S3 Ep259: John O'Keefe: The Evidence (Part 4)

In the early morning hours of Saturday, January 29th, 2022, Boston Police officer John O’Keefe was found dead in a snowbank outside a home in Canton, Massachusetts. According to the medical examiner, O’Keefe had died from blunt force trauma and hypothermia. At first it seemed like a tragic accident, maybe a slip on the ice, a fall that ended in death. But as investigators dug deeper, things became far more complicated and Karen Read, O’Keefe’s girlfriend, became the center of the investigation. Evidence that there had been trouble in paradise in the romantic relationship began to surface, but so did other disturbing possibilities. What seemed like a domestic tragedy was quickly clouded by allegations of police corruption and cover-up, and an investigation that many believe was compromised from the start. What if the very people tasked with upholding the law were covering up the truth? Was John O’Keefe’s death a result of an angry lovers rage- or the collateral damage of a police force protecting its own? In this case, the line between justice and corruption becomes confusingly blurred. Evidence disappears, witnesses are silenced, and as the truth slowly rises to the surface, it may reveal a web of lies that’s more dangerous than anyone could have predicted. Was Karen Read the scapegoat in a larger cover-up? And what role did corruption within the police department play in distorting facts. This may not be just a story of love gone wrong, it may in fact turn out to be a story of power, deceit, and the price people will pay to keep the darkest of dark secrets buried. Join us as we delve deep into the case of John O’Keefe and Karen Read, and help us see if we can get closer to the truth. Try our coffee!! - www. CriminalCoffeeCo.comBecome a Patreon member -- > ｿ https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeeklyShop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> ｿ https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shopYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcastWebsite: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.comInstagram: @CrimeWeeklyPodTwitter: @CrimeWeeklyPodFacebook: @CrimeWeeklyPodADS:1. SimpliSafe.com/CrimeWeekly - Get 50% off any new system with a Select Professional Monitoring Plan!2. Talkspace.com/CrimeWeekly - Use code SPACE80 for $80 off your first month!3. Prose.com/CrimeWeekly - Get 50% off your first subscription order and a FREE in-depth hair consultation!4. SkyLightFrame.com/Weekly - Get $20 off!5. https://bit.ly/crimeweekly - Download June's Journey for free today!

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

• 0:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow.

• 0:16Derrick Levasseur?

  And I'm Derrick Levasseur.

• 0:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  And we are diving into part four of the John O'Keefe and Karen Reed case. But before we do, we have a special Criminal Coffee Holiday Announcement. We're so excited. Derek and I have been working behind the scenes. Well, mostly Derek, but I've been talking to him about it. We've been working behind the scenes to bring you something special. We have great coffee. Everybody who drinks it knows. And now we're adding a special addition. Derek, I will let you do the honors.

• 0:41Derrick Levasseur?

  That's right. Something that's been a probably our biggest request, flavored coffee. You guys wanted it for years. It's a whole different process and we are finally taking that challenge on. And we're starting with our holiday coffee. You're going to see the bag design right here on the screen. This is our Criminal Coffee Peppermint Bark. And it is delicious. I will tell you that Stephanie has tried it as well. It's amazing. And we've actually teamed up with Mills Coffee Roasters, which if you look them up, they're one of the oldest roasters in the country. They started in 1860. And I'm working with Susan Mills, who's obviously of the Mills family. And she's been a huge help. And this is going to be hopefully an ongoing relationship where we're going to offer

• 1:27Derrick Levasseur?

  the peppermint bark just for the holiday season. That one will go away. And then we're going to bring out other flavors throughout the season. That'll be seasonal, but we're also going to have some steady fixtures. We're going to have to figure out which ones they are, probably like a French vanilla or a hazelnut. But we will find the certain ones that you guys love and we'll keep them in stock all year round. But extremely excited about it. The bag, as you can see the design on the screen here, pretty cool. This is your first visual. Of Corver City. Nobody's ever seen it before. Now you can. This is supposed to depict what Corver City looks like in our minds. Think it came out pretty cool. There is a little caveat here.

• 2:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  What's the caveat?

• 2:06Derrick Levasseur?

  The caveat is we're scrambling. This was an ongoing process. It's something that we had to scramble to get done. And the bags, as I were recording this, are on their way here. So Mills is gonna do their best possible ability to kind of get these bags filled, and we will pick them up immediately to get them out to you. So as you're watching this episode, or listening to it on Friday, we should have the bags here, and I'll be shipping them out as soon as we get them. There may be a delay or two. So if you order the coffee, it may take an extra day or two than it normally does when you order from us. I wouldn't call this a preorder. It's on its way. But once you see this link, come up in this description box, click it, order your coffee, and as soon as it hits my

• 2:49Derrick Levasseur?

  door, you're gonna have it delivered to your door. So order as you can, because we have a limited supply. I only ordered, I don't know, maybe, I don't even know the number of bags I ordered. It wasn't a lot, because I wanted to see what the response was. So if you're interested in trying it, you've been waiting for something that is a little different than just the medium dark and light roast, this is definitely the option for you. Little hint that I've been finding out, and this is from Susan Mills herself, peppermint bark. It's obviously got chocolate notes, and it's got peppermint notes, strong peppermint notes. If you really want to enhance the chocolate note, you have to add a little sugar. So if you're not someone who loves sugar,

• 3:31Derrick Levasseur?

  that's okay. Just add a little bit in there. You'll taste the chocolate so much more. I didn't realize it until she's like, throw a little bit more sugar in there, and watch what happens, and pop, all of a sudden, tastes like a chocolate peppermint bar in my coffee.

• 3:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, it's like a peppermint, a chocolate peppermint patty. That's what it reminds me of.

• 3:47Derrick Levasseur?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 3:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  And peppermint mocha is my favorite holiday drink. So this is amazing. They've got, they've got great peppermint mocha creamers out there that pair beautifully with this. So check it out. Nothing better to give your loved ones this holiday season than a bag of this seasonal criminal coffee. It's so good. They're gonna love it. They're gonna drink it all throughout the winter, and you're gonna be happy that you did it.

• 4:12Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, this is gonna be like a medium roast, and I promise you, I will do everything in my power. If you order relatively soon, we will try and get it to you before the holidays. I'm pretty confident, unless you're ordering like two days before Christmas. We'll be able to get it to you. So that's the plan. Go check them out. Peppermint Bark. You can order it right now as you're hearing or seeing this. Appreciate the support. Enjoy the coffee and let us know what you think. If you love the flavored coffee and you want, and there's a specific flavor you might want to see or taste, I guess I should say, let us know in the comments and we're going to try to make that happen, but we're super excited.

• 4:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  I vote for hazelnut.

• 4:46Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, hazelnut and French vanilla are probably the most too popular, but there's some other flavors like smores and sugar cookie that we have on the table that we're talking about. There's also a fall flavor that has a hint of orange that I tasted. That was incredible. So really excited about expanding our product line. And this is just an evolution in building a coffee company. You have to go through two different processes. You can't use the same machines for the regular blends as you do for the flavored coffee because you have to clean out the alcohol with the flavor components. It's this whole thing. It's really pretty advanced, but we got it done. We're excited about it. So please go over, check it out. Let us know what you think. That's all I had.

• 5:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  All right. Well, let's dive in. It's gonna be a long episode. We got a lot to talk about today. We're covering the physical evidence and basically, you know, what one side says about it, what the other side says about it, et cetera, et cetera. You know the deal. You know it.

• 5:38Derrick Levasseur?

  But we're there. Can we recap real quick? Real quick, we've, after episode three, we've kind of came to the conclusion. You were already there, but now me going through the evolution, asking the questions I've asked, at this point, I've taken off guilty verdict off the table. She should be acquitted and as you have said multiple times, she shouldn't be tried again. It's too tainted now. There's been too many mix ups in the storyline. There's been too many questions about the witnesses. At this point, I'm transitioning to what actually happened because that's really important here. What actually happened to John O'Keefe? But as far as being factually innocent, I'm already there. If I'm a jury member, I'm finding Karen Reed not guilty on all charges. That's where I am.

• 6:21Derrick Levasseur?

  But now I'm trying to figure out who killed John O'Keefe? Was it an accident? Was it intentional?

• 6:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  You don't mean that you don't think Karen Reed could have potentially done this? You just mean in a court of law based on what you've seen?

• 6:33Derrick Levasseur?

  Correct. I think it's still very likely to be transparent with you guys that she did do it. She might not even have known she did it, but that doesn't also mean if she did it, that the police still aren't corrupt or wrong in what they did because as I've said to you before, And I don't know if it was on camera or off camera. I strongly believe that they decided immediately Karen Reed was guilty. And they built their case around that assumption. And that is the wrong way to investigate a case. They didn't open it up to all scenarios and follow the evidence. They said, oh, she did it. Now let's find the evidence that supports that. And it might have even gone as far as lying or embellishing what they found, not only on the part of law enforcement, but also the witnesses, to build that case and make it stronger.

• 7:18Derrick Levasseur?

  So that's what I'm trying to see here. Now, although their intentions may have been in the right place, I guess, if you want to say it like that, the way they conducted themselves is morally, ethically, and legally wrong, which is why people like Proctor are not even on the job right now.

• 7:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't think their intentions are in the right place. I'm just gonna put that out there.

• 7:36Derrick Levasseur?

  I hope you picked up on the tone there. I mean, obviously, I'm saying this because not everyone agrees with you. And our job is to represent everyone and to represent all sides regardless of what we believe in.

• 7:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  But it is my opinion that their intentions were not good.

• 7:53Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes, and if that wasn't abundantly clear after three episodes that Stephanie believes.

• 7:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  You don't unintentionally screw up this much.

• 8:01Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, conversely, I would argue that if it was intentional, they wouldn't have wanted to screw up this much, so they wouldn't.

• 8:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't think that they thought anybody was going to look that hard. I don't think they thought Karen Reed was gonna hire this badass defense team and fight back the way she did. I thought that, I think they thought she was gonna roll over and take it because she literally had no memory of what happened because she was so drunk allegedly.

• 8:21Derrick Levasseur?

  Agreed, agreed, yeah. And that's kind of where I'm at. So what I'm trying to figure out now is what actually happened. Clear out the white noise. Go off what we can, as much as we can, even though there's always two sides to, there's two interpretations of every single piece of evidence in this case, right? I'm trying to come to my own conclusions on what I am gonna choose to believe and try to avoid using testimony of quote unquote experts. Because I do want to say one more thing. I know this episode's long, but I have to reiterate it. And this is gonna piss some of my colleagues off, but I don't, it's the truth. I worked with the FBI and ATF and DEA for many years. And I have a lot of respect for them.

• 9:05Derrick Levasseur?

  There were some badasses that I worked with, some guys who were in the FBI who went overseas in Afghanistan and came back and are just absolute monsters, just the best guys you can think of and would run through a door for you. But I'm here to tell everyone, because there's a stigma behind the FBI that's not true. Just because they're an FBI agent, it does not make them better than anybody else. So when you're using it, saying, "Oh, the FBI said this, the FBI said that," I will tell you that for me, that doesn't carry a ton of weight. Because I have seen FBI agents that are no better than my local patrolman. They don't have the experience, they don't have the knowledge, and they're just a human being like you and I, and they make mistakes as well.

• 9:47Derrick Levasseur?

  So ultimately, what I'm suggesting to everyone is, come to your own conclusions. Don't use the acronyms in front of the expert's name to decide what is more valid than the other.

• 9:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, I think in this situation, when the FBI is being tasked to investigate the investigating body of this case, I would trust their opinion more than the opinion

• 10:06Derrick Levasseur?

  You can do that.

• 10:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  of the Massachusetts State Police or the Canton Police who are being investigated

• 10:10Derrick Levasseur?

  You can do that.

• 10:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  because of the way they handled it. So it's almost like this should be a little bit of an unbiased, more unbiased than the Mass State Police and Canton.

• 10:19Derrick Levasseur?

  It's possible, but I'm also here to tell you that when it comes down to the evidence itself and their interpretation of it, they can also be wrong. And that's not coming from something I'm just pulling out of my you-know-what. It's one of those things where I know firsthand that when I read a report from an FBI agent as opposed to a DEA agent or an ATF agent or a state trooper, you gotta evaluate the evidence for yourself. What I'm saying is, be an independent thinker, come to your own conclusions. There's a lot of different, different pieces of evidence in this case that that filter can be applied. We may talk about it some tonight. Obviously, we talked about the 2/27 timestamp, that's a big one, that's a huge one for a lot of people, but I do have some opinions on that as well.

• 11:02Derrick Levasseur?

  But overall, use what you believe is the most viable information. Don't go off the assumptions that you may have because of what you've been told. Oh, FBI is, there's this hierarchy where it goes, local authorities, state authorities, then federal authorities, and that's basically their rank as far as intelligence and capabilities. That's not true. Now, what Stephanie's saying as far as them being independent investigators, not being connected to Boston, whether it's laterally or vertically as far as their hierarchy, that could be true because they're not connected to Boston. But make no mistake about it, just because the FBI is looking into something, it doesn't mean they're more equipped to do so.

• 11:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  I would go as far as to say that the FBI being a law enforcement body may be almost more slanted to give a break to the police department.

• 11:49Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, they may look out for their boys because there's FBI agents, like I said, I'm a local, I was a local cop, but some of my best friends were FBI agents that would have my back if I needed to, not in a legal way, but they would have my back where we're working a case together, we're one and one. We don't look at it as, oh, they supersede me. So yeah, to that argument, you could say, yeah, if anything, the FBI is going to be slightly skewed to protecting, quote unquote, their own. So that's just something I want to say because I was going through my own research and I'm seeing, you know, the arguments and the debates and everyone's like, well, the FBI said this, but state police said this, oh, but Canton said this. And it's like, listen, wash out that noise,

• 12:31Derrick Levasseur?

  go to the source. Do your own independent thinking, your own independent investigation, and come to your own conclusions. Don't assume that the people relaying that to you just because of their resume are smarter than you. Because I'm here to tell you that's not the truth.

• 12:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  All right. Well, let's dive in. So let's go to the date of January 29th, 2022, when an investigation began into the death of Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe. We are going to the testimony of Massachusetts State Police Lieutenant Kevin O'Hara, who was also the team commander for the State Police Special Emergency Response Team, or CERT, as we'll refer to it from now on. So O'Hara said that at 2:30 PM on the 29th, he was contacted by Lieutenant Brian Tully, who's the supervisor for the Norfolk County DA's State Police Detective Unit. Tully told O'Hara that he was conducting a death investigation in Canton and needed assistance with an evidence search.

• 13:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  O'Hara said that he told Tully that members of the SRT team could respond, but it would take some time because of the weather conditions on that day, which as we know, was a pretty bad blizzard. At 3:45 PM, O'Hara told Tully that he and his team had been cleared to respond to the Canton area, the scene, and he would testify that his team were told to bring shovels, brooms, and rakes to assist with evidence recovery. At 4:56 PM, O'Hara and six other members of the SRT team arrived at 34 Fairview and they set up a grid search around where Karen's SUV was believed to have been parked the night before. Lieutenant O'Hara testified that by the time they started to search, it was already getting dark. He also testified that Tully had told the SRT team that John O'Keefe had been struck

• 14:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  by a vehicle and they should be looking for pieces of a broken taillight, along with John's missing sneaker, which is pretty specific information to give.

• 14:22Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, which by the way, already, already, that's tunnel vision, right? They're already, they've already come to the conclusion of what happened. Now they're trying to fill in the blanks to connect the dots and that they're trying to get to that conclusion now with evidence. So right there, that's already a red flag for me.

• 14:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  So O'Hara said they found six or seven pieces of a taillight on the street between the flagpole and fire hydrant in front of the Albert home, and these were found while searching through snowdrifts. And in that same general area, John's other sneaker was found, completely buried in snow. By 6:15 PM, the entire search was wrapped up and O'Hara told Brian Tully that the SRT team could return during the day to continue searching. Now in court, the ADA, Adam Lally, showed the jury photos of where the taillight pieces and sneakers had been found. And on cross-exam, defense attorney David Yanetti pointed out to O'Hara that the scene had not been secured and had been left open to the public for hours before the SRT team arrived.

• 15:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yanetti was also able to get O'Hara to admit that the information about where the search was gonna take place and what they were looking for had come with Tully. And he pointed out a portion of O'Hara's report where O'Hara noted that John O'Keefe had been hit and dragged by a vehicle at around 12:30 a.m. O'Hara also admitted that he had gotten this information from Lieutenant Brian Tully. Now, it has been questioned how the Canton police officers who initially responded to the scene found no taillight pieces, even though they conducted their search in the early morning hours when it was light out. But then 12 hours later, when it was dark, the CERT team found some pieces of taillight along with John's sneaker.

• 16:04Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now, although CERT collected some pieces of the taillight on the afternoon of January 29th, several more pieces would be found, but not by CERT. Trooper Michael Proctor would enter over 30 pieces of taillight into evidence that he claimed he randomly found during five separate occasions over the course of the month of February 2022. So it's Proctor and a couple other law enforcement people who claimed they were just like driving by and would just see pieces of taillight and they'd stop and grab them. And according to the original police reports, law enforcement recovered taillight pieces from Brian Albert's front yard over the course of two searches, which was January 29th and February 3rd.

• 16:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  However, photographs of dated evidence bags showed that additional undocumented searches recovered more taillight pieces. Notations on the evidence bags showed that Trooper Michael Proctor traveled to the Albert home by himself on February 8th, February 11th, and February 18th, at which point he collected more pieces, but no information about where these pieces of evidence were found was notated.

• 17:07Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, not only, not only should it have been notated, but whenever you collect evidence, the number one thing you want to do is photograph it, put a placard there, date, time, if you can, videotape it, but at minimum photos, at minimum photos that show it in the place before you remove them.

• 17:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, this was never done, and not only that...

• 17:24Derrick Levasseur?

  That's a problem right there. It brings into question the evidence, of course.

• 17:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  Why was Trooper Proctor the one grabbing these? Why wouldn't he call an evidence response team or, you know, make sure somebody else was there to document it so that he could be above board?

• 17:38Derrick Levasseur?

  So this is, this is... This is where I'll get pushed back on it, but the truth is like that would be great if you could say, hey, could someone respond over here to watch me secure this evidence? That's why, that's not always practical. What is practical is as a detective, he should have a camera bag with him. And what he should be doing is, okay, I just, I'm coming by as the lead investigator here. I'm checking the scene and I want to look at it again. I should be noting the date and time that I arrived. I should be taking an overall photo of the residence and the area before, not even zooming in, just an overall photo. I should then be approaching the area, dropping my yellow placards with the numbers on it and taking photos showing the areas with a scale. And then at that point, documenting each piece of evidence being put into a bag with

• 18:23Derrick Levasseur?

  a date and time. So there's no dispute about where and when that evidence was located and the conditions of the environment. That's why you take the overview, overall photo. Now that could still be questioned, of course, with nobody else there. But if you do that, it minimizes an opportunity to be questioned. Him not doing that and just assuming it's going to be believed, that's a problem.

• 18:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And let's talk about this broken taillight, right? Because it's one of the most compelling pieces of evidence against Karen Reed.

• 18:51Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, yeah, agreed.

• 18:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now remember that on the morning of the 29th, both Jennifer McCabe and Carrie Roberts had testified that Karen pointed out damage to her right rear passenger side taillight. At 4:30 PM on January 29th, law enforcement, including Trooper Yuri Bukhenek, arrived to the home of Karen Reed's parents in Diggle, Massachusetts to interview her. When they approached the home, they observed that Karen's black Lexus SUV was parked outside and troopers observed damage to the right passenger side taillight.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  Bukhenek also describing his first interview with Karen Reed that morning in January.

• 19:25Speaker 03

  She was asked if she saw Mr. O'Keefe walk into the home at 34 Fairview and she stated she did not. She stated that...

• 19:36Speaker 03

  She made a three-point turn after dropping him off and left.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  He adds Reid was then notified her SUV and cellphone would be seized.

• 19:44Speaker 03

  She was asked if she knew if, how she found out about the damage to her vehicle, to which she stated, quote, "I don't know. It happened last night."

• 19:53Speaker 02

  This video showing Reid backing up into O'Keefe's car, then driving off. Reid's defense team has pointed to this incident causing the taillight damage. Another surveillance video capturing Reid and her father later looking at it.

• 20:07Speaker 03

  They observed the defendant and her father at the rear right taillight gesturing or signaling towards the affected damaged and missing parts of the taillight.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  This Sally Port video from the Canton Police Department showing Reid's SUV stored and taped off.

• 20:23Speaker 03

  We're establishing a perimeter around the vehicle.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  Her vehicle then later transported to Milton.

• 20:28Speaker 03

  The Canton Police Department had recused themselves from interviews and that portion of the investigation.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  Outside of court, we asked Reid about her taillight. Karen, how did the taillight get damaged?

