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Ladies and gentlemen, there was a cover up in this case, plain and simple. It's not that it could happen. It's that every single one of those things that I just mentioned did happen right in front of you. When you stare the truth down, you will see that the Commonwealth has not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty. Not even close, ladies and gentlemen. Karen Reid is innocent. Do justice and find her not guilty. Karen Reed was accused of ending the life of her boyfriend John o', Keefe, a Boston police officer, after his body was found lying deceased in the snow on the front lawn of a fellow Boston police officer. This trial was insane. Actually, there were two. The first one, which was such a disaster, it was such chaos, it ended up being declared a mistrial, leading to a second trial. I. I don't even know if I would say that the second trial was any better, but both had the same goal, to figure out what the truth was about this case. Because there is a truth issue being it just depends on who you ask. And I think the thing about this case, I wanted to make a podcast episode on it because it feels like either you're on Karen Reed's side or you're not. This isn't one of those cases where you can say two things can be true at once. There can be two things that are true, but they lead to the same result. No. Either you think that there was a cover up or you don't. It's as simple as that. You think that Karen Reid killed her boyfriend or you don't. So I want to break it down for you guys. I want to talk about it with you guys. I want to know what you have to say about this case. Because again, I feel like it's one way or the other. There's no mix of possibilities. But let's just get straight into it. Welcome to this episode of I wish you were here. January 28th of 2022 was a Friday. By then, 41 year old Karen Reed and her boyfriend's 46 year old John O' Keefe had been together for two years. They knew each other. They had a past they had previously been involved with each other romantically in their twenties. That fizzled out. They rekindled in their adult lives leading into this two year relationship and that very day they had an argument. They argued about John's niece and nephew who were practically his children given that he had taken them in to live with him, treated them as his own after his sister and his brother in law had passed away. Which honestly just goes to show the kind of person that John o' Keefe was. And I will say regarding this case, I'm sure many of you guys know because it's so recent, it was everywhere, there's no way that you could not have heard about this case, but it is. It does suck that it feels like it's Karen Reed. Karen Reed. Karen Reed. Boston police officers and I feel like John's name gets lost in the headlines which shouldn't happen because that's the most important thing about this case is that someone lost their life regarding how it happened, who did it, who lied, who didn't, he lost his life and, and his name gets, I don't want to say forgotten about but that's the most important thing about this case. So just keep that in mind. So they argued earlier in the day, but regardless, by the time that nighttime rolled around, the two of them were fined or they seemed fine. They seemingly got over whatever they were arguing and they met up around 9pm to go and have a fun night at a place called CF McCarthy's. They spent a couple hours there and around 11pm they headed over to a place called Waterfall Bar and Grill. At Waterfall, they ended up meeting up with a group of John's friends who like John, worked in law enforcement. There were fellow police officers, they spent some time there hanging out, having drinks. Now it's past midnight, the place is closing up, but the group is not ready to call it a night. Brian Albert, a fellow Boston police officer and his wife Nicole Albert extend an open invite to go back to their house at 34 Fairview Road. Part of the people invited included Jennifer McCabe and her husband Jennifer, who is sisters with the owner of the house. Nicole Albert and Jennifer, who was really good friends with John O'. Keefe. Karen leaves Waterfall in her black SUV. John O' Keefe is sitting in the passenger seat. The black SUV is seen right outside of 34 Fairview Road, but Karen and John are not coming inside. So Jen, good friends with John, texts John at 12:27am saying here. She then calls him. They speak for eight seconds. Jen texts John again. Hello. At 12:31. Nine minutes later, she texts him again saying pull up behind me. Assuming that she was inside the house, looking out the window, seeing, saw that he was maybe trying or Karen was driving but saw that they were maybe trying to decide where to park. Texts him, pull up behind me. Two minutes later she texts him again, where are you? Calls him again twice. At 12:43 in the morning, she calls him again. Five minutes later, calls him again at 12:50am so now it's been 23 minutes since the first initial text. Jen calls John again. That call goes unanswered. If you ask Karen Reed about her version of events, her final story, and I say final because it seemed like even she was unsure of what exactly happened at what exact times. At first, presumably because it was a very long night where a lot of drinks were had, a lot of them by Karen Reed. But