97\. Who Killed John O'Keefe? : The Karen Read Trial
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Get me Will Trent. ABC Tonight. I don't even know where he is. Will Trent is back. You thought you could hide forever? Time to come home. The series that's being called one of the best network procedurals. We're going to solve this case. Featuring new cast member Gina Rodriguez. I'm a prosecutor. We deal in truth and facts. Maybe everybody should try that, huh? Will Trent, the two-part season premiere begins tonight on ABC and stream on Hulu.

Today, I want to tell you a story about a woman who found a body lying in the snow. But it was what was found around the body that would leave us with more questions than answers. If you're the type of person who has a dark curiosity, then you're one of us. And make sure to like this video, subscribe to this channel, and hit that notification bell so you never miss a video of my dark creation. It's when your heart starts pounding. It's when your heart starts pounding. It's when your heart starts pounding.

On January 9th, 2022, an ambulance cut through the icy streets of Canton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. They were speeding despite the whiteout conditions from the horrible blizzard blanketing the town. Earlier, they had gotten a concerning call from a woman. She sounded out of breath on the phone, but like she was trying to stay calm. And she told the 911 operator, quote, "'There's a man passed out in the snow. I think he's dead.'"

You guys got to get here. In the background, another woman can be heard panicking. It's hard to hear exactly what she's saying, but the words dead and no can sort of be made out.

EMTs pulled up to the scene unfolding outside of a two-story suburban home on 34 Fairview Road just before 7 a.m. There was a car parked on the curb and three women panicking near the home, all dressed in winter coats. There, lying on the snowy lawn, was a body.

of a man around mid forties with two black eyes amongst other head injuries and scratches all up and down his arm. He was lying motionless in the snow. Everyone at the scene was zipped up in heavy winter coats, gloves and hats to stay warm in the below freezing temperature. But the man was just wearing a long sleeve t-shirt.

One of his shoes was at the scene, but not on his foot. And there was a smashed cocktail glass scattered around. One of the women at the scene had a frightening ring of blood around her mouth. And she was running around screaming and crying, completely inconsolable.

And it's this woman who would become the centerpiece of this entire investigation because this was the man's girlfriend, Karen Reed.

Karen had awoken in the early hours of the morning to find that her boyfriend, John O'Keefe, was not in bed with her. She called his friends who had no idea where he was. So she and two of her friends that she called to help her jumped in a car and started retracing their steps from that night. Karen and John had been out drinking and John wanted to stay out drinking at his friend's house while Karen chose to go home.

One of the EMTs reached down to take the man's pulse, but they couldn't get a read. At that point, John's body temperature was just 80 degrees Fahrenheit. That's 18 degrees lower than a healthy living person's. But just looking at the scene, at the battered body of the man in the snow,

It wasn't clear if the cold was actually what killed him. What were those black eyes from? The answer to that question was not so simple and would lead investigators down the rabbit hole into rumors of vengeful girlfriends, police corruption, cover-ups, and many, many lies.

- This is "Heart Starts Pounding." I'm your host, Kaylin Moore, and I want to tell you the wintry mystery of what happened to John O'Keefe. Because now, almost three years later, people are still left with many questions.

As I go through this story with you today, it's important to remember that someone, and probably multiple people, are lying. I'm going to share with you eyewitness testimony, arguments from both the prosecution and the defense, and what the people directly involved in this case had to say about it. It's going to paint a really big picture and a really conflicting one at that, but

And it's up to you to decide what you believe. And as always, if you're listening on the ad-supported version of this show, wherever you get your podcasts, like on the Odyssey app, thank you so much. This show is made in part because of our sponsors. So I really appreciate you guys.

If you'd like to listen over on Patreon or Apple subscriptions, you'll also have access to bonus content as well as other perks like stickers and a Heart Starts Pounding mug if you're listening on the High Council tier on Patreon. And no matter where you're listening, you'll be getting a special bonus episode next Monday where I sit down with Tank and Investigator Slater from the Psychopedia podcast.