• 20:43Speaker 04

  You saw it. I backed up into John's car.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  Her father saying the same.

• 20:48Speaker 05

  But it makes contact with the O'Keefe vehicle and you'll see his left rear wheel jets him forward then return to its previous position. And that's how I believe my daughter's taillight got cracked.

• 21:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so we're going to talk more about this video of Karen Reid's SUV backing up into John O'Keefe's car the morning of the 29th. We're going to talk more about that in a minute. But that's, that's pretty much what the defense says. That's how her taillight got cracked.

• 21:17Derrick Levasseur?

  I mean, listen, it's convenient that that video being there is pretty damn good.

• 21:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  So allegedly in this video, you can see the taillight was not as broken as pictures taken after the car was towed to illustrate. And this is actually supported from Sergeant Nicholas Barrows, who was with Yuri Bukenek at Karen Reid's parents' home on the 29th when the vehicle was towed.

• 21:39Speaker 06

  And at some point, did you make any observations of the right rear part of that Lexus SUV?

• 21:45Speaker 07

  I did.

• 21:45Speaker 06

  And what, if anything, did you observe about that area of the vehicle?

• 21:49Speaker 07

  I saw that there was some damage to the right rear taillight. To my best ability and recollection, that taillight was not completely damaged. It was cracked and a piece was missing, but not completely damaged.

• 22:05Speaker 06

  And then beyond the taillight area of that vehicle, what if anything else did you observe as far as damage to the rear passenger side area?

• 22:11Speaker 07

  Uh, like a dent on the rear quarter.

• 22:17Speaker 06

  And as far as the dent on the rear quarter panel that you saw, was that above the taillight, below the taillight, or something?

• 22:25Speaker 07

  Um, it's probably right in conjunction with the taillight in that same area.

• 22:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so Karen's SUV arrived at Sallyport at 5:32 PM, and there's a video of this happening. But there's a few things wrong with this video. Aside from it seemingly being altered with jump cuts and, you know, a bunch of time missing, something else isn't quite right.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  Video of Reed's SUV that prosecutors showed to the jury may not be what it seems. This video appears to be flipped, the image of it. The defense says flipped on purpose. NewsCenter 5's David Benick live at the courthouse in Dedham to explain more. David?

• 23:07Speaker 07

  Erica, this revelation came at the end of today's testimony here, and it caught everyone off guard. Some jurors even looked at each other quizzically, and some may have wondered if they'd just been tricked. The video shows police pulling Karen Reed's SUV into the Canton Police Department garage after it was seized as evidence. The video appears to show the passenger side, including the passenger side taillight, which prosecutors say was damaged after Reed allegedly backed into John O'Keefe and killed him.

• 23:34Speaker 03

  I testified that this is an accurate scene.

• 23:40Speaker 07

  But under cross-examination, state police investigator Yuri Buhenik confirmed the video is actually inverted. It shows not the passenger side, but the driver's side of the SUV. At one point, it shows the driver getting out. Not once did you mention that this video is actually completely inverted.

• 23:59Speaker 03

  Did not know. How did you discover that the image was inverted? I saw the word "police" and thought I had dyslexia.

• 24:06Speaker 07

  In the video, the word "police" appears backwards on another vehicle parked in the garage. So does the number "4" on one of the garage's overhead doors. Defense attorney Alan Jackson believes it was no accident.

• 24:19Speaker 03

  The timestamp across the bottom is not inverted, which means somebody had to put that on the inverted, the manipulated, the altered video on purpose.

• 24:29Speaker 07

  Here is the video again after we

• 24:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  have uninverted it, what is in fact the passenger side taillight is out of view. And there appears to be somebody standing near it. Who's the guy in the watch cap and the winter cap back there by that right rear taillight? The entire time by himself? That's Proctor. Proctor is Trooper Michael Proctor, the lead investigator on the case. Now, the defense has said that he is the one who broke the taillight as part of an effort, they say, to frame Karen Reed. I did reach out to the district attorney's office about that inverted video. They said they would not comment. OK, so we're going to hear a little bit from Yuri Bukanek in a second. Because basically, what the defense is trying to show is that Karen Reed caused some

• 25:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  damage to her taillight when she backed into John O'Keefe's car on the morning of the 29th, maybe a crack, as Barrows had testified to. But the defense is also trying to suggest that the Sally Port video was intentionally inverted so that the jury would think what they were seeing was the passenger side of the SUV, and they would see that while in Sally Port, no one had gone near that side. When in fact, Trooper Proctor spends some time hovering around the rear passenger side of the car. And this is when they believe he collected pieces of Karen's taillight so that he could return to 34 Fairview and plant these pieces in the snow to be discovered later by himself and other law enforcement officials. And we're going to talk about this in a second, but first, let's take a quick break. We'll be right back.

• 26:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  We're back. So do you want to comment on the inverted video before we hear from Trooper Bukanek?

• 26:08Derrick Levasseur?

  So just not even as a police officer, I don't understand why the video was inverted. And also, if like, I think the defense makes a great argument, like, you know, as to why the motive behind the invert, why you would invert it. But to be honest with you, it almost doesn't make sense either, because if you were really trying to convey that was the passenger side. The guy gets out of the car after driving it in the lot. So anyone with a brain is going to know unless you're in the UK that it's an inverted video. Right? Because he gets out of the car.

• 26:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't, I don't think that anybody is really thinking that hard, especially when you're a jury member and you're sitting there watching a video that you hear Trooper Buchanan say is an accurate representation of what happened. You're not really thinking. You're just like, oh yeah, it's right.

• 26:52Derrick Levasseur?

  I guess it's my detective brain because I saw the guy get out of the car and I'm like, oh, okay. It's, it's backwards.

• 26:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, nobody was by the, the right rear passenger taillight. So how could it have been tampered with? You know?

• 27:02Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I think it's a great, I think it's a great argument to make. And again, it's, it's, it's a great argument. It's a great argument. I, I immediately was like, oh, this video is backwards because I saw the dude get out of the, get out of the quote unquote passenger side because he had just driven it into the lot.

• 27:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, two people, two people get out of the car. So maybe we just missed that part of the video, but two people, one in the driver's side, one in the passenger's side. So it kind of looks like there's two people.

• 27:25Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. I mean, listen, you want to represent the video accurately and they didn't do that. And so even if it was inverted because of the technology in this, in the computer, you should invert it, you should switch it back. You want it to represent what, what it actually is. And by not doing that, again, you raise all these questions and, and it's, uh, and I think the argument put forward by the defense to show, oh, nobody's near the passenger side taillight the whole time, when in fact they were, is, is, is very problematic for the prosecution.

• 27:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  I agree. So let's hear a little bit from Trooper Buchanan when he's, uh, testified about this on cross.

• 28:01Speaker 07

  You do recall seeing the video that you saw yesterday, uh, the sort of clear one that has the crime scene tape being put up and all that. You have seen that one before?

• 28:10Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 28:10Speaker 07

  And that was with Mr. Law, correct?

• 28:13Speaker 03

  That is not correct because I do not recall when I saw that video or what video I saw with Mr. Law.

• 28:18Speaker 07

  I see. All right. Um, you indicated that the video that you, all the videos, uh, everything that you saw yesterday is true and accurate, correct? Based on your memory of the, the events? that were memorialized in the video?

• 28:29Speaker 03

  The video captures events taking place in inaccurate fashion, yes.

• 28:37Speaker 07

  In inaccurate fashion, alright, that's what I wanted to find out. And after you watched the video, I think you were asked by Mr. Lally, does the video show you or Trooper Proctor having access to or messing with in any way that right rear taillight in any fashion? And you said, "Never."

• 28:56Speaker 03

  I was asked if at any point Trooper Proctor and I had came into contact, I believe, and/or touched the vehicle and that portion of the vehicle? And I said, "Never, we never touched the vehicle" prior to it being properly processed with a search warrant.

• 29:13Speaker 07

  And that was the, specifically, his question was to, and your answer was to, the right rear portion of the vehicle, right? That right rear taillight?

• 29:21Speaker 03

  The right rear damaged taillight, correct.

• 29:24Speaker 07

  Sergeant, do you recognize this as being the video that we saw yesterday?

• 29:28Speaker 03

  It does look accurate.

• 29:31Speaker 07

  Okay, alright, that shows the vehicle coming into the Sallyport, and we're looking at which side of the vehicle?

• 29:37Speaker 03

  So that is the driver's side of the vehicle. What that video depicts is a mirror collection. Although mirrors are accurate representation of what you're seeing, it's just inverted. So that is the driver's side of the vehicle. I do not know why it is inverted, but that's the way it was presented, collected and presented from Canton Police.

• 29:58Speaker 07

  And you see a timestamp or a time and date stamp on the bottom of that, it's in blue?

• 30:04Speaker 03

  I cannot know.

• 30:05Speaker 07

  Who is that that just got out of the vehicle?

• 30:08Speaker 03

  I do not know. I think that's the tow truck driver. He would have the only access to the vehicle. We did not touch the vehicle.

• 30:18Speaker 07

  Who's that on the left?

• 30:21Speaker 03

  I missed it, I was looking down at the laser pointer. I do not know. I know for a fact, I'm the gentleman that's wearing a dark olive drab state police baseball style hat, and Trooper Mike Proctor is wearing a winter hat.

• 30:38Speaker 07

  Yesterday, when you testified, you indicated that the two individuals in this scene were you and Trooper Proctor, correct?

• 30:45Speaker 03

  Not correct. There was two individuals in the rear of the vehicle. I shined my light to, that was me and Trooper Proctor.

• 30:53Speaker 07

  Do you see Trooper Proctor toward the back of the rear of the vehicle there?

• 30:56Speaker 03

  I can't tell because of what the head is. I just know that Trooper Proctor was wearing a black hat.

• 31:03Speaker 07

  Which is the person in that, in the video to the left, to the rear of the car is wearing a black hat, correct?

• 31:10Speaker 03

  I can't tell. I don't want to be locked into a statement where later on you show me that it's somebody else magically. I can't testify to that.

• 31:18Speaker 07

  No magic about this. It's your testimony. Just ask me what you see.

• 31:21Speaker 03

  I don't see that, no.

• 31:23Speaker 07

  Do you see the person toward the back of the vehicle, walking toward the opposite side of the SUV?

• 31:30Speaker 03

  I do.

• 31:31Speaker 07

  What area does he appear to be going to?

• 31:34Speaker 03

  He appears to be going towards the rear passenger side of the vehicle, although it does not appear so because the video is inverted, a mirror image, that's where he's going.

• 31:46Speaker 07

  And Sergeant Butnik, you testified for at least a half an hour about this video yesterday, correct?

• 31:52Speaker 03

  I'm sorry, it was a long day, I don't know the timing of how long I testified.

• 31:56Speaker 07

  You significantly testified about this video yesterday, did you not?

• 31:59Speaker 03

  I testified about this video.

• 32:01Speaker 07

  And you testified that it was true and accurate, correct?

• 32:04Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 32:05Speaker 07

  You testified that it was reflective of your observations of what was happening in that Sallyport that evening, correct?

• 32:13Speaker 03

  I testified that this is an accurate...

• 32:19Speaker 03

  Scene and collection of video evidence from the Sally Port.

• 32:23Speaker 07

  And as that truck sits in that Sally Port, just like this, it appears from all perspective that what we're looking at is the passenger side of the car and that right rear taillight is right there shining in our face, correct? From this perspective.

• 32:39Speaker 03

  I'm sorry, can you repeat the question?

• 32:40Speaker 07

  From this perspective, from the perspective that the jurors are looking at.

• 32:44Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 32:45Speaker 07

  From all indications, that would appear to be the right side of the truck, the passenger side of the truck, and that taillight that you can see is the right rear taillight, from this perspective, correct?

• 32:56Speaker 03

  The way it presents itself, yes.

• 32:57Speaker 07

  And yesterday during the entirety of your questioning by Mr. Lauley, not once did you mention that this video is actually completely inverted, correct?

• 33:09Speaker 03

  Not, no.

• 33:10Speaker 07

  Mr. Lauley didn't ask you if it was inverted, correct?

• 33:14Speaker 03

  That's correct.

• 33:14Speaker 07

  And if I hadn't gotten up here because questioning you, that would be left uncorrected, correct?

• 33:21Speaker 06

  Objection.

• 33:21Speaker 07

  Sustained.

• 33:24Speaker 07

  The person with the winter cap appears to walk directly to the what ultimately should be the right rear taillight of this car, correct?

• 33:37Speaker 03

  That's the vicinity, yes, that's where he's in.

• 33:40Speaker 07

  I'd like you to pay attention to the right rear of this car, and I know we're completely backward, but it's the far corner of the car. Do you see a person's head there?

• 33:50Speaker 03

  It appears as if someone's still there.

• 33:53Speaker 07

  And that person is located at or near what portion of the car?

• 33:58Speaker 03

  In real life or as it's depicted?

• 34:01Speaker 07

  Is the person near the, in real life, near the right rear taillight of the car?

• 34:09Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 34:10Speaker 07

  As a matter of fact, standing there hovering around you, correct?

• 34:14Speaker 03

  We don't know the distance that they are in proximity to the actual vehicle. We just know that they're behind the vehicle that...

• 34:21Speaker 07

  Looks like it's pretty close, doesn't it, Sergeant?

• 34:23Speaker 06

  Objection.

• 34:24Speaker 07

  Sustained. Does that look like he's in close proximity to the right rear taillight?

• 34:30Speaker 03

  As I said, I can't tell how far away he is from the vehicle.

• 34:34Speaker 07

  His head's right there, sir. You can't tell that he's right next to the right rear taillight?

• 34:38Speaker 06

  Objection.

• 34:39Speaker 07

  Sustained. All right. I want you to pay attention to what that person does as soon as the other person comes out from behind that car. Can you see him move?

• 34:54Speaker 07

  Stop it. Do you see that person move?

• 34:58Speaker 03

  I saw movement in the frame, yes.

• 35:00Speaker 07

  Right when the other person is in eyesight of the person toward the right rear, correct?

• 35:08Speaker 03

  I mean, the video speaks for itself. I, I.

• 35:10Speaker 07

  Yeah, it does.

• 35:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:12Derrick Levasseur?

  I think it's a great, a great interaction between the defense attorney and the state trooper. I think that the, the Yanetti really drives home the point that, for me, what really stood out, again, if I'm putting my juror hat on, is not necessarily the inversion. Obviously, I think he made his point, like it's presented as if that's the passenger side. If you look at it quickly and you're not really dissecting it, I think most people would say, oh, that's the passenger side of the vehicle and nobody's near that taillight. I think that's a commonsensical opinion to come to. I don't think many people would dispute that. I think what's more important to me is that what Yanetti said was that Lally had asked the trooper if anyone had been near the taillight, the rear passenger side taillight, and he said, no, nobody had been there. And the video clearly shows that's not true. There was someone hovering over it, possibly Proctor.

• 35:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  It was Proctor.

• 35:58Derrick Levasseur?

  Okay, it's Proctor. And, and so you have someone standing in the area of the taillight and they're there for a decent amount of time, and that is an area where, at the crime scene, as I pushed back a little bit, where if you're out at the scene, you want to collect something before it's disturbed, you take photos, you do what you can, but if you're waiting for that search warrant and you have the opportunity to have another officer present, if you find something that's potentially a smoking gun in the case, you would want another law enforcement officer there to document that situation, to maybe video record it, before you start doing a preliminary search. I don't know if they had obtained the search warrant at that point, but I'm assuming they hadn't. Proctor made a mistake by doing that, and the video does not look good.

• 36:42Derrick Levasseur?

  I know that the trooper wasn't willing to lock himself into the distance away from the vehicle at that point. Was he in arm's reach, was he not? It's difficult for me to see if they're within arm's reach or they're closer to it, but it doesn't really matter. The perception is, all I can see as a jury member, is a state trooper standing behind the car at the taillight, and all I can see is his hat. So he could be doing a variety of things back there and none of it is on camera. So I think the defense in this exchange made his point and I'm sure it's something that resonated with the jury.

• 37:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, and when he says, oh, as soon as the tow truck driver kind of comes around there, he moved.

• 37:18Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, he moved a little bit. Yeah. And then, and it's, yeah, it's, that's something we do all the time. It was, you know, to make light of it real quick. I see that you see the person standing in front of the car that looks like a person. It's a dummy. And it's so funny, in my Sally Port, we had the same thing. That's a dummy for a Taser training. You use that to shoot in distances. So it's just funny how different police departments have the same thing. But yeah, no, the video is troubling. It looks bad and it does appear initially that it's the passenger side of the vehicle, which looks good for law enforcement. But in reality, there's a trooper now that identified as Proctor, standing at that back taillight for an extended period of time without any supervision, not on camera, with which at minimum does what?

• 38:00Derrick Levasseur?

  Raises reasonable doubt that he could have broken off a piece of taillight, stuck it in his pocket, and now he can go transport that back to the crime scene where he quote unquote later finds it by himself.

• 38:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  Would you say that you agree that the video was intentionally inverted though? Because like, like the defense attorney said, the timestamp is not inverted. So it looks like somebody inverted the video and then added the timestamp onto the inverted video. So this was intentionally?

• 38:26Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, that's something I was asking myself. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if you inverted the video or sometimes videos are naturally, they're already inverted. I don't know why. I'm not a tech, a security camera expert. But sometimes the security camera footage is inverted for whatever reason. I don't know why. But I don't know if that would necessarily invert the timestamp unless the video was exported. And then in secondary software after the fact, someone inverted the entire thing, which I would expect at that point, the timestamp would be inverted as well. Yeah, that's, I don't have much more to elaborate on that. I don't know the technicalities of that camera system and why it would be inverted. I'm surprised the prosecution didn't bring anybody in

• 39:06Derrick Levasseur?

  who would have been able to testify to that. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know why that video was inverted in the.

• 39:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  So like I said, the defense is saying, hey, Michael Proctor is over there. He may have gotten some of these taillight pieces. He may have planted them.

• 39:20Derrick Levasseur?

  Possible, yeah.

• 39:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  But according to Michael Proctor and the district attorney, Michael Morrissey, who we haven't talked about yet, but is a big part of this, Proctor hadn't been at the Albert home on the 29th at all, even though he was the lead investigator. And you'd think that that he would want to have been on the scene of the crime as the lead investigator. But here's a statement that Morrissey made in relation to this case.

• 39:49Speaker 07

  This will be the first statement of its kind in my dozen years as Norfolk District Attorney. Michael Proctor, the state police trooper, being accused of planting evidence outside 34 Fairview Road, was never at Fairview Road on the day of the incident. Proctor and his state police partner traveled together the entire day while other officers were processing 34 Fairview. Trooper Proctor was not there and did not plant evidence at 34 Fairview Road. In addition to having no opportunity to plant the evidence, as has been suggested, Proctor would have no motive to do so. Trooper Proctor had no close personal relationship with any of the parties involved in the investigation

• 40:33Speaker 07

  and had no conflict. And he had no reason to step out of this investigation. Every suggestion to the contrary is a lie.

• 40:42Derrick Levasseur?

  Okay, I have a few questions for you. And I'm going to ask these questions because I saw the comments and I was apologizing a lot for asking questions that you've already answered earlier in the script, but people seem to like that. So just to recap real quick for me, on the day of the incident, now Proctor didn't show up that night, but on the day of the incident, before Proctor had a chance to go to that scene. Was there any taillight fragments found at all? That day, that entire day that Proctor had not been there, according to what Morrissey's saying? Was there any taillight fragments found at the crime scene that day?

• 41:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  The taillight fragments were not found until the Sert team got there and they wrapped up their search around 6:00 PM.

• 41:24Derrick Levasseur?

  Okay, so 6:00 PM, and now if we're to believe what Morrissey is saying, he's saying that there were taillight fragments found at the crime scene before Proctor ever responded to the crime scene, is that correct?

• 41:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  Correct.

• 41:36Derrick Levasseur?

  Okay, so if that's true, well then that's obviously compelling, right? If there's taillight fragments already at the crime scene before Proctor, who we have on video at the taillight area, having a chance to respond there, that's, that's good for the prosecution. What I was getting at before this, which I still think is important, is if you had, and that's why I asked this question, if you refreshed my memory and told me that that entire day, there had never been a single piece of a taillight fragment found, and then, I coincidentally, after Proctor has a chance to visit the crime scene, he finds a piece of taillight? That is, that is bad. And you're nodding your head, so obviously you agree. That would be really bad, but I see what he's trying to convey here. Now I want to push back on one thing Morrissey said.

• 42:20Derrick Levasseur?

  He said that, that Proctor would have no reason to, or no motive to plant evidence.

• 42:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  He had no relationship.

• 42:27Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, no relationship. I disagree with that. It could be as, it could be as trivial as what I said earlier, where Proctor is taking this case personal. This is a cop that was killed, and he's looking at it as, I know this woman did it. She killed one of our own, and I'm gonna make sure that she goes down for it. Doesn't have to be a personal connection. The connection could be that they're brothers in blue.

