Who Killed John O'Keefe? : The Karen Read Trial

Written By Kaelyn Moore

When John O'Keefe's body was found in the snow in January of 2022, there were more questions than answers. Eventually his girlfriend, Karen Read, was charged with his death. But as the case unraveled in court, dark secrets, illicit affairs, and police coverups came to light, proving that the truth would be hard to find.

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SOURCES

Who Is Karen Read? CBS Overview: https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/karen-read-trial-latest-details-john-okeefe/

TRANSCRIPT

On January 9th, 2022, an ambulance cut through the icy streets of Canton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. They were speeding despite the white-out conditions from the horrible blizzard blanketing the town.


Earlier, they had gotten a concerning call from a woman. She sounded out of breath, but like she was trying to stay calm and told the 9-11 operator “There’s a man passed out in the snow. I think he’s dead. You guys got to get here”. In the background, another woman can be heard panicking. It’s hard to hear what she’s saying, but the words “dead” and “no” can sort of be made out. 


EMT’s pulled up to the scene unfolding outside of a two story suburban home on 34 Fairview road just before 7am. There was a car parked on the curb and three women panicking near the home, all dressed in winter coats. 


there, lying on the snowy lawn, was a body. Of A man, around mid 40’s, with two black eyes amongst other head injuries and scratches all up and down his arm, lying motionless in the snow. Everyone at the scene was zipped up with down coats, gloves and hats to stay warm in the below freezing temperature, but the man was just wearing a long sleeve t shirt. One of his shoes was at the scene but not on his foot, and there was a smashed cocktail glass scattered.


One of the womenhad a frightening ring of blood around her mouth, and she was Running around screaming and crying, completely inconsolable. And it’s this woman who would become the centerpiece of this entire investigation, because this was the man’s girlfriend. Karen Reed.


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


One of the EMT’s reached down to take the man’s pulse, but they couldn’t get a read. At that point, John’s body temperature was just 80 degrees fahrenheit, that’s 18 degrees lower than a healthy, living person’s. But just looking at the scene, at the battered body of the man in the snow, it wasn’t clear if the cold was actually what killed him. What were those black eyes from?


The answer to that question was not so simple, and would lead investigators down the rabbit hole, into rumors of vengeful girlfriends, police corruption, coverups, and many, MANY lies.


This is heart starts pounding, I’m your host Kaelyn Moore, and I want to tell you the wintery mystery of what happened to John O’Keefe, because now, almost 3 years later, people are still left with many questions. 


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


And as always, if you’re listening to the ad-supported version of this show, wherever you get your podcasts like on the Audacy App, thank you so much. This show is made in part because of our sponsors, so I really appreciate you. If you’d like to listen over on Patreon or Apple podcast, you’ll also have access to bonus content as well as other perks like stickers, and a heart starts pounding Mug if you’re listening on the High Council tier on Patreon. 


And no matter where you’re listening you’ll be getting a special bonus episode next Monday where I sit down with Tank and Investigator Slater from the Psychopedia Podcast. We chat about the cases that keep us up at night, and slater talks about her experience investigating abuse cases against the church and the boy scouts, so you definitely want to check that out. 


Ok, like I said, this story is massive, so let’s start at the beginning, what happened in the few hours leading up to John O’Keefe’s death.


By all accounts, the snowy evening of January 28th, 2022 started as a normal evening for John O’Keefe and his girlfriend, Karen Read.


The two had known each other since 2004, but didn’t start dating until 2020 when they reconnected over facebook messenger. John, a boston cop,  had become the legal guardian of his sister’s two children after her tragic passing.  after they started dating Karen, a 32-year old adjunct professor, moved in with the family. And that particular night they were meeting their friends at a local bar.


The group first got drinks at a local Canton pub, C.F. McCarthy’s, and then made their way over to another local spot, The Waterfall. Inside the Waterfall were a few more of their friends, including The Alberts. That is Chris Albert, his brother Brian Albert, who was a boston police officer alongside John and actually worked on the Boston Strangler case, and Brian’s wife, Nicole. Nicol’es sister, Jennifer McCabe, one of Karen’s Best Friends, was also at the bar. As was Brian Higgins, an ATF agent. Surveillance video from the bar shows the group drinking and laughing with each other, the couples cuddling up with one another. 


It also shows three of the guys, John, Brian Albert and Brian Higgins, roughhousing.


Just after midnight, footage from the Waterfall’s security system shows John O’Keefe leaving in the same long sleeve t shirt his body would be discovered in. In his hand is a cocktail glass, and he gets into Karen’s car. The plan was that the group was going to go to Brian and Nicole Albert’s house to keep hanging out, but Karen didn’t want to join. She claimed to have dropped John off at the Albert’s as the blizzard raged on, while she went home and went to bed. 


After that is when she awoke in John’s house just before 5am and realized John hadn’t made it home. She started calling the people she had been at the bars with. Those who answered didn’t know where John was. 


