Karen Read
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In January 2022, a Boston police officer was found dead, and his girlfriend, Karen Reed, was accused of killing him by backing her Lexus SUV into him and leaving him for dead in a snowstorm. But Karen Reed's supporters allege that she's the victim of an elaborate cover-up by the police. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 238, The Case Against Karen Reed. ♪♪

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.

Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast with a forensic science twist. Each episode features real stories highlighting how forensic science was used, from fingerprinting to criminal profiling to DNA. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.

As a one-woman show, your support helps me find new compelling cases, conduct in-depth fact-based research, and produce and edit this weekly show. You can support my work in two simple ways. Become a valued patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales and leave a positive review. Before we get to the episode, we've got two new Patreon supporters to thank this week, Nikki B and Marianne C.

Now, let's get to this week's episode. In the early morning hours of January 29th, 2022, Boston Police Department officer John O'Keefe was found dead outside the home of another Boston police officer in Canton, Massachusetts. Within hours, the police arrested his girlfriend, Karen Reed. Now, over two years later, we're still trying to figure out exactly what happened on that snowy night.

Some of the facts are undisputed, but the question of whether John O'Keefe was murdered by his girlfriend still remains up for debate. What really happened that night, and who is responsible for this officer's death? Let's jump into the case and see what the forensic evidence says. For those of you familiar with this story, then you know just how recent everything is. So obviously this entire thing is far from over.

This also isn't something that we typically do on the podcast, but I've received so many requests from all of you to do an episode on Karen's case that I couldn't resist. This also might be a little bit longer than my typical episodes. That's because there's just so much to cover in this case, and I might not even be able to cover every little detail about it. Otherwise, it would probably be a 10-hour episode.

but I'm definitely going to talk about what I think are the most important pieces of evidence, especially when it comes to the forensic evidence. Let's start with the undisputed facts first. In January 2022, Karen Reed and John O'Keefe had been dating for about two years. 46-year-old John O'Keefe was a 16-year veteran of the Boston Police Department, raising his niece and nephew after his sister and brother-in-law passed away.

He grew up in Braintree, Massachusetts, went to high school there, and got a master's degree in criminal justice from UMass Lowell. His girlfriend Karen worked as an equity analyst for Fidelity, as well as a part-time professor at her alma mater, Bentley University. She grew up in Virginia and had both a bachelor's and master's degree in finance. She met John in 2019, and the two started dating.

Now let's go to the night of January 28th, 2022. Still talking about the undisputed facts. Karen, John, and a couple others went out drinking and bar hopping in Canton, a suburb about 15 miles southwest of downtown Boston. The group was Karen, John, fellow Boston police officer Brian Albert, his sister-in-law Jennifer McCabe, and a couple of others.

It was a pretty rough night weather-wise in Boston that night. There had been a major winter storm with heavy snowfall and blizzard-like conditions pretty much across the entire state. So it wasn't exactly the best night to be out drinking, bar hopping, and especially driving. They first started the night at C.F. McCarthy's Bar, where they all had a couple of drinks.

After that, they went to the Waterfall Bar and Grill across the street around 11 p.m., where they stayed for about an hour and everyone had a few more drinks. John was reportedly drinking beer and Karen was having vodka sodas. Now, the exact amount of drinks that Karen had that night is definitely going to come into question later on.

but some reports estimated that she had up to seven drinks, so she probably would have been a little intoxicated, just like everyone else was. It's also unclear exactly how much John had to drink either. The group was captured on CCTV cameras inside the bar, and everyone seemed to be having a pretty good time. Karen had her arms around John most of the night, and the two were pretty lovey-dovey from what I've seen.

Around midnight, most of the people in the group left the Waterfall Bar and Grill and headed to Brian Albert's house just around the corner on Fairview Road in Canton. John and Karen reportedly left together in her black Lexus SUV, the vehicle at the heart of this story that we're going to be talking a lot about.

