INTRODUCING: Crime Junkie AF

Hi, Crime Junkies, happy Friday! Are you surprised to hear from me today? Well, if you haven't heard yet, we recently had a very special announcement. Over on Sirius XM's app, we launched their very first ever true crime channel, Crime Junkie Radio. It's your ultimate destination for 24-7 true crime.

Crime Junkie, AF.

Hi, everyone, I'm Ashley Flowers, and welcome to my new show on Sirius XM, Made by a Crime Junkie, Ashley Flowers, for people who are Crime Junkie, AF. My plan is to come here every month and share with you the cases you have to know about. You have to be able to talk about beyond the clickbaity headlines, but like really get into. And I don't want to do that alone. It's more than just storytelling.

Hi, I'm so excited to be here. This is so awesome. I don't get to do Crime Junkie stuff as much, and it's so fun to focus on this.

I am jazzed. For people who don't know you, we have been working together for five, six years now. Oh my gosh.

It's been a minute.

Delia is one of the most tenacious investigative journalists I have ever met in my life. She hosts the limited series Counter Clock, which is an investigative series. You are currently working on season, well, season seven, but a season six is about to come out.

Yeah. You know me. I'm like, it's like making a movie. I'm like years ahead. Yeah.

You also host Park Predators. You had a new show. come out with us, Dark Arenas. Yeah. You are very well known in the podcast field, very well known in the journalism field.

I always want to be on the side of like, hey, you can't just say the most wild thing, but at the same time, some of these cases, and this case that you said we were going to talk about today, it is that, it is the sense of like, does it go this far, like this, so deep? And so that's definitely something that I'm like, I've had way too many run-ins with.

And before you knew we were coming here, did you know this case?

I did not know it intimately, but the headline, the headline, I had remembered. So this case happened in January, late January, 2022, which, for those of you that don't know, you and I were having children, like literally birthing children at that time. So postpartum, like I remember, in those weeks after, you know, when my son is sleeping like hours a day, right, and there's nothing to do, I remember just kind of like peeking into the real world and being like, what's happening? And this headline was one that stood out, probably on Twitter or probably on X or something like that. And I just remember being like, what?

And the headline is breaking news, Karen Reed, Karen Reed, Karen Reed is her name, charged with murder in January, 2022, death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer, John O'Keefe. So Karen Reed, this woman in Boston, is accused of killing her boyfriend, John O'Keefe, who was a Boston police officer. And it's interesting when you're talking about the headlines, because actually one of the first things that I read when I was really diving into this was a piece that was written by one of John O'Keefe's friends. And it was all about the family's perception of this, because this case has really grown beyond just what are the facts or the fact that she's going to trial. It has taken on a life of its own.

Yeah, because the people that know this case the absolute best at this point are the ones that have crafted these documents. And so really like. that is key to a case like this, where there's so much going on, because, like you said, there is so much that sort of polluted the space around this story and this headline. So these documents are really the people who have been putting their heart and soul into this case for so long. So I think that's where you get that level of credibility that is good.

And it's interesting because you get the narrative piece by piece. Every filing, every document, you get one more thing that you can file away like, oh, this fills in that gap. or, oh, this contradicts that. So I want to give you kind of an overview of the case itself, or at least what the prosecution originally put forward in their like statement of the case. So this all started in the very end of January 2022..

I did. You know, I did.

Of course you did.

I live on Google Maps.

And this is where I, in the court documents, there's all this talk about, again, they break this down 15 different ways, 15 different times about when this car moves up and it goes to the left of the property or whatever by the flagpole and the fire hydrant. And for some reason, when I'm reading this in black and white, I'm imagining that she's going like around the side of the house and not being seen by people. And if you Google the address, it's, I mean, everything can be seen from the house.

It's all visible. Yes.

And it's not a huge property. We're talking a regular neighborhood and a regular subdivision. So the car moves up a little bit, but then John never comes in the house. Karen doesn't go in the house either. And the next thing anyone knows is they're getting calls from Karen saying that John didn't come home.

Yeah. Wide out.

Wide out, which is the timing of it. If you put it in a novel, someone would be like, I don't know, it feels like a little much. Yeah.

