← America's Most Infamous Crimes with Katie Ring
America's Most Infamous Crimes with Katie Ring
Karen Read: Did She Kill Her Boyfriend…Or Was She Framed? Pt. 1
00:33:52
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- [00:02]
Katie Rang
Hi. We have some exciting news. Crime House plus and Murder True Crime Stories are celebrating America's 250th by dropping a four part limited series on the crimes that built America. These are the crimes and cases that gave us Miranda rights, sparked criminal profiling, and a murder that built America's missing children movement. Follow Murder True Crime Stories for a new episode every Monday leading up to July 4th. Or you can listen to all of them right now with Crime House Plus. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com or if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, tap, try free at the top of the show's page.
- [00:45]
Tyler Reddick / Carter Roy
This is Crime House.
- [00:48]
Katie Rang
On the morning of January 29, 2022, John O' Keefe was found lying in the snow outside a house in Canton, Massachusetts. His body was freez cold, he wasn't breathing, he didn't have a pulse, and one of the first officers on the scene said it looked like he went 10 rounds with Mike Tyson. John's girlfriend, Karen Reed was inconsolable when she found him, but within hours she would become the prime suspect in one of the most closely followed nationally viral and divisive true crime cases in recent American history. Today I'll tell you about the man at the center of this story, who the woman accused of killing him and the night that changed both of their lives forever. Every crime tells a story about the people involved, the system that tried to stop it in the nation that couldn't look away. Some cases are so shocking, so deeply woven into who we are that decades later we're still asking, how did this happen? I'm Katie Rang and this is America's Most Infamous Crimes. Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I'll take you deep into that have a lasting imprint on society and still haunt us today. I want to thank you for being part of the Crime House community. Please rate, review and follow America's Most Infamous Crimes wherever you get your podcasts and to get all episodes at once ad free. Subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. You can also find us on YouTube with full video episodes. Just search America's Most Infamous Crimes and subscribe. Before I get started, please be advised that this episode contains descriptions of death and references to domestic conflict. So please listen with care. This is the first of our three episode series on the death of John o' Keefe and the case against Karen Reed. Today I'll tell you about the man everyone in the town of Canton loved, the woman who loved him back, and the brutal January night that ended with a body in the Snow. And a question that would consume the entire country. Who killed John o'? Keefe?
- [02:52]
Narrator / Voiceover
Foreign.
- [02:57]
Katie Rang
Before I tell you about the night John o' Keefe died, I want to tell you about the kind of man he was. John was born and raised in Braintree, Massachusetts, just south of Boston. He was the kind of guy who showed up and who made everyone around him feel like they had someone in their corner. His grandfather had been a cop, and John always knew he wanted to follow in those footsteps. He joined the Boston Police Department and served for 16 years. Boston PD hasn't always had the best reputation, but John was one of the good ones. He was an honest cop who genuinely wanted to make a difference in his community. His colleagues described him as someone who led with empathy, who treated every call like it mattered, and who never forgot the uniform. Came with a responsibility to serve. But John's life was marked by an almost unimaginable amount of loss. The kind of loss that comes in waves and doesn't give you time to catch your breath between them. In 2013, when John was in his late 30s, his older sister Kristin died from a brain tumor. And then just eight days after Kristin's death, one of John's best friends and fellow police officers died by suicide, leaving behind a pregnant girlfriend. About two months after that, John's brother in law suffered a heart attack and died too. That kind of grief would have broken most people. But John wasn't most people. When his sister Kristin and her husband died, they left behind two young children. A six year old girl and a three year old boy. And John, who was about 38 at the time and had never been a father, didn't hesitate for a second. He stepped up and became their legal guardian. He didn't know the first thing about raising kids. And when he told his mother about his decision, he asked her two simple questions. What do I feed them and what time do they go to bed? But he figured it out. John changed his entire life for those kids. He went to the dance recitals and never missed a single one of his