We chat about cases that keep us up at night, and Slater talks about her experience investigating abuse cases against the church and the Boy Scouts. So you definitely want to check that out. Okay, like I said, this story is massive. So let's start at the beginning. What happened in the few hours leading up to John O'Keefe's death?

Hey, I'm Ben Stiller. I'm Adam Scott. And we make a TV show called Severance. On January 17th, Severance is back for season two on Apple TV+. And we can't wait for you guys to see it. And before the premiere, Ben and I are going to be binging season one and putting out daily recap podcasts. Yep. Each weekday beginning January 7th, we'll be dropping an episode featuring exclusive behind-the-scenes tidbits and brilliant insights from our cast and crew and us.

Patricia Arquette, Britt Lauer, Zach Cherry, John Turturro, the list goes on. All your favorite Lumen employees, their friends, families, enemies, in your feed every single weekday. And here's the best part. After that, we're going to keep going. Tune in weekly as we recap every episode of Season 2. The podcast drops on the same day the episode comes out.

It's the Severance Podcast with Ben and Adam on Apple Podcasts, the Odyssey app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

By all accounts, the snowy evening of January 28th, 2022 started as a normal evening for John O'Keefe and his girlfriend, Karen Reed. The two had known each other since 2004, but didn't start dating until 2020 when they reconnected over Facebook Messenger. John, a Boston cop, had become the legal guardian of his sister's two children after her tragic passing.

And after they started dating, Karen, a 32-year-old adjunct professor, moved in with the family. And that particular night, they were meeting their friends at a local bar. The group first got drinks at a local Canton pub called C.F. McCarthy's, and then made their way over to another local spot called The Waterfall.

Inside the waterfall, there were a few more of their friends, including the Alberts. That is Chris Albert, his brother Brian Albert, who was a Boston police officer alongside John and actually worked on the Boston Strangler case. Brian's wife was there, Nicole, and so was Nicole's sister, Jennifer McCabe, who was also one of Karen's best friends.

And also at the bar was Brian Higgins, an ATF agent. Surveillance video from the bar shows the group drinking and laughing with each other and the couples cuddling up with one another. It also shows three of the guys, John, Brian Albert, and Brian Higgins, roughhousing.

Just after midnight, footage from the waterfall's security system shows John O'Keefe leaving in the same long-sleeved t-shirt that his body would be discovered in. In his hand is a cocktail glass, and he gets into Karen's car. The plan was that the group was going to go to Brian and Nicole Albert's house to keep hanging out.

but Karen didn't want to join. She claimed to have dropped John off at the Alberts as the blizzard raged on while she went home and went to bed.

After that is when she awoke in John's house just before 5:00 AM and realized that John hadn't made it home that night. She started calling the people who she had been at the bars with, and those who answered didn't know where John was either. Karen also called John's friend, Kerry Roberts, who wasn't out with the group that night and hadn't been contacted by John at all.

Carrie, in turn, was so concerned, she started calling local hospitals and then the police to see if he had been admitted or picked up by an officer, but he hadn't.

Karen said her first thought was that John may have gotten hit by a snowplow. So she jumped back in her car and went to the bars to see if John was still there or had gotten hit walking back from them, but they were all closed. Then she picked up Carrie and Jennifer McCabe and they went back to John's around 5:30 in the morning, though they knew that he wasn't there.

That's when they decided to go to the Alberts' house where Karen said she had dropped him off. And it was there that they found him laying in the snow about 12 feet from the curb.

Karen left out of the car and immediately started giving him CPR. And shortly thereafter, EMTs and officers were all over the scene. Lights, sirens, everything. But while John had been found, there was something noticeably missing from the scene.

the homeowner, Boston cop, Brian Albert. With all of the chaos unfolding outside of his home, the screaming, the sirens, Karen wondered why he hadn't come out to see what was going on or to offer care.

That was one of the many questions that would remain unanswered for some time. Along with, if there was a party happening at the house the night before and people were coming in and out of the home, how was Karen the first person to find the body?

Since John was a Boston police officer, the Massachusetts State Police were actually assigned to the case to avoid a conflict of interest, and the lead investigator was a state trooper named Michael Proctor. When officers arrived at the scene after the EMTs, they faced a huge challenge.