• 42:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  No, we talked, we talked about how Trooper Michael Proctor said that the Alberts were basically his second family, Trooper Proctor's own mother. We talked about this, I think, in episode one.

• 42:59Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, he, he's saying that he had no relationship, what Morrissey's saying here is he had no relationship with John O'Keefe.

• 43:04Stephanie Harlowe?

  No, he's saying he had no relationship to the people inside that house. He had no relationship to any witnesses involved in this case.

• 43:10Derrick Levasseur?

  So, that's not true. He's lying about that. And then also, I don't even think you need that. It's, it can also be what I just said.

• 43:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  I agree. I completely agree with you.

• 43:18Derrick Levasseur?

  I, I don't think, I don't think you need to have a personal connection, although there is a connection here. I don't think you need that. I've seen cases where the personal connection is the detective to the case and the victim. They make it personal. And that's sometimes all they need.

• 43:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  And like I said, we're gonna get more into it. Michael Proctor is gonna need a big, there's gonna be, our next episode is gonna be about all the conflicts in this case.

• 43:43Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, you haven't gotten to the conflicts yet?

• 43:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  We haven't even gotten to the conflicts.

• 43:46Derrick Levasseur?

  I don't know what these last four episodes have been, but...

• 43:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  So the specific conflicts, which are glaring. We haven't even talked about that yet. The fact of the matter, and we're gonna talk about the assertion that Proctor had no closer personal relationship with any of the parties involved in the investigation in a different episode. Let's focus on Morrissey's statement that Proctor had not been to 34 Fairview on January 29th. First of all, that doesn't even make sense. He's the lead investigator. You'd think he'd make an opportunity at some point that entire day because John O'Keefe's body's found like 5:30 a.m. You could go there at some point during the day, but he didn't allegedly. Now, during a cross-examination of Brian Albert, who's the homeowner, during the trial, he made what I believe to be, or what I believe he thought to be, a benign

• 44:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  statement. But he did place stupor Proctor at his house on January 29th. So the defense wasn't even trying to get this out of him. The defense was trying to show how weird it was that Michael Proctor hadn't even, you know, hadn't even gone there or conducted any interviews or gone to the scene of a crime that he was the lead investigator on for days because allegedly he didn't do any interviews with the Alberts until like February 3rd, I believe. But while he's trying to get Brian Albert to admit to this, Brian Albert says something else that I believe surprised even the defense attorneys.

• 45:00Speaker 06

  Talk a little bit about Michael Proctor. Did Michael Proctor come into your home at 34 Fairview on January 29th? Yes.

• 45:08Speaker 06

  Michael Proctor?

• 45:11Speaker 06

  Let me rephrase the question. I wanna make sure we're, I'm not talking about Officer Lang, Officer Good. Right. Michael Proctor, in the Massachusetts State Police, did he come into your home on January 29th? He conducted an interview with my wife, and I don't remember if it was the 29th or the 30th. That's what we're asking.

• 45:30Speaker 06

  Wasn't that interview on February 3rd?

• 45:35Speaker 06

  I feel like it was earlier than that, but it could have been February 3rd. Okay. Presume for purpose of my question that it was February 3rd that Michael Proctor interviewed your wife?

• 45:46Speaker 07

  Then he would not have come into your home on the 29th, 30th, 31st, the 1st, or the 2nd.

• 45:52Speaker 06

  Right.

• 45:55Speaker 07

  And you know from your training, obviously, as a first responder, the first 48 hours in an investigation are absolutely critical, correct?

• 46:02Speaker 06

  Objection. Do you know that, sir? In that context, I don't. Okay, next question.

• 46:10Speaker 07

  I mean, you're aware there's a TV show called First 48.

• 46:14Speaker 06

  Objection, Your Honor.

• 46:16Speaker 07

  Do you think the first 48 hours of a criminal investigation are critical?

• 46:20Speaker 06

  Objection.

• 46:22Speaker 07

  You do know that the longer you wait to properly investigate anything,

• 46:28Speaker 07

  the better chance that evidence can be manipulated or destroyed, right? You'd agree with that?

• 46:32Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 46:33Speaker 07

  Did an investigator or any forensics team ever come into your house, ever, to photograph your entire home?

• 46:39Speaker 06

  No, I wish they had.

• 46:41Speaker 07

  Did an investigator, yeah, me too.

• 46:44Speaker 06

  Objection, Your Honor.

• 46:45Speaker 07

  Just state. Did an investigator or a forensics team ever come into your house to search for physical evidence?

• 46:52Speaker 06

  No.

• 46:53Speaker 07

  Did an investigator or a forensics team ever come into your house to search for trace evidence?

• 46:59Speaker 06

  No.

• 47:00Speaker 07

  Did an investigator or a forensics team ever come into your house to take carpet samples, flooring samples, from the basement, for instance?

• 47:06Speaker 06

  No.

• 47:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so Brian Alberts asked, did Trooper Proctor go into your house on the 29th? He says yes, without hesitation.

• 47:12Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 47:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  And then to the defense attorney, he's like, wait, Trooper Proctor? You know, because like, he's trying to get something completely different out of him, and then he's sort of stunned by this. So I don't know which is worse, that Trooper Proctor was there on the 29th and said he never was, so he couldn't have possibly planted evidence, or that Trooper Proctor never even conducted interviews with the Alberts until February 3rd, which is several, several days

• 47:35Derrick Levasseur?

  Wait, you believe that that's true?

• 47:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  That he was there on the 29th?

• 47:38Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 47:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't know.

• 47:39Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, yeah, no, I don't. I, I didn't take it that way. I think if it was true, I think that he got the date wrong and I, and I don't even think that because of what he said. Because I think that Yanetti is really good at his job. I think we've established that. He's already established that he was there on the 3rd, which is why he says, okay, well, let's work off the February 3rd date. If it wasn't, and there was an opening, I think we know at this point Yanetti would have taken it. I think Albert was wrong, and this just goes to show you how bad these witnesses are and how bad witnesses can be in general. He's completely off on the date, and I'm not going off Brian Albert, guys. I'm going off Yanetti because even though he was wrong, Yanetti said, let's work off the February 3rd date. Because he knew what was the date and he was more focused on the fact that there was a lack of a search.

• 48:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  He knew what the official date of the interviews was.

• 48:26Derrick Levasseur?

  I think he looked into it. I think he probably confirmed it.

• 48:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  But if, if Trooper Proctor made a, an unreported visit to the Alberts on the 29th and talked to Brian Albert and his wife inside their house. Then, and, and I think obviously Yanetti's just continuing out with his line of questioning because that's what, what he had to do because that was what he was doing. But he's, he's gonna, you know, bring this up later, which he did, where he's like, hey, why did Brian Albert even say that he was there on the 29th? Was he there on the 29th and he just didn't put it in his report and that's why Morrissey's over here saying it with his chest? Yeah, like.

• 48:58Derrick Levasseur?

  I don't believe it. I don't, I believe that it was a mistake in, a mistake in the date. And I think if there was more to this, they would have confirmed it. You could grab, you could grab Proctor's GPS data from his phone to show if he was there or not. And Yanetti's been so thorough, if there was any possibility to prove that Proctor was there on the 29th, they would have hung him out to dry. So I think that maybe there was things done that didn't come to fruition. Um, but like, I'm sure you're not the only one that, I am sure there's a lot of people that agree with you that this, uh, spontaneous utterance, if you will, is, is in a indirect omission that Proctor made an unofficial visit on that date and he didn't mean to say this. So I, I get where you're coming from. I don't personally believe that, but yeah, I mean, everyone's entitled to their opinion.

• 49:41Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, let's continue on with the tail light evidence. So Maureen Hartnett, who's a forensic scientist with the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab testified that she reported to the Canton Police Department on February 1st. Well, initially, she said February 2nd. It says February 2nd in her report. She testified February 2nd at the grand jury, but then they got her to admit, no, it was actually February 1st. At that time, she examined Karen Reed's SUV. Hartnett noted that there was damage to the rear passenger side of the vehicle and a dent in the trunk door, as well as scratches on the rear bumper and the broken taillight. Maureen Hartnett also testified to seeing what she referred to as "an apparent hair" on a rear quarter panel of the SUV and some pieces of apparent glass on the rear bumper.

• 50:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  On cross-exam, Maureen Hartnett admitted that she had no conclusion about what caused the scratches, dents, or broken taillight on the SUV, and she could not conclude whether they had gotten there recently or because of a motor vehicle accident. She's like, yeah, they could have been here at any time in the time before, you know, I saw it.

• 50:43Derrick Levasseur?

  It could have been from that video we saw.

• 50:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  Could have been anything.

• 50:45Derrick Levasseur?

  Could have been from that video we saw when she bumped that car and played John's car.

• 50:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  Dude, I get scratches on my car, and I'm like, I could fix this, but it's going to be expensive. I'll wait till I get more scratches, and then I'll just get it all fixed.

• 50:57Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, my God.

• 50:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  So she also talked about performing a blood screening on the undercarriage of the SUV, along with the bumper, the rear tires, and the tire flaps.

• 51:07Speaker 07

  You did, however, look for tissue, human tissue, blood, biological material, and things of that nature on the car itself, did you not?

• 51:17Speaker 04

  Yes, I did.

• 51:18Speaker 07

  In that review, I think you testified that you saw nothing that suggested the transfer of human tissue to the vehicle, correct?

• 51:26Speaker 04

  I did not see any visible stains or tissue on the vehicle.

• 51:30Speaker 07

  And you didn't take any, I'm sorry, the swabs and samples that you did take variously on the car all came back negative for human tissue, et cetera.

• 51:39Speaker 04

  The testing that I did on scene from the various areas of the undercarriage, which I had mentioned before, the tire flaps, the edge of the bumper, and the exhaust pipe screened negative for blood.

• 51:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  So that's interesting, right? That John was pretty bloodied up, and there's no blood on the underside of the car, tire flaps, things like that, but she's seeing this apparent hair and this apparent glass, and that's all still intact. We're going to talk about that in a minute, but first, let's take a quick break.

• 52:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, we are back. And defense attorney Alan Jackson also questioned Maureen Hartnett about blood samples she had taken from those infamous red solo cups.

• 52:25Speaker 07

  You also mentioned that you took swabs of what you believe to be blood evidence contained in six solo cups, correct?

• 52:32Speaker 04

  Yes, I noted those as frozen red brown stains in red cups.

• 52:37Speaker 07

  Were those solo cups in any way labeled among themselves? In other words, solo cup 1, 2, 3, 4?

• 52:46Speaker 04

  I don't believe they were, but I don't have a photograph of that, so I'm not 100% sure.

• 52:52Speaker 07

  You did not thereafter label those solo cups? If they hadn't been done beforehand, you did not undertake that to label those solo cups, correct?

• 53:01Speaker 04

  No, I did not label them.

• 53:02Speaker 07

  How did you take those swabs? Was the swab done in one solo cup? Or did you take a swab from all six? Or how did you take those swabs that you ultimately did take?

• 53:13Speaker 04

  I took those swabs from one solo cup.

• 53:15Speaker 07

  How did you choose which of the six solo cups you were going to take a swab from?

• 53:19Speaker 04

  I don't recall exactly how I chose which cup. It was reported to me that those cups came from the same area of red brown staining, so I assume you make an assumption that they're all related. It came from, from what I was told, it came from one area of red brown stain at the scene.

• 53:33Speaker 07

  And you, of course, know as a forensic criminalist that blood stains can contain multiple contributors, correct?

• 53:41Speaker 04

  Yes, that's correct.

• 53:43Speaker 07

  You don't know as you sit here which blood stain found at the scene related to which solo cup in the bag, correct?

• 53:53Speaker 06

  Objection. I'll allow it.

• 53:55Speaker 04

  No, it was my understanding they were all taken from the same stain, but I was not there.

• 53:59Speaker 07

  From the same scene or?

• 54:00Speaker 04

  Stain, excuse me. It was my understanding they were all taken from the same stain.

• 54:04Speaker 07

  Okay. If they in fact were taken from multiple stains, you would have no way of knowing that as you sit here?

• 54:10Speaker 04

  That's correct.

• 54:11Speaker 07

  And ultimately, once you did take that...

• 54:16Speaker 07

  Swab from that single solo cup. What did you do with the rest of the, of that blood evidence?

• 54:22Speaker 04

  I left that with the Canton Police Department.

• 54:24Speaker 07

  By the way, I should ask this. I've been saying swabs. Was there one swab taken of that one solo, from that one solo cup? Or were there multiple swabs taken?

• 54:32Speaker 04

  There were two swabs taken.

• 54:34Speaker 07

  Of those two swabs, did you seek to do DNA testing? Or was DNA testing done on either one of those or both of them?

• 54:41Speaker 04

  DNA testing was not done on those swabs.

• 54:43Speaker 07

  So as we sit here now, there's been no DNA confirmation of what the, who those, uh, who that blood relates to, I should say.

• 54:52Speaker 04

  There was no testing done on it at all.

• 54:54Speaker 07

  And so therefore, we would not know if there were multiple contributors to those stains or that, that swab that you took from that single solo cup?

• 55:00Speaker 04

  That's correct.

• 55:01Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 55:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  So I don't know, and maybe you're, you're better at this because you've been in the investigatory process, but is it common to just take a few swabs from one of these cups? And then not even test this DNA evidence?

• 55:15Derrick Levasseur?

  What do you mean, test it?

• 55:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  Like, she said, no, she took the swabs, but there was never any testing done in the swabs. So they don't even know.

• 55:22Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, they, they didn't do DNA testing. They just did the, tested it for the presence of blood.

• 55:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  I, yeah, maybe, but I, it's to my understanding.

• 55:29Derrick Levasseur?

  That's what she said.

• 55:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. So it's blood, but whose blood is it? We, you know, once again, the, the defense is trying to make the.

• 55:34Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I don't know why they didn't test it. I don't know why they wouldn't test it to say like confirmation, this is John's blood. Like, why wouldn't you do that?

• 55:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  And why would they take six cups of these samples and her to take swabs, two swabs only from one cup?

• 55:45Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, no, that, that, that part was confusing to me. I would assume that the cups and this, and the blood that was put into each cup was taken from different droplets of blood at the crime scene. So you would want to test.

• 55:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  Which they were, yes.

• 55:56Derrick Levasseur?

  Which you would want to test each individual cup, not only to confirm that they're all drops of human blood, but also if you do it, if you take it out further, you DNA test all those individual droplets of blood to not only confirm if it's John's blood, but if there's the presence of someone else's blood, let's say someone he got in altercation with, that would cause some, that would cause some concern. So regardless of what you think, and I say it all the time, as an investigator, you're not only trying to build your case, you're. Also trying to make sure that you minimize any potential dispute the defense could have. So even if you don't feel that other, those other cups would be of evidentiary value, you would do it just to rule it out, right? And by not doing that, you allow a defense attorney to ask you these questions,

• 56:41Derrick Levasseur?

  and you not have the answers to them, which has the jury going, nodding over there going, "Yeah, that's a problem." So that's why at minimum, you would want to test that to confirm, "Yes, it's human blood, and yes, all the blood droplets came back to one person only, John O'Keefe."

• 56:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  Exactly.

• 56:55Derrick Levasseur?

  But they didn't do that, so you can't do it now.

• 56:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  Can't. So that leaves an opening, and one's

• 56:58Derrick Levasseur?

  Leaves an opening.

• 56:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  Reasonable doubt.

• 57:00Derrick Levasseur?

  He already, the defense attorney accomplished his goal. He doesn't need to know who the blood belongs to. Just that it's a possibility it belongs to someone else. That's all you need.

• 57:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  So Jackson then began grilling Hartnett about the hair and the pieces of glass that she'd found on the car. So the hair was on the quarter panel, and the glass was on the bumper. And he specifically asked her, "Did they seem to be affixed to the vehicle in some way? Were they like frozen on? Were they glued on? Were they somehow, kind of like you were saying earlier, were they found in the casing of the taillight?"

• 57:31Derrick Levasseur?

  Inside the taillight, yeah.

• 57:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  And here's her response.

• 57:33Speaker 07

  And it's correct that none of these pieces of apparent glass were embedded in the bumper. They weren't dug in, stuck into that hard plastic, correct?

• 57:43Speaker 04

  No, I did not have that, I do not have that notation that they were embedded, just they were on the bumper.

• 57:47Speaker 07

  As a matter of fact, they were physically perched on top of that hard plastic horizontal bumper, correct?

• 57:54Speaker 04

  To my recollection, they were just sitting on the bumper, yes.

• 57:56Speaker 07

  Okay. And do you know, just in your experience, and if we could leave this up for just a moment while I ask the next couple of questions, Your Honor?

• 58:03Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 58:04Speaker 07

  Do you know where Dayton, Massachusetts is?

• 58:08Speaker 04

  I know the general area.

• 58:10Speaker 07

  How far would you say that is from Canton?

• 58:13Speaker 04

  I don't know, maybe a half an hour? I'm not exactly sure.

• 58:15Speaker 07

  Do your notes indicate that the vehicle was recovered from Dayton and towed back to Canton and placed in the Sallyport before you started your examination?

• 58:25Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 58:25Speaker 07

  So if the, and you also had been apprised before you began your examination that the incident in question took place in Canton, correct?

• 58:34Speaker 04

  Yes, that's correct.

• 58:35Speaker 07

  So you knew as you were looking at this vehicle and doing your examination, the vehicle had to have been driven by definition from Canton to Dayton, and then towed back from Dayton back to Canton, correct?

• 58:48Speaker 04

  I was informed that the car was recovered in Dayton.

• 58:50Speaker 07

  And ultimately, either driven back or towed back, one of the way, in some way, it ended up back in Canton, correct?

• 58:57Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 58:58Speaker 07

  Okay, so if Dayton is, how far would you say Dayton is from Canton?

• 59:03Speaker 04

  Again, I'm really guessing. I would say maybe a half an hour.

• 59:07Speaker 07

  Thirty miles?

• 59:08Speaker 04

  Potentially. I don't know exactly. I was never in Dayton.

• 59:11Speaker 07

  Okay, so, according to your notes, the glass pieces that we're looking at on the back of this bumper would have traveled, let's call it for round figures, about sixty miles in a blizzard before you saw it.

• 59:28Speaker 04

  I don't know when the glass pieces were, ended up on the bumper, so I couldn't say.

• 59:34Speaker 07

  And of course, you knew that on February 1st, you knew a few days earlier, on the 29th, there had been a pretty significant snowstorm here in Massachusetts, correct?

• 59:43Speaker 04

  Yes, I did have that information.

• 59:45Speaker 07

  And that blizzard included high winds, freezing rain, snow, all the, all the good stuff with a blizzard, correct?

• 59:50Speaker 04

  I don't recall the exact, um, weather conditions of the blizzard.

• 59:54Speaker 07

  But irrespective, after all of that, whatever the "that" was, you saw these five pieces just sitting perched on the top of the bumper, not in, not embedded in any way, correct?

• 1:00:05Speaker 04

  That's correct.

• 1:00:06Speaker 07

  And you recovered those with little bitty tweezers, correct?

• 1:00:08Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:00:09Speaker 07

  You testified on direct examination that you also found a hair on that rear panel, the quarter panel of the car, correct?

• 1:00:15Speaker 04

  Yes, at the time of the scene, I noted it was an apparent hair, correct?

• 1:00:18Speaker 07

  And the apparent hair, and I'll try to use that same word, I keep forgetting, you'll correct me, that apparent hair, um, was not sitting on the horizontal bumper, but on a, a vertical portion of the quarter panel, correct?

• 1:00:33Speaker 04

  That's correct.

• 1:00:35Speaker 07

  Did you find the hair, or was that hair pointed out to you by somebody else?

• 1:00:39Speaker 04

  I believe I located the hair.

• 1:00:44Speaker 07

  How exactly was that hair secured to that vertical panel? If you can explain that?

• 1:00:52Speaker 04

  It didn't appear to be secured in any way. It was just on that quarter panel.

• 1:00:56Speaker 07

  Okay, so it wasn't taped?

• 1:01:00Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:01:00Speaker 07

  It wasn't glued?

• 1:01:01Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:01:02Speaker 07

  Wasn't stapled?

• 1:01:03Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:01:04Speaker 07

  It was not affixed in any way whatsoever? It was just perched on that vertical panel of the SUV, correct?

• 1:01:11Speaker 04

  That's correct.

• 1:01:12Speaker 07

  And for you to remove it?

• 1:01:16Speaker 07

  And by the way, this is, you found this at the same time that you found the general time, that you found the glass pieces as well.

• 1:01:24Speaker 04

  That's correct.

• 1:01:24Speaker 07

  So that hair potentially would have had to make that same 60 mile round trip in the same blizzard.

• 1:01:32Speaker 04

  At the ti- I don't know when that hair was deposited on the vehicle.