It feels like it's just like a scene setting thing. Yeah.

Like a book. It had started snowing the night before, but we are talking full on blizzard, almost white out conditions in the morning. So when they're driving up, Carrie and Jennifer say they don't see anything. But almost right away, Karen says that she sees him. She pulls open the van or the vehicle, the door, whatever, like, hops out and goes to him.

She's making these declarations that are like, whoa, what's going on?

And he's pronounced dead at the hospital later. His injuries were mostly to his head and to his forearm. So, according to the autopsy, he had several abrasions to his right forearm, two swollen black eyes, a small cut above the right eye, a cut to the left side of his nose, a two-inch laceration on the back right side of his head, multiple skull fractures that resulted in bleeding of the brain. And the autopsy will later note that his pancreas is a very dark red, which indicates hypothermia, which they say contributed to his death. So he was injured.

And then he has that snow on top of him, right? The snowfall that's fallen that covered him. So that's another indication that he has been out there for a period of time.

Six inches of snow on top of him.

And I know snow can fall fast in the Boston area, but I think all of that, right? Like you said, that plus his autopsy results show that he was there and he very well could have been still trying to live. And that's super heartbreaking for sure.

Now nobody comes out of the house from what's been said, reported, whatever. Again, everyone wants to make a lot of that. It's also a blizzard. Other neighbors aren't even coming out of the house to see what's going on with all the police there. It's freezing.

I mean there's been so many reasons, right? But I mean the issues with their relationship and the voicemails and stuff like that.

Well, that's what, the charge will get changed later, but when the, there's a state trooper, so originally Canton PD comes, Canton PD gets conflicted out of the case because there's all these police officers there, so they bring in the state police. That state police officer goes to get Karen's statement. after she's released from the hospital, she's staying at her parents' house, and he says he notices that her taillight, her passenger side rear taillight, is broken. So that becomes part of their theory, is that she backed into him, the taillight broke as a result of that, and again she was drunk, this is a tragic accident. So she's charged, and at the time that she is charged, it all happens again really fast.

The tipster's lawyer.

Yeah, so a lawyer, a journalist, did track down the actual tipster, and the tipster's lawyer's, like, nope, didn't say that. So is it, is it, right? So, and again, right now, all it is, is just this, like kind of wild, harebrained tip. Yeah. But it kind of starts working its way into the back of everyone's mind.

And leaving the scene of an accident, which is, you know, it's kind of like, okay, duh, but it is an extra charge.

Now, I didn't really understand why go out, you already had her on manslaughter. You're saying she was drunk. You're saying this. But like, so, then why, why do that? Why go to that extra step?

Well, and I think something that sort of would make that make sense is if they continue to investigate and they discover issues in the relationship.

Which they did.

Preceding the event. And I think in this case, as they continue to work the investigation, whatever law enforcement officials were working the investigation, whether they were connected to some of the witnesses or not, they began to discover, hey, was this truly an accident? And they started to ask the question of what preceded these events? And I think that's what led them to go, hey, I think that maybe we can sell that more to a jury, right? Like a second degree, they're having potential issues.

I get that. But this is like such the problem I have with the legal system. It's like, it's not, I want to say. it's not about winning. It's about what happened.

That right there, the discovery of that and when they discovered that, to me, would feed into potentially why they changed that charge. Like, I think it was a factor. I don't think it was necessarily the entire factor, but that right there says something.

And I think that that they're, they're building out this story, that there were clearly problems in their relationship. And they get this from really John's niece. So, and again, to make sure John doesn't get lost in all of this, John had actually taken in his niece and nephew, his sister had died and then his sister's husband died shortly after that. Super tragic. Yeah.

Yeah. I think it just like, whatever that story is, again, the more law enforcement learns of things like that, the more they're going, let's widen out the scope of this very specific incident that we think we're looking at. Let's widen out. And I think all those things really contribute to that. And that's what makes it, too, like, just very personal.

But what I, what I have a hard time piecing together, is how do you, everyone says they were getting along that night, or at least not fighting that night. Everyone says everything was good that night. And here, you know, what is Karen's memory? I don't know. Because I will say, again, first we get this story, and it might have been her lawyer saying this was an accident, she doesn't remember.