John was found outside with the blizzard continuing on and the crime scene was quickly filling up with snow. The footprints that had led to John's body were rapidly disappearing. So they needed to rely on witness testimony. And one of the first people they talked to was Karen, who told police that she had been drinking all night and chastised.

and chose to drive regardless, and that she had a stomachache and didn't feel like staying at the Alberts with John, which is why she dropped him off and went home. She said she watched him walk up to the side door, looked at her phone for about 10 minutes to check some texts, and then she drove home.

We know that at least one of these things is true, the drinking and driving. Because after Karen found John's body, she was so inconsolable, she was actually transported to the hospital, where her blood alcohol content came back at around .08%.

That's the legal limit. And mind you, she was tested around nine hours after she stopped drinking that night. So investigators believed her blood alcohol level was much higher when she dropped John off at the party. Later that day, lead investigator Proctor went to Karen's parents' home where her car was being kept.

And that's when he noticed something else that didn't bode well for Karen. Her rear right taillight was cracked and pieces of the red and white plastic were missing. He made a note of it and then he had the car towed and brought in for testing. And this was all happening as the autopsy report was being released. And the medical examiner ruled that John's cause of death

was blunt force trauma to the head combined with hypothermia. To investigators, the head trauma and the missing taillight were enough evidence to make an arrest. And on February 2nd, just five days after John's death,

Karen Reed was arrested for manslaughter, negligent homicide, and leaving the scene of an accident involving injury. Police figured that she had killed John with her car, being drunk and at the wheel, and then fled. But here's an issue. Manslaughter implies criminal intent. If Karen did hit him, did she intend to do it?

Well, according to her, not only did she not hit him, but it would have been impossible for her to hit him. And she pled not guilty to this charge. Karen insisted that she could not have been responsible for John's death. She watched him go to the side door of the house. There was...

No way she could have backed into him. Sure, she didn't know how she broke her taillight or even that it was broken at all, but it couldn't have been from hitting John. She made the decision that she was not going down for this crime and she was going to put up a fight. So she hired one of the most aggressive defense attorneys in the game, a man named Alan Jackson.

Jackson was the managing partner of the firm Worksman Jackson & Quinn, who successfully prosecuted Phil Spector for murder in 2003 and had actually more recently gotten Kevin Spacey acquitted of his groping charges. Jackson said he gets a lot of emails asking for help with cases, but there was something about Karen's case that

really affected him. He said that he knew she was innocent just from reading her email, which didn't come as a surprise to people. He's her attorney. That's what, of course, they expected him to say. But no one expected his next argument, one that would send shockwaves through the entire community in Canton. He said that what everyone's been hearing is true.

John O'Keefe was murdered, but it wasn't by his client, Karen. No, it was by the people who were at the party that night, including an officer that John worked with, and that this was all part of a huge cover-up. And he told the people of Canton that he had everything he needed to prove it.

Pretrials for Karen's case started in May of 2023, but they didn't wrap up until April of this year. And that's when the jury selection started. The trial of Karen Reed began on April 29th of 2024, over two years after John's death.

And while the pretrials were happening, Jackson continued to find evidence strengthening his bombshell of a claim. He said that he came to the conclusion after looking at the facts of the case, specifically the autopsy report. And he decided that there was no way that John had been hit by a car. It just didn't look like it.

Specifically, he thought that the scratches on John's arm were a smoking gun. There were six deep lacerations that just didn't look to Jackson like they came from a car. Plus, he saw Karen's phone records, how she called John 49 times after she dropped him off at the house party.

Now, the voicemails she left John are vulgar and they're very angry. She tells John in those messages that she hates him multiple times. She even calls him a loser and a pervert. But these voicemails start almost immediately after she dropped him off at Brian Albert's house. And remember, according to Karen, she watched him get out of the car and walk up to the side door.

She looked down at her phone for about 10 minutes before she drove off. If that wasn't the case, and in fact, she did hit John before leaving, Alan Jackson asked, why would she call a man 50 times if she knew he might be dead?