By 4 and 5 o'clock a.m., John's teenage niece was calling Jennifer McCabe, saying that John wasn't answering her texts or phone calls and hadn't come home yet. Remember, there are a few key players in this story, and one of them is Jennifer. She's Brian Albert's sister-in-law, the other Boston police officer out that night, as well as John's friend.

So she's a name that's going to come up over and over again in this story. So is Brian Albert and a few others. Karen also called another woman, Carrie Roberts, basically saying the same thing about John. So all three women got in Karen's SUV and started driving around looking for John. Jennifer later on said that she expressed concerns about Karen driving since they had all been out drinking that night. But they all went out looking for him anyway.

Naturally, the first place they looked was Brian Albert's house. That's because that's where Karen said he dropped him off at. But they didn't have to look very far, because by 6 o'clock a.m., they found him. He was lying unresponsive in a snowbank just outside of Brian Albert's house. Karen was the one who tried CPR while Jennifer called 911.

And at approximately 6.04 a.m., the Canton police, fire, and EMS responded on the scene. Two hours later, at 7.59 a.m., John was pronounced dead at Good Samaritan Hospital. So what happened to him between bar hopping the night before and ending up dead in the snow out in front of his friend's house at 6 a.m.? Well, a lot of that depends on one question.

Did John O'Keefe ever step inside Brian Albert's front door? Karen Reed swears that he did, while the other people inside swear that he didn't. Now this brings up to the part of the night that we're not 100% sure about. And many of these facts are disputed. This is what Karen apparently told the police. She said she dropped John off at Brian's house a little after midnight.

John wanted to keep the party going, but she said she wanted to leave because of stomach issues. She wasn't feeling well, and all she wanted to do was go home and go to sleep. So after she dropped John off at Brian Albert's house, she went back to John's place where she passed out on his couch. But when she woke up around 4 a.m. and noticed that John hadn't come home, that's when she got worried and went out looking for him with Jennifer McCabe and the other friend.

She denied knowing anything about what happened to John after she dropped him off at his friend's house and said that she had no idea how he died because she said she wasn't there. But even before Karen could finish her story, the police were suspicious. First, let's talk about the autopsy.

Not only was it strange for an off-duty police officer to be found dead lying in the snow in front of another police officer's house, but he was also completely covered in injuries. He had two black eyes, multiple skull fractures, and cuts on his face and the back of his hands. He also had what the medical examiner described as, quote, claw-like wounds on his right arm. Keep that in mind, too.

But that's not all. Because of the deep color of his pancreas, the medical examiner believed that hypothermia also played a big role in his death, which meant that he was probably lying in the snow for a pretty good amount of time before he actually died. So based on the injuries and the hypothermia, he ruled his cause of death as blunt impact injuries of the head and hypothermia.

But what the medical examiner wasn't able to determine was the manner of death. He couldn't say for sure whether it was a homicide or an accident. So that's really the question here. Was he murdered? And if so, by who? Well, like I said, the police made up their minds pretty quickly that this was a murder. And they thought they knew who exactly was responsible.

So two days later, February 1st, 2022, they arrested John's girlfriend, Karen Reed, and charged her with manslaughter, motor vehicle homicide, and leaving the scene of a deadly crash. Then four months later, she was indicted by a grand jury for second-degree murder and motor vehicle manslaughter while driving under the influence, as well as leaving the scene of a deadly crash.

This is what the prosecution believes happened. After a night of heavy drinking and fighting, Karen intentionally ran over John with her SUV after dropping him off at Brian Albert's house and then left him for dead in a snowstorm. After that, she drove away and passed out on his couch. Now this is what Karen says.

She didn't run him over, but instead was framed for John's murder, and the entire investigation has been botched from the beginning. She says that John was beaten by the people inside of Brian Albert's house, bitten by a dog, and then thrown outside in the snow to die.

And now this well-connected circle of friends that included several Boston police officers, state troopers, and even federal agents was trying to frame her for what happened. So that's the case in a nutshell. Let's now go to the trial and talk about all of the evidence, especially the forensic evidence. So the first people to testify for this state were John's brother and sister-in-law.