• 1:01:35Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:01:38Speaker 07

  And it didn't take you much to remove that hair, correct?

• 1:01:41Speaker 04

  I picked it up with a pair of tweezers.

• 1:01:43Speaker 07

  Didn't give you any resistance?

• 1:01:45Speaker 04

  Not that I recall.

• 1:01:46Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:01:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  So when we first talked about this, you know, you said, yeah, if it's making a 60 miles round trip kind of thing, and it's like the glass or the hair is inside of something where it's protected from the wind and the snow, that makes sense. But the way that they're explaining it with the glass just sitting on that horizontal bumper and the hair just sitting on the vertical panel.

• 1:02:09Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  How likely, in your opinion, is it?

• 1:02:13Derrick Levasseur?

  No, I mean, not likely, but it's also, but is it, but I, can I sit here and say it's completely impossible? And I think what she was alluding to, which, which does make sense, is that the, the hair and the glass could have still been intact and inside the taillight. And so the defense is painting the picture that that hair and that, and the taillight glass would have been deposited on that bumper and on that quarter panel before it was ever picked up from Dayton. And the reality of what she's trying to say, what she's trying to convey without, you know, and I find her reliable at this point, I don't have anything to dispute it, she seems like she's being pretty pragmatic, is she's saying, I don't know when that hair came onto the quarter panel or where it came on the glass.

• 1:02:52Derrick Levasseur?

  Now, the, the framing conspiracy group will say, yeah, it was the, it was put there afterwards. But what, what someone who believes that? Things were done according to how they should have been done. That hair and that glass could have been still within the taillight casing. And as that vehicle is traveling on the back of the tow truck, there could have been a bump or something, or when it was driving into the Sallyport, where the hair becomes dislodged and ends up on the quarter panel, or the glass breaks off a little bit more and ends up on the bumper. This is another one of those cases where depending on what camp you're in, you can come up with an explanation as to why it's there.

• 1:03:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  Can I interject really quick?

• 1:03:33Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  I kind of disagree with you there because even if you're like you're in the camp where you're trying to be unbiased, right? And you're trying to look at things.

• 1:03:39Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm trying to be, yes.

• 1:03:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's a logical fallacy to say if you're a person who believes that everything was done above board, then you could say this, we know for a fact by now, everything was not done correctly and everything was not done above board. So to say if everything was done above board, then this is possible. That's completely wiped out because it wasn't.

• 1:03:56Derrick Levasseur?

  No, but there's a spectrum, but I'll let you finish.

• 1:03:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  And I, I thought when she was saying, I don't know when that hair was deposited there is her kind of trying to wash her hands of it. It's like, yo, I just collected this stuff. Okay.

• 1:04:06Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:06Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't know what happened before I got there.

• 1:04:08Derrick Levasseur?

  Correct. Yeah. She's, she's, she's doing her job. She's just doing her job. This is what I'll say, and this isn't like anything against you or anybody else, because I think there's a lot of validity to what you're saying and what everyone's saying. You, this isn't like a revelation here. You're clearly in the camp that there was some type of corruption done here and you've, you, you, you're trying to remain unbiased, but you, you, you're already further in the story than I am. And you're writing the script based on your opinions. And so I understand where you're coming from, and I think a lot of people share your sentiment. So I'm not disputing it or, um, or, or trying to diminish it. What I'm saying is I'm trying to come into it and look at it where there could be, there's a spectrum as far as how badly this was mishandled. And I've said it multiple times, on the lower end of that spectrum,

• 1:04:51Derrick Levasseur?

  there was just a lot of incompetence and negligence and just, just not doing a good job. On the other end of that spectrum is this is a full out conspiracy frame job where Proctor said, I will do everything and anything I can along with my colleagues to make sure that this woman is, is found guilty of this crime to the point where I'm going to grab evidence from John's body, his hair, whatever. I'm going to plant it on the car, um, so that someone else will eventually find it. But there are some questions you have to ask yourself. I don't have all the video and we don't have the time to watch it here. But obviously there's video of that Sally Port where that vehicle was found the entire time. That video is constantly running. It never gets shut off.

• 1:05:33Derrick Levasseur?

  And so if Proctor had an encounter with John O'Keefe, it would be after the day that he was found because from what you've told me, Proctor didn't visit the crime scene that day. So he wouldn't have had direct contact with John O'Keefe.

• 1:05:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  He went to the hospital.

• 1:05:47Derrick Levasseur?

  Okay, at the hospital. So he goes to the hospital. You would have to believe at that point. And again, I'm not saying it's not possible. This is what you would have to believe. You would have to believe that Proctor was able to obtain a piece of hair from John O'Keefe, which is completely possible. He could do that. And then at some point, he would be back on camera at the Sally Port, hovering around that taillight after visiting John O'Keefe in that timeline. So if you're and then planting that hair there so that it would later be found. So my question to you to round out what I'm saying is the video that we discussed earlier in this episode, where it shows Proctor around the taillight, was that after the time that Proctor visited John O'Keefe at the hospital?

• 1:06:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes.

• 1:06:24Derrick Levasseur?

  So it does create some issues. It creates some it creates some evidentiary issues where that hair could have been planted there after the fact. And so that's why the defense is bringing this up. And that's why it's it's causing problems and it's ultimately why Karen Reed was found not guilty. But yeah, it's a spectrum. Depends on what you want to believe. And I know there are people who believe both sides of it.

• 1:06:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  And I'm not at the opposite end of the spectrum where I'm like, oh, this is a complete cover up. Everybody here is lying. Like, I'm not there yet.

• 1:06:52Derrick Levasseur?

  No, you're not there yet. But I think it's fair for me to say, Stephanie, that you are, you don't believe a single thing. That everything that can't be explained, the explanation for you, and I'm not, I'm not demeaning you by any means, like you're entitled to your opinion. You are in the camp that I don't believe anyone involved in the the evidence collection or investigation of this. And I believe that there was a collaborated and a calculated effort to make to frame this woman.

• 1:07:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  So I'm not saying it's their responsibility to do this or that. It's their responsibility as to the to the taxpayers to run a an investigation that doesn't leave the people.

• 1:07:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  Feeling like they can't be trusted. That's all. I'm not saying I don't trust anything they say. I'm just saying they're making it hard to trust anything they say. That's all. And it's not like this girl here, you know, this forensic person that I'm like, oh, you're lying. It's Proctor.

• 1:07:45Derrick Levasseur?

  I found her very believable.

• 1:07:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, it's Proctor for me. Anything that comes through him is something that I'm going to question.

• 1:07:51Derrick Levasseur?

  Is it possible, just as lucky as criminals get some time with their head being behind a fence pole on camera, right? Right when you could have seen who they were? Is it possible, and I'm not a physicist, but is it possible somehow that glass and that hair got there just organically? Yes, it's possible. But to your point, everything is in question when Proctor's name is mentioned in that same paragraph.

• 1:08:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  All right. So Maureen Hartnett also said she examined the hair. It was about seven eighths of an inch long and based on its scales and the shape and size of the medulla, which apparently is a channel that runs through the center of the hair. I had no idea, but I learned that. She determined it was a human hair. Hartnett also performed tests on the clothing John O'Keefe was wearing on the night he died. She testified that his sweatshirt had numerous red, brown stains in several areas, as well as areas of damage, including the right arm and the back of the shirt. The defense questioned her as to whether or not there had been anything under Karen Reed's SUV that could have caused the damage to John's arm, which remember with those scratches and abrasions. And Hartnett said that although this was not her area of expertise, she'd made no conclusions of the sort at

• 1:08:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  that time. But once again, she added that the underside of the SUV, including the tire flaps, had tested negative for blood. Ashley Valaire, a forensic scientist at the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab, had been assigned to perform a physical match analysis on various pieces of the taillight. And she explained that the task involved, quote, "looking at two or more items that have broken or irregular edges and seeing if they fit together, sort of like a jigsaw puzzle," end quote. Valaire testified that many of the smaller pieces of plastic fit together into a larger section that was a physical match for the taillight housing taken into evidence from Reed's SUV.

• 1:09:35Speaker 02

  A state police forensic scientist returned to the stand this morning. She testified about smashed pieces of clear and red plastic turned over to her as evidence in the case. Under Questioning from the prosecution, she said she found the broken pieces fit together as larger units. Under cross-examination, the forensic scientist, Ashley Valair, testified the evidence she analyzed was turned over by state trooper Michael Proctor.

• 1:10:02Speaker 06

  Your chain of custody at the lab for the two shirts plus the pieces of plastic in 7-18 dot 18, that began on March 14th of 2022, correct?

• 1:10:15Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 1:10:16Speaker 06

  So between January 29th of 2022 and March 14th of 2022, you do not know what Michael Proctor did or didn't do with the orange t-shirt and gray long-sleeve shirt, correct?

• 1:10:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  Jackson. I'll allow it.

• 1:10:32Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 1:10:34Speaker 02

  The defense then pointed out several pieces of evidence turned in by Proctor weeks after O'Keefe was killed on January 29th. Proctor was the lead investigator on the case. He's now the subject of an internal affairs investigation for a potential violation of department policy.

• 1:10:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so once again, we don't have to belabor that. They're trying to show chain of custody. Proctor had this evidence before Ashley Valair did, et cetera. So Ashley Valair also testified that what appeared to be red and clear plastic were present in debris found in John O'Keefe's clothing. And additionally, Nicholas Bradford, a forensic DNA analyst at Bow Technology, testified about DNA found on these taillight pieces. Expert witnesses in the Karen Reed murder trial said the victim's DNA was on her taillight.

• 1:11:20Speaker 02

  The Mansfield woman is accused of backing into her boyfriend with her SUV. Katie Benoit explains why the defense didn't cross-examine those experts. Nicholas Bradford, a DNA analyst, says the DNA from three people was found during a test from Karen Reed's taillight. John O'Keefe's DNA profile was compared. So in this case, that would be very strong support for inclusion. The state crime lab also sharing its results for comparison. At least 510,900 times more likely if it originated from John O'Keefe. And two unknown individuals, then if it originated from three unknown unrelated individuals. Reed's attorneys allege evidence tampering and claim the Boston police officer was beaten up inside a Canton home and dumped outside during a 2022 snowstorm.

• 1:12:05Speaker 02

  DNA swabs from state police investigators Proctor and Bukkeneck were also collected and compared, but don't appear to match. Strong support for exclusion. The hair found on Reed's SUV also sent for testing. Experts testify it was consistent with O'Keefe's mitochondrial DNA. We're able to exclude at least 99.895% of the population from being a source of that evidence. Is there a specific reason that the defense didn't cross-examine those witnesses? Well, yes, there is, which is, we're not contesting the fact that it was John O'Keefe's hair that was planted on the vehicle. I mean, it was.

• 1:12:44Speaker 02

  You know, the question is, how did that magic hair survive a 30-mile drive through a blizzard, and then a 30-mile drive back? The defense did cross-examine Detective Lieutenant Brian Tully about a Ford Edge a witness allegedly saw at the Canton house. He says that witness changed their story multiple times.

• 1:13:02Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, so this is the million-dollar question, right? Like, and it could be one or the other, right? There's evidence that implicates the defense, their client, right? And they're saying, we're not disputing that. Mm-hmm. So they have to go after the collection of the evidence itself. And we've talked about this in other cases. This one, obviously, it's very strong. Anything tied to Proctor is tainted. So when you can't dispute the evidence itself, you have to go after how the evidence was obtained. That's a common tactic. That's what the defense is supposed to do, and it's, and they should. I will say, after seeing that photo in the video of the hair, which is the first one that I've seen that was pretty clear, I would love to have recreated that scene where what I would have done is a mixture of moisture and maybe salt and sand, thrown it on that

• 1:13:45Derrick Levasseur?

  car and threw a hair into it, and then made that exact drive to see if maybe it would be like encapsulated in the salt and sand to somehow cause it to stick to the car. And I would have done it 10 times. And it's obviously time-consuming, but for a big case like this, you would do it 10 times, same panel of the car, sand and salt, and see how many times out of 10 it would survive that drive. I think that would have been very compelling information, one way or the other. Um, and you videotape it, you have it like that and see if that hair survives. But I did see a little bit more sand and salt on that quarter panel, which I was like, oh, could that have served as some type of adhesive for it, but um,

• 1:14:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  or you know, just coldness, coldness.

• 1:14:22Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, coldness, right.

• 1:14:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  Cause by the time she gets there on February 1st, to remove the glass and the hair, the car's been sitting in Sallyport, so the ice would melt, right?

• 1:14:30Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, the ice would melt, but that's sand, you know, you've seen it, you're from New York. That sand and dirt will stay on there forever. It cakes on there, kind of where that doesn't go away. Um, but I love what that video, well, that wasn't Yannetti in that video. That was another one of the defense team members, right?

• 1:14:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  That was Jackson.

• 1:14:44Derrick Levasseur?

  Jackson, okay. Well, I loved what he said there is exactly what's going on. He was very transparent about it. We're not questioning the evidence. The DNA is on the taillight, right? John O'Keefe's DNA is on the taillight. His hair is on there as well. However, we're not questioning that. We're saying the way that it got there is the problem.

• 1:14:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  And that's what, that's the lens, right?

• 1:15:02Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  That I'm looking through the sound, that's the lens we're all going to look at all this evidence through, and that's why it's going to be such a cluster because.

• 1:15:09Derrick Levasseur?

  The DNA on the taillight is even more concerning than the hair. The hair, you could throw it on there, hope it gets found, but the DNA, what did he do? Swab? Swab a little bit of like, you know, because he would have to have done it in like, kind of like a, he would have had to done it in like a surgical way almost because he wouldn't want his DNA to be in there as well. They excluded his DNA. So we have to use some type of buckle swab or something where he would swab John and then rub that swab on the taillight, which is not impossible. But those, there's a little bit of a, there's a little bit of work that has to go into to ensure that there's not your DNA as well. Cause imagine if one of those other two detectives' DNA was mixed in with John's. Wow. That would have been, that would have been huge.

• 1:15:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, I think it's interesting that the DNA is found in the taillight pieces, but not on the taillight, you know?

• 1:15:52Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, it makes sense if that, if his, if his head or his, his chest or his hand or whatever hit the parts that broke, you know, like that's the area that actually was impacted by it. Yeah.

• 1:16:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back.

• 1:16:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so let's talk about the broken cocktail glass that was found at the scene just within a few hours of John's body being discovered, remember? It was the Canton Police who had found that along with, what else? Oh, they took the blood samples and the red solo cups.

• 1:16:23Derrick Levasseur?

  Blood samples, taillight pieces.

• 1:16:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  They didn't find the taillight pieces?

• 1:16:25Derrick Levasseur?

  Not initially, no.

• 1:16:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, the CERT team found those 12 hours later.

• 1:16:28Derrick Levasseur?

  In the morning.

• 1:16:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, so in the morning, they found the cocktail glass. Now, the police had recovered the base and the jagged lower sides of the glass. And the prosecution claimed that this glass seemed to be the same one that John O'Keefe was holding when he exited the Waterfall Bar and Grill hours before his death. Christina Hanley, a forensic scientist at the State Crime Lab, testified that she had examined the broken cocktail glass along with five pieces of glass found on the bumper of Karen Reed's SUV. And under cross-examination, Hanley admitted that there was, quote, "no physical match", end quote. See, the prosecution's saying this glass on Karen Reed's bumper is from John O'Keefe's broken cocktail glass that was found near his body.

• 1:17:09Derrick Levasseur?

  Right, because it wasn't, and I think it's important to point out for people, there's a difference between the shot glass or the drinking glass. And we say taillight glass, but sometimes it's more of like a PVC or a plastic. I don't know what's the case here, but it's going to be two different materials, for sure.

• 1:17:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, so the taillight pieces are not the glass found on the bumper.

• 1:17:27Derrick Levasseur?

  There's a distinction in that, and, yes, exactly.

• 1:17:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  So that's interesting. If not from John O'Keefe's cocktail glass, what were those pieces of glass from?

• 1:17:35Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, great question.

• 1:17:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now, Ellen Jackson also made a point of telling the jury that some of the glass pieces were submitted into evidence by Trooper Bukanek while one single piece had been submitted by Trooper Proctor. We're now going to move on to the accident reconstruction, which is going to be another huge point of contention between the defense and the prosecution. Now, Trooper Joseph Paul of the Massachusetts State Police testified that he believed John O'Keefe's injuries were consistent with a pedestrian motor vehicle accident. Now, this witness, Trooper Joseph Paul, absolute mess, to be completely honest with you. The prosecution has been hitting it out of the park with bad witnesses, but Paul was the worst. And at some points during his cross-examination, I actually felt bad for him because, in my

• 1:18:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  opinion, it was clear he had no idea what he was talking about. And with the accident reconstruction being something that was very, very important to the prosecution's case, I'm sure he felt that pressure, but also, he was not prepared.

• 1:18:32Speaker 06

  Lauren, before you dig into the testimony, I think it's important to address sort of the almost nervous demeanor of this expert. Explain that.

• 1:18:41Speaker 04

  Well, I'm glad you highlighted that he's an expert because he is the one that they go to to reconstruct accidents, at least for this investigation. But I have to say, the testimony started with his voice being very shaky. He had to stop and start quite a bit. The judge even asked him to slow down several times. Then he was reading directly from his report. That's something that's not allowed.

• 1:18:59Speaker 02

  Also, I can't hear you. Sorry. Okay, so just take your time.

• 1:19:07Speaker 07

  After a shaky start to testimony, Trooper Joe Paul, a state police reconstructionist, testified the data collection system in Karen Reed's SUV showed she was speeding in reverse the night John O'Keefe was found dead in the snow.

• 1:19:19Speaker 05

  They accelerated at a high rate of speed before she struck the pedestrian John O'Keefe on the roadway and subsequently left him at the scene.

• 1:19:26Speaker 07

  The prosecution says Reed hit O'Keefe in that process and left him to die, pointing to her taillight as evidence. But Reed's defense says that taillight was broken hours before, when she backed into O'Keefe's SUV, frantically realizing he'd never come home from a night of drinking.

• 1:19:40Speaker 05

  Even if the camera systems were covered in snow, even the systems were defective anyway. And even the mirrors were blocked. An attentive and reasonable operator would not travel in reverse, especially at a high rate of speed.

• 1:19:56Speaker 07

  That's Trooper Paul's explanation to the prosecution about whether any other roadway or environmental factors could have contributed to a vehicle hitting O'Keefe. But Reed's defense has repeatedly blasted Paul's credibility as an expert, saying he's misinterpreted tons of data during this investigation and then questioning his academic degrees. How about in engineering?

• 1:20:15Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:20:16Speaker 07

  How about in kinematics?

• 1:20:18Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:20:19Speaker 07

  What's the highest degree that you do hold, sir?

• 1:20:22Speaker 05

  I have an associate's degree.

• 1:20:23Speaker 07

  Although his expert analysis concluded that Reed likely hit and killed her boyfriend, Reed's defense doubled down.

• 1:20:29Speaker 04

  Pointing to inconsistencies in his testimony.

• 1:20:32Speaker 07

  I never, I never said that was the area impact. I said it's after that. Trooper, we were all here on Friday.

• 1:20:41Speaker 04

  So what you just heard was a little back and forth from testimony where Reed's defense was kind of questioning saying about something he said last week saying, look, we were all here. We did not hear that. Again, Trooper Paul maintained that his credibility is intact, that he is well prepared for this role and that, yes, he is qualified to reconstruct that accident.

• 1:20:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  All right. So Trooper Joseph Paul could not seem to stop looking at his notes and reports, even though he's not allowed to do that and even though he was asked multiple times by the judge and by the defense to stop.

• 1:21:09Speaker 06

  Did you come to through reports of your investigation?

• 1:21:12Speaker 03

  So on Saturday, January 29th, 2022, at approximately 12:45.

• 1:21:21Speaker 02

  So you can look at your report, but you can't read your report. So.

• 1:21:25Speaker 03

  I agree to my conclusions based on what they asked me to do. Okay.

• 1:21:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I also, I can't hear you.

• 1:21:31Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 1:21:32Speaker 02

  Okay. So just take your time, read your report and then answer Mr. Lally's question. And if you need to look at your report, we'll see about that again.

• 1:21:42Speaker 03

  All right.

• 1:21:43Speaker 02

  Ask the question, Mr. Lally.

• 1:21:46Speaker 06

  Based on the totality of your investigation, what, if any, conclusions did you come to with regard to how this collision occurred?

• 1:21:54Speaker 03

  So this collision occurred on Saturday, January 29th, 2022, at approximately 12:45 hours. A 2021 Lexus LX 570 was traveling southbound on Fairview Road, in Area 34, Fairview Road.

• 1:22:12Speaker 06

  Objection on it.

• 1:22:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:22:14Speaker 06

  It appears that.

• 1:22:15Speaker 03

  Sorry, I'm trying to uphold it.