Yeah, it was like, I was just going to drop him off and leave anyway.

Because I was having stomach issues, right. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to drop him off, I'm going to leave, I'm having stomach issues. And then, the second time around, her story is, and this is what she told Nightline, was I didn't know if we were invited. I didn't.

Understandable.

Yeah, I get it. So she said, I told John, like, go in and make sure it's cool for us to be here. So she says she's waiting in the car and waiting in the car and he's not coming and not coming. And so then she finally gets pissed and is like, oh, he just ditched me and forgot that I'm sitting here waiting for him. And so she leaves.

Yeah, those connections can totally be made. And I want to go back and look at the situation where it is John texting Jennifer McCabe to coordinate the meeting up at Brian Albert's house, like after the bar. I think some people on that face would go, well, wait a minute. Like, if Karen and John had these sort of issues about these things she's claiming in this voicemail, like John texting, you know, another woman, even in friendly, like, hey, we're all having a party. Come back to my house.

And you're, you're drunk. We know, you know, nothing is better with alcohol.

Yeah, no. And late at night.

So, so she claims that she left, that she was trying to text and call him. She ends up falling asleep on the couch. And then it's 4.30 in the morning when she, again, wakes up, realizes he's not there. She goes to get his niece to call Jennifer McCabe. And then, you know, everything else is pretty much the same.

Similar.

Similar pieces. They're at the scene. And some, I laugh, they found some patches of blood, spots of blood. Here's where things get wild. So the glass and the blood is collected first.

I actually didn't even know what I was looking at at first when you sent it to me. But yes, the picture is a brown grocery store bag. And there's six red Solo cups in the bottom that all have what appear to be little clumps of snow in them. And then you told me what is in the clumps of snow.

That's the blood. In the Solo cups.

What?

What? Yeah, these officers on the scene were, and granted, again, it's a blizzard. So you're in a race against time. That's the only.

But whose Solo cups are these? They're not the cops.

I think they're our neighbors. And I hope they're not used. But. What? Yeah.

Because you said that the Massachusetts State Police investigator, like early on, noted that the taillight was broken. So you would think that, going back in additional searches, that would be like something you're actually looking for. if you have this theory of, is this a hit and run?

Yeah. But you would also think that the first time that when you removed John's body and you found pieces of clear glass on the ground in the snow, you didn't find pieces of red plastic.

Yeah. That's a hard thing to wrap your mind around. But I also just know, and you know as well, that whenever additional evidence is found on subsequent searches, that is so par for the course, like in terms of just happens all the time. All the time.

It does. And I mean, they went and again, there was so much snow that day. They went back multiple times, and it's almost one of those things where it's like they keep finding more and more and more. It said that some of John's DNA was on a piece of taillight. They don't get specific, though.

That would be, to me, if you have these little shards and pieces that are recognizable enough in snow, you would think that would be in his or on his clothing. The fact that he is on the ground and had been there a while, that stuff probably wouldn't have moved. So that's what I was really curious about.

So they obviously took her car. They processed her car. This happens on February 1st, after they take, like an initial, the Massachusetts State Police Crime People or whatever, they do the initial pass at her car. They don't spot this, but then they bring in someone, they bring in a forensic scientist named Maureen Hartnett, and she probably works for them again, but she comes in and she's the one who ends up finding this hair. It's referred to as hair.

On the bumper.

Yeah. That they're like, oh, again, maybe we don't have the taillight on him. But they find this apparent hair on the rear passenger side quarter panel. So all they have, so they had glass in her bumper, which was like, again, that's not John on her bumper. But then they get this apparent hair and they're like, this is the proof that, like his head, made contact with her car.

Yeah.

So the prosecution, what they do, that's obviously not the results they want. So they want to contract with an outside private lab, Bodie. The defense is like, okay, before you do that, we want to like examine it. You might use up everything in testing. That ends up getting denied.

Yeah.

Explain it to me, Delia. I know.

I can't. I get the whole like, okay, sequence of events, right? But from what I know from talking to a lot of forensic pathologists, when people have those impact and like heavy pressure, right? Like getting run over by a car tire or, you know, getting side swiped, it doesn't necessarily look how we like think it should look, which is that? like that blunt force trauma injury.