Instead, he had another theory as to what happened that night. His theory was that John died during the after-party, inside of the house, where he was attacked by someone inside, and the scratches on his arm were potentially from the German shepherd that the Alberts owned. And he said that he could prove this theory with something that he found on one of the partygoers' phones.

So one of the people inside of the house party that night was Jennifer McCabe. And for clarity, she's Karen's friend who helped her look for John. She, along with everyone else at the party, claimed that John never made it into the party that night. But then why? At 2.27 a.m., Jackson asked, did Jennifer Google on her phone, quote, "'How long to die in cold?'

That Google search stunned everyone. The prosecution tried to counter that point and say that the search actually happened closer to 6:30 a.m. And Jennifer herself swore that she made that internet search because Karen asked her to when they found John's body.

Her side argued that Jennifer must have opened a tab on her phone at 2.27 a.m., but then completed the search at 6.30 a.m.,

But a digital expert that was brought to the trial testified under oath that that's not really how it works. The timestamp from the Google search would have been from when the search occurred, not from when the tab was opened, meaning that the Google search most likely occurred while the party was happening inside at 2.27 a.m.

And this was just the start of Alan Jackson unraveling the real identities of the people John was with the last night of his life. Though they all swore that they were colleagues and friends and old cop buddies, whatever, there was a lot bubbling under the surface. And one of the first people called to the stand was homeowner and Boston police officer, Brian Albert.

the one who stayed inside the morning that John's body was found. On the stand, Brian claimed that he knew John from work and didn't have any problems with him and that he had only met Karen once or so. He made it seem like they weren't really friends. He kind of casually knew the couple. Well, Jackson, Karen's defense attorney, wanted to bring some photos and videos to the jury's attention.

In one photo shown, Karen and Brian are standing together in a group smiling. Clearly they had met more than a few times and were somewhat familiar with each other. And then he showed the jury the security footage from the waterfall on the night of January 28th, where Karen and Brian are seen chatting with each other. If they had been cordial with each other and Brian had nothing to do with John's death,

then why was he lying about something as obvious as whether or not he was friends with Karen? And to lie on the witness stand as a police officer is not a good look, and that's just putting it lightly. But strangest of all, to me at least, as I was going through this research, was how Brian erased the contents of his phone despite receiving a preservation order he was given.

According to Brian, he didn't receive orders to preserve the contents of his phone until September 23rd, 2022. And he erased his phone the day before. So technically he did not violate the order.

And just to underscore this, because I think this is important, September 23rd was nine months after John's death. And he happened to erase everything on his phone just one day before he got the preservation order.

The defense told the jury that Brian intentionally destroyed evidence. Another person that was called to the stand was Brian Higgins. He was the ATF agent that was out with the group that night. Alan Jackson wasted no time before he asked him about the inappropriate relationship that he had with Karen. Yeah.

That's right. For weeks before the murder, Higgins and Karen had exchanged flirty texts. They both called each other hot, and Karen complained about John to him. And then, one night after they watched the Patriots play, Higgins and Karen kissed. At John's house.

But then after that, Karen ghosted him. And security footage from the waterfall shows Karen almost avoiding Higgins and hanging on John.

That same security footage shows Higgins and John roughhousing. He said it was just play fighting, but Karen described it as like sparring, like it had an angry undertone to it. Higgins also admitted on the stand that he was the first person to leave Brian Albert's house party in the early morning of January 29th, around 2 a.m.,

Now, if Karen had hit John with her car, he would have been lying in the snow as Higgins walked out of the house and down the driveway. But Higgins swore he didn't see anything. It was snowing at this point, but John's body wasn't even buried in the snow when he was found. So he, in theory, would have been even more visible at 2 a.m.,

And this was all part of Jackson's argument to make the jury wonder, how did a Boston cop and an ATF agent not know that there was a dead body just a few yards away from them, especially when one of them walked right past it on his way out of the house?

And what Jackson really wanted to know was what was the phone call that Higgins made to Brian Albert immediately after leaving his house.