• 1:22:16Speaker 02

  So you know what? I don't, Mr. Lally, break this down. Ask simple questions so that the witness can answer your questions. We don't need a narrative.

• 1:22:24Speaker 06

  From your investigation, what, if any, conclusions did you come to as to where this collision occurred?

• 1:22:33Speaker 03

  So, all right. So.

• 1:22:37Speaker 03

  The night of Saturday, Jan. 22, at approximately 12:45 hours, a 2021 Lexus LX570. Could you slow down, sir? Yes.

• 1:22:46Speaker 02

  So, forget all that part, Trooper.

• 1:22:48Speaker 03

  All right.

• 1:22:49Speaker 02

  Just answer the question.

• 1:22:50Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:22:50Speaker 02

  Where did it occur?

• 1:22:51Speaker 03

  It occurred in the area of 34 Fairview Road.

• 1:22:54Speaker 06

  And who, if anyone, were the participants in this collision, sir?

• 1:22:59Speaker 03

  The operator appeared to be Karen Reed, and the pedestrian was John O'Keefe.

• 1:23:06Speaker 06

  And where was the vehicle located in reference to the residence of 34 Fairview Road?

• 1:23:11Speaker 03

  It was located along the southbound travel lane and to the left side of the house as you look at it from the front.

• 1:23:19Speaker 06

  And as far as the vehicle, what if any directionality did it head in and what if any interaction did it have with Mr. O'Keefe?

• 1:23:29Speaker 03

  So, the vehicle was traveling in reverse along the southbound travel lane, traveling north.

• 1:23:38Speaker 06

  And how fast was the vehicle traveling and over what distance?

• 1:23:41Speaker 03

  The vehicle traveled up to 24 miles per hour and approximately 62 feet.

• 1:23:47Speaker 06

  And at the time that the vehicle was traveling approximately 24 miles per hour over approximately 62 feet, what if anything occurred then?

• 1:23:55Speaker 03

  The right rear of the Lexus struck the pedestrian, John O'Keefe.

• 1:24:01Speaker 06

  And post-collision, what if anything occurred with regard to Mr. O'Keefe?

• 1:24:06Speaker 03

  Mr. O'Keefe was projected forward and to the left along the front yard of 34 Fairview Road.

• 1:24:13Speaker 06

  And post-collision with Mr. O'Keefe, what if anything does the defendant's vehicle?

• 1:24:17Speaker 03

  The Lexus continued traveling in reverse before they left the area.

• 1:24:21Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, so I'm not going to beat this guy up too bad. I mean, listen, I'm not going to say he's not intelligent. I don't know him, and I would also push back a little bit on the defense. There are very good officers, and there's even people good in the true crime space that don't necessarily have degrees in certain areas but are very capable of analyzing something because of their own research. So, I don't necessarily equate capability with the degree you have. There's some, I have multiple degrees. Doesn't make me bad. Better than anybody else at Accident Reconstruction. There are schools you go to when you become a law enforcement officer that make you an expert in that area. But looking at this case, particularly in looking at this interaction, you can tell that this trooper is very nervous. The question as to why he's nervous is the question we all have.

• 1:25:04Derrick Levasseur?

  I would also say, and I understood what you were saying, but you are allowed to have your report with you. I know in narcotics cases, I would have to have it a lot. You're allowed to reference it, you know, allowed to look at it and say, pause, I need to check something. But as you said, you're not allowed to read off of it. And this just goes to show the level of nervousness that this trooper has. He's told three times that you can't read your narrative. And even when he's asked about his conclusions, he starts with the beginning of the narrative. As far as the information that he relayed at the end of that clip, I'm wondering if the text stream data from the vehicle backs it up, if that's where he's getting it from. But it is compelling when you look at that, that's just that piece and not his behavior. The fact that he's saying her vehicle was in the southbound lane, and yet it traveled northbound

• 1:25:46Derrick Levasseur?

  for approximately 62 feet for 24 miles per hour. If you're in the camp that she struck John O'Keefe while going in reverse, causing the damage to that taillight. This little piece of evidence in it of itself would support that. But then you obviously have to look at the outside circumstances of his behavior and how nervous he is and how uncertain he is about certain things. And it does make you question his opinion.

• 1:26:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, his lack of education doesn't really make me question his opinion.

• 1:26:12Derrick Levasseur?

  Of course not. I've told you before, I think you write better reports than some of the guys that I that I supervised, and you don't have a criminal justice background.

• 1:26:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  And I often dislike when defense attorneys go after expert witnesses.

• 1:26:24Derrick Levasseur?

  It is, you know, like, oh, you don't have a bachelor's degree, so you're dumb.

• 1:26:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  However, I watched this guy's whole testimony. He has no idea what he's talking about.

• 1:26:33Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, he's clearly a bad witness. I mean, no doubt about it.

• 1:26:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  He has no idea.

• 1:26:38Derrick Levasseur?

  Listen, for all we know. He may be like a nerd, he may be like a good, smart guy, and that's why they sent him to accident reconstruction. But part of being an expert is you gotta be able to articulate your findings. And he doesn't have that. He doesn't have that. So, but yeah, but I agree with you, and I think we have to point that out. Like, I understand what the attorney's doing here, but most of us don't have education in kinetics. We don't have that.

• 1:27:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, you would need that, actually, as a crash reconstructionist, though. That's the point.

• 1:27:05Derrick Levasseur?

  You wouldn't have to have, we have accident reconstructionists on our job that do not have degrees in kinetics.

• 1:27:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  No, not a degree. You would have to have knowledge of it.

• 1:27:13Derrick Levasseur?

  An understanding of it, yes. But he's asked him if he had a degree in kinetics.

• 1:27:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh, but when he, when he, it's not kinetics, it's some other word that sounds like kinetics.

• 1:27:21Derrick Levasseur?

  Okay.

• 1:27:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  When he asks him later, he's like, what does this mean? What does this word mean? The dude doesn't even know how to answer it.

• 1:27:26Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I mean, listen, I'm not an accident reconstructionist. I hated the idea of going to that school. It's a lot of math and a lot of different things.

• 1:27:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  Physics, right?

• 1:27:34Derrick Levasseur?

  It's a very difficult school, too. We had some of our smarter guys go to it, but I don't know what it entails to become an accident reconstructionist expert. We did have him on our department. I was not one of them.

• 1:27:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  He took a handful of classes.

• 1:27:45Derrick Levasseur?

  So, it's not a handful of classes. There's a training you have to go to. And I know the training that, what it is, I can't think of the name of it right now. But it's not, I don't want to downplay it. It's not like, what are some classes that? Okay, there are some classes you can take as a detective where it's almost like an elective, like photography. That is a couple of classes that I took. But with accident reconstruction, it's like a multiple-week school. You actually are, at least from Rhode Island departments, you go to this school. You're not even, you don't work the streets anymore. You go to this school, there's a test every week that you have to take. And I know a lot of guys failed it and weren't able to get their certification. It's a very strenuous school. So I don't want to diminish how hard it's to become an accident reconstructionist,

• 1:28:30Derrick Levasseur?

  but it doesn't mean that this guy was cut out for it. That's all I'm saying. And it also, by the way, goes back to my original point at the beginning of this episode. There's a lot of belief out there that state troopers are more qualified than local law enforcement. That's a, that's a common belief. And this is just one example where it's not about the badge you're wearing or the uniform. It's about the person. You know, you could be a local officer and be really good at your job. You can also be an FBI agent and not be good. It's, it's, it's a, it's a case-by-case basis.

• 1:28:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, on cross-examination, obviously Alan Jackson absolutely ripped Trooper Paul apart.

• 1:29:04Derrick Levasseur?

  Of course.

• 1:29:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  Started with his lack of education, talking about knowledge when it came to, you know, math, physics, formulas that you would use for accident reconstruction.

• 1:29:12Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, that is fair. If there's certain formulas that you're trained on, like DUI is another one. If you, there's certain things you have to know, certain terminology you have to know. So the attorney will get up there and ask you those, those terms, and if you don't know them, they're gonna eat you up.

• 1:29:26Speaker 07

  Define kinematics.

• 1:29:28Speaker 03

  It deals with the aspect of motion.

• 1:29:32Speaker 07

  It's a subfield of what broader field?

• 1:29:35Speaker 03

  Kinematics.

• 1:29:37Speaker 07

  Kinematics is a subfield of what broader discipline of science?

• 1:29:42Speaker 03

  I'm not sure.

• 1:29:44Speaker 07

  Big physics, correct?

• 1:29:46Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:29:47Speaker 07

  And it describes how points and objects, systems of objects, how they move, and how the rate they move and the rate of their velocity, correct?

• 1:29:58Speaker 03

  It deals with, yeah, it deals with the motions.

• 1:30:00Speaker 07

  What's that called? The rate of velocity? What's another word for that?

• 1:30:05Speaker 03

  The rate of velocity?

• 1:30:06Speaker 07

  Correct.

• 1:30:07Speaker 03

  I mean, it's a, it deals with, um, motion. It deals with forward and also deals with speed. It deals with, um, travel and speed. If something's moving, it also has a speed to it.

• 1:30:19Speaker 07

  Right. The word you're looking for is acceleration, correct?

• 1:30:23Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:30:25Speaker 07

  What role does acceleration play in the field of kinematics?

• 1:30:29Speaker 03

  What role does self, so what role does acceleration play with, in kinematics?

• 1:30:35Speaker 07

  Correct.

• 1:30:36Speaker 03

  It talks about, like you just said, it talks about the speed and talks about motion.

• 1:30:42Speaker 07

  Is kinematics also known as the geometry of motion?

• 1:30:47Speaker 07

  Is that correct?

• 1:30:47Speaker 03

  I have not heard that.

• 1:30:49Speaker 07

  Never heard that. What's the difference between constrained and unconstrained motion?

• 1:30:54Speaker 03

  Constrained, unconstrained motion?

• 1:30:56Speaker 07

  That's what I asked.

• 1:30:59Speaker 03

  Constrained motion? I can't recollect at the moment.

• 1:31:03Speaker 07

  Constrained motion is motion on a predetermined path, isn't it?

• 1:31:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:31:09Speaker 07

  Unconstrained motion is what?

• 1:31:11Speaker 03

  One doesn't have predetermined path.

• 1:31:13Speaker 07

  Free movement, correct?

• 1:31:14Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 1:31:15Speaker 07

  Couldn't remember that from your class?

• 1:31:18Speaker 03

  For the most part, we don't go that dead of constrained and unconstrained.

• 1:31:23Speaker 07

  Constrained, unconstrained, not restrained.

• 1:31:25Speaker 03

  That's what I said, sorry, unconstrained.

• 1:31:27Derrick Levasseur?

  Okay, so what is established, Chairman, to summarize for you. Basically, Yanetti has brought into question the expertise of the expert, and I think he's displayed that this person is not an expert. And so therefore, their testimony should be discredited. And he's done that. It's, this guy's not familiar with it, what he has shown by using terms like kinematics, not kinetics. These are terms that I'm sure what Yanetti did, just like in a DUI case, they will pull up the policy and procedure and also go get the textbooks and the plans, the actual education plans for these certifications. They will read it, they will review it, and then they'll throw some terminology at you that you should have learned during your time during the crime scene reconstruction certification class.

• 1:32:10Derrick Levasseur?

  And so he's doing that here, and this guy just doesn't have the answers. Trooper Paul doesn't have the answers. So it brings into question his expertise. He's established that he's not a credible expert. Perfect. What I would say, and I've said, I've mentioned the word a couple of times, I don't know if you're going to hit on it. This goes back to where you, what you want to focus on and trying to grind down to the facts and try to remove personal opinions and assumptions. What I would focus on here, not the accident reconstructionist, I would focus on the text stream data from the Lexus Karen Reed's vehicle. Basically, text stream data is going to tell you the movements of the vehicle, its speed, its direction, et cetera. You're not going to be able to determine from that data if she struck someone, but you would be able to confirm or dispute the idea that she went in reverse at a certain

• 1:32:55Derrick Levasseur?

  speed for what distance. So you would be able to confirm that data that for some reason, while her GPS shows her in the southbound lane, her vehicle went northbound in reverse for an extended period of time. You would be able to emphatically confirm that. What you would not be able to do is determine if it was a side swipe or if she struck a person at all. So it's not as good as this, but it's better than this expert. That's what I would say. You have to discredit him. He has proven, just in these clips that we have, that he's not someone we should rely on.

• 1:33:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, we're gonna talk about that. Um, I think, so kinematics is an actual thing.

• 1:33:28Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, yeah, I just, I don't know. That's why, you know, I'm not an accident reconstructionist. I'm calling it kinetics.

• 1:33:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  He was just showing that, that Trooper Paul knows the word kinematics, but doesn't know what kinematics means or what it is.

• 1:33:39Derrick Levasseur?

  He passed the school, but he's, you know, they're saying, like, you know what someone who passes doc, you know what they call someone who passes medical school with a C? What they call him?

• 1:33:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  What?

• 1:33:47Derrick Levasseur?

  They call him a doctor.

• 1:33:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, because it goes the same way, exactly.

• 1:33:49Derrick Levasseur?

  Exactly. And so this is, he's, he's your C student. He got, he barely, he barely passed.

• 1:33:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  And I could, we could play this, but it goes on forever. There's so many things to talk about from his testimony.

• 1:33:57Derrick Levasseur?

  It's just, it's, this is a beating, like, Yanetti could get charged with assault here.

• 1:34:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  But what, what Yanetti gets Trooper Paul to say is that he believes that when Karen Reed backed up, she hit John's arm. She didn't hit his body, she didn't hit his torso, she hit his arm, he spun around, and that's when he landed. That's important to know going forward, so we're gonna talk about that. So Ellen Jackson then showed Trooper Paul a diagram, and this was a diagram that Trooper Paul had already looked at and testified during his direct examination. And this diagram showed the debris field and where Paul claimed the area of impact was. And so using a photo taken at the crime scene, Ellen Jackson showed Trooper Paul a piece of plastic that was found by the fire hydrant. But in the diagram, the fire hydrant really isn't a part of the debris field. And as it turns out, Paul didn't

• 1:34:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  even know that piece of taillight existed, and he had not factored it in when he did his analysis of the scene, which, at the end of the day, doesn't really matter, because Trooper Proctor got like 30 pieces of plastic from that scene and never marked where he found them. So it, this diagram is basically toilet paper at this point. Now, during his initial testimony with ADA Adam Lally, Trooper Paul had talked about a vehicle striking a pedestrian, and how smaller and loose objects would be separated from the victim pretty quickly at the time of impact. And he said that when John O'Keefe had been struck, he'd flown 30 to 40 feet. Now, once again, how can you determine how far John O'Keefe flew when you just said you didn't know his weight, you didn't know the weight of the

• 1:35:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  car, and you, there was no formula that you could come up with to determine that?

• 1:35:33Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, no clue. Like, like I said, I've already, I'm not gonna push back on anything. I've, we've already established that he's not a credible expert.

• 1:35:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  So on cross, Ellen Jackson asked Paul, "How was it possible that John's phone was found underneath him and his drinking glass was found right beside him? If smaller loose objects are separated from the body early on in the impact, but John's body had traveled 30 to 40 feet." And Trooper Joseph Paul, surprise, surprise, had no explanation for this.

• 1:35:57Derrick Levasseur?

  He was really struggling.

• 1:35:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh, yeah. Not only that, but under oath, Trooper Paul testified that the glass found at the scene was the same glass found on Karen Reed's bumper. So then he's faced with the question of how his colleagues at the Mass. State Crime Lab had concluded these were not a match. And remember, Paul works for that same entity. And he's like, "I don't know. I didn't know that they came to that conclusion. I had no idea that that's the conclusion they reached." Which means he didn't even talk to them before doing his accident reconstruction.

• 1:36:24Speaker 07

  You did your reconstruction and your analysis. Were you informed that none of the glass pieces, not one of them, could be matched to the cup?

• 1:36:38Speaker 07

  I don't know anything about the... I don't know that. So if you knew that the glass pieces on the bumper do not match the cup, that change your opinion?

• 1:36:53Derrick Levasseur?

  Objection.

• 1:36:54Speaker 07

  About that glass? Can you answer that question? I cannot. You can't answer the question? It's what was told to me as evidence. Got it. By whom?

• 1:37:06Speaker 07

  By the crime scene. Who told you? It's crime scene that was there. It says, "This glass from the cup." When I was there, my initial inspection, that's what it was on from. That's not what you just said. You said, "That's what was told to me." Yeah, by crime... Yeah, I can see you. By crime scene. While I was at my inspection. Wait, what? It was told to me by the crime scene when I was at my inspection, at the initial inspection. So what you meant by, "That's what was told to me," is the crime scene talked to you? Yes.

• 1:37:39Speaker 07

  Crime scene say anything else?

• 1:37:43Speaker 03

  I don't know what else do you want me to say?

• 1:37:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so I don't want to talk about this right now because it's kind of ludicrous.

• 1:37:50Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, it's just, it's a lot of the same thing. Like, we're beating a dead horse here.

• 1:37:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, it's, we're gonna talk about the way, because this is, this is Trooper Paul saying that John's arm broke the taillight, and then the broken taillight scratched John's arm.

• 1:38:03Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, no, I mean, Trooper Paul's discredited. Trooper Paul, and I don't blame you, Nettie. He's got someone on the stand who sucks, so he's gonna basically make Paul the icon of the Mass Day Police, because that's the guy who you can, he's eating them up. So he's just, he's just smarter than he is, and he's more prepared than he is, and he's just, he's making him look like a fool, and he's not gonna let him off the stand until he just, this guy's at the point now where he's like, okay, yeah.

• 1:38:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, I think he's also cornering him into giving a narrative of how John O'Keefe received his wounds.

• 1:38:35Derrick Levasseur?

  Right, and that's the problem here, is because he's trying to say that, oh, you represent, and he does, to a certain degree, you represent the opinion of the Mass Day Police, you represented the opinion of the prosecution, which, how would you come to these conclusions when you didn't do any of the formulas to support it? So...

• 1:38:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, it also just doesn't make sense.

• 1:38:52Derrick Levasseur?

  No, it doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense. But, yeah, anyways.

• 1:38:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  An accident reconstruction is the process of using scientific methodology to determine the circumstances, mechanics, and contributing factors associated with the collision, and it requires a working knowledge of many things, including physics, vehicle dynamics, math, photogrammetry, and computer applications, like they use simulation and modeling tools. And usually, a vehicle's gonna have something called the crash data retrieval system, or the CDR, and that's basically the black box of a car. They've been mandated in the car and light duty truck market in North America since 2013, so Karen Reed's car had this. And this is why, if the vehicle senses a change in velocity, the airbags will be alerted, and the airbag system decides, hey, do I need to deploy and protect my passengers? Now,

• 1:39:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  while making these decisions, sensing a change in velocity, the CDR is going to record data. The mandatory data points collected by the CDR system are as follows. Impact severity, which is measured by the change in velocity, vehicle speed up to five seconds prior, steering or accelerating input, brake input, ignition cycle, seatbelt status, and air blade deployment. We're going to focus on the ignition cycles here, and Alan Jackson is going to refer to these as triggering events, cycles, things like this. And my friend, who doesn't know that we're friends, but we are, over at Legal Bites, broke this down beautifully.

• 1:40:13Derrick Levasseur?

  She does. She shouted us, she said, "Thank you" in the comments, and I responded to her.

• 1:40:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  We're friends now.

• 1:40:17Derrick Levasseur?

  Shout out Legal Bites, yeah.

• 1:40:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  And so she's, she's explained this in a much more intelligent way than I could with my limited crash reconstruction knowledge. I mean, me and Trooper, Trooper Paul are probably

• 1:40:28Derrick Levasseur?

  You might be better.

• 1:40:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  On par with what we understand about this. But I'm going to let her explain this portion of Trooper Joseph Paul's cross-examination.

• 1:40:36Speaker 04

  Before closing it out, Jackson asked Trooper Paul about the triggering events that were labeled 12629A and 12629B. One of the things he did was he went over whether 12629A was a U-turn or a three-point turn. And like I said in the day 25 recap, turns out Jackson read it the same way that I did. But other than that, Jackson didn't really need to get into the nitty-gritty details of each event. Rather, he focused on the definition of key cycles, and then turned to the main chart where you can see the listing of all of these triggering events. So on direct examination, Trooper Paul said that there was a listing of key cycles that started with key cycle number 1164. The key cycles that followed 1164 were apparently all Trooper Paul's testing. Basically, he could confirm that, and that was settled with everyone across the board.

• 1:41:21Speaker 04

  Jackson really worked to make that super clear to the jury before he proceeded. And then Jackson pointed to the two entries that showed the 12629A event and the 12629B event. And he pointed to the key cycles that were listed for each of those. As it turns out, they're both listed as key cycle 1162, meaning that they took place during one key cycle where the car was off, it was turned on, and then it was off again. And so Jackson got the witness to agree that his conclusion relies on the idea that there were two key cycles in between the one where Trooper Paul said that Karen hit John at 34 Fairview Road. And the one where Trooper Paul started his testing on the car. The problem with this is that there's been a ton of evidence showing Karen or someone else driving that car in between those events.