nephew's baseball games. He even transferred to a safer precinct so he'd be around more and could pick them up from school. He also moved to Canton so they could grow up in a good neighborhood. Even while all of that was going on, John stepped in to support his late friend's pregnant girlfriend. He was the first person in the delivery room when her son was born and he became the boy's godfather. John o' Keefe was the kind of guy who just showed up and did what needed to be done, no questions asked. And the people in Canton knew that about him. Karen Reed would later call him the patron saint of Canton. And she wasn't exaggerating. That's what we really need to remember as we get into this story. Because John o' Keeffe is not just a name in a case file. And whatever happened on the night of January 28, 2022, he deserved better than what he got. Those kids deserved better. And I don't want that to get lost in the chaos of everything that comes next. But now it's time to meet the second person at the center of the story. Karen Reed. Karen grew up in Massachusetts, and I think it's fair to call her an overachiever. She graduated from Bentley University, one of the top business schools in the state, in just three years, earning a degree in finance. Then she went back and also got her master's there. After that, Karen worked as a financial analyst for Fidelity Investments, one of the biggest investment firms in the world, while also teaching finance as an adjunct professor at Bentley. She was sharp, driven, and ambitious. The kind of person who didn't settle. But like John, Karen's life wasn't easy. In 2005, when she was around 25, she was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, an autoimmune condition that attacks the gut and can spread to other parts of the body. And Karen's case was severe. She went through 10 surgeries in two years. Then seven years later, she was hit with another diagnosis. Multiple sclerosis, another autoimmune disorder affecting the brain and spinal cord. It was the kind of thing that would have sidelined a lot of people permanently. But Karen refused to be defined by her worst days. She kept working and teaching and living her life. But then, out of the blue, she got a DM from John o'. Keefe. John and Karen actually weren't strangers when they reconnected. They'd met Years earlier, in 2004, at a birthday party for John's sister, Kristen. They went on a few dates after that, but it was never anything serious. Karen's career had her traveling constantly, and she eventually took a job in Ireland. The two drifted apart and didn't stay in touch. But 16 years later, in the spring of 2020, John sent Karen a message on Facebook. Just a simple note. Hey, blast from the past. How's things? It's not clear why John reached out after all of this time. Maybe he was lonely or curious. Or maybe there was just something about the pandemic that made people want to reconnect with the people from their past. Whatever his reasons were, Karen responded. And just like that, the spark reignited. This time, the relationship stuck. Karen and John were both people who'd been through serious life altering experiences, and they understood each other in a way that most people couldn't. Karen hadn't planned on becoming a mother figure, but she loved John and loved his kids. Since she could work from home, she started watching them and cooking for them. While John was on shift. She'd help with their homework, drive them to activities and be there when they got home from school. The four of them were building something real, something that felt like it might finally be the stable, loving home she and John had both been searching for. But like a lot of relationships, this one had its rough patches. John and Karen had their fair share of arguments. There were trust issues. Karen suspected John of cheating on her during a trip to Aruba, which was a hard thing to move on from. And there were moments of of jealousy and frustration on both sides. So when their lives were torn apart on the night of January 28, 2022, people wondered, how bad had things really gotten? January 28, 2022, was a Friday night in Canton, Massachusetts, and a major winter storm was rolling in. By the time the snow stopped the next day, Canton would have more than 20 inches on the ground. A local meteorologist would later call it the biggest January snowstorm in the city's history. It was the kind of night where most people would stay home, light a candle and call it early. But this was Massachusetts and John O' Keefe and Karen Reed had plans. Around 7:30 that evening, John headed to an Irish bar in Canton called CF McCarthy's to meet up with a friend. Karen joined them about an hour later, arriving around 9. For the next couple of hours, they did what any group of friends does on a Friday night. They drank, talked, and hung out. Security footage from the bar doesn't show anything concerning nobody's arguing or fighting, just people having a