if you ask her, she would tell you that she was unsure if they were invited to the after party, let's call it. So when they pulled up, she asked John to go inside to go and make sure that they were given that the entire group they were hanging out with were either friends or acquaintances with John. Karen didn't really know anyone in the group. She was meeting some of them for the first time. She knew others from meeting up with them before. But at the end of the day they were John's friends, not hers. So she tells John to go inside and figure out if they were invited because she wasn't sure. John o' Keefe gets out of the car. He starts walking towards the house. Karen thinks assumes that John enters the house but she doesn't know for sure because as soon as she sees him walking away, she picks up her phone and she's looking at her phone, not on John o'. Keeffe. So he walks away from her car but he does not come back to get her. At that point, Karen gets impatient. She doesn't know what's taking so long. She tries calling him. He's not answering her calls. So she ends up losing her patience. She leaves and does not come back. She drives to John's house alone and she ends up falling asleep on the couch. She so that's her story. Karen's story. However, if you ask everyone else inside of that house, they would say that after leaving Waterfall Bar and Grill, they never saw John o'. Keefe. They would all bet their life on it that John O Keefe never entered Brian and Nicole Albert's house. At around 4:30 in the morning, back at John's house, Karen Reed wakes up in a panic. From the moment that she opens her eyes, she knew something was wrong because John wasn't there. He never made it home. Where's John? Where's John? He's not home. Is he okay? What happened? Where is he? She's freaking out. She wakes up John sneeze to get Jen McCabe's phone number. And then she calls Jen McCabe at 4:53 in the morning saying that she's going absolutely crazy because she just cannot find John. She then calls another one of John's friends, Carrie Roberts, to tells her that she's worried about John because he never came home. And according to Cari, on that phone call, Karen says something about being worried that John is gone. Gone as in dead, as in no longer alive. And she mentioned something about the possibility of him being hit with a snowplow. Oh yeah, forgot to mention. Massive snowstorm in Boston that night. I'm talking like it was all over the news. It was that big. It was not your usual snowstorm. It, it was a lot of snow. The three women. So Jen, Carrie and Karen, they all end up in one car driving to Brian and Nicole Albert's house to go and look for John. Karen is still the entire time, full panic mode. She's rambling on in the backseat about the worst case scenario. And according to Jen and Carrie, she asks them, could I have hit him? Did I hit him? As they're pulling up to the house. Mind you, all this is happening, like I said, in the middle of a blizzard. And I mean blizzard like it was a historic snow blizzard in Boston. There was so much snow. But they pull in and Karen goes hysterical saying there he is, there he is. John is right there. Carrie and Jen are confused because they don't see anything. The snow is so bad they can hardly see the road as it is. But Karen practically jumps out of the car, runs straight to John's body in the snow that is covered up in a layer of snow and she starts trying to warm him up with her entire body heat. Apparently soon after that, seconds after that, she tells Jen, she yells at her and tells her to look up. Something along the lines of how long can somebody last in the colds before they pass away? Or how long before someone passes away from hypothermia? While Karen and Carrie are all hands on deck trying to help John, trying to keep him more warm, Jen calls 911 and she reports that they need assistance immediately at 34 Fairview Road because there is a man lying in the snow unresponsive with what appears to be blood on his face. Carrie later says that when they saw John when they first found his body, he looked bad. He had two black eyes. Jen on the phone tells the operators that she thinks it's too late. She thinks that John has already passed away. Paramedics arrive at the scene. Everyone is hysterical. There's body cam footage of this. It's a, it's a disaster. I mean not only the blizzard but also. Karen is hysterical. Jen is freaking out. Carrie doesn't know what to do. It's a lot. One of the emergency responders as well as others that were present would later say in court that while hysterical and inconsolable at the scene of the crime, Karen Reid was repeatedly saying I hit him. I hit him. Paramedics rush John to the hospital but heartbreakingly despite their best efforts they are not able to save him. And he is pronounced deceased by 7:50 in the morning on January 29th of 2022. Now let's clarify what happened in the time between when Karen's SUV was seen outside of 34 Fairview Road the night prior to when John O' Keefe's body was found. How and when he ended up in a pile of snow on that front yard. Again, it depends on who you ask. Regardless, someone has lost their life. A 16 year veteran of the Boston Police Department, 46 year old John O'. Keefe. And with that an investigation begins. State trooper Michael Proctor was assigned the case. He finds Karen Reed to speak