• 1:42:06Speaker 04

  And so there had to be more than two key cycles in those trips. Counting back, here's what Jackson tallied. Starting off key cycle 1164 was Trooper Paul's testing. And before that, the SUV was driven into Canton PD Sallyport. So that's key cycle 1163. Before that, it was turned on to get the SUV onto the tow truck. That was key cycle 1162. Then key cycle 1161 was when Karen drove from Meadows Ave to her parents' house in Dayton. Then key cycle 1160 would have been Karen driving from John O'Keefe's garage to Gemma Cave's house. Then key cycle 1159 would have been Karen driving from the waterfall to 34th Ferry Road back to Meadows Ave. And as Jackson pointed out, key cycle 1159 was not documented in this chart as having any triggering event.

• 1:42:50Speaker 04

  So that is really, really bad for the prosecution's case in chief.

• 1:42:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, so what do you make of what she's talking about key cycles and things like that? Because I know you're more familiar.

• 1:42:59Derrick Levasseur?

  This is something, and I'm not an accident reconstructionist, but I did look at the text stream data, which is the same data that you're referring to. And I really focused on cycle 1162. And I want to reiterate something before I go forward. I've told you guys at the beginning of the episode, which is the premise for me going forward. I'm not trying to determine Karen's guilt or innocence. I'm trying to figure out what actually happened. And I'm trying to use that with data that can't be altered as opposed to assumptions and opinions made by experts and interpretations made by attorneys on both sides of it. So this is just what I came up with, and this is what I'm looking at. And some of you weighed down in the comments, some of you emailed me. But this is where, this is what I took from it. And I could be completely wrong, but trying to figure out whether Karen struck John or

• 1:43:40Derrick Levasseur?

  not, this is what I interpreted from cycle data of 1162. Okay, so there's a couple, there's two events, as they mentioned. This is just my interpretation. One being the reversal event, which would be theorized to be when John was struck, the other being the three-point turn. So first off, we have to go back to the timeline. And if we're to go off the video footage at 12:11 a.m. John and Karen are seen leaving the area of waterfall, heading toward the area where they were parked somewhere around CF McCarthy's, right? And just, so let's go with the 1211 timeline, okay? In that cycle key, uh, cycle 1162, 11 minutes after that cycle began, there was this reversal.

• 1:44:22Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm sorry, there was this three-point turn, alleged three-point turn, okay? So that would put you at 1224. Well, if you go 19 minutes from that point, from that 1213 timeline, so we're saying they left the bar at 1211, they get in their car at 1213, well, 19 minutes from 1213 a.m. would put you exactly at 1232 p.m. for the reversal taking place. And looking at some of the other things I've seen, and also comparing it to the Apple Health data, which you asked me to look into last episode, John O'Keefe's steps stop at 1232 exactly. His movement and GPS stops at that time as well, it puts him on the flagpole.

• 1:45:03Derrick Levasseur?

  So, my takeaway from cycle 1162 would be the first event, 11 minutes after they get in the car at 1213 being the reversal, I'm sorry, the, uh, the three-point turn, and at 1232 being the, the reversal, and that timeline, that cycle data, if the, if accurate, would line up exactly with the timeline of John O'Keefe's movements stopping at 1232 a.m. So it would line up. That's just my interpretation of it, though. I like what Legal Bites had to say there, I mean, she brings up 1164, she might have more, um, information on it that she's maybe even given a more accurate opinion, but I really focused on cycle 1162. And again, just to reiterate, if you're going off the timeline, that Karen and John got

• 1:45:45Derrick Levasseur?

  into the car around 1213, 11 minutes after they get into the car, you would have that first event, which would be the three-point turn, and then 19 minutes after the first, the 1213 timeline, you would have, uh, the reversal, which would be at 1232. And when you just don't take that data, see, I'm not just taking that data, but when I compare it to the Apple Health data of John's Apple Health phone or his watch, I don't believe he had a watch, I think it was just a phone.

• 1:46:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  I think it was both.

• 1:46:12Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, he had, he had the watch as well?

• 1:46:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, because I think they were comparing and how they were slightly different, but yeah.

• 1:46:17Derrick Levasseur?

  And there was slightly deviations in that. And sometimes you can have Apple Health data on your phone alone, but it's not as accurate. It uses like an accelerometer or altimeter, whatever it is, whatever it is.

• 1:46:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  Odometer.

• 1:46:27Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. And so, so those things can be a little bit off, but as far as his movement, there were, you know, and I know, whether it's your phone or your watch, it's very sensitive as far as accounting for steps. If you even move just a little bit, it'll, it'll track a step. The steps for John's Apple Health stopped at 1232, which means that phone would have been had to have thrown on the ground and not moved, or John himself would not have moved because he still would have had the watch on, even if his phone got separated from him. So I really think as a detective-

• 1:46:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, his phone was underneath him, which I find to be weird, given the fact that they say she hit him and then he flew 30 to 40 feet. He would have dropped.

• 1:47:05Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I don't, I don't believe that he, he flew in whatever that direction. I mean, I don't know that. But for me, as a detective, I'm looking at, when did his movement stop? And that's probably your critical time, whether it's an assault or him being struck by a car. It looks like it comes back to 1232. And I, I don't have any skin in the game. I just compared it to the text stream data and it does line up. Now, there could be something that's off with the data, but that's what I looked at.

• 1:47:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  So we are going to talk about Trooper Paul's testimony a little bit more, simply because-

• 1:47:34Derrick Levasseur?

  You love Trooper Paul, man. I would have-

• 1:47:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  The way, well, because of the way that he said John got his wounds is the prosecution's statement of how John got his wounds. So if they're going to put this dude on this task-

• 1:47:46Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, you gotta, you read what you saw.

• 1:47:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  They're going to put him on the stand and that's the narrative you're going with based on him.

• 1:47:52Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep.

• 1:47:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  All right. Before we talk about that though, before we come back to Trooper Paul, we're going to give everybody a break from him and we're going to take a quick break.

• 1:47:59Derrick Levasseur?

  Not me though.

• 1:47:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  Our last one. No. We don't get an actual break. We'll be right back.

• 1:48:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  Mayber Paul was clumsily trying to explain his theory of how the SUV had hit John O'Keefe in a way that would cause him to sort of spin around as he flew through the air. And Paul also claimed that John had received the injuries to his forearm because his arm was what broke the taillight. And then that broken taillight proceeded to cause the scratches and abrasions to John's arm. Remember also that Paul- indicated the place on John's body where he was hit was his upper arm, not his torso, but his upper arm. Now, it doesn't take a scientist or a medical expert to understand basic facts such as an SUV is harder and heavier than a human body. And it would seem far more likely that the taillight of the SUV, especially going at the speed the prosecution claims it was going when John was hit, would break John's arm, not the other way around.

• 1:48:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  John O'Keefe was a strong man, but he wasn't Iron Man or Superman. He's made of flesh and bones, and there was no bruises or broken bones on John's body. Also, as you heard Jackson alluding to, the human arm is on a hinge. It's not one whole piece attached to the main body, so getting hit by a large SUV in the arm would have at least dislocated or broken John's arm, and at the most ripped it off his body, not caused him to spin around or rotate or pirouette or whatever you want to call it. I think it's very clear to everyone that Trooper Joseph Paul was not qualified to perform this reconstruction, and its results honestly can't be trusted, and you'd be hard pressed to find someone, even the most staunch Karen Reed haters, who could disagree with me at least on this point.

• 1:49:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now, the defense, however, brought in two crash reconstructionists from a company called Arca. This is a company that was founded in 1987 by an engineer who specialized in protecting people during crash events. This engineer's name is Alan Kanter. He was also credited with developing new lifesaving occupants seating and restraint systems that are still used today and have resulted in significant reduction in fatalities and major injuries. Now, one of the first projects that Arca actually worked on was with NASA evaluating the Challenger disaster, and as a result, new survival items became mandatory in all future U.S. Space Shuttle missions. They've been experts in crash reconstruction for over 30 years, and one of the Arca experts that took the stand for the defense was Daniel Wolf, who does have a PhD and a background

• 1:50:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  in electrical engineering as well as physics. Although he was called as a defense witness, Wolf had actually been retained by the FBI for their investigation into the state police, which the judge felt the jury didn't need to know, but the rest of us did. Dr. Wolf told the jury about extensive testing, including the use of a pneumatic cannon that he and his colleagues at a firm

• 1:50:38Speaker 05

  called ARCA did in this case. Defense attorney Alan Jackson asked him for his conclusion. Essentially, is the damage on Karen Reed's SUV consistent with a pedestrian strike? In this case, the victim, John O'Keefe.

• 1:50:53Speaker 07

  In your expert opinion, based on all your testing, is the damage to the taillight that you saw consistent with striking a human head? No. In your expert opinion, is the damage to the taillight consistent with striking a human arm? No. Well, I think one thing that comes to mind is it was a little bit difficult to follow the evidence, so to speak. So typically, when I go out and do an inspection, especially of a fresh incident, let's say I've got a debris field or I've got tire marks. What I like to do is kind of step into the scene, if you will, where you take global perspective shots and then you step into a specific piece of evidence so that you can at a later point in time identify where that evidence is.

• 1:51:34Speaker 07

  I noted that in a lot of these photographs, I didn't see a whole lot of that stepping in. It was essentially just zoomed right into where that evidence is, but not really having a great understanding of where was it relative to all of the other evidence? Or when it got there? Correct. So the primary damage was to the right taillight. It appeared to be fractured with the majority of the lens cover, so that that clear and red plastic covering missing from it. In addition to that, to the, if you're looking at the back of the vehicle, to the left of that, in the area above the, there's also another taillamp assembly on the lift gate. So above that assembly, there was a small dent along with some paint chips on the bumper,

• 1:52:18Speaker 07

  more so on the wraparound section as it kind of curves around to the right side of the vehicle. There appeared to be some superficial scratches as well in that area. Was there any other damage or deformation that you were able to glean from your review? The photogrammetry, damage to the Lexus, the bumpers, the panels, the quarter panel, the sheet metal, anything like that? No, the rest was remarkably intact. Is it common in vehicle pedestrian collisions that there is some sort of bumper displacement and/or sheet metal deformation that's concomitant to that? Absolutely. Assuming a pedestrian is positioned in a normal upright position, you certainly would expect to see damage to the bumper.

• 1:53:02Speaker 07

  In a lot of cases, what happens is, you know, the bumper is just clipped on. So again, the fourth

• 1:53:06Speaker 04

  Of that impact will oftentimes cause the bumper to kind of become unmounted or unclipped. You certainly could see deformation to body paneling such as the liftgate or the quarter panel as well.

• 1:53:15Speaker 07

  Is that especially true at higher speeds, meaning above 15 miles per hour or so?

• 1:53:20Speaker 04

  Oh, absolutely, yes.

• 1:53:22Speaker 07

  Was there any apparent damage to the Lexus that appeared consistent with any kind of pedestrian interaction that you saw?

• 1:53:28Speaker 04

  No, it was, again, it was really confined to just the taillight, a very isolated portion of the vehicle. With Dr. Rentschler and I working together on this, again, we performed projectile testing to the taillight with a drinking glass as well as a hybrid.

• 1:53:44Speaker 07

  How would you describe the drinking glass test?

• 1:53:47Speaker 04

  Certainly. So, again, from our review of the evidence, we knew that we had an isolated portion of damage to Lexus confined to the taillight. So we know that we're dealing with potentially a small object that could have created that. Looking at, again, the evidence in terms of the scene photographs, we know that we have a damaged drinking glass at the scene in the vicinity of the fragments of the taillight. So the theory that Dr. Rentschler and I put forward is potentially an individual threw this drinking glass at the back of the Lexus, causing the taillight to fracture.

• 1:54:20Speaker 07

  I'm going to interrupt you right there. You and Dr. Rentschler formed that theory and wanted to test that theory, correct?

• 1:54:28Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:54:29Speaker 07

  You were not told that theory by the Feds because you've never met us?

• 1:54:32Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 1:54:32Speaker 07

  You were not told that theory by the Commonwealth, you've never met them, correct?

• 1:54:36Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 1:54:37Speaker 07

  Your theory was the product of simply having some facts extant in the data and a broken drinking glass, a broken taillight, let's put them together and figure out if the drinking glass could be responsible for the taillight and vice versa.

• 1:54:51Speaker 04

  Absolutely, yes.

• 1:54:52Speaker 07

  And that was your determination of, well, we were given instructions to reconstruct this, let's look at every single angle, correct?

• 1:55:00Speaker 04

  Absolutely. And I will note, as part of the engagement with the entity that retained us, we were asked not to do any outside research or investigation of the case. It was to be based solely on. On the evidence that we were provided.

• 1:55:14Speaker 07

  Okay, as a matter of fact, and importantly, while you were doing your testing, had you ever even heard of the Karen Reed case? So, getting back to that testing, and I interrupted your flow, you were looking at whether or not the glass could have produced the damage to the rear taillight that you saw, correct?

• 1:55:33Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 1:55:34Speaker 07

  And what did you do in furtherance of making a determination about whether or not that was possible?

• 1:55:39Speaker 04

  Certainly. So, myself and one of our lab technicians at Arca, we designed and developed a pressurized air cannon. So it was capable of firing a projectile such as a drinking glass at the taillight. So it essentially, you could think of it kind of as a giant cannon, but it had a barrel, and then there was a valve that would open rapidly, and directly behind that was a pressurized vessel. And depending on the pressure, the PSI of that vessel, would determine essentially the speed at which that glass would be projected into the taillight.

• 1:56:11Speaker 07

  So you literally built a cannon?

• 1:56:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's pretty awesome.

• 1:56:18Speaker 07

  Cool job. Tell me what the results of your testing was with this pneumatic cannon that would fire the drinking glass?

• 1:56:26Speaker 04

  Certainly. So, we performed two different tests in terms of speeds. The target speeds were 30 and 40 miles per hour.

• 1:56:34Speaker 07

  Why was that?

• 1:56:35Speaker 04

  Well, so with consultation with Dr. Rentschler, he indicated that that is a reasonable speed at which an adult male, or an individual for that matter, could throw a drinking glass at the taillight.

• 1:56:46Speaker 07

  Had anybody indicated that there was any evidence whatsoever that John O'Keefe had thrown a drinking glass at the taillight?

• 1:56:55Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:56:55Speaker 07

  Was this another example of you and Dr. Rentschler and your team just exploring sort of every possibility and working a little bit in the blind?

• 1:57:04Speaker 04

  Objection.

• 1:57:05Speaker 07

  Sustained. What was the reason that you decided, or you and your team decided, that you wanted to approximate how a grown man could throw a glass at a taillight?

• 1:57:17Speaker 04

  Well, I think we wanted to have an understanding.

• 1:57:19Speaker 05

  Is when a projectile such as a drinking glass interacted with the taillight, would we get damage on the test taillight that was consistent with that of the subject taillight?

• 1:57:31Speaker 07

  Understood. So based on your, your, your theory, were you able to approximate the damage on the taillight?

• 1:57:41Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:57:41Speaker 07

  Describe that for us.

• 1:57:43Speaker 05

  So as I mentioned, we, we ran two tests. The, the target speeds were at 30 and, and 40 miles per hour. And there was a little bit of variability in terms of what our target was and, and what we actually achieved. So the achieved speeds were at 31 miles per hour and 37 miles per hour. So there's just depending on how the glass leaves the, the barrel and some of the rotation can affect some of the speed. Or ultimately the, the end result speed to that. So what I will say though, is that with the 37 mile per hour projectile into the taillight, we noted and observed that there was damage that was consistent with that of the, the subject taillight. And that the test taillight had the majority of the outer lens fractured and, and missing,

• 1:58:28Speaker 05

  broken into pieces, as well as some, some underlying damage to some of the internal components as well.

• 1:58:34Derrick Levasseur?

  Wow. There's a lot there. There's a lot to unpack.

• 1:58:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, first of all, we, we mentioned, I mentioned, you know, Superman and how John O'Keefe wasn't Superman. Well, Dr. Wolf looks like Superman and he definitely behaved with more professionalism and confidence on the stand, just like Superman would have. Okay. Uh, he clearly knows his shit and, and look at them. They're performing tests. They're trying to figure out every possible way that taillight could have broken. They're not just like, how could John's body have broken the taillight? And focusing on that, that tunnel vision theory. So I thought it was interesting because I'm not sure if they're saying that the, the drinking glass broke the taillight. Cause we know that.

• 1:59:11Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, that's what I kinda took from it.

• 1:59:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  Right. What I was wondering is if it wasn't John's cocktail glass, the one found by his body broken, that, that hit Karen's car, could it have been the cocktail glass that she left the bar with? Cause remember they both left the bar.

• 1:59:26Derrick Levasseur?

  That's right.

• 1:59:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  With a cocktail glass. So. Maybe John gets out of the car, they're fighting, he's got both cocktail glasses in his hands. And he's holding one, he's holding hers. And then he's like, well, screw you. She starts to drive away. She's like, I'm leaving your ass here, bitch. And he's like, oh, really? And he throws the cocktail glass at her car as she drives away. Now, interestingly enough, you would wonder. Well, if the the glass on the bumper doesn't match the cocktail glass found by John O'Keefe's car, would they go into the Elbert home and see if there was any glasses in there that matched the glass on Karen Reed's bumper? Of course, we know they didn't do that.

• 2:00:00Derrick Levasseur?

  They didn't do that, correct.

• 2:00:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  So we have some mystery glass on Karen's bumper, but we also know that she left the bar with cocktail glass. He left the bar with cocktail glass. His cocktail glass is found near him. Where is hers?

• 2:00:11Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, so I I'm writing down notes. First off, I agree with you on the the testimony of Dr. Wolf. Is it Dr. Wolf?

• 2:00:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  Dr. Wolf, yeah.

• 2:00:19Derrick Levasseur?

  This is what most experts do look like when they go on this thing. They don't look like Trooper Paul. And you, in many cases, you will find Dr. Wolf's on both the prosecution and the defense side, and they will both present an argument that sounds reasonably believable. But to get into what he said here, which I found fascinating, um, was that it potentially was a glass and they were able to replicate it and create similar damage to her glass. So everything that you said, um, you said it. There's an argument, there's a discrepancy between them, and there's something going on. He grabs both glasses. She's driving away. He throws the glass at her car. Now, if you're, if you believe that he was assaulted by someone else, he could have thrown the glass and Karen Reed breaks her taillight because he threw the glass and hit it, and she drives off.

• 2:01:02Derrick Levasseur?

  There's also an angle where she, he throws the glass and hits her car, and that's when she reverses into him and then drives off. Or there's a possibility that he throws the glass, hits her taillight, breaks it, that infuriates her, and she backs up into him and then takes off. But this is what I want to go back to with the the stuff that we do know. We know that Karen Reed's vehicle reconnected to John O'Keefe's wifi at 12:36 a.m. And his movement stopped.

• 2:01:33Derrick Levasseur?

  On his Apple Health data at 1232. So is it possible that she struck him and then drove off? Well, I wanted to dive into that too, because I looked up on Google Maps and Dr., not Dr., but Mr. Yanetti brought up the fact that it's a six-minute drive on a good day to get from 34 Fairview to Meadows where John lived. And he's not wrong. If you put it in Google Maps right now, it literally pulls up six minutes on the dot. In that Canton area, the speed limit universally is 30 miles per hour. So at that speed limit, which is what Google Maps is calculating off of, it would take approximately six minutes. However, I pose this theory to all of you. When have we sometimes not driven the speed

• 2:02:18Derrick Levasseur?

  limit? Late at night, or for there's a sense of urgency, or we're just trying to get home?

• 2:02:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  Or you're drunk?

• 2:02:23Derrick Levasseur?

  Or you're drunk. You know, could you make that drive in four minutes? You absolutely could. And so if you believe that, this whole theory of the glass hitting the back of the taillight, breaking it, her striking him, his movement stopping at 1232, her pulling off and getting home by 1236, it would line up with the wifi. But you were gonna say something, and you let me finish. So thank you. What was the third theory that you were gonna bring up?

• 2:02:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  I was thinking like, they get in a fight. He's like, I'm going in. She's like, I'm not waiting for you. She drives off, he throws the glass, and then he falls because he's drunk. He hits his head, and maybe he cuts his arm on his broken cocktail glass, you know? There could be a million things that happen.

• 2:03:07Derrick Levasseur?

  I just thought it was interesting that they were going down this glass being the reason for the tailgate breaking, because if we're to believe that he was, John O'Keefe was assaulted inside, then the taillight would have been broken during the rear, the fender bender in her own driveway. And this recreation, this examination done by Dr. Wolf, would dispute that, because he's saying that the object would have been having to travel between 34 and 37 miles per hour. We can see from that video, she was not traveling that fast, in that, when she's reversing into that car.