In my mind, like for his injuries, you had brought up something to me the other day. You're like, what if he got like stuck in that, or he was like getting out of the car and then fell?

Yeah. So my thought is, if he's getting out of the passenger side and stepping out, that passenger side door is going to be open. The left side of his body is going to be more in the car, right? And if he is standing in that space or getting out and the car begins to go in reverse, he's going to fall down more likely on his right side and he's going to get run over and potentially dragged under that tire. You're talking about snow.

in the street.

He's found in the yard. Yeah. So that's another thing. It's like, okay, where, again, the sequence of events, where's the car oriented to him? If, in fact, this is how this happened.

And there isn't.

That's super frustrating because I'm like, it completely destroys the timeline of the prosecution. If her taillight is not broken when she gets home, if there could be proof of that, it destroys the timeline, right?

If it is broken, it doesn't just destroy the timeline, destroys their whole theory.

Yeah, it destroys the whole theory. But then I'm also thinking we go back to this. It was a blizzard.

I know.

And I know, because I have the same system at my home, that like, if there's like a spider web or like a lot of condensation or frost or whatever, that that technology doesn't always capture every single motion event that's happening. It's super unfortunate that it doesn't capture this one thing. But to your point, I want to know, like in that app, like who can delete stuff? Is there like a metadata trail for that? Yeah, because that right there, it should be able to tell you like which user of the app.

Did it just not register it? Yeah. Yeah. Or there's got to be something there. Yeah.

This is 2024.

Or 2022, when this is happening.

Well, yeah.

But come on.

We've got to be able to look at that.

And well, apparently they're using new technology as it pops up. because if you want to pop to another big thing that people who believe in a conspiracy theory point to is it goes back to tech. So there is supposedly a search on Jennifer McCabe's phone at 2.27 in the morning. 2.27 is hours before Karen is supposed to have called her and said, John didn't come home. Let's go look for him.

Well, why is her phone searching that?

Such a technicality. Yes. Why is her phone searching that? Right.

This alarming because we know now, with the evidence in John's autopsy, that there is this factor, that he died out in the snow, in the cold. I don't love it. I think, again, for people that support Karen Reed's side of things, it would be indicative of. there are people at that home who are in his company that are trying to figure out what to do with him, which is, again, super disturbing. But again, I go back to what I said about the driveway footage.

This is where it gets really messy, because originally, when the defense was given everyone's phone records, this search wasn't even included.

That search was made at 227 a.

And I don't know how you explain that.

I don't think you can explain it. I'll be very interested to see how it's explained in court at trial. I think that's absolutely something a jury is going to, if we're so hung up on it, that's what 12 Strangers are going to go, let me find the answer to that question.

There's some other phone data that's really interesting, too. So they, he had an iPhone, and Jennifer McCabe had an iPhone, and they've got the Apple Health data, you know, always being watched, always being tracked. And it says that John took some steps around the time that he would have, if Karen's story is true, he would have been going into the house. And the defense says, look, that's proof that he left the car and didn't just get run over right there. He wouldn't have done that.

Yeah. And that, okay, that's not the best look for her. But I go back to what I said. It's her phone, that's pacing around. So I'm always on the side of.

You can explain the device thing to me, I guess, for Jennifer, but everyone has agreed. John's phone is found under his body. So I don't know how I.

The activity before he dies. Yeah. It's hard. That's hard to wrap my head around as well. Is he in the home?

So this is all the stuff that that they're fighting about, right? There's, you know, the defense is like, there's no way his injuries were made this way. The taillight. they're going so far as to accuse the lead investigator of planting the evidence. They say that he, I don't know where he got that taillight, but he planted the evidence.

Which is really out of the norm to have a federal investigation happening simultaneously in tandem with a state investigation into a second degree, formerly manslaughter charge. That right there, raises the profile for me.

And everything that people are saying, this is unprecedented. Yeah. Usually they let things play out. And if there's something to look into, if it's prosecutorial misconduct, if it is something, I don't even think they would deal necessarily, because there's also, at the same time, there ends up being an internal investigation into Michael Proctor, who's the lead investigator for how he handled it. And did he have a conflict of interest?

