosecution's cases, one of the things I brought up in evidence that they point to, is the hair that they found on Karen's car that they said links to John, right? Like, this is proof that she hit John with her car.

• 1:31:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:31:49Ashley Flowers?

  Well, a lot of people are wondering, like, is that real? Or is this more proof that evidence was planted? Because it is a singular hair attached to like, not even like, on top of the bumper, but like, the side back of her car. And everyone's like, okay, she hits him, she drives to his house in a blizzard, then drives all over looking for him, and then to-

• 1:32:13Speaker 01

  Also still in a blizzard.

• 1:32:14Ashley Flowers?

  Also still in a blizzard, and then she's driving to Jen's house, and then she's back at his house, and then she's there, and then she's at her parents' house, and then they tow her car to the Sallyport, and in that time, yes, maybe the hair froze on, but then they also bring it to the heated Sallyport garage, so everything can melt off, and that's, the picture they have of the hair is like, it's on the car. And so that's the one thing that didn't melt off, like-

• 1:32:34Speaker 01

  It just seems so unlikely.

• 1:32:35Ashley Flowers?

  It seems like magic, it's not impossible, clearly, but like-

• 1:32:39Speaker 01

  But is it?

• 1:32:40Ashley Flowers?

  I don't know. So if I were a juror, I don't know what happened in the wee morning hours of January 29th, but the way this has unfolded has left so much room for reasonable doubt. If an investigating agency can do everything I just talked about and secure a conviction, honestly, that's the scariest freaking idea to me. It's scary to let someone get away with killing someone too. Don't get me wrong, but like, my God, we have to set some kind of standard, right? Like, so many jobs have a bare minimum requirement. Like, if you are gonna put someone on trial and take their entire life away, you should have to at least do your job the right way? Like, am I, am I crazy?

• 1:33:25Speaker 01

  No, like, it seems like an easy ask, but...

• 1:33:29Ashley Flowers?

  But I don't think, I don't know that everyone agrees. I would say some people might, but not everyone, because a jury didn't fully agree with me. So after receiving a fire hose of information for nearly two months, the jury ends up telling the judge that they cannot reach a verdict. They send a note to Judge Beverly Canoni saying that they are deadlocked after three days. She doesn't accept the first one. She's like, this is three days. We've been here for six weeks. Get in there and try it again. They send a few other notes. They send one asking a question. And then on July 1st, 2024, after deliberating for less than a week, they send a final note to the judge that says, despite our rigorous efforts, we continue to find ourselves at an impasse. And Canoni

• 1:34:14Ashley Flowers?

  quickly declares a mistrial, citing a hung jury. So prosecutors say that they fully planned to go after Karen again. I mean, clearly, there were some people on the jury who saw what they saw. We'll see you back in court, basically. But after this, some people from the jury were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's not the whole story. In the weeks after the trial, Jackson says that at least five jurors approached him, indicating that the jury wasn't hung on all three charges. In fact, they had agreed to acquit Karen on two of the three: murder and leaving the scene with injury or death. It was just the manslaughter while operating under the influence of alcohol charge that they couldn't agree on.

• 1:34:59Ashley Flowers?

  So after they come forward to Jackson and the media, Karen's lawyers moved to have those charges, the ones that they agreed on, thrown out, claiming that like, the jury had unanimously agreed on those to acquit her specifically of those charges, and trying her again would constitute double jeopardy. Obviously, that's not cool with the prosecution, and this fight goes to the state's highest court, but the ruling is the same, no matter how far up they go. The issue is that the jury never wrote that down and submitted that as a verdict.

• 1:35:29Speaker 01

  So it wasn't an official verdict?

• 1:35:31Ashley Flowers?

  It didn't count, right. So Judge Beverly Canoni's ruling stands, AKA Auntie Bev's. Because by the way, we haven't even gotten into that potential conflict of interest that Auntie Bev might have in the case. So there's been a lot of talk alleging that she's also cozied up to the Albert and McCabe families. And listen, there are some maybe receipts here. So first off, according to the Vanity Fair article on Reed's case, Bev's brother represented Brian Albert's brother when he went to trial for a motor vehicle homicide case, and then he went to jail for like six months. And then there are these screenshots of a text convo between Turtle Boy, he's back

• 1:36:14Ashley Flowers?

  again, and who he says was Jen McCabe's brother-in-law Sean McCabe. Apparently Turtle Boy asked Sean if the McCabe's had a direct line to the judge, and Sean allegedly responded by saying, quote, "Auntie Bev? Who's seaside cottage do you think we're gonna bury your corpse under later?" End quote. Now, the alleged conflicts run so deep that the defense actually asked Auntie Bev, or Judge Canoni, to recuse herself from the case altogether, but she wouldn't step aside. She says that she did not know Sean, and that she had never socialized with any of the witnesses in this case, so there was no lack of impartiality.