Both of them painted a picture that Karen and John's relationship wasn't that great. They both said they witnessed the two of them fighting a lot, including a fight that happened during a trip to Aruba. According to Erin O'Keefe, John's sister-in-law, just weeks before John died, they all took a vacation to Aruba. And during that trip, Karen fought with John and accused him of cheating on her with another woman.

So if they had been fighting and arguing a lot, then the prosecution thought they had a pretty good motive to murder. But what seemed even worse for the defense were text messages between John and Karen that happened that night. Yes, they were allegedly fighting in the weeks before what happened, but I think more important for the prosecution's case was the fact that they were actually fighting that night.

Cell phone records show that they started fighting around 9.30 a.m. that morning, long before they went out for drinks. Now, they texted each other all day long. But here's just a handful of them so you can get a better idea. Karen, 9.49 a.m. You have really hurt me this time. Karen, again at 2.25 p.m. Tell me if you're interested in someone else. Can't think of any other reason you've been like this.

John at 2.25 and 2.26 p.m. Nope. Things haven't been great between us for a while. Ever consider that? John again at 2.32 p.m. Sick of always arguing and fighting. It's been weekly for several months now. So yeah, I'm not as quick to jump back into being lovey-dovey as you apparently.

On top of the texts, there were also angry voicemails that Karen left on John's cell phone, calling him an effing loser and an effing pervert. Between 1230 a.m. and 6 a.m., she called a whopping 53 times and left a total of eight voicemails. So the prosecution introduced all of this to basically illustrate that their relationship was on the rocks, which also meant they had a motive.

Plus, you've got a lot of alcohol going around. Like I mentioned earlier, prosecutors believe that Karen had about seven vodka sodas that night in the span of just a couple of hours. When her blood was drawn at the hospital after John was pronounced dead, her blood alcohol content was around .07 to .08.

But it would have been probably between 0.13 and 0.29% around 12.45 a.m., the same time that she allegedly dropped John off. So she was definitely drunk, although she says she wasn't. But now let's talk about the people who first got there that night. Their testimony also didn't look too good for Karen's defense.

Four prosecutors testified that when they showed up at the house, Karen kept saying, I hit him. I hit him. This was also backed up by the first officer who arrived at the scene, Canton Police Officer Steve Seroff. He said that Karen was visibly upset and kept saying, this is my fault. I did this.

So that seems to be a pretty clear admission of guilt. She's basically admitting that she ran John over. But Karen's defense says that none of that testimony can be trusted because one of those paramedics, Katie McLaughlin, is allegedly friends with Caitlin Albert, the daughter of Officer Brian Albert.

So their friendship could have given her a reason to lie about what she heard Karen say to maybe take any possible blame away from Brian Albert. On the stand, this paramedic acknowledged that, yes, she did go to high school with Caitlin Albert, but she basically said that they were simply acquaintances. She said they didn't have a significant relationship and therefore had no motive to lie and try to protect the Albert family.

But whether this was true or not isn't really clear. That's because the defense later accused Katie McLaughlin of basically perjury after dozens of pictures of them together emerged, including one photograph from June of 2021. So were they close friends or simply just acquaintances?

But the prosecution wasn't tripped up about this paramedic. They still had the other three paramedics that basically said the same exact thing. On top of attacking issues about conflicts of interest, Karen's defense also tried to rationalize the whole thing by saying that she was in shock and just thinking out loud about what could have happened.

She wasn't saying she actually hit him. She was just saying what could have happened because she really didn't know. Now, what about the statements made by the first officer who got there? Well, the defense has a problem with him as well. Apparently, he didn't include Karen's statement in his initial report saying that this is my fault. He only said that months later when he was called to testify in front of the grand jury in April of 2022.

So that seems to be a pretty important omission. If she really said that, then why didn't he write that in his initial report? Then there were Jennifer McCabe and Carrie Roberts' testimonies. Besides saying things like, I hit him, they also testified that while they were out looking for John, she said something like, what if he's dead? What if a plow hit him?