Because he knew a lot of the witnesses at Brian Albert's house. Yeah. Yeah.

But, but, but again, that's being handled by internal affairs.

Yeah.

So what is the federal government investigating? So when the defense starts hearing this, they basically go to the prosecution, they're like, what is going on here? Like, if you're calling these witnesses, something is happening that we haven't gotten in discovery. And they do basically notice a discovery and the DA responds and is like, listen, we have no idea what's going on. We don't know about a federal investigation.

So they knew we're subpoenaing your witness.

And, you know, if you need to disclose, oh, and like. the emails are also just like shady themselves, because the DA is like, you know, if you do anything, we're going to have to share it, which is basically like, don't mess it up.

We're going to share it with the defense. Yeah.

And it's it's been said that there was like some shady stuff even on the other side and that the state's attorney is like, well, you don't have to share what you don't have back and forth. The point is that they knew this was going on and all of that gets disclosed. So there is this federal investigation. And in doing so, the federal investigation, they didn't have to, but they end up releasing like three thousand pages of their investigation to the defense and to the prosecution. Part of what they've gotten, and I've, you know, inferred this just from some of the filings, is testimony from their grand jury hearings, where people are, main people from their case are being asked about, again, it's clearly about John O'Keefe's death or the investigation into it.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's a very bold, very bold thing for a district attorney to do.

Because there were rumblings, right? Even early on, like I said, very early on, Karen's like trying to figure out who's connected to who. Yeah. And the D.A., I mean, it was firm. He was like, there is no impropriety, basically.

But you know what perpetuates that, though? When you keep a secret from the defense that a federal investigation is going on, that could potentially result in exculpatory information for your client. So, if the defense is already going down, this, what the prosecution is saying, a conspiracy theory, you're perpetuating that, district attorney, by hiding and not being forthright. So, like, if that's what you're saying, then part of the blame could be on you and your office.

Like, did the D.

know?

Like, was Michael hiding for everyone? And it's, I mean, it's very clear. So, 10 days before John dies, Michael Proctor, the lead investigator, is texting with Julie Albert, who is related to Brian Albert, whose house it was, about babysitting his child. That is someone you know. Yeah.

No doubt. You trust with your kid.

More concerning is that two days after John died, there are text messages between Michael Proctor and Michael Proctor's wife. And Michael Proctor's wife is relaying a message. It says, quote, just saw Julie. They're talking about Julie Albert. And Julie said, when all this is over, she wants to give you dot, dot, dot, a thank you gift.

I don't love communication like that, because, right, you can read into it 10 different ways. But I think what that says in the big picture is you're too close for comfort. And because of that, again, you could be perpetuating a lot of questions, innuendos, and theories that ultimately bring your integrity into question. And in a case that that is at the core of it at this point, that's super problematic.

Julie Albert actually comes into this a little bit more, too, because we haven't really heard much about her. Was she there that night? Was her husband, Chris Albert, were they there that night? Were they not there that night? Nobody really seems to agree, which is really strange.

Well, I think the question is, is, if you're looking at a, in the moment, something happened in that house, the question, naturally, is, okay, who had the beef, who had the beef with John O'Keefe, even if it was in the momentary split second, you know, you spilled a drink on me or something, or is it something that preceded it? where there's this kind of growing issue? And I think that's where we need to get to the bottom of who was in the house. When did they get there? When did they leave?

What they had always said is that everyone stayed for about an hour and then people left or went to bed. This is also what's strange to me, because you have people leaving the house at, say, 1, 1.30, like around that time. Nobody sees John laying in the yard. And this is not a big property. I, like, I can't wrap my head around it.

How can you not see that, unless you're just blackout, which we know, some of these witnesses were not. Some were drunk, some were not blackout. But then, yeah, how do you not see someone lying there? Because we know at 1 and even 1.32, he's not covered in those six inches of snow yet. So my question is, are there external witnesses like people that were driving on that street or working the blizzard conditions?

Right. There is supposedly a snowplow driver who was plowing the street at 2.30, who, according to the defense, is willing to testify that he did not see John out in the yard at 2.30 in the morning.