to her and her black SUV is taken in to be processed as evidence. When Karen Reed speaks to Michael Proctor she tells him what I told you. Her version of events was that her and John argued earlier in that day but they were fine by nighttime that they went out and that she drove the both of them back to the Alberts house. John got out of the car but never came back. So she says that she made a three point turn to leave and go back to John's house where she fell asleep on the couch and says that when she woke up she, she noticed that the tail light on her car was broken but claimed that she wasn't sure how or when it happened. Michael Proctor and other officers and detectives and investigators on his team then start hearing about Karen Breed's comments that she made wondering if she could have hit John with her vehicle. He hears that according to the people inside of the house John never made it inside of the Albert's house and and hears that Karen allegedly said to the paramedic I hit him, I hit him. I hit him. Then Proctor gets the autopsy results back of how John's body was found. Injured with cuts on his face, a laceration on the back of his head, two black eyes, multiple skull fractures, missing one of his shoes with a broken glass shattered by him that he had a drink in. His cause of death was ruled as blunt force trauma to the head and hypothermia. So Michael Proctor decides in that moment that the only explanation that makes sense here is that Karen Reed hit John o' Keefe with her car. He fell back, maybe hit his head on something, was unable to get up, and Karen Reed left him all alone in the snow for him to pass away. And with that suspicion, Karen Reid is arrested on February 1 on charges of leaving the scene of a crime and manslaughter and motor vehicular homicide. Her charges would later be upgraded to second degree murder. Manslaughter while operating under the influence of alcohol and leaving the scene of personal injury or death. She would plead not guilty for all charges and she would post bail. So that is the case that prosecutors were going to try and make with pretty much all of Boston PD on their side. But then Karen Reed starts to think about this in more detail. She starts kind of thinking about what could have happened. She starts connecting the dots and she starts to figure out all of the connections that everybody has of the people who will be testifying against her and of the people who were there the night of January 28th. She thinks about how Jen McCabe is sisters with Nicole Albert, who, who is married to Brian Albert, who is friends with Brian Higgins, who we'll talk about in a little bit, who all seem to be friendly with or at the very least run in the same circle as Michael Proctor, the lead investigator on the case. And Karen starts thinking that something happened inside of that house that night and that this entire thing is a cover up of all of those people who were intertwined with each other and working together to try and frame the death of John o' Keefe on her. So let's get into what happened at trial. Right. So we're in the courtroom now. Okay. The six week trial that turned something the. This is the first one, because, remember, it ended up being declared a mistrial. But everything mentioned inside that courtroom is still very, very important. And it really paints the picture of what this case turned out to be. But it turned out to be something way bigger than anyone could have seen coming. And again, I sound like a broken record. But the prosecution is fighting to prove that Karen Reed was and is the Only person responsible for ending the life of John o'. Keefe. And Karen Reed's team is fighting to prove that she is the one being framed. One of the biggest things that the prosecution was holding on to was that Karen Reed was telling multiple people in regards to John, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him. They are saying that she basically confessed. I mean, call it what it is, if they're saying that she said those words, they're saying that she flat out confessed. End of argument. However, nobody, not the paramedics at the scene, no witnesses, not the police, not a single person wrote or stated that Karen Reid said that in their written reports from that night. And they're holding on to it as if they're holding onto it so hard, as if that was arguably one of the most important pieces of this case, yet every single person just failed to write that in their reports. Karen says that she may have said something along those lines, but more so phrased in the Could I have, Could I have hit him? Way more so as a question, not as a confession saying I hit him. Next, the infamous broken tail light on Karen Reed's black suv. Karen is unsure of how she got the broken tail light because remember, they had a lot of drinks that night. But of course the prosecution says it's obvious she hit John o' Keefe with her car when she was turning around as the evidence showed that her car reversed at 24 miles an hour. They say she must have hit him then when she turned around and left the Albert's house at around 12:45 in the morning. Because pieces of Karen's broken tail light are found in the snow at the scene of the crime. That is a fact. And John's DNA was found on some of those taillight broken pieces. So the prosecution also focuses in on the angry voicemails