• 2:03:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  I think he said that that's how fast John would have thrown it.

• 2:03:40Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, thrown it to hit, to hit. To break the taillight and break it in that fashion. I'd be interested to know if he could replicate that damage backing into another vehicle because I was sitting there going. I get what he's saying, but isn't he also kind of discrediting the idea that the damage was caused by another vehicle that was stationary?

• 2:04:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  So I think that's why the defense was like, but you have no reason to think that's what happened. You were just doing tests.

• 2:04:05Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  To try every possible scenario.

• 2:04:07Derrick Levasseur?

  I also liked what Yanetti said there where he's like, oh, because he mentioned the overview photo. Remember he said I like to go into the scene? What did I say earlier? You got to take an overview photo. You want to scale everything. You want to draw it out. So you can not only reference the placard, the number six placard, but see where it was relative to all the other evidence and relative to the flagpole. And the house and they didn't do that. They just took these close up shots. So by not doing that, it does limit the ability to review the evidence later and to identify where each item was located. In reference to the overall crime scene. But yeah, I thought it was fascinating what he had to say and I think he did a great job. And, you know, I mean, it was, he's a great, he's a great expert witness. There's nothing else to say. He, could his interpretation be wrong? Of course it could be. It's his opinion.

• 2:04:53Derrick Levasseur?

  But it's based on a lot of experience, a lot of knowledge, a lot of education and he presents, he presents himself in a way that he's very sure about it.

• 2:05:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  And he's explaining it in a way that's not hard for us to understand.

• 2:05:04Derrick Levasseur?

  But that's what it's about with the jury. If you're a jury member and you're sitting there listening to Trooper Paul. And then you're listening to Dr. Wolf. Who's more convincing?

• 2:05:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean Wolf.

• 2:05:14Derrick Levasseur?

  Right. You know what I mean? So it's like, you know, that's, that's just common sense. It's human nature.

• 2:05:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, Dr. Wolf's colleague, who he referred to during his testimony, Dr. Andrew Wenschler, who's a biomechanical engineer for ARCA. Dr. Renshler testified that John's injuries were not consistent with being hit by a vehicle going 24 or 26 miles per hour, whatever. He said that John's injuries would have been much more significant to include broken bones and or torn ligaments. Notably, Dr. Renshler said, quote, "If there's enough force to cause a skull fracture, there's enough force to cause injuries to the other part of the body," end quote. Now injuries, these injuries he's speaking about, we know that John O'Keefe didn't have. On cross-examination by ADA Lally, Rentschler was asked about how John's arm was positioned at the time of impact, you know, because, uh, what's his name over there, Trooper Paul?

• 2:06:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  He's saying that he's holding it up, kinda like he's waving at somebody, right? Like extended like an L. And so ADA Lally was like, well, was it, was it tucked in? Was it hanging out? And Dr. Rentschler responded, quote, "There's no indication in any of the evidence of what he may or may not have been doing, how he may or may not have been positioned. That's the whole issue. There's no evidence to indicate what may have allegedly occurred in this case." End quote. And I have a lot of respect for that because over here, Trooper Paul's like, oh, his arm was like this and he got hit like this and then he spun. Where are you getting this from? Cause the crime scene's talking to you, my dude?

• 2:06:39Derrick Levasseur?

  Exactly. That's where, that's where he really effed himself and effed this case up because he's making, he's extrapolating out something that he doesn't even fully understand.

• 2:06:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. And this guy, this biomechanical engineer is like, none of the evidence has, gives us any indication of how he was standing, where he was standing, how he flew.

• 2:06:58Derrick Levasseur?

  That's a biomechanical engineer and the trooper's becoming, playing biomechanical engineer.

• 2:07:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  Exactly.

• 2:07:03Derrick Levasseur?

  You've exceeded your, your expertise.

• 2:07:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  Far, far.

• 2:07:07Derrick Levasseur?

  You, you made some leaps that you probably shouldn't have. And I'm sure when he was sitting in that box, testifying, he was thoroughly regretting those decisions.

• 2:07:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  Dude, you left the kiddie pool, you went right into the deep end and you cannot swim.

• 2:07:19Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep.

• 2:07:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  So additionally, Dr. Frank Sheridan, who's a retired forensic pathologist, who had formerly been a chief medical examiner for San Bernardino, California, he testified for the defense as well.

• 2:07:30Speaker 02

  Can you describe the injuries that you see in this photograph?

• 2:07:34Derrick Levasseur?

  These injuries that you're looking at here on the arm are abrasions, which are friction injuries, basically. We classify them under the general category of blunt force injury, but these particular ones are abrasions. Abrasions being where the outer layer of the skin, the epidermis, as it's called, has been scraped off. These are friction injuries, essentially.

• 2:07:56Speaker 02

  Based on your review of the information discussed earlier, can you tell, as well as your review of these photographs, can you tell whether these injuries were sustained before or after death?

• 2:08:07Derrick Levasseur?

  These, these injuries were sustained before death. We call them ante mortem, A-N-T.

• 2:08:12Speaker 07

  Mortem meaning before death. And that's based primarily on their color. And you have to take other things into consideration, but that's the basis basics of it. If these had been postmortem, they would have a more yellowish, orange, orange color, yet usually yellow.

• 2:08:30Speaker 03

  In your professional opinion, based on a reasonable degree of scientific certainty,

• 2:08:34Speaker 02

  are those injuries consistent with being struck by a vehicle while holding a drinking glass?

• 2:08:39Speaker 07

  Objection. I would say in general, no.

• 2:08:42Speaker 02

  So that that objection was sustained. I think Ms. Little's going to put it to you in a different way.

• 2:08:47Speaker 07

  I'm sorry. If you mean struck in that part of the body on the arm.

• 2:08:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:08:52Speaker 07

  Directly. I would say, no, it doesn't look like that at all. But then I've also had cases where an animal or a dog particularly was involved, but wasn't the actual cause of death, so to speak, but they were involved in a in something that was happening and left some traces of their of their activity in the form of bite marks or scratch marks.

• 2:09:13Speaker 02

  In your professional opinion, are those injuries consistent with an animal attack?

• 2:09:19Speaker 07

  Are they consistent with what?

• 2:09:20Speaker 02

  An animal attack.

• 2:09:22Speaker 07

  I would say they are, yes. I'm not a hundred percent sure about this, but my my initial reaction when I saw this photograph was that it was probably an animal mark, and most likely, I would say, a dog. Scrape marks with the paws and possibly also a bite mark from the teeth as well, possibly. I'm not a hundred percent sure. I didn't get a chance to analyze it right there, the spots, so to speak. But my basic impression is that these were consistent with marks caused by, say, a dog using his paws or claws, if you want to put it that way, and possibly the teeth as well.

• 2:10:04Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, so I get what he's saying here, and we couldn't show the photo. It's blurred out in here. You can go look up the photo. I've seen the photo. I've done, obviously, we're deep into this now. I've seen the arm photo on, it's unblurred online. And I will say, I mean, I'm not an expert in it, but it doesn't look like road rash or banging from a from a truck or a SUV. Kind of look like claw marks or bite marks from a dog. And you know, with some canine training that I would be doing, a lot of the times the dogs will bite on the arm or the leg. Um, creating similar abrasions. Uh, could it be something else? Of course it could be. We don't know for certain. That's his interpretation. I will say his breathing would be enough to drive me insane. But other than that, I, you know, I get where he's coming from. We couldn't show the video, the photo here for purposes.

• 2:10:45Derrick Levasseur?

  Anytime you show any, um, dead body, you get demonetized immediately. So, um, you can look it up. It's really, it's, it's readily available. It's not anything graphic, but you know, I, I, to me, I've seen road rash a lot in my professional career.

• 2:10:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  I feel like we've actually shown the picture, but this, I think it's court TV. They, they blurt it out. We do not.

• 2:11:04Derrick Levasseur?

  But if we showed it, if we showed it, we would get demonetized. I got demonetized for a video I just did where they, it was a dead body. It was just the jacket of the dead, of the person and they, and they demonetized me.

• 2:11:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. You never know what they're gonna, they're gonna grab onto.

• 2:11:16Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, they're pretty, they're pretty selective, but, um, I get where he's going with this. I will say again, you know, I was to, to be transparent with you guys, I was working under the assumption that he was holding the glass when he was struck. And Dr. Wolf really opened up my eyes to a potential motive. If you're to believe Karen Reed struck him, like, why would she, why would she go in reverse after getting ready to leave? Well, he could have pissed her off, like you said, where he throws the glass as she's driving away and that could have enraged her, especially if they're going back and forth. I didn't even think about that possibility.

• 2:11:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  She might've even just backed up really fast to like, be like, you know, show like, ah, I'm mad and not knowing she hit him.

• 2:11:53Derrick Levasseur?

  I also was like, could it be a situation where she's going in reverse to like spook him or whatever, or like just to go back and talk to him? And as she's backing up, he throws the glass at her taillight, you know, like get out of here or whatever. Like there's so many, as you said, so many possibilities. But I will say that just with that experiment that Dr. Wolf conducted to be able to replicate it, it does seem more likely. Based on the forensics of it, that he wasn't holding the glass in his hand if he was struck by the vehicle. And the damage to the taillight could have still occurred by the glass by being thrown. Really interesting stuff.

• 2:12:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  Derek, if he's holding the glass when he's hit, the glass.

• 2:12:32Derrick Levasseur?

  It shatters all over him.

• 2:12:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's not, and it's also not flying with his body.

• 2:12:36Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  He's gonna drop it.

• 2:12:37Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:12:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  Then his body's gonna fly.

• 2:12:39Derrick Levasseur?

  But like you said, if it's Karen Reed's glass, maybe that's how some of the fragments end up on the, that would, what you said, I was like, lightbulb, that makes sense. If it's a second glass and he throws it, it shatters and fragments end up on the bumper. I'm like, wow, okay, that makes more sense.

• 2:12:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yep, absolutely. And, you know, what they could have done, what they could have done is gone to, what is it, PF McCarthy's?

• 2:13:02Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  Where, where they believe she took the glass from and grabbed those glasses and grabbed glasses from the waterfall bar and grill and compared those glasses.

• 2:13:10Derrick Levasseur?

  I think it was CF, I think it's CF McCarthy's.

• 2:13:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  Whatever. They grabbed those glasses from each bar and compared it to the gla-, well, compared it to the glass in Karen's bumper.

• 2:13:18Derrick Levasseur?

  Of course, absolutely.

• 2:13:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  But they did not.

• 2:13:20Derrick Levasseur?

  That's the problem. Coulda, shoulda, woulda.

• 2:13:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  So on cross-examination, Dr. Sheridan was asked by ADA Lally if frozen ground could have cracked the back of John O'Keefe's head. And Sheridan said, yes, it could have. Sheridan also said that John did not have broken orbital bones or other injuries that you would expect to see if someone had been in a fight, injuries to his eyes, right? There's obviously injuries he has, but he doesn't have orbital injuries or injuries to his eyes you would expect to see if someone had been in a fight. But even the medical examiner who conducted the autopsy on John O'Keefe had a hard time saying for sure if his injuries were consistent with being struck by an SUV going 24 miles per hour. She said, quote, "I would say it's likely and unlikely at the same time, depending on the position of the body and the vehicle in question," end quote, yeah.

• 2:14:04Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, she's covering herself both ways.

• 2:14:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  She also testified that any blunt object could have caused John's skull fractures, and they could be consistent with a fall to the ground. She also said that she saw no signs of a significant altercation, but admitted that it was possible some of John's injuries could have been caused by a punch. Another defense witness, Dr. Marie Russell, testified that the injuries on John's arm were consistent with an animal bite.

• 2:14:31Speaker 07

  Prosecution and defense are questioning a series of witnesses who the defense wants to call as part of its case. The prosecution claims these witnesses were all late additions and it didn't have a chance to prepare for them. The first witness is a retired ER doctor and forensic pathologist. She says she's reviewed photos of John O'Keefe's wounds and she does not believe he was hit by a car.

• 2:14:56Speaker 04

  Those injuries appear to be consistent with an animal attack. Well, they are consistent with a large dog attack. There's a combination of both what I consider bite wounds and scratch wounds on the arm.

• 2:15:14Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, this is something that I was seeing a lot of because obviously when you're doing your own research, you run into other things and you hadn't even mentioned the dog bite at the time when I was doing my research.

• 2:15:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, we did talk about Chloe, the German Shepherd.

• 2:15:26Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, the dog, the German Shepherd in the house. The problem for me, guys, and if someone has a way to dispute it, I'm open to it. The problem for me with all of this, whatever happened after Karen left, because if this is what happened, if this happened in Karen's presence, she obviously would have said it. But we know that she left the property around 12:32 and got home at 12:36. But his Apple Health data, his movement stopped at 12:32. So if you're to believe that he went into the house, by the way, the GPS shows him outside the house all the time, too. But if you're to assume that something happened after Karen Reed left and there was a dog bite and it was an altercation, whatever angle you want to go with, why wasn't any of it recorded? Why were there no steps taken?

• 2:16:09Derrick Levasseur?

  Why did he land in that spot near the flagpole and immediately after she pulls away, there's zero steps? If he was bitten by a dog, there'd be movement. Even if he's just standing in place, there's going to be activity recorded. There's nothing. So I agree with the observation of the wounds, even though I'm not a pathologist. I agree, it does look like a dog bite, but I wonder if those injuries could have been before his death, maybe earlier in the day or a day or two before that. We don't know about, maybe he got into, I don't know. But I have a hard time getting there when the activity on his own watch and phone stops at 12:32. But anyways, that's just my holdup.

• 2:16:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  His activity stops at 12:32 and her car connects to the wifi at his house at 12:36.

• 2:16:54Derrick Levasseur?

  Correct.

• 2:16:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  I have a hard time believing that she could hit him and get back to his house within four minutes. I really do. That's a very tight.

• 2:17:03Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm telling you, we could do it. If you want to come up here, we'll make the drive.

• 2:17:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  Very tight timeframe though.

• 2:17:06Derrick Levasseur?

  They're saying six minutes. You couldn't take two minutes off your timeline? I'm asking you personally, it's a six minute drive if you're going the speed limit. If I said to you, you have to get home two minutes earlier, you at that time of night, you couldn't do it? Have you seen the path? It's a very direct route.

• 2:17:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  Let me, let me, before we close out the episode, I want to bring up just two, two more things.

• 2:17:24Derrick Levasseur?

  Do it, do it.

• 2:17:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  I want to talk about a plow driver named Brian Lafran. Um, there's too many Bryans in this case, so he's also known as Lucky Lafran. That's what we're going to call him. Lucky. Yeah. Now, an initial statement from the Canton DPW superintendent, Mike Trotta, told Trooper Michael Proctor that no town workers had plowed Fairview on the morning that John O'Keefe was found. And this is what Proctor puts in his report. Nobody plowed Fairview. That was the evidence presented, but then the defense called Lucky to the stand as their first witness. And Lucky testified that he did in fact run his normal route the morning of the 29th, which included Fairview. And he not only told this to Michael Proctor, but to the FBI and to a private investigator. He testified that he passed the Albert home around 2:45 a.m.

• 2:18:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  And he said he could see a very large portion of the lawn, almost to the front steps. And he saw nothing. He didn't see a dead body. Lucky also said he drove by about 30 minutes later and he again said he saw nothing on the lawn, but he did see a light colored Ford Edge parked on the road in front of the house. Since he knew the Albert family well, he'd gone to school with Chris Albert. He testified that he was being courteous and he decided not to report the car for violating snowstorm parking restrictions, which is basically they tell you, hey, snowstorm's coming. Make sure your car's not in the street because the plow drivers have to come through.

• 2:18:42Derrick Levasseur?

  And tell you, yeah.

• 2:18:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  But he didn't do that. He said he didn't, he didn't turn them in. When Lucky came back, uh, back that way around 5:30 a.m., he claimed at that point the street was blocked and first responders were there. Now, according to the FBI, every plow truck in Canton is equipped with a functioning GPS. And the GPS data established that Lucky actually did pass by 34 Fairview at 2:30 a.m. On January 29th, 2022. And by that time, it had just started sort of snowing, you know, lightly around the 12:30 time. Two hours later, is there going to be enough snow coverage so that Lucky, driving a plow with nothing to do but look around him, is not going to see a dead body laying on a, on a white lawn? I don't know.

• 2:19:24Derrick Levasseur?

  I, I, I don't know either. I don't know Lucky. I don't know if he's the sharpest tool in the shed. I think it's a, I think, I think there's people who would miss that, obviously, and I think there's people who would pick up on it.

• 2:19:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  So he goes by at 2:30 and then again 30 minutes later, does not see a body at any point, but he sees a Ford Edge, right?

• 2:19:40Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, he could, he could easily not have been, if you're not looking for it, it's easy you could have missed it.

• 2:19:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  But in order to see the Ford Edge on the street, he would have had to have been looking at the yard.

• 2:19:49Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, I mean, to see the Ford Edge on the street, you're looking for other cars.

• 2:19:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  Maybe, I don't know.

• 2:19:54Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I mean, you look, you don't want to hit the car.

• 2:19:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  I think you're discounting a pretty important wit eyewitness.

• 2:19:59Derrick Levasseur?

  Really? You think he's that important? The fact that he didn't see a body in the middle of the night, in dark clothing? You think that that's, that, that important?

• 2:20:06Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't know. When everything's white from snow, I think I would see.

• 2:20:08Derrick Levasseur?

  You can't, people can't have it both ways. Either it was a dusting at that point or it was a blizzard.

• 2:20:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh, I, but it's too, so it starts snowing around 12, 12:30 time.

• 2:20:18Derrick Levasseur?

  Correct.

• 2:20:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  Is there going to be enough snow falling where you wouldn't be able to see on a white lawn that there's like a lump, like, you know, what's her name? That said she saw a dark spot when they left around like, I think, what did she say, 1:45 or something?

• 2:20:32Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm saying I don't know Lucky. I don't know how observative he is, but I will say just, is it possible that this witness, missed a body that was on the lawn in the middle of the night that could have potentially been covered by a dusting of snow as well as the ground around it and not noticed the discrepancy in the height of the ground and this small bump that was there? Is that possible? That he wasn't paying attention for that? I don't think I'm going out on a limb saying that's possible. So I'm not discrediting you. I think it's important. You got to bring it in. Had, definitely helps the defense case. But I also think I would go more off the Apple Health data and the GPS coordinates of John O'Keefe as opposed to a plow truck driver at 2:30 in the morning. But that's just me. Many, many people will agree with you. I have no doubt about it.

• 2:21:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  I'm gonna get a lot of shit for this because I know there's a lot of people that hinge this case on that Apple Health data and it's like, okay, it's a small point for me, but overall, it's not the end all be all because it's literally not accurate at all.