good time on a cold winter night. At 10:40pm the group left for a second bar, the Waterfall Bar and Grill, just down the street. They got there about 14 minutes later and that's where the cast of characters in the story starts to expand the at the waterfall, John and Karen ran into Brian Albert, a retired Boston police officer who'd served on the force for 30 years, along with Brian's family members and his sister in law, a woman named Jennifer McCabe. Jen McCabe and Karen were friendly and bonded a bit over the fact that they both had Ms. The Alberts were part of John's extended social circle. A federal ATF agent named Brian Higgins was also at the waterfall that night. Like most small towns, pretty much everyone in Canton knew each other. When the waterfall closed at midnight, the group decided to keep the party going. Brian Albert's 23 year old son Brian Jr. Was throwing a birthday party at his parents house at 34 Fairview Road. So they decided to take the party back to the Alberts house. Inside the house that night were the homeowners, Brian and Nicole Albert, their children Kaitlin and Brian Jr. Nicole's sister Jen McCabe and her husband Matt McCabe, Brian Higgins, Brian Albert's 17 year old nephew Colin Albert and a few of Brian Jr's friends. A lot of the people in that house were either law enforcement officers, married to law enforcement officers or related to law enforcement officers. And that address, 34 Fairview Road was about to become one of the most scrutinized locations in modern true crime history. At 12:14am John texted Jen McCabe asking for the address. Once she sent it to him. John and Karen climbed into Karen's black Lexus SUV and Karen drove them over to the house. Both of them had been drinking heavily. Karen had between six and eight drinks over the course of three hours. It was pitch black, the snow was coming down hard and the roads were slick. Not ideal conditions for anyone to be driving, let alone someone who'd had that much to drink. But they went anyway. Security footage from the Canton library captures Karen's car on the road about a minute after they leave the waterfall. And at 12:27 Jen texted John asking where he was. At 12:31 she told him to pull up behind her car in the driveway. Jen would later say she glanced out the window a few times and saw a dark SUV parked in different spots along Fairview. First in front of the house, then near a flagpole in the front left corner of the yard. Then a bit further up the street. It looked exactly like Karen's car. But according to every single person inside that house, neither John nor Karen ever came through the front door that night. However, Karen would later tell a different story. She said that her and John weren't very close with the group of people who invited them back to the house. So she asked John to go in and check the vibes before they committed to going inside. Karen waited in the car. But when John didn't answer any of her calls or texts and didn't come back out to the car, she assumed John had gone inside the party and ditched her. So she drove home in a rage. And the voicemail she left throughout the night tell you exactly how angry she was. Between midnight and six in the morning, Karen called John's phone over 50 times and he never answered a single one. Karen's phone connected to the WI fi at John's house at 12:36am, which will be a very important detail later. And a minute later, at 12:37am Karen left her first voicemail telling John she hated him. Twenty minutes later, she left another message. She was yelling about being stuck at home with his kids in the middle of the night, calling him a pervert and demanding to know where he was. 20 minutes after that, she told him she was done, accused him of sleeping with another woman and called him a loser. Meanwhile, the woman who had invited them to the after party, Jen McCabe, was also calling John. Between 12:29 and 12:51am she called his phone seven times. But none of those calls went to voicemail, which meant she was ending the calls before they could ring all the way through. Another very important detail for later on and part of the reason why so many people nickname this trial the butt dial trial. Despite the fact that none of the calls went to voicemail, Jen claimed that they were all butt dials. That somehow she accidentally called him seven times in the span of 22 minutes. You tell me what you think about that, but here's what we know for sure. Sometime after midnight on January 29, 2022, John O' Keefe ended up outside in the snow at 34 Fairview Road. His phone registered its last activity at 12:32 in the morning. After that, nothing. No outgoing calls, text or movement. Just silence. At around 2:45 in the morning, a snowplow driver named Brian Lucky Loughran was clearing the snow from the storm and passed by 34 Fairview Road on his first pass. Lucky said he didn't see anything on the front lawn of 34 Fairview. But when he came back around 3:30am he said he