I don't remember anything from last night. We drank so much, I don't remember anything. But again, the defense says she was simply thinking out loud about all the possibilities about what could have happened. They completely deny that these were ever admissions of guilt. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. What are some of your self-care non-negotiables? Maybe you never skip leg day or therapy day.

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Visit BetterHelp.com slash tails to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash tails. Next up, the crime scene. We already know that John was found outside of his friend Brian Albert's house, who just so happens to also be a Boston police officer. He was bloody and covered with snow.

But according to investigators, they also found patches of blood and pieces of a broken taillight near his body. So this is how their theory about Karen hitting him with her SUV comes in. When the police questioned Karen at Brian Albert's house, her Lexus SUV had a broken taillight. And when they asked her about it, she said she didn't know how she got it.

which sort of makes sense if she had been drinking the entire night before. She could have easily hit something like a parked car or even the curb and not even remember it. But the police believe she broke the taillight when she ran into John's body. So let's talk a lot more about that taillight because it seems to be a very important part of this entire case, as well as the biggest piece of evidence proving the state's theory.

The prosecution had several experts testify that they found John's DNA on it. They also said that microscopic pieces of red plastic consistent with the SUV's taillights were found on his clothing. So you've got John's DNA on the taillights and you've got particles consistent with it on his clothing. But here's the thing.

The broken taillights weren't found right away. They were found several hours and even days later. We already know that it was snowing pretty bad that night. So when the police first showed up, there were at least four inches of snow on the ground. Now, according to their own testimony at trial, the police used a leaf blower to try and get rid of some of the snow that night.

And that's when they found the patches of blood near John's body. But what they didn't find were the pieces of the broken taillight. They had used the leaf blower everywhere and didn't find them. It wasn't until they came back hours later and after they already towed Karen's car away that they claimed to have found them. Now, after the snow melted a couple days later, they apparently found a couple more broken pieces of plastic.

Then, a week after that, former Canton police chief Kenneth Berkowitz drove by the house again and said that he discovered additional pieces. So in Karen's defense, this all pointed toward a cover-up. Someone planted the pieces of taillight at the scene after John was already pronounced dead and after they had already towed away her car.

And as far as John's DNA being found on the taillight, well, the defense says that was planted too. They argued that the entire crime scene hadn't been secured for several hours after John's body was taken away, basically leaving plenty of time for someone to plant evidence. There was also a discrepancy in when Karen's SUV was actually towed away.

The police reported it towed at one time, but the actual time it was towed away was about one hour later. So why the discrepancy? Here's another interesting thing. The broken taillight was on the right side of the car, but if she had made a three-point turn as the prosecution claimed, it should have been on the left side, not the right. Plus, the speed at which she was going.

The defense didn't think the speed at which she could have gone would have killed him. Given the location and the weather conditions, she wouldn't have been able to go that fast, according to the defense. Then finally, Karen's lawyers argued that the injuries didn't match either. Both of John's eyes were swollen shut. He also had a bloody nose, which didn't sound like someone backed into him with their car.

They seemed more like injuries you would get if someone beat him up. But none of this meant anything to the prosecution. They had a lot of witnesses, including Jennifer McCabe, testify that they heard Karen talk about her broken taillight while they were out looking for John that night. According to McCabe, Karen said things like, "'Did I hit him?' "'Could I have hit him?' while mentioning a cracked taillight."

And Karen allegedly told investigators she first noticed the broken light that morning. She also told them that she didn't know how she did it. Now, as far as how the taillight was damaged in the first place, Karen's lawyers offered two explanations or two possible explanations. One, Karen broke it by backing into John's parked car back at their apartment.

At 5.07 a.m., a ring camera at John's house shows Karen's SUV coming extremely close to John's SUV in the driveway. You can even see her quickly apply the brakes like she hit it. Now, this video is available online, so if you haven't seen it, I really recommend you check it out for yourself. The second theory offered by Karen's lawyers was that the police broke it after it was towed.