that Karen left John that night after she drove off to prove that their relationship was not healthy, that it was a toxic one, it was a bad one. And hint at the fact that Karen was angry with John that night when she left, as if to say that that was her motive for ending his life. And the voicemails that Karen left John, they are nasty. When Karen drove off, she left angry voicemails for John, yelling at him, calling him a loser, telling him to go f himself, telling him that she hates him, etc. Etc. Fine, I guess they have a strong argument with those voicemail proving how angry she was at him that night. But the defense also has a strong argument that they believe that the evidence, the pieces of the broken tail light that were found at the scene of the crime were planted. And they have a few things to back that up and to make Michael Proctor look suspicious or at the very least, show horrible police work. First of all, there's video footage of Karen leaving John's house at 507 in the morning, when she was going to go meet up with Jen and Carrie to go and look for John before they found his body, obviously. And it looks like in the CCTV footage, it looks like she could have bumped John's car with her car on the side of the broken tail light. So she could have broken her taillight then, which they could have used that evidence to make this their case. But for some reason, all and any footage that could have captured or that would have captured Karen's black SUV on the side of the broken tail light, any cameras with that footage that could prove that her tail light was not broken when she left John and, and got back to his house alone, all of that footage was missing, including footage from a camera from a public library. The footage is just missing. It's just gone. It cannot be found. Why? I don't know. I wonder the same thing. Because if that footage existed and her taillight was not broken when she got back to John's house and she did in fact break it when her car bumped John's car, then the prosecution's argument would be over and it would look very suspicious as to how the broken tail light pieces were found at the scene of the crime. And it would tell you that that piece is of. That those pieces of evidence were planted when the crime scene was being processed after John's body was found. Those pieces of the broken tail light in the snow were not found for hours. Nothing is found, in fact, for hours, even though they were literally searching with a leaf blower, blowing snow out of the way. And then suddenly, after Karen's car is taken in as evidence, over 40 pieces of broken tail light are found. So the defense is saying, look, Michael Proctor needed to wait to get his hands on Karen's car so he could then grab pieces of the broken tail light. And in the small gap of time when the crime scene was left unattended, he could have himself or he could have had someone drop them off and plant them there as evidence. The prosecution says that's stupid. Of course, we didn't do that. Here is a video showing when we were processing Karen's suv, nobody touched that side of her car, the side of the. Where the broken, broken tail light was. So they're playing the video in courts showing that no one was on the side of the. Of the broken tail light side. No one was working on that side of Karen's suv. So they're playing this literally in the courtroom. Right. And then the defense says hold on, that is backwards. The video that you're showing as evidence backing up your entire argument, that video is inverted. So if you turn it back around, there is someone touching the area of her tail light and the hat of the person that seems to be back there doing whatever they were doing, possibly gathering pieces of evidence to go and plant them. That hat looks to be none other than Michael Proctor's hat. And on top of the terrible police work when collecting evidence at the scene of the crime, they didn't have evidence bags, I guess or they didn't have anything to collect the evidence properly. So you know what they used to collect the evidence to collect blood evidence, mind you, that they found. They collected the blood and put it in red solo cups. Yeah, like the red solo cups that you will see at college parties. Those same kind of cups. And they put those red solo cups in a brown grocery bag. Shocking. Shocking. Unbelievable. Moving on back to the prosecution saying that Karen and John's relationship was rocky and toxic and not good. It turns out that flirty messages come out between Karen Reed and Brian Higgins. Brian Higgins I briefly mentioned before, is a federal agent who was at the Alberts house the night of the crime. So to make a long story short, Brian Higgins and Karen Reid, while she was in a relationship with John, were messaging each other, texting each other, being very flirty and they even shared a kiss together not long ago. So the prosecution says John and Karen's relationship was bad. It was not good. She was invested in someone else. Her attention was elsewhere. She did not care about John. The defense says not so fast. How about we consider the possibility that John o' Kee found out that his girlfriend Karen Reed was being flirty with Brian Higgins. And that night he entered the Alberts house where Brian Higgins was, went up to him, confronted him, a fight broke out, someone took it too far, knocked