Karen also called John’s friend Kerri Roberts, who wasn’t out with them that night and hadn’t been contacted by John at all. Kerri, in turn, started calling local hospitals and the police to see if he had been admitted or picked up by an officer. He hadn’t.


Karen said her first thought was that John may have gotten hit by a snow plow, so she jumped back in her car and went back to the bars to see if John was there, but they were all closed. Then, she picked up Kerri and Jennifer and they went back to John’s around 5:30, though they knew that he wasn’t there. that's when they decided to go to the Albert's house where Karen said she had dropped him off, and it was there they found him laying in the snow about 12 feet from the curb."


Karen leapt out of the car and started immediately giving him, and shortly thereafter EMT’s and officers were all over the scene, lights, sirens, everything. But while John had been found, there was something noticeably missing from the scene. The homeowner, Boston Cop Brian Albert. With the chaos unfolding outside, the screaming, the sirens, Karen wondered why he hadn’t come out to see what was going on or to offer care.


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


Since John was a Boston police officer, the Massachusetts State Police were assigned to the case to avoid a conflict of interest, and the lead investigator was a state trooper named Michael Proctor. When officers arrived on the scene after the EMT’s, they faced a huge challenge. John was found outside, and with the blizzard continuing on, the crime scene was quickly filling up with snow. The footprints that had led to John’s body were disappearing. 


So they needed to rely on witness testimony, and one of the first people they talked to was Karen, who told police that she had been drinking that night and chose to drive regardless, and that she had a stomach ache and didn’t feel like staying at the Albert’s with John, which is why she dropped him off and went home. She watched him walk up to the side door, looked at her phone for about 10 minutes to check texts, and then drove home.


We know that at least one of those things is true. The drinking and driving, because after Karen found John’s body she was so inconsolable, she was transported to the hospital, where her blood alcohol content came back at around .08, that’s the legal limit. Mind you, she was tested around 9 hours after she stopped drinking that night, so investigators believed it was much higher when she dropped John off at the party. 


Later that day, Lead investigator proctor went to Karen’s parents home where her car was being kept, and that’s when noticed something else that didn’t bode well for Karen. Her rear right taillight was cracked, and pieces of the red and white plastic were missing. He made a note of it, and had the car towed and brought in for testing.


This was all happening as the autopsy report was being released, and the medical examiner ruled that his cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head combined with hypothermia. 


To investigators, those pieces of evidence were enough to make an arrest, and on February 2nd, just 5 days after John’s death, Karen Read was arrested for manslaughter, negligent homicide, and leaving the scene of an accident involving injury. Police figured that she had killed John with her car and fled. 


But manslaughter implies criminal intent. if Karen did hit him, did she intend to do it? Well, according to her, not only did she NOT hit him, it would have been impossible for her to hit him, and she pled not guilty to this charge.


Karen insisted that she could not have been responsible for John’s death, she watched him go up to the side door of the house, there was no way she could have backed into him. Sure, she didn’t know how she broke her tail light, or even that it was broken at all, but it could not have been from hitting John. 


She made the decision that she’s not going down for this crime, she’s going to put up a fight, and so she hired one of the most aggressive defense attorneys in the game, Alan Jackson.


Jackson the managing partner of the firm Werskman, Jackson & Quinn, who successfully prosecuted Phil Spector for murder in 2003 and had more recently gotten Kevin Spacey acquitted of groping charges.


Jackson said he gets a lot of emails asking for help with cases, but there was just something about Karen’s case that really got to him. He said he knew she was innocent, which people expected him to say, but no one expected his next argument, one that would send shockwaves through the entire community in Canton.


He said that what they’ve been hearing is true, John O’Keefe was murdered, but it wasn’t by his client Karen. It was by the people who were at the party that night, including an officer that John worked with, and this was all part of a huge coverup.  And he told the people of Canton that he had everything he needed to prove that. 

Pre trials started in May of 2023, but they didn’t wrap up until April of this year, and that’s when Jury selection started. The trial of Karen Read began on April 29th of 2024, over two years after John’s death. 


And while the pretrials were happening, Jackson continued to find evidence strengthening his bombshell claim. He said he came to this conclusion after looking at the facts of the case, specifically the autopsy report, and he decided there was no way that John had been hit by a car, it just didn’t look like it. Specifically, he thought the scratches on his arm were a smoking gun. The 6 deep lacerations just didn’t look like they could have come from a car. 


Plus, he saw Karen’s phone records, how she called John 49 times after she dropped him off at the house party. Now, the voicemails she left John are vulgar and angry. She tells John she hates him, multiple times, she even calls him a loser and a pervert. But these voicemails start almost immediately after she dropped him off at Brian Albert’s house. 


Remember, According to Karen, she watched him get out of the car and walk up to the side door. She looked down at her phone for about 10 minutes before she drove off. If that wasn’t the case, and she in fact DID hit John before leaving, Alan Jackson asked, why would she call a man 50 times if she knew he might be dead?