• 1:36:53Speaker 01

  This is so much.

• 1:36:54Ashley Flowers?

  It is, but in the end, she declared a mistrial, right? So, here we go again. And even in this new trial, Judge Canoni will be the judge again. And here's the thing, post this last trial and pre this new one, stuff has been just as wild as the last time around. As of this recording, Karen's lawyers are still trying to argue the double jeopardy claim in federal court. Karen's also been busy. She has been meeting with supporters across the country. She's hoping to raise money for blood and DNA testing to be done on carpeting that was thrown out of the Albert's home after it was sold. And her defense team has found themselves in the hot seat as well.

• 1:37:36Ashley Flowers?

  Judge Canoni expressed what she called grave concern over the fact that prosecutors say they found evidence that two, what we were told were impartial witnesses, the one who said that John's injuries weren't consistent with being struck by a car. Well, they were actually paid around $23,000 by the defense, even though one of them, who people online are calling Crash Daddy, he said on the stand that the defense hadn't paid him anything. Now, technicality maybe, because I guess he was paid a month after he testified to that, but he was paid nonetheless. So like, I'm side-eyeing everyone in this case, you guys. Including Michael Morrissey, the DA bringing the charges against Karen.

• 1:38:19Ashley Flowers?

  It's worth noting that this isn't the only case that his office has handled that people are questioning. He and his office are getting a lot of heat for how they handled the death of Sandra Birchmore. And I could go on for hours about her case, but like, quick Cliff Notes, Sandra was part of the Police Explorers program.

• 1:38:39Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:38:40Ashley Flowers?

  Mm-hmm. Which you're gonna hear me mention if you come on Twitter. And in this program, she met a cop who allegedly groomed her when she was a kid, had a sexual relationship with her when she was under 16. Well, he is now accused of killing her while she was pregnant with his child. And the accusation is that he staged her death to look like a suicide. Morrissey's office ruled that it was a suicide, but federal authorities stepped in years later and indicted the officer on charges that he killed Sandra. So her case is one of like the most egregious examples of abuse connected to the police explorer programs. Like this will be, I'm like vowing this will be an episode one day, but like I continue to look into it.

• 1:39:21Ashley Flowers?

  But anyways, Morrissey has been under pressure from all angles as both of these cases unfold in Canton. So for Karen's retrial, the prosecution has brought in someone new. Hank Brennan is coming in to lead the team. Now, this guy represented infamous Boston mob boss Whitey Bulger during his federal trial. So to say that he's a heavy hitter is an understatement. And it's clear that they plan to come out swinging. In October, prosecutors requested records from Karen's dad's cell from around the time of John's death, which they say shows alleged proof of her calling her dad at around 1:30 in the morning, the night that John died.

• 1:40:04Ashley Flowers?

  Now, police had gotten a search warrant for Karen's phone earlier, but investigators were working on removing, I guess, like privileged conversations she was having with her lawyer before handing the records over to the prosecution. So that's why this is just coming up now. And while we were finalizing this episode, prosecutors dropped the list of who they planned to call to the stand in trial number two, and Karen's dad is now on the list this time. So it seems like they might zero in on those calls. Now, the federal investigation into John's death and the handling of the case was closed as of March 4th, 2025. The federal investigation loomed over Karen's case for more than a year, but it did not result in any charges, which might be something for the prosecution to use.

• 1:40:48Ashley Flowers?

  However, the Internal Affairs investigation into Michael Proctor wrapped in January.

• 1:40:53Ashley Flowers?

  And then he went in front of the Massachusetts State Police Trial Board three times. And in March, while they waited on the trial board's decision, his family like broke their silence. They really had not been talking this whole time. But his wife, Elizabeth Proctor, and Michael's sister Courtney Proctor, released a statement saying that even though his texts were regrettable, same word that he used, he was just venting to friends like during a stressful situation. They say that their family has been tormented and harassed since those texts went public. And they think the attention on Proctor has been the defense's attempt to distract from the person who's actually on trial, and that's Karen Reed.

• 1:41:34Ashley Flowers?

  In the end, I don't think the statement helped because on March 19th, Proctor was fired. State police said that the trial board recommended that they fire him, and then the state police agreed citing those very texts about Karen and drinking on the job. His family said that by firing Proctor, the trial board was unfairly exploiting and scapegoating one of their own. And I think like, no, it probably should just hold people accountable.