John out and when he became unresponsive, everyone inside of that house decided to put him out in the front yard, let him pass away from hypothermia to then be able to frame everything on Karen. So now more evidence to support the idea that the defense presented or a similar situation, the general idea that a fight broke out inside of that house. This is more evidence that kind of backs that up. Brian and Nicole, the owners of 34 Fairview had a German shepherd, a dog named Chloe. Soon after John's death, the family got rid of the dog completely. Chloe the dog. And they say that it. She ran away, they gave her away. I don't know, they kind of conflicted their stories there. But Chloe the dog had a history of being aggressive and violent. So the defense has an expert witness come up and testify and say that John's injuries on his arm are likely to be teeth or claw marks showing that John had likely been attacked by some sort of animal, AKA a large dog. Even though the prosecution had their own expert witnesses come up and say that his injuries could have been scratches, maybe from a broken tail light. A lot of people believe that the injuries do look way more to be like those consistent with being scratches or teeth marks from an attack from a dog. The prosecution says, well, they tested the injuries on John o' Keefe for dog DNA. There was no dog DNA found, so he wasn't attacked by dog. But the defense says, well, no, you're right, they did not find dog DNA, but they did find pig DNA, which could have been left from a dog treat, which could have been left on John from Chloe the dog's teeth. The Alberts sold their house shortly after the crime and they said that they had been planning on selling it for a while prior to John's passing. Regardless, that does look suspicious. So the defense takes advantage of that and they try to use that to support their argument that something happened inside of that house. A strong belief by a lot of people is that there was a fight inside of the house between John o' Keefe and maybe Brian Higgins, maybe someone else, that they were fighting, that the dog saw it, got aggressive, jumped on John, attacked him further, and then they left him out in the cold for him to pass away. And then the Alberts got rid of the house and rid of the dog. Because no dog, no house equals no evidence. But tell me what you guys think on that. The prosecution says, this guy, John o', Keefe, he was one of us. He was a Boston cop in a house full of Boston cops. How dumb do you think we would be to put a deceased body out in our front yard knowing that we were responsible for his death, entangled in that case, which is also a good point because why would they, if they, if they did something to John, right? If whatever happened, happened inside of that house, why would then knowing how the law works and knowing likely how everything would go down, why would they put a dead body in their front yard, which Is a good point. However, let's get into the million and a half accidental butt dials that happened that night. We'll just mention some of them. Okay, so back to the night of the crime. By 2 in the morning, everyone had left the Albert's house. Everyone had gone to bed, or so we thought. Brian Higgins didn't go to bed. He went to the Canton Police Department, which is the police department, by the way, handling this entire case. Brian Higgins went there around 1:30 in the morning. He had no business being there after a long night out. But according to him, he stopped by to do some quick paperwork or something random. And then apparently he went home and went to bed. So by two in the morning, everyone claims to have been asleep. But phone records show that at 2:22 in the morning on January 29th, Brian Albert calls Brian Higgins. Seconds later, Brian Higgins calls Brian Albert back. And that call is answered. It only lasts a few seconds, but it is answered. And when they were asked about this in court, both men say, I don't know. Was it me? I was sleeping. I don't know. They say that it was a butt out. But what are the odds that your friend butt dials you and then you immediately butt dial them and they answer the phone? The phone call, I mean, it just really makes no sense. Then we find out that Brian Albert destroys his phone, gets rid of his phone one day before he received a protective order to hand in his phone. Then months later, Brian Higgins drives to a military base. I'm pretty sure that was hours away. Completely destroys his phone and his SIM card and disposes of the pieces in separate areas in that military base. The military base that investigators do not have access to. And the defense says again, look, they're obviously trying their best to hide something. Shall I mentioned other weird phone activity? Jen McCabe at 2:25 in the morning, said sends two text messages. What they were, we don't know. They just don't exist. She deletes a bunch of calls made the night of the crime as well. So messages and phone calls disappeared. Nobody knows. But they didn't do it on purpose. They're just gone. And they're not sure why. Which leads us to yet another battle of the experts. The infamous search of how long to die in the cold that was made by Jen McCabe on her phone at 2:27 in the morning. Again, when everyone is suspected or supposed to be asleep. During this time, according to the prosecution's