• 2:21:30Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I agree. It's not accurate, especially as far as height. I want to point out some other research I was doing with that, with the Apple Health as far as stairs because you mentioned that. There's a, I'm gonna try to summarize this, but ultimately the GPS coordinates, it's kind of a dead area over there at 34 Fairview and what they were able to replicate is, and many of you have probably seen this, when John O'Keefe's data, his GPS data is at that location, it basically keeps pinging at the flagpole. And then there's a moment where it kind of becomes a bigger circle where it encompasses the 34 Fairview address, but it only happens for about, I believe, six seconds. So they estimated that he would have had to have been traveling 30 miles per hour into the house and then back out of the house because within that six, six second period, the circle expanded to include 34 Fairview

• 2:22:15Derrick Levasseur?

  and then it shrunk back down to the flagpole and stayed there for the rest of it. That's the GPS, so not possible. There is a point where it computes that John O'Keefe was going up and downstairs and it's not, again, not disputed by anyone that he was in a car going up and down a hill at that point. And there is a thing, and I could be wrong about this, it's called a barometric altimeter that's inside the iPhone and it can, it can throw off the amount of stairs you're going up and down based on elevation changes and temperature changes. So I'm not really focusing on the staircase element of it. I'm focusing on the lack of steps because what I do know, I do agree with you that it's not 100% accurate, but what I have found with my Apple Health is it's more likely to count steps that I

• 2:23:01Derrick Levasseur?

  didn't take than not account for steps. So the fact that there were zero steps after 12:32, that is, that is something that I do take a lot of, I put a lot of stock into, I put a lot of weight into. And then you include the GPS coordinates of Karen Reed, now Dr. Wolf's testimony about the, um, the shot glass, and I round out this episode, again, feeling very strong. wrongly about the fact that the threshold of reasonable doubt has been absolutely met and they made the right decision by finding Karen Reed not guilty and now I'm still going through this episode and going through the series trying to figure out what actually happened to John O'Keefe

• 2:23:40Derrick Levasseur?

  and I do at this point feel like the possibility of Karen Reed striking John O'Keefe maybe not even knowing it is very much in play here is very much in play and the reason I say that she may not have known about it I'm not necessarily going off the forensics at the crime scene not necessarily going off the digital data I'm going off her behavior after the fact where she seems very pissed off at John and wanting to know where he is and I don't think that's a person that if they knew they did something wrong would be making those phone calls like that because that would actually demonstrate motive so that's why I'm leaning that direction of she did potentially hit him but whether she knew it or not is a completely different question and personally I don't think

• 2:24:24Derrick Levasseur?

  we'll ever truly know if that is what happened

• 2:24:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  yeah I agree I agree

• 2:24:28Derrick Levasseur?

  that's where I am I'm not putting my whole thing on it that's what I'm leaning towards the and again if you don't like the Apple health data like you said that's going to completely discredit what I'm saying but if you're if you believe that the step should have been recorded if he was still wearing the watch which from what I understand he was still wearing the watch when he was found there should have been some recorded steps and the fact that there weren't is concerning to me as far as potential theories involving anyone else even if they came out to him at the flagpole if there was a small altercation it would have recorded some steps and it didn't so that's something that I'm puzzled by

• 2:25:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  well along with there being a lot of Brian's involved in this case there also appears to be several Ford edges involved in this case because remember Lucky the plow driver said he saw Ford Edge and we we heard about this in a previous clip where it says the prosecution was like oh forget about that Ford Edge this person's changed their story multiple times he never changed his story about the Ford Edge

• 2:25:22Derrick Levasseur?

  who who Lucky changed his story or okay

• 2:25:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  that's what the prosecution he never changed his story about the Ford Edge and a lot of people own a Ford Edge Brian Albert himself drove a Ford Edge provided to him by the city of Boston his brother Kevin Albert also drove Ford Edge And his nephew, Colin Albert, was the owner of a Ford Edge. Just gonna put that out there. Now, I want to also quickly touch on some surveillance videos, specifically the video of Karen leaving John's house when the defense claims she actually broke her taillight, and also a bunch of surveillance footage that has suddenly gone missing, in this case. Footage that shows crucial moments in the timeline. First, let's look at the surveillance footage of Karen leaving John's house after 5:00 a.m. on the 29th.

• 2:26:03Speaker 02

  None of those defenders is more convinced than that of my next guest. Sean McDonough is a retired DEA supervisory special agent who's investigated this case on his own, pretty much full-time, for a year now. He says he can prove that Karen Reed's taillight was completely intact after the alleged hit-and-run happened. Take a look at this video from the doorbell cam. It was taken at 5:03 a.m. And 5:03 a.m. is hours after Reed and O'Keefe parted ways. And you can see, right there in the circle, that Reed's taillight is right where it's supposed to be, on her Lexus SUV.

• 2:26:46Speaker 02

  I want to welcome to the program Sean McDonough. Sean, that, that video is sort of jaw-dropping. It's kind of like the Perry Mason moment, and I wonder if the prosecutors have it, and if they do, how do they explain it?

• 2:27:01Speaker 05

  Actually, first, I'm so happy to be here, and thank you, thank you for covering this. I'm so happy you led with the first picture. The first picture is what the prosecution wants the jurors to believe. Look, that, that taillight looked like at 12:32 a.m. after John was allegedly hit by Karen Reed. In this video, which is four and a half hours after Karen allegedly hit John...

• 2:27:25Speaker 05

  That, see that, that light right there has absolutely no wires, no LEDs. All the red is completely gone, which means no red would be reflective, right? There would be nothing, there would be nothing illuminating. At 503 to 508, you see her back in, she cracks the, the backup light onto John O'Keefe's, Officer John O'Keefe's traverse, which is behind there. See those tire tracks? She goes in at an angle, which means she definitely made contact with the, that, that side light that comes out five inches. We, we documented this. And see right there?

• 2:28:07Speaker 05

  That, that tire on John's car moves forward. It didn't go backwards. So the angle directs the motion of the vehicle when it got struck. So when that, as that video continues on, if you keep, keep going with that video, a little bit more, it's completely intact. And this is how it all came about. The lead detective, Michael Proctor for the Mass State Police, this is how I found it. In his affidavit, he said, the taillight, the right rear taillight, right side was shattered and a large piece missing. And I said, wait a minute. The two witnesses told him that there was a crack.

• 2:28:52Speaker 05

  And we analyzed this back and forth and we let the video play all the way through. I went to Lexus dealerships. They told me not only do they have, it's a polycarbonate of plastic, one of the hardest plastics you can have. The law of physics, but there you go, right there. See all that red? In the, in the final picture where the prosecution's saying, this is how it ends up. It's no way. So, polycarbonate of plastic, very hard. Sixty-five hundred pounds going into a 220 pound.

• 2:29:23Derrick Levasseur?

  Male human will topple him over. It will not crack up the taillight in thirty-seven plus pieces. Absolutely impossible. Mistake number one, they did not know this video existed when they did this crime scene later in the night. This video came about two days later. So when

• 2:29:43Speaker 02

  they made the decision. So again, just listen, I've got only thirty seconds left, but I've got to, I've got to ask you, you've been in this business a long time. How are the prosecutors going to explain this away? Because I guarantee you what you have, defense attorneys will use.

• 2:29:55Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, they have it all. They have that and more. I don't know how they intend to convince a jury of twelve that that car hit John O'Keefe. There is no way. So this is a compelling video. I, I, I would ask the same question. How did the prosecution explain this? Because the video, the, the taillight to me, looks like it's intact at that point. I will say, I, the, it's very obvious the taillight's still intact in that location. Is it already cracked? It's potentially possible it's cracked. I don't know. It could be already fractured and the pieces came out as after the car was retrieved or went over some bumps. But what I would be more curious to see, and again, I love recreations, right? Because they don't lie. You can trade, take that traverse, put it right in that driveway. You take her Lexus, you put it, or a similar Lexus, you put it in that driveway and you

• 2:30:40Derrick Levasseur?

  back into her, and you back into the traverse. I would be interested to see what part of her car, because it's clearly, you can see, her car hit his car. I would love to see what part of her car strikes the back, the, the front of, or the back of his traverse. Because as I was watching that video, two things I took from it was that the, the taillight appears to be intact, or most of it appears to be there, right? But also, her bumper protrudes further than the taillight itself waste on the, based on the way that Lexus kind of curves inward. So I would think, just as a layman, that it'd be more likely her bumper would strike his car. But I don't know without a recreation, but I would love to see if they could replicate

• 2:31:22Derrick Levasseur?

  a scenario in that driveway where her taillight could have came in contact with his vehicle. That's something I would love to know.

• 2:31:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, the way that the prosecution explained this away was by claiming that state troopers, including Michael Proctor, had gone to John's house and they had not found any pieces of Karen's taillight there, and they had seen no damage to John's vehicle.

• 2:31:44Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, but the taillight's intact at that point.

• 2:31:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 2:31:47Derrick Levasseur?

  The taillight's there. I mean, I gotta call it how I see it. The taillight's there. Now, it could be a fractured taillight that broke out as they were driving around and as she's leaving, of course. But to this DEA agent's credit, in that video, there's no disputing the fact that it doesn't look the same as the photograph taken by investigators later when they seize the vehicle. So that is something that I'm sure the defense hopped all over, and as they should.

• 2:32:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes, I agree. The taillight looks like it's intact. It's not missing big chunks.

• 2:32:15Derrick Levasseur?

  Correct, yeah. I think we can both. It could be cracked. We don't know. You can't tell from that video, but it doesn't look like that photo. That's for damn sure.

• 2:32:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  No. So let's talk next about random missing surveillance video.

• 2:32:26Speaker 02

  Buchanan testified that he requested motion-activated Ring camera footage of John's driveway from that night, yet never saw Karen. The prosecution insinuated that Karen deleted it, but the defense quickly pointed out.

• 2:32:39Speaker 04

  Who received the actual Ring video or videos from the Ring Corporation?

• 2:32:45Speaker 03

  It was Trooper Mike Proctor who received it.

• 2:32:47Speaker 02

  And an audio recording was played for jurors of Buchanan's conversation with Karen on June 6, 2022, where she accuses other people who were there that night and who have already testified in this trial as being the real killers of John O'Keefe. You're aware that you've beaten up that very calm hour. We're all in on the same

• 2:33:06Stephanie Harlowe?

  joke, right? My taillight is cracked and junked. It's pulverized. We've got footage of Karen. Leaving John's house.

• 2:33:15Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  After 5:00 a.m., but the footage of her arriving back to the house after allegedly hitting him, it's just missing. It's gone. And they say, oh, Karen got rid of it. But how could she have done that?

• 2:33:27Derrick Levasseur?

  I don't think you can. I think Ring keeps it up in their cloud.

• 2:33:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't think they do necessarily.

• 2:33:32Derrick Levasseur?

  I think you have to pay for that plan, actually. You might be right.

• 2:33:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  But the way to access it would have been through, through John's cellphone.

• 2:33:38Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  So the only other person who could have removed it before it went into evidence is stripper Michael Proctor, unless for some reason at that exact moment when she got back, the video just glitched. The Ring camera just, just glitched.

• 2:33:50Derrick Levasseur?

  And I would also say, I'm assuming the account's in, in John's name.

• 2:33:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  It is, yes.

• 2:33:53Derrick Levasseur?

  So how would Karen be able to get it removed? Like, would she, I don't know if she'd have access to that.

• 2:33:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  She would not have been able to.

• 2:33:59Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, yeah. I agree. Yeah, I agree.

• 2:34:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  So additionally, now, there is surveillance footage from one of John's neighbors that show headlights arriving at the house around that, you know, 12:36 time.

• 2:34:10Derrick Levasseur?

  Right.

• 2:34:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  And we assume, because that's when her car connected to his wifi, that that's her coming in.

• 2:34:15Derrick Levasseur?

  A reasonable assumption, yeah.

• 2:34:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  We, yeah, so we have some footage. It just doesn't show her vehicle. It just shows headlights pulling into John's.

• 2:34:21Derrick Levasseur?

  But I mean, her, her phone connects to the wifi. We know that's impossible to do unless your phone's there. Like, we have, I have trouble connecting to my wifi when I am at home.

• 2:34:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  For real.

• 2:34:28Derrick Levasseur?

  So, so I mean, I don't, I don't think you need to tell the headlights, but okay.

• 2:34:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  So it's just more missing evidence.

• 2:34:34Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  That, you know.

• 2:34:35Derrick Levasseur?

  Terrible case.

• 2:34:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. So.

• 2:34:37Derrick Levasseur?

  There's a reason why Proctor is, is on administrative leave. And there's probably some other people that should be as well.

• 2:34:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. Well, both houses across the street from Brian Albert's house also had Ring cameras, which would have been pointing directly at 34 Fairview, including the home of Deputy Chief Tom Halliher. And it looks like the police never asked these neighbors for their Ring camera footage, even though they have done this before in multiple other cases. And we know that after a certain amount of time, your phone doesn't store those things anymore. Uh, they, you, you'd have to get them within like the first few days, and then it's like rewriting over.

• 2:35:10Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now, we know that that Canton Police and Massachusetts State Police have, in other cases, put out, you know, Twitter alerts and things and said, hey, anybody in this neighborhood, if you have surveillance video, please send it to us. They did not do that in this case. Why? When this would have exactly shown every single thing that happened.

• 2:35:30Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I, I, yeah, I, I agree. I agree. I don't know why you wouldn't dot your i's, cross your t's. You're never gonna get me to disagree with you in this case as far as the police misconduct and the... The inaccuracies and the the lack of investigation that took place into certain areas, the question is why? And that's the million dollar question for a lot of people, where is it? Is it because they were covering up for another police officer? Or they had already zeroed in on Karen Reed and they were only interested in evidence that supported their initial narrative, which was that she struck him and she took off? Anything outside of that, that they just considered it a red herring? And that's that's wrong. It's not what you're supposed to do.

• 2:36:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, additionally, during the grand jury, Brian Albert testified that he'd gotten what he thought was a Nest camera for Christmas, but he said he hadn't installed it yet. And I find this very suspicious, not because he didn't install it yet, but because he's a Boston police officer, he's pretty well known in the area. Most times, police officers have some sort of home surveillance.

• 2:36:32Derrick Levasseur?

  Amen, you should.

• 2:36:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  To protect their families, right? Because they're they're putting bad guys, taking them off the street.

• 2:36:37Derrick Levasseur?

  Or even just your vehicles. Somebody knows you live there, they could throw a brick through your window, something like that.

• 2:36:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  And Brian Albert's been involved in a lot of high profile cases, as we discussed previously. You'd think he'd have some sort of security system installed.

• 2:36:48Derrick Levasseur?

  Everybody should. Shout out Simply Safe.

• 2:36:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  According to him, nothing, right? So there's also a video of Karen Reed's SUV passing by the Canton Library on her way to the Albert's home that night with, you know, John O'Keefe in the car with her. But stunningly, when she would have driven past the library again on her way to John's house after the prosecution claims she hit him, which would have given us an indication of how long it took for her to get home.

• 2:37:11Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:37:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  There was a glitch in the system and there's a two minute gap at the time exactly that Karen Reed would have been driving by the Canton Library and it would have showed what time she did that and it would have showed whether or not her taillight was intact.

• 2:37:24Speaker 05

  The Commonwealth's evidence, we know that my client drove by the Canton Library at 12:16 a.m. on January 29th, because that was recorded. There is video of her driving by at that time, heading to 34 Fairview, which is where John O'Keefe died, with her taillight intact. We know that my client arrived back at John O'Keefe's residence at 1 Meadows Ave in Canton at 12:41 a.m. because the Commonwealth produced a voicemail that she left for John, where you can hear the garage door close. The car door closing, the house door closing while she walked in her high heels on the garage floor. One Meadows is about a mile from the Canton Library. We know the video equipment was working because they have that footage from 1216 a.m.

• 2:38:09Speaker 05

  but in the video that the prosecution turned over to us, there is a gap in that video from 1237 a.m. to 1239 a.m. which would have been the precise time my client would have been driving back past the library. We know that that footage would show that my client's taillight was still intact at that point because she never struck John O'Keefe with her vehicle. Yet the prosecution has produced a video from the library with that crucial time period missing.

• 2:38:39Speaker 06

  Now, as far as the video was provided to Trooper Matthew Dunn of the CPAC unit with the District Attorney's Office, that was then shared with Ms. Crawford. It was a person in our office who specifically, who deals with forensic and surveillance video and type evidence. It was then archived on our system. Recently, we reached out and spoke to the IT Director with the Town of Canton again. That share link I tried to send to counsel, email essentially wouldn't go through. We tried to open it, essentially it won't open. So the link expired within 30 days, within 60 days if not 30 days of being shared with

• 2:39:22Speaker 06

  our office, but the exact information that was provided by the Town of Canton was archived by Ms. Crawford, was then provided to counsel at her arraignment in Superior Court, as well as I was able to download it onto a Citrix file, which I then shared with counsel earlier this week. So what we have as a video, what exists as a video, what we were given as a video for those relevant timeframes was placed onto the, onto the archived within our system, was then placed onto a disk, and what's on the disk, what's been provided to counsel, is what we received.

• 2:39:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, it's like the epitome of you have a lot of explaining to do and it's just constant, constantly.

• 2:39:59Derrick Levasseur?

  I was a little confused. Jackson said 37, 1237 to 1239, but she would have already been home.

• 2:40:04Stephanie Harlowe?

  So 1241 was when she entered the house and she called John and you could hear her heels clicking on his floor.

• 2:40:10Derrick Levasseur?

  But he said that there was a gap missing from 1237 to 1239 on the camera, but she would have already been home at that point. Maybe he just misspoke, or is he trying to push?

• 2:40:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  I'm not sure.

• 2:40:20Derrick Levasseur?

  Or you know what I'm talking about, but that would have pushed her time even later to get home. So maybe at that point, he was going with that timeline where she would have passed at 12:37 to 12:39, which is why you hit the garage at 12:41. But again, it's semantics. The bottom line is you don't have the video footage. Would we be able to see the taillight? I don't know. I don't know how good the camera system for the library was, but I know that footage that was shown a couple of minutes ago to our audience where she's in the driveway at 5:03 in the morning is pretty clear that the taillight, from what you can see, is still intact. Could it be damaged? Maybe, but it's, it does not look like the photo that we've been shown. That is, you cannot dispute that. It doesn't look the same.

• 2:41:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, it's a mess. This case is a mess. It's an absolute cluster, and I think it's, it's just kind of, I feel like we're belaboring the point now, which is any piece of evidence that is presented to us cannot be trusted because there's 17 people who can give you 17 different interpretations of it. And the, the integrity of that evidence is going to constantly be under question because of where it came from.

• 2:41:24Derrick Levasseur?

  Completely agree. Completely agree, which is why this case is so hard and which is why people are so divided on it.

• 2:41:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  Crazy why they're bringing her back to trial. What are they gonna do?

• 2:41:31Derrick Levasseur?

  I don't, I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that either. And that's why I'm trying as best as I can, and it's not a foolproof plan to rely on, to rely on evidence that's not controlled by anybody, any party, or has not been interpreted by any party. I'm not going off interpretations because we know, you guys know, experts, they get there for hire. That's for both sides. I'm not saying it one way or the other. And I have some friends who are, you know, experts in these fields and they will be the first to tell you that. So I'm trying to go forward with an open mind and rely on evidence that I don't think was altered to fit a narrative like the Celebrite report, not the interpretation of it, but the actual report,

• 2:42:13Derrick Levasseur?

  like the Apple Health data, even though that has its flaws, the GPS data, things of that nature. It's not a lot that hasn't been controlled by one party or the other. And I'm also trying to focus on evidence that hasn't been in the hands of Detective Proctor or Trooper Proctor. So it's limited because his hands were on everything. So that's where I'm at on it. I think there's things that could make you, could make you go either direction. I think we all agree that Karen should be found not guilty anytime and that she should not be tried again. And that, that may be because of just the... The terrible case that was put on by the prosecution and the investigation done by the the Mass State Police. But now I'm just trying for the sake of my own mental health and for everybody else out here, just to really find out what happened to John O'Keefe, even though there will be

• 2:42:56Derrick Levasseur?

  no prosecution at this point of anybody else. You know, like, that's never gonna happen. John will never get justice.

• 2:43:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  No.

• 2:43:03Derrick Levasseur?

  So, so that that's, that's already out there, but we'll see where it goes. It's a fascinating case. I'm glad we're covering it. And I just want to point something out. Although this case, I've heard so many bad things about it as far as how negative and how harassing people can be to anybody who decides to cover this. Overall, knock on wood, I think everyone has been pretty respectful in the comments. They voiced their, their opinions and gave their reasons behind it, but I haven't gotten any nasty emails or DMs and we've gotten that on other cases. So, kudos to everybody who's looking at it, making your points known in the comments. Like I said, I've gotten a couple emails. They've always been respectful.

• 2:43:44Derrick Levasseur?

  So as much negativity as I've seen around this case, as far as the, anybody who's decide to cover it, I think it's been going pretty well, knock on wood. And, and I hope it continues that way because we're just trying to find out what happened to John. That's what's ultimately important. And also if Karen Reed is innocent, to make sure that, you know, that's, that's also also out there as well.

• 2:44:04Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, it's a, I mean, I think going forward, like when we cover the next episode and we talk about all of the, the clear conflicts in this case, how everybody's very connected. It's, it's gonna, it's gonna add another layer, but at the end of the day, I think you're right. John O'Keefe does not get justice for this. And, and whose fault ultimately?

• 2:44:26Derrick Levasseur?

  Mass State Police.

• 2:44:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:28Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. Mass State Police, 100%. They're the ones that were in charge of solving his crime. Or at least proving, hey, listen, they could have come out and said, hey, listen. It was an accident. Karen's not gonna be charged. It was an accident. But ultimately, that's what happened. They didn't do any of that. They went for-

• 2:44:41Stephanie Harlowe?

  Or she gets charged with like vehicular manslaughter or something, you know?

• 2:44:44Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes, exactly. Exactly. And, and, you know, so we'll see where it goes. Well, how many more parts are you thinking? This was our, this was old school Crime Weekly. This is by far the longest episode we've done in a few years.

• 2:44:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  I think we can wrap this up in two more parts.

• 2:44:55Derrick Levasseur?

  Love it. Guys, we appreciate you being here. As always, like, comment, subscribe. Let us know what you think. We love the, you know, the opinions that are being put out there. We know this is a polarizing case. Everyone has been respectful so far. And on a final note, take a second, go order some criminal coffee, peppermint bark. Get it before it runs out, because I might keep it all.

• 2:45:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  Get it while it's hot.

• 2:45:17Derrick Levasseur?

  Absolutely. Everyone stay safe out there. We will see you next week. Have a good night.

• 2:45:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  Bye.