noticed a dark Ford Edge SUV parked in front of the house. He remembered the SUV specifically because plow drivers are supposed to report vehicles parked on the road during storms. But he recognized the address and knew Brian Albert was a first responder. So he let it slide. At around 4:53am, John's 14 year old niece called Jen McCabe from home. Karen was at the house and she was frantic. John hadn't come home that night. His bed hadn't been slept in. Karen knew immediately that something was very, very wrong because John would never under any circumstances leave his niece and nephew home alone all night. Whatever had happened, this wasn't like him. Once they hung up, Karen called John's friend Carrie Roberts right away at five in the morning. And she was spiraling. One detail that will stick out later is that at 5:07am, right after talking to Karen on the phone, Jen McCabe made a phone call to her sister Nicole Albert Brian Albert's wife, the homeowner at 34 Fairview. That call log says that the call was answered and lasted 38 seconds. Meanwhile, Karen was getting desperate. She drove to Jen McCabe's house and then the three women, Karen, Jen and Carrie Roberts went back to John's home at 1 Meadows Lane, hoping he'd somehow made it back. But he hadn't. So they drove to 34 Fairview Road and arrived just after 6 in the morning. Carrie would later testify that Karen was going wild and she had to scream at her to calm down, shut up and buckle her seatbelt because they were driving through a blizzard and Karen was barely functional. When they pulled up to the house, Karen sees a large mound in the snow and immediately believes it was John. She started screaming and before the car even came to a full stop, Karen kicked the door open and ran toward the flagpole in the Alberts front yard. According to Jen McCabe, she yelled, There he is. Let me out. The mound was in fact John. He was lying on his back, partially buried in the snow. He had blood on his face, around his nose and mouth. His right eye was swollen to the size of a golf ball and there was a small laceration above it. He had abrasions on his nose and long deep scratches running down his right arm. The back of his right hand was bruised. His body was cold to the touch and he was wearing dark clothes. And both Jen and Carrie said that they hadn't seen him at first, even though he was a big guy, over 200 pounds. Jen McCabe called 911 four minutes after they found him. When the EMTs arrived, all three women were huddled over John's body, performing CPR and wrapping him in blankets. Karen was hysterical, running back and forth, barely coherent. And according to multiple first responders on the scene, Karen. Karen said something that would change the course of her entire life. Canton firefighter and paramedic Katie McLaughlin said she heard Karen repeatedly saying, I hit him. I hit him. Another firefighter, Anthony Flumati, said he heard the same thing. And Officer Steven Saraf testified that Karen told him, this is all my fault. This is all my fault. I did this. Karen would later say they all misheard her. She wasn't confessing, she was just asking not I hit him, but did I hit him? The question of a terrified, hungover woman who was trying to understand how the man she loved ended up face down in the snow outside of a house she dropped him at six hours earlier. There's only a one word difference in those statements, but in a criminal investigation, the difference between a statement and a question could be the difference between freedom and prison. The ambulance took John to Good Samaritan Medical center around 6:20 that morning, but there was nothing the doctors could do. At 7:59am Almost eight hours after he left the Waterfall Bar with Karen, 46 year old John O' Keefe was pronounced dead. His niece was 14, his nephew was 12. And they had now lost another person who had given up everything to take care of them.
- [19:11]
Tyler Reddick / Carter Roy
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Katie Rang
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Tyler Reddick / Carter Roy
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- [19:43]
Narrator / Voiceover
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- [20:44]
Tyler Reddick / Carter Roy
Hi listeners, it's Carter Roy, host of Murder True Crime Stories. I wanted to let you know that Crime House plus and Murder True Crime Stories are celebrating America's 250th by dropping a four part limited series on the crimes that built America. These are the crimes and cases that gave us Miranda rights, sparked criminal profiling and a murder that built America's missing children movement. Follow Murder True Crime Stories for a new episode every Monday leading up to July 4th, where you can binge all of them right now ad free with Crime House Plus. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com or if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, tap Try free at the top of this show's page.