• 1:42:00Speaker 01

  Just a thought.

• 1:42:01Ashley Flowers?

  Now, we reached out to a whole lot of people in this case, like scrolling through our reporter Taylor's call log, it looks like scrolling through a Boston area phone book. But the only one who responded was Greg Henning, who is representing Brian and Nicole Albert and their kids. He said that he would send us a statement, and he did. So Bren, I'm gonna have you read it.

• 1:42:22Speaker 01

  The Alberts identified a real estate agent and prepared to sell their home months before the death of John O'Keefe. This information, along with the location and history of their dog, was provided to and investigated by law enforcement, including the U.S. Attorney's Office. The Alberts had nothing to do with the death of John O'Keefe. There's no conspiracy. Any suggestion otherwise is fabricated bull.

• 1:42:44Ashley Flowers?

  Now, we've told you a lot about the case against Karen Reed in this episode, but I do want to make sure that John's name isn't forgotten. Like, this is becoming about Karen so much and about the police department as a whole. But at the center of all of this, where this all started was with John's death. And no matter who killed John or how he died, there is a loving family that misses him. And that actually is one, like, beautiful part of the documentary. Early on in episode one, they play home videos of him. And like, I feel like I got to see who he was in like, a completely different way than this, like, 2D version we've gotten of him so far. So before we wrap up, I want to tell you a little bit more about John.

• 1:43:28Ashley Flowers?

  So John, known as Johnny or JJ by his family and friends, grew up in Braintree, Massachusetts. He's one of three children in a middle-class Italian and Irish family in a middle-class Italian and Irish town just outside of Boston. He graduated from Northeastern University in Boston, and then he went on to earn his master's degree in criminal justice from UMass. And he was the kind of guy who never missed opening day at Fenway Park. John had been a Boston police officer for 16 years and was loyal to his fellow officers. And he especially loved being an uncle to his niece and nephew. And he became their guardian after his sister died of brain cancer and then their father died of a heart attack. John's niece and nephew have been left to mourn another parent figure, and they're

• 1:44:12Ashley Flowers?

  now being raised by John's parents, who, after the mistrial, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Karen. They also filed it against the Waterfall Bar and C.F. McCarthy's, seeking $50,000 in damages for pain, suffering, and emotional distress. But a judge has put all of that on hold until Karen's criminal trial is over. At its core, this is a case that presents the question of whether a crack in an SUV taillight is cut and dry evidence of murder, or if it exposed a crack in the system, a system that was ripe for a cover-up that spanned agencies across Massachusetts.

• 1:44:50Ashley Flowers?

  Now, I've talked a lot about the details in this case and how those details have been interpreted by a million different people, a million different ways. I know there's a lot to process. I mean, even the actual jury on this case couldn't see a clear path forward. But I know us crime junkies always love to go a layer deeper. And so I want us to be locked in on this retrial together. And that's happening here in the next couple of weeks. So I want to try something new this time. We just started a new Crime Junkie Jury page on YouTube, where we are going to be streaming the trial and discussing what goes on every day with you. And you're going to have Brandy Churchill there. Like I said, she's like an expert in this case, watching along with you, explaining the things that

• 1:45:34Ashley Flowers?

  are happening. So don't feel like you have to come in as an expert. This is your way to like, get in and follow what's going on in real time. And you're not going to want to miss it, because I have a feeling we're in for another long ride.

• 1:46:00Ashley Flowers?

  You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com.

• 1:46:06Speaker 01

  And you can follow us on Instagram, at Crime Junkie Podcast.

• 1:46:09Ashley Flowers?

  We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.

• 1:46:47Ashley Flowers?

  Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

• 1:46:56Speaker 01

  When the nights grow longer, the shadows start to stir. And that can only mean one thing. Full Body Chills is back. This season, step inside original tales where every doorway leads somewhere darker, every stranger carries- Is a secret and nothing is ever quite what it seems. Each story takes you somewhere new, but be careful. You never know what might follow you home. So gather around, listen close and stream full body chills wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  Growing up in a small town, I know how deeply a crime can shake a local community. And I know that what makes the headlines is rarely the full story. That's what Kylie Lowe explores on her show Dark Down East. She digs into cases from Maine and New England using original reporting, archival records and conversations with the people who knew them best. Each episode takes you inside the communities these stories shaped and the families who never stop searching for answers. Listen to Dark Down East wherever you get your podcasts.