Higgins' phone record shows that he had a 22-second phone call with the homeowner, Brian Albert, right when he left the party, potentially as he was walking down the driveway past John O'Keefe's body. What could be discussed in 22 seconds? A plan?

Alan Jackson wanted to know, but Higgins said that this must have just been a butt dial. As if Higgins' behavior the night of John's death wasn't strange enough, his behavior afterwards was even stranger, Jackson pointed out. Because after John's death, Higgins got rid of his phone, the one that he used to make that 22-second phone call.

Yes, you heard that right. A second person at the party that night got rid of their phone and all of the evidence on it. Higgins insisted there was no specific reason why he had thrown his phone away, but Alan Jackson wondered aloud if he had also done this to destroy evidence intentionally. What was on the phone of those two men? And was it something that would have revealed what happened to John O'Keefe that night?

The defense tried to build a case that, yes, it was. They said that Brian Albert and Brian Higgins were both suspects in this case, but were not treated as such because they worked for law enforcement. They said that Brian Albert was maybe jealous of John at work. After all, John was granted special allowances after his sister's death, something a seasoned officer like Brian might look down on.

And as for Higgins, well, maybe he wanted to get the thing he felt was keeping Karen from him out of the way. The group had a few too many drinks that night and something happened in the home of Brian Albert. And then he and Higgins worked together to cover it up. And everyone who was in the house that night has stayed quiet, according to Alan Jackson.

So at this point in the trial, the story had exploded and become really the story of the summer. Each morning when Karen arrived at the courthouse, she was greeted by a sea of people wearing pink, which was her favorite color, and sporting signs that read, free Karen Reid, stop Canton cover-up, and even, we love you, Karen, as if they were at a rock concert. It really seemed like most of the general public thought she was innocent.

♪

And this is largely because of a YouTuber that went by the alias Turtle Boy. So Turtle Boy is a self-proclaimed investigative journalist who started covering the Karen Reid case way before it even made it to trial. By the time the news of the case started picking up steam, he already had multiple YouTube videos on it, many of which included footage of him standing outside of the Alberts' house to illustrate where John's body was found.

So he started being known as the go-to guy for information on the trial outside of the mainstream media. But Turtle Boy wanted to be even more involved than that. He wanted to be treated like an actual investigative journalist by the media. And he started coming to the trial with a bullhorn and he would shout rallying cries to the people who had traveled to be there.

He also started contacting witnesses and showing up to their homes and places of business, and he was eventually arrested and charged with multiple counts of witness intimidation.

Even though the outside of the trial looked like Karen had lots of support, there were photos that were taken of her inside the courthouse that kind of started tarnishing her image. In the courtroom, Karen would often smile to herself and she was sometimes caught on camera laughing with her defense team. At one point, the judge even dismissed everyone early for the day because they found it disrespectful that Karen was laughing.

Now, maybe you're not the type of person who would show up to a courthouse with a sign and scream at witnesses as they walked in, but...

Perhaps you can see why so many people were this passionate about the trial. They really started feeling like there was a cover-up happening. And even though everyone at the party that stood trial still insisted that John never made it into the house, their behavior was all seeming stranger and stranger.

It was starting to feel like there wasn't going to be a way to convict Karen. There just wasn't enough evidence, especially now that her manslaughter charge had been upgraded to second-degree murder. It just didn't feel like that was possible. At least...

That's what it felt like. But the prosecution held firm in their faith that they had everything they needed to convict Karen. And it hinged on a few pieces of plastic, they said.

So the day that John's body was found, Trooper Proctor noticed that Karen's rear right taillight was cracked and a few pieces of the red and white plastic were missing, but no one saw the plastic at the crime scene.

Well, eventually the blizzard stopped and temperatures rose just enough so that a few days later, all of the snow had melted in the Alberts' yard. The prosecution showed a photo to the jury that included laying in the dead grass, pieces of red and white plastic.

Those pieces were collected and brought in for testing, and they were reconstructed to fit exactly into Karen's taillight. Every piece of the light that was collected at the crime scene. Not only that, but John was found near pieces of a shattered cocktail glass that was confirmed to be from the waterfall. Pieces of that glass, along with John's hair, were found in Karen's bumper.