- [21:35]
Katie Rang
After John's body was found, the investigation moved fast. A little too fast. Karen was taken to the hospital shortly after John and placed in a temporary psychiatric hold because she had told her dad that she didn't want to live if John was gone while she was there. At 9:08am her blood was drawn. Her blood alcohol content came back at point 093, just slightly above the legal limit in Massachusetts. But a forensic toxicologist later estimated that at the time, Karen would have dropped John off at Brian Albert's house around midnight. Her BAC could have been anywhere between 0.13 and point that's up to nearly four times the legal limit. However, there was a problem with that number. Security footage from the Waterfall Bar showed Karen leaving the bar walking completely normally. Sure, she looked like a woman who'd been drinking, but not like her BAC was that high. That inconsistency made a lot of people question whether that blood test was reliable, but it would play a big role in the case against Karen. The two lead investigators on the case were Trooper Michael Proctor and Sergeant Yuri Buchnik of the Massachusetts State Police. The Canton Police Department had recused themselves from the investigation because the homeowner at 34 Fairview, Brian Albert, was the brother of one of their own officers, Kevin Albert. So due to the conflict of interest, the case was handed to the state police. On paper, that makes sense. You don't investigate a case where an officer's brother is a potential witness. You bring in someone with no connections or conflicts. At least that's how it's supposed to work. Proctor and Buchnik started building their theory within hours, and it pointed straight at one Karen Reid. She was drunk, she was the last person seen with him, and she'd allegedly told first responders she had hit him. The partner is usually the first person you talk to in a case like this, so their theory wasn't completely out of left field, but they still needed to investigate further. Later that afternoon, they went to Karen's parents home to formally interview her and seized her Lexus SUV and cell phone without a warrant. Once they towed her car back to the Canton police station and went through her phone records, it didn't look great. On February 1, 2022, just three days after John was found dead, Karen Reed was arrested. She was charged with manslaughter, motor vehicle homicide, and leaving the scene of a motor vehicle collision causing death. She spent one night in jail and was released on $50,000 bail. Karen pleaded not guilty to every charge. But here's where the story takes a turn that would captivate millions of people. Shortly after Karen posted bail, her defense attorney, David Iannetti, received a phone call he wasn't expecting from someone whose voice he didn't recognize. The anonymous tipster told Yannetti that Karen was innocent and that she was being framed. He said Yannetti should be looking at the owner of the house where John's body was found, Brian Albert and Brian's nephew, a 17 year old named Colin Albert. The caller alleged that they were responsible for John's death, and another law enforcement officer had helped them move the body to the front lawn. Defense attorneys get strange calls all the time. It comes with the territory. But this could have been huge. So Yaneti tracked the caller down, but he recanted his entire story. He said he'd only been speculating. Except Yaneti couldn't move past that because the details the tipster had given were specific. He'd named names, described a scenario, and provided information that aligned with things only someone close to the events of that night would know. And at the time of the call, photographs of John's injuries were hadn't been publicly released. So how would a random person making things up know what those injuries looked like? And the tipster trying to take it all back just made Yannetti even more suspicious. Because if someone was just guessing for kicks, why would they bother calling back to say nevermind? That sounded less like a prankster and more like someone who realized they had said too much. So Yane kept digging. And what he found would turn this case completely on its head. It turns out the Alberts weren't just any family in Canton. Brian Albert was a retired Boston police officer with 30 years on the force and a reputation as a tough guy. Tough enough to be featured on a reality show called Boston's Finest. His brother, Chris Albert, sat on the Canton Select Board, which had the power to appoint and fire the town's Chief of police police. And another brother, Kevin, was an active Canton police officer. Which, again, was the reason why Canton PD had recused themselves from the investigation in the first place. In other words, if there was one family in Canton you didn't want to cross, it was the Alberts. And the deeper Yaneti looked, the more unsettling the questions became. Why had the case been handed to a state trooper whose family turned out to have personal ties to the