I mean, that's a good witness, for sure, but I again, my mind goes to like video. Can we strap some video cameras on these snowplows for the future so that they can?

start? Or just more ring cameras.

I know.

I'm shocked that there's nothing. And maybe there's something that will come out in trial. But I'm shocked that none of the neighbors have anything that is helping solve that or like piece that together.

sleeping. And they were supposed to be together at the same house earlier in the.

night. Well, earlier in the night, right, right, right. Yeah. They left at this point and then they're calling each other. So it doesn't totally add up.

I think that would raise questions, right? Any communication between any members of these witnesses after the fact throughout that night should certainly be observed. These stand out for a lot of reasons.

And then we also know that Brian Higgins apparently, according to defense, stops responding to Brian Albert at some point. after all of this happens. He kind of goes dark. And I want to read something from one of the hearings from the defense, quote, Your Honor, there's only one way to interpret that. Brian Albert was panicked that Brian Higgins had flipped on him.

And for me, I think you have to look at what the defense is saying. They're saying, hey, this is all interconnected. This is all really problematic. And when you have communications like this, that really supports that, especially when those communications could be interpreted as them, not only discussing what happened, but this federal probe that's happening simultaneously, that is everyone's a little worked up about. Right.

It's not. everyone's story seems to have changed, including Karen's. Everyone's story seems to have changed a little bit. And is that time? Is that people getting together and making their stories match?

And it's the influence, too, of all of this sort of circus around it. in that small community. Right. Like, people begin to get much more on edge. And I know that in some of the source material, it's pointed out that the Alberts like moved away.

Yeah. So that again, you can go either way with this. So the the conspiracy people will say, OK, he replaced his floors, like moved out of his house and got rid of his dog shortly after this happened. Like all of the things. And by the way, Brian Albert's house was never searched at the time that this all went down.

And if you're going to be a witness at a trial, like you should, as much as you can remove yourself from things. But I also, again, just to speak to that circus element, to it, I know in this trial that's like playing out. right now, there's a buffer zone around the courthouse, 200 feet, which, of course, as a journalist and someone who's like, no, let me in there. You know, I'm not a demonstrator. I'm always like, no, don't keep the people out.

And I feel for John's family because they have received so much hate, which is to me disgusting, because, like, again, they do believe that Karen is responsible. Karen's supporters have been very vocal, that somehow they're bad people. This is their truth and they want it to play out in court. And I think it will play out in court. And again, not that I necessarily even agree with them, but they have already been victimized.

A federal nexus is what they have to be looking at, which goes to much bigger things that have to be observed. Right. And that has to do with processes, public entities, people that hold certain positions. How are their offices managing things? It's not.

Which is going on right now. So Karen's trial has started. They've gone through jury selection, at least at the time of this recording, which is why I wanted to make sure everyone is up to speed on on what had happened so far, what we're all walking into, because I think we're going to find out so much more once the trial begins. Are you officially on the conspiracy train? Are you?

Are you here? I'm officially on. this could be its own limited series train, which is my wheelhouse. So send me to Boston. Yeah, I'm there.

I've heard that Netflix has already been following and planning a doc. I mean, there's. there's stuff planned for this.

Yeah, this is one of those stories that, like, deserves to have a very hard look at it. Obviously, some of the elements that are in play, I'm super familiar with. And it's hard for me not to like make that leap because I've seen it myself.

I was just going to say, so this has a lot of parallels, not necessarily the federal investigation. You've kind of had to do the overall investigation, but the season you have coming out, season six of Counter Clock. Do you want to talk about that for like just a second? Because it's, it's a wild intertwined case.

Yeah. So it's a case that involves different law enforcement agencies, conflict of interest of certain individuals. It involves, you know, a death that could be looked at from a lot of different ways of. is it just an accident? Is it something intentional?

So which is how it started. I mean, much like this case, you got in with this one man's death. Was it an accident? Was it murder? And then it grew and grew and grew all the way to the top, all the way to the top.

At Delia.

And you can follow Crime Junkie at Crime Junkie podcast. So that's all for this first episode of Crime Junkie AF. I will see you back here next month with a new case.