Then after that, they went back to plant the evidence at the crime scene, which of course supports the framing theory as well. Beyond the broken taillight, the prosecution claimed that a piece of hair was recovered from the car's bumper. And according to Tess Chart, a DNA analyst with a crime lab in Virginia, the hair's mitochondrial DNA profile was quote, "...consistent with John's DNA."

She could exclude at least 99.8% of the population from being the source. But again, that's something Karen's defense says that the police tampered with. And the chain of custody when it comes to anything related to the car itself can't be trusted. But of course, that's just yet another point of proof for the prosecution's theory. The state put State Trooper Joseph Paul, a crash analyst on the stand.

He said that after analyzing data from Karen's SUV, he was positive it had been in a pedestrian collision around 12.45 a.m. He also said it could have been a side swipe strike in which Karen hit John with a corner of her car. This is what he thinks happened. Karen hit John's arm but not his torso.

He said the impact broke her taillight, leaving scratches on John's forearm from pieces of broken plastic. As John spun counterclockwise after the collision, it's possible he hit his head on the curb. This state trooper also believes the impact sent John flying about 30 feet.

But the defense challenged this by wondering, how was it possible for him to fly 30 feet in the air like they said that he did without breaking his cell phone, which was found underneath of him, not broken. Now moving on to some more digital forensic evidence, which was definitely something that helped the defense in my opinion. According to court documents, Jennifer McCabe made an interesting Google search saying,

At 2.27 a.m., she Googled, how long to die in the cold? Now, this probably goes without saying, but this is a pretty weird thing for her to do because this was about four hours before John's body was discovered outside of her brother-in-law's house. And why would she be Googling something like that in the first place, especially if she claimed that John never came inside the house?

The defense also had a signed affidavit from a forensic expert who said that several phone calls between Jennifer McCabe and Brian Albert that morning had been deleted. Well, weird or not, the defense and prosecution couldn't agree on when Jennifer actually made that Google search.

The defense had a digital forensic expert who testified that she did the actual search at 2.27, again, long before John's body was even discovered. But the state's expert, digital forensic expert Jessica Hyde, said the search happened at 6.23 a.m. and not at 2.27 a.m.,

According to her testimony, Jennifer's search could have been timestamped at 2.27 a.m. rather than 6.23 a.m. because that was the time when she first opened the tab where she made the search.

If Safari, the search engine, is minimized and operating in the cell phone's background, then the timestamps aren't updated. And searches done hours or even days later on that same tab can show a previous timestamp, according to this prosecution expert. According to the prosecution, Jennifer was on Wi-Fi looking at their kid's sports schedule at 2.27 a.m.,

Then, hours later, she used the same Safari tab to look up information about hypothermia, and that search was logged with the older timestamp. So if you believe the defense, she made that search at 2.27 a.m. But if you believe the prosecution, that's only the time that she opened her browser. Neither side can agree, and both sides have digital forensic experts who say that they are right.

When Jennifer was asked about it during cross-examination, she said that it was Karen who asked her to do it that morning while looking for John. Next up is John's Apple Health data. Now this is also something that's really strange. John's Apple Health data showed him in the area of Brian Albert's house and showed him taking multiple steps at elevation, the equivalent of walking up three flights of stairs.

Brian Albert's house has three flights of steps. The defense argued that if he'd been hit by a car before he made it inside of the house, he wouldn't have been able to take as many steps as he did. The prosecution offered no explanation. One thing that's really strange about the digital evidence in this case is the lack of CCTV or surveillance cameras in the area. We live in a world where pretty much everything is recorded on tape.

And most people either have surveillance cameras or ring doorbell cameras. But in this case, there's practically zero video footage. We have some footage of Karen and John together inside of the bar. And we have the ring camera from John's apartment showing Karen coming home that night.

But we have nothing from outside of Brian Albert's house. Because if we did, we would know for sure if the taillight was broken before or after John was found. We would also have the answer to the biggest question in the case. Did he ever go inside Brian Albert's house or not? Let's go back to the autopsy for a second. Besides the black eyes and skull fractures, John also had some pretty weird injuries on his arms.