Alberts? Why was there no record of anyone ever asking to search the inside of Brian Albert's house? The location of the party John was invited to the night he died? And why did multiple witnesses from that night seem to have suspiciously similar stories, coordinated timelines, and an awful lot of convenient memory lapses? But maybe the most important question was if John O' Keefe was hit by a 4,000 pound Lexus SUV traveling at 24 miles per hour, why didn't he have a single injury below his neck? No broken bones, no torn ligaments, not even a single bruise below the neck. His injuries were confined entirely to his head, his face and one of his arms. Specifically those long, deep scratches down his right arm that looked less like they came from a car bumper and more like they came from something else. Something much sharper. The medical examiner listed John's cause of death as blunt force trauma to the head and hypothermia. But later, when asked on the sand whether John's injuries were consistent with being struck by a vehicle, she said she couldn't find evidence of an impact site anywhere on the body. She ruled the manner of death undetermined. That ruling is really important because when the manner of death is undetermined, the case almost never goes to trial. If your own medical examiner can't say with confidence how someone died, proving a homicide case beyond a reasonable doubt becomes almost impossible. But the Commonwealth of Massachusetts pushed forward anyway, and they charged Karen Reid with killing the man she loved. Karen's defense team, David Iannetti, along with a high profile Los Angeles attorney named Alan Jackson, who joined the case after Karen reached out to him with an email titled Murder of a Boston Cop, was about to make an argument that would shock the entire country. They weren't just going to argue that Karen didn't do it. They were going to argue that John O' Keefe was accidentally killed inside of 34 Fairview Road. A house full of law enforcement officers and their families had framed Karen Reed to cover up what really happened. And the evidence they uncovered to support that theory would be explosive. At the end of each episode, I like to take a moment to answer any questions you may have about the case and share my thoughts. So make sure to comment below what stands out to you the most about how quickly the investigation zeroed in on Karen Reed. I think this fact set the stage for the entire case and made the bias and conflict of interest glaringly obvious. John's body was found at 6am on a Saturday morning. And by Sunday afternoon, the investigators already decided Karen was their person. They seized her car and phone without a warrant, went through her phone, and had a full theory locked in with about 16 hours. But for me, what is really striking is the complete lack of investigation into anyone else. You're telling me a Boston cop was found dead on the front lawn of a house, and they didn't even ask to search the house? If a man was found dead on the front lawn of any of our houses, you can bet the cops would be searching your house and you would be a potential suspect. But the cops never treated anyone in the house like a potential suspect at all. In any other case, protocol would be to separate the witnesses and get their statements individually. But in this case, they let everyone sit with each other and talk, potentially letting them get their story straight. And when they did interview them later in the day, they went to their houses instead of having them come to the precinct, which we will find out later led to some serious eavesdropping. Sure, as a cop, you can have a hunch or a theory, but your job is to actually investigate a case despite that theory. You can't just choose a suspect and work backwards to find evidence that you think could prove their guilt. Because when you decide someone is guilty that fast, you can get it completely wrong and let the real suspect or suspects slip through your fingers. And that is what would eventually define this case. And the fact that the manner of death was ruled undetermined, that's a pretty big deal, right? It's a huge deal. There are five classifications for the manner of death. It's natural, accidental homicide, suicide, or undetermined. The reason why so many cases with an undetermined cause of death don't go to trial is because it's extremely hard to convince a jury that a suspect murdered someone when you can't even confirm that the victim was murdered. Beyond a reasonable doubt is a very high burden. And if your own medical expert isn't fully convinced it was even a murder to begin with, how are you going to convince 12 jurors beyond a reasonable doubt? That alone should have given the prosecution serious pause. And the fact that they charged Karen anyway and charged her, that quickly tells you a lot about how confident they were in their narrative. Whether that confidence was justified is a whole other conversation. Can we talk about the I hit him versus did I hit him thing? Because that feels