He had another theory as to what happened that night.  His theory was that John died during the after party in the house, where he was attacked by someone inside, and the scratches were potentially from the German shepherd that the Albert’s owned. And he said that he could prove it with something he found on one of the party goers phones.


One of the people inside of the house party that night was Jennifer McCabe, for clarity, she’s   Karen’s friend who helped her look for John. She, along with everyone else at the party, claimed that John never made it to the party that night. 


But then why, at 2:27am, Jackson asked, did Jennifer google on her phone “how long to die in cold”. 


That bombshell stunned everyone. The prosecution tried to counter that point and say that the search actually happened closer to 6:30 am, and Jennifer swore she made that internet search beacuse Karen asked her to when they John’s body. They said that Jennifer must have opened a tab on her phone at 2:27, but completed the search at 6:30am.


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


This was just the start of Alan Jackson unravelling the real identities of the people John was with on the last night of his life. Though they all swore they were colleagues and friends, there was a lot bubbling under the surface.


One of the first people called to the stand was homeowner and Boston police officer, Brian Albert. The one who had stayed inside the morning John’s body was found.


On the stand, Brian claimed that he knew John from work and didn’t have any problem with him, and that he had only met Karen once.


Well, Jackson, Karen’s defense attorney wanted to bring some photos and videos to the Jury’s attention. In one photo shown, Karen and Brian standing together in a group smiling. Clearly they had met more than a few times and were somewhat familiar with each other.


Then, he showed the Jury security  footage from the Waterfall on the night of January 28th, where Karen and Brian are seen chatting with each other. If they had been cordial with each other, and Brian had nothing to do with John’s death, why was he lying about something as obvious as whether or not he was friendly with Karen. And to lie on the witness stand as a police officer. Not a good look, and that’s putting it lightly


Strangest of all, to me at least as I was going through the research, was how Brian erased the contents of his phone, despite receiving a preservation order he was given. According to him, he didn’t receive orders to preserve the contents of his phone until September 23rd 2022, and he erased his phone the day before, so it technically did not violate the order. And just to underscore this, September 23rd was nine months after John’s death, and he happened to erase everything on his phone just ONE DAY before he got the preservation order. 


The defense told the jury that Brian intentionally destroyed evidence.


Another person called to the stand was Brian Higgins, he was the ATF agent that was out with the group that night. Alan Jackson wasted no time before he asked him about the inappropriate relationship he had with Karen. 


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


But after that, Karen ghosted him, and the security footage from the Waterfall shows Karen almost avoiding Higgins, and hanging on John. That same security footage shows Higgins and John rough housing. He said it was play fighting, but Karen described it as sparring, like it had an angry undertone to it.  


Higgins also admitted on the stand that he was the first person to leave Brian Albert’s house party in the early morning of January 29th, around 2am. Now, if Karen had hit John with her car, he would have been lying in the snow as Higgins walked out of the house and down the driveway, but Higgins swears he didn’t see anything. It was snowing at this point, but John’s body wasn’t even buried in snow when he was found, so he would have been even more visible at 2am. 


This was all part of Jackson’s argument. To make the Jury wonder How did a Boston Cop and an ATF agent not know that there was a dead body just a few yards away from them, especially when one of them walked right past it on his way out of the house?


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


Higgins’ phone records show that he had a 22-second phone call with the homeowner, Brian Albert, right when he left the party, potentially as he was walking down the driveway past John Okeefe’s body. What could be discussed in 22 seconds? A plan? Alan Jackson wanted to know. But Higgins said it must have been a butt dial. 


As If Higgins behavior the night of John’s death wasn’t strange enough, his behaviour afterwards was even stranger, Jackson pointed out. Because after John’s death, Higgins got rid of his phone, the one he used to make that 22 second phone call. Yes, you heard that right, a second person at the party that night got rid of their phone, and all of the evidence on it.


Higgins insisted there was no specific reason why he had just thrown his phone away, but Alan Jackson wondered aloud if he had also done this to destroy evidence. 


What was on the phones of those two men, and was it something that would have revealed what happened to John O’keefe that night?


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


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


At this point in the trial, the story had exploded and had become the story of the summer in 2023. Each morning when Karen arrived at the courthouse, she was greeted by a sea of people wearing pink (her favorite color) and sporting signs that read “Free Karen Read” “Stop Canton Coverup” and even “We Love You Karen” as if they were at a concert. It really seemed like most of the general public thought that she was innocent. 


And this is largely because of a youtuber who went by the alias Turtleboy. Turtleboy is a self proclaimed investigative journalist who started covering the Karen Read case way before it even made it to trial. By the time that news of the case started picking up steam, he already had multiple youtube videos on the case, many of which included footage of him standing outside of the Albert’s house to illustrate where John’s body was found. So he started being known as the go to guy for information on the trial outside of the mainstream media