argument, John's body is already outside in the snow all alone. But nobody knows yet only Karen. Everyone else is supposed to be asleep. Like that is what the prosecution is saying, that his body was out in the cold, that Karen was the only person who would have known because she was the one who killed him. Everyone else would have no idea. By this time, everyone else was supposed to be asleep. Jen McCabe's phone records show that at 2:27 in the morning she made a Google search of how long to die in the cold. How would she know how to search that? If she isn't supposed to know that her friend is out in the snow just yet, she doesn't find out for hours. Well, the defense says that the search was made at 2:27 in the morning and then it was deleted. It. It's literally in black and white. They're saying it's right there. There's no question about it. Jen on the stand says, no, I didn't make that surge. Which, I mean, she looks pretty silly saying no when the phone records were literally showing like it was in black and white. It was in black and white made showing that she did make that search. But the prosecution comes in with a different expert saying, well, it might be wrong because it says 2:27 in the morning, but 2:27 in the morning is not when that search was made. This is what the prosecution is saying. This is what the prosecution is arguing. The Google search was made when they found John's body with Karen and Cari and Karen was yelling at John to look up how long until someone passes away from hypothermia. They're saying that she made the search the morning after they found the body. And the prosecution says that it shows 2:27 in the morning because that was the time that Jen opened up the tab. Not the time that she actually made the search, but the time that she opened the tab in which she made the search on her phone. So maybe they're both right. They're just seeing it differently. I don't know. It was an entire battle of the experts. And one more thing that I want to mention is Lucky the snowplow driver. Lucky has lived in the area for a very long time. He knows the Alberts household. He's known them for a long time. He's known that they've lived there for a long time. And Lucky was on shift that night. He was driving with his snowplow right by the Alberts house between 2:30 in the morning and 2:45 in the morning. Lucky on the stand testifies that the seat in his snowplow is higher than most so he is able to see 5 to 15ft out in front of him when he's driving it. And he testified with a hundred percent certainty that when he drove past the Alberts house, nobody was out on the front lawn. Lucky says there's no way. There was nothing there. There was no body out there. I would have seen him. The defense makes it a point to say if the prosecution is correct and Karen did hit John with her vehicle and left him there. That would have happened at 12:45 in the morning. Lucky was driving between 2:30 and 2:45. So Lucky would have seen him if John's body was out there, but he didn't. However, the prosecution says, well no, Lucky must have just missed him. He probably wasn't paying attention. He just, he was out there, but Lucky just didn't see him. It was a lot. And things were just not making sense. After six weeks of that trial, they've kept everyone on the edge of their seat. The trial ended up being misdeclared, a mistrial. The jury was able to agree to find Karen Reid not guilty on two out of the three charges by but because they couldn't unanimously rule her guilty or sorry, not guilty on all three charges, the judge declared a mistrial, meaning that the entire thing had to happen again. So a second trial was scheduled and the second time around, all eyes were on Karen Reed. The case had exploded by then. I'm sure you guys heard of it. It was on TikTok. I made a TikTok about it. It was on Facebook, groups, even national outlets were talking about it. It was everywhere. Everyone had an opinion. But the question was, was Karen Reid a murderer or was she being framed by the very people who were supposed to protect and serve? And after months of testimony, after every photo, every witness and every theory had been pretty much picked apart by the entire world, the jury came back with a non guilty verdict. They found Karen Reed not guilty on all charges. Karen Reed walked out of the courtroom a free woman. But even with the trial over, the questions still haven't stopped. Because people still want to know what really happened to officer John o' Keefe that night in the snow. And I want to know what you guys have to say. That is all I have for this episode of I wish you were here. Thank you guys so much for listening and please, please, please, if you haven't, please make sure to leave a review on this podcast if you enjoy it. It helps me out so much and I really, truly appreciate you. Every single one of you that comes back here every single week. It means the world to me and I love you guys so, so much. Hope you're having the best day. If not, go do something to make it the best day. Make somebody happy and I will see you in my next video. Massive kiss on the forehead to every single one of you. Thank you guys so much for tuning into this episode of I wish you were here. I wish. As a reminder, you can listen to this episode any way you get your podcast video version. Also available on YouTube. Love you.