like the basis of the whole early case against her, it really is. Put yourself in Karen's shoes for a second. You wake up in the middle of the night and your boyfriend isn't home. You're hungover, you can barely remember the drive back, and the last thing you know is that you dropped him off at a house party in a blizzard. You spend the next two hours calling everyone you know, panicking, driving around in the snow, and then you find your boyfriend who you dropped off the night before, face down in the snow. In that instance, you are going to go through all of the possibilities of how he could have ended up there. Being hit by a car is definitely an option. And in this case, she was the one to drop him off. So questions like Did I hit him? Could I have hit him? Are completely reasonable, especially if, you know you were the one drinking and driving. Did I hit him? Is the question of a terrified, confused and panicked woman trying to piece together a night she can't fully remember. I hit him is a confession. And the difference between those two things is everything. But here's what really bothers me. That statement didn't appear in the initial police reports. Multiple first responders testified to hearing it, but it wasn't formally documented right away. Jen McCabe even called back hours later to add to her witness statement that she remembered Karen saying something like that. When key evidence shows up after the fact instead of in real time, it raises serious questions for me. What about John's injuries? The fact that there was nothing below the neck seems really hard to square with being hit by an suv. In the next two episodes, I'm going to lay out some of the insane things that the homeowners, partygoers, witnesses and investigators did after the murder. But if we take all of those things away, this is why I 100% believe Karen is innocent. You cannot convince me that someone could get hit by a 4,000 plus pound car backing up around 60ft at 24 miles per hour, get flung around 7ft into the yard and not sustain a single broken bone, a single ligament tear, a single tire mark, or even a single bruise. Yeah, no chance. Even convincing me that a drunk woman is able to reverse 60ft at 24 mph in a snowstorm and hit her target perfectly without spinning out at all is a very hard sell. The only injury below the neck were the marks on his one arm that looked exactly like bites or scratches from a dog. And you'll find out why that is so curious in the next episode. I'm not a forensic expert, but I Know what a car does to a human body, and this just does not match. That inconsistency is at the heart of why so many people started questioning the prosecution story. And it's a big part of why this case became so much bigger than just a drunk driving accident. And then the anonymous tip comes in. What do you make of that? The tip completely changed the trajectory of this case and shaped the defense's strategy. Imagine being a lawyer and having a man call in and tell you that your client is completely innocent and being framed. Yes, defense attorneys get random calls from people all the time, especially in high profile cases. People want to be a part of the story. They want to feel important, whatever. But in this case, the caller knew details that hadn't been released to the public. He didn't just say, karen is innocent. He specifically named Brian Albert and Colin Albert and described a scenario involving someone being moved to the lawn. And this was before any photos of John's injuries had been released. How would a random person making stuff up know all of those details? And when the caller recanted, it actually made me more suspicious, not less. Especially when you find out who the Alberts were and the poll they had. In this community, these are people in positions to harass you or even potentially frame you for something you didn't do as punishment for coming forward. The caller was anonymous, but when they tracked him down, the danger became real and he walked back. His story. That sounds more like someone who got scared and realized they'd said too much, not someone who was lying and making up a story for fun. Whether the tip turns out to be fully accurate or not, it clearly lit a fire under David Iannetti to not only defend a client he believed was innocent, but to also find out who framed her and what really happened. And what his team uncovered after that call is going to blow your mind. Thanks so much for joining me for this episode. Make sure to rate, review and follow America's most infamous crimes so we can keep building this community together. And to get all episodes at once. Ad free. Subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. Come back tomorrow for our next episode on the Karen Reid case. The defense is about to present its theory and what they've uncovered about the people inside 34 Fairview Road. The lead investigator assigned to the case and the investigation itself is going to turn everything you think you know about this case completely on its head.