The prosecution brought forward multiple witnesses who reported hearing Karen screaming at the scene, "I hit him, I hit him, I hit him," including EMTs who were there and her friend, Carrie Roberts, who helped search for John. But that wasn't really what she meant, Karen insisted in this 2020 interview that she did. She said, "I hit him was preceded by 'did.'"

and ended with a question mark. She said she was concerned that she maybe hit him. She was asking, "Did I hit him? Did I hit him?" But she wasn't admitting to guilt at the scene.

It's hard to deny though that it's pretty damning evidence that they had against her. John's hair and a cocktail glass in her bumper, her light at the scene. The one person who should have been there to talk about this evidence though was lead investigator, Trooper Proctor. He was after all the one who saw that the taillight was broken in the first place.

But Trooper Proctor couldn't be at the trial because he was under investigation himself.

The truth of the matter is not long after Trooper Proctor was put on the case, he was taken off. Originally, the reason given was conflict of interest after it was revealed that his relationship with the people involved, like Jennifer McCabe and Nicole Albert, was much closer than previously thought. But the fact is Trooper Proctor seemed to have a bias in the case. Tell

texts he sent to other officers shortly after he started working on this case called Karen a whack job. One even read, quote, I hope she kills herself. Other texts joked about finding nudes or rejected the notion that Brian Albert would ever get in trouble. He wrote in one text when asked if Brian would get in trouble, quote, Nope, homeowner's a Boston cop too.

Proctor insisted that these texts and his personal feelings did not impact his ability to do his job. But an FBI probe felt differently, and he was pulled from the case. But this brings up an interesting theory. If Trooper Proctor was the one who found the cracked taillight and the pieces weren't found at the crime scene until days later...

Is there a chance that he broke the taillight and then transferred all the pieces?

On June 25th of this year, the prosecution and defense rested their cases and the jury went to deliberate. By June 28th, the jurors slipped the judge a note saying they were deadlocked. On July 1st, Trooper Proctor was relieved of his duties as a state trooper. And on July 9th, Brian Albert's brother, Kevin, is put on leave from his job as a cop.

And then it was up to the jury to take everything they had heard and to try and come to an agreement. On one hand, multiple people at the scene heard Karen say, I hit him that night, and John's hair was found on her car. And on the other hand, could they look past the chance that Karen was being framed? On July 10th, they decided...

They couldn't. And they alerted the judge that they were still hung. The judge then declared a mistrial,

And as of now, Karen lives a free life. But a retrial is set to start at the end of January 2025. That's just a few weeks away. In the meantime, John's family has sued Karen for wrongful death, and they've also sued the two bars that the group was at the night of John's death. They claimed that they over-served Karen that night. We may never know what happened to John O'Keefe the night he died,

There's a chance that he was the only person who witnessed what happened and took that secret with him. But on the chance that a group of people are culpable, can they keep a secret? And if so, for how long?

There is one piece of evidence that I see people online go back to over and over and over again. And it's a piece of testimony that was given by an expert witness called by Karen's attorney. An expert reconstructionist who was hired by the FBI had evaluated John O'Keefe's injuries in relation to Karen's car.

And that expert concluded that the damage on the car was inconsistent with having made contact with John O'Keefe's body. Karen is set for a retrial and we'll see if anything changes. But before we go, I just want to note that this is a real trial with real people involved. No

No one has been found guilty. And even though you may feel with every fiber of your being that you know who did it, do not contact any witnesses. Do not be like Turtle Boy. Don't contact jurors or anyone else involved in this case, especially not jurors. I mean, if you've gotten jury duty before, you know it's hard enough as it is.

And in the meantime, we'll follow Karen's second trial and see if any of us can finally get to the bottom of what happened to John O'Keefe. But for now, that's all we have on this case. And until next time, stay curious.

Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by Kaylin Moore. Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Additional research and writing by Marissa Dow. Sound design and mix by Peachtree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME, and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out heartstartspounding.com.

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