He had what the medical examiner described as claw-like wounds on his right arm. Well, if you remember, one of the defense's theories is that John was attacked by a dog inside of Brian Albert's home. So let's talk about it. The Albert family had an 80-pound German Shepherd dog named Chloe who was inside the house that night.

But oddly enough, the family rehomed the dog out of state shortly after John's death. No one knows why they decided to get rid of a dog that they had owned for about seven or eight years, but they did. They also didn't know where he went or who the new owners were.

Now, the prosecution says that the dog was rehomed because it had gotten into a few altercations with another dog in the neighborhood, and the Albert family simply couldn't keep him. But it's definitely strange timing. What's also strange timing is that the Alberts also sold their home unexpectedly right after John's death and before the police could ever search it.

Now, the police claimed they had no reason to search the home because no one in the house had ever been considered a suspect. But regardless, the Alberts sold the house for $50,000 below listing price right after all of this happened. Later on, the Alberts said that they sold the home because they wanted to, quote, downsize and move.

When it came to the dog bite claims, Karen's lawyers had an expert, Dr. Marie Russell, a retired emergency medicine physician and pathologist. She testified that the scratches on John's arms were the result of a dog attack. So I guess now the theory goes John was beaten up inside of Brian Albert's home, attacked by their German shepherd Chloe, and then thrown outside in the snow.

Now, who does the defense say beat John up? Well, they have a theory for that as well. They point the finger at Brian Albert's nephew, Colin Albert. Here's why. Shortly after Karen's original bail hearing, an anonymous tipster called her lawyers, saying that they weren't the ones who killed John, but they knew who did.

They said John and Brian Albert had gotten into a fight that night, and Brian's nephew, Colin, beat him up so badly that he broke John's nose. After that, they threw him outside in the snow. So the defense hired its own private investigator, and apparently this PI found a witness who confirmed that Colin had been at his uncle's that night. But for some reason, the police withheld that information.

Now, Karen said that there was some bad blood between Colin and John. But, of course, that's her point of view. And, of course, if that was true, that certainly does help her defense. So her lawyers say that a drunk Colin went over to Brian Albert's house. The two fought. John got bitten by the family's German shepherd, and then they threw him out in the snow.

They probably didn't intend on actually killing him, but that's what ended up happening. Let's not forget here, or forget to mention, Brian Albert is a trained and highly skilled boxer and fighter. Colin Albert was also friends with Trooper Proctor, the lead state detective on the case that we've talked about. Colin was even a ring bearer in Courtney Proctor's wedding 10 years earlier. Courtney is Trooper Michael Proctor's sister.

So going back to the biggest question about this case, did John ever make it inside of Brian Albert's house? Because if he didn't, the prosecution is probably right. But if he did actually make it inside, then what happened? Remember, Karen's whole story is that she dropped him off and went home because she wasn't feeling good. And she swears he went inside.

Well, the prosecution had 11 witnesses who all testified that John never came inside the house. So from their perspective, there's no way Colin, Brian, Albert, or the dog could have done anything to John if he never made it inside the house that night.

Brian Auburn himself even testified, saying that he and his wife slept through the entire commotion that was happening right outside his house when first responders first got there. So really, the only person who said that John went inside the house was Karen. It's basically 11 versus 1. That's a pretty big cover-up involving a lot of different people.

The state also had witnesses who said that they saw a similar-looking SUV outside of Brian's house, one that matched Karen's Lexus. Ryan Nagel, Juliana's brother, said that he got a text message from his sister around midnight asking him to pick her up from the Alberts' home. And when he got there, he said he saw a black SUV parked outside with the brake lights on. Ryan's girlfriend, who went with him, testified to the same thing.

She said she saw two people inside, a man and a woman, but didn't see if they ever got outside of the car. So none of the state's witnesses actually heard any screams or anything like that. They also didn't say whether they saw any damage to her car or not. They just testified that they saw her SUV. Obviously, Karen's lawyers had a lot of problems with how the police originally secured the crime scene, as well as collected the forensic evidence.

First, of course, was their use of a leaf blower to clear the snow away from John's body. A leaf blower isn't something that's typically used at a crime scene for pretty obvious reasons. The defense also criticized the police for apparently collecting red Solo cups from the front yard and putting them in brown grocery bags instead of official evidence collection bags. Another crime scene no-no.

So all of that gave Karen's lawyers some pretty good ammunition to say that this was a botched investigation from a forensic evidence collection standpoint, whether that was done intentional or not. I can't keep mentioning that so many people who worked on this investigation had some tie to the Albert family. We already talked about the paramedic who went to high school with Brian Albert's daughter and the lead state trooper, Trooper Proctor.

He was the one who filed criminal charges in the case and was also responsible for finding the broken taillight. He also just so happens to be friends with the Albert family. On top of all of that, Trooper Proctor got into some pretty big trouble for saying inappropriate things about Karen in group texts with other police officers and personal friends.

In one of those texts, Proctor's friend says, I'm sure the owner of the house will receive some shit. Of course, this refers to Brian Albert. And Trooper Proctor responds, Nope, homeowner is a Boston cop too. And told his friend that Karen waffled John, whose body was, quote, banged up when he saw it at the hospital. When a friend asked if John was beaten up, Proctor said, Nope.

In another text, a friend asked Proctor if Karen was, quote, hot, to which Trooper Proctor replied, quote, Let's also not forget to mention Trooper Proctor also joked with friends that he was searching through Karen's cell phone when it was turned into evidence looking for, quote, nudes. This is all coming from the lead detective on the case.

Now, Trooper Proctor has since been suspended without pay for his conduct. But, of course, the defense is going to say that this case is riddled with conflicts of interest. The people responsible for investigating this case are way too close to the other people at the scene. Karen's lawyers even tried to get the judge to recuse herself from the case because of potential conflicts of interest.

They basically accused the judge of personally knowing some of the prosecution's key witnesses. But she refused to recuse herself and has adamantly denied knowing anyone on a personal level who she shouldn't. All right, that's a lot to take in. So now what?

Well, after eight weeks of testimony from 68 witnesses, the defense completed its list of six witnesses and rested the case on June 24, 2024. Closing arguments were delivered the next day, and jury deliberations started the same day.

But on July 1st, after 25 hours of deliberation, the jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision, and Judge Cannon had no choice but to declare a mistrial. Like I mentioned at the top of the episode, this is still such a new and ongoing case. The prosecution has already said they plan on retrying Karen in a new trial, so we'll have to wait and see if that happens or not.

One of the latest updates in the case is that at least four jurors have already come forward saying that most of them were ready to say not guilty to second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a deadly crash. Which, if true, that's a pretty big deal or a pretty big win for Karen's defense.

That's because if prosecutors do decide to retry her in the future, which again, they've already said that they have or they plan to, then her lawyers already know that at least one jury might find her not guilty. And if that happens, if she is found not guilty, then prosecutors will basically have their hands tied and they won't be able to retry her for a third time.

Whether you think Karen Reed is guilty of murder or the victim of a massive cover-up involving multiple law enforcement agencies, one thing is for sure. This is a very fascinating case, especially when it comes to the interpretation of the forensic evidence. If Karen really did murder her boyfriend, then how do you explain the strange injuries to John's body?

or the Google search for how long to die in snow. But if she's innocent, how can so many people get away with a cover-up of this magnitude? If John O'Keefe was really beaten, bitten by an 80-pound German shepherd and left for dead in the snow, then how come all of these people can get so lucky to be able to establish such a cover-up?

How would they be able to blame all of this on Karen Reed so quickly? And with the cooperation of so many people, including different law enforcement agencies. To share your thoughts on the story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron, patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. After each episode, I release a bonus episode where I share my personal thoughts and opinions.

Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday. If you love the show, consider leaving us a positive review or tell friends and family about us. You can also help support the show through Patreon. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please join me next week. We'll have a brand new case and a brand new story to talk about. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.

Forensic Tales is a Rockefeller Audio Production. The show is written and produced by me, Courtney Fratwell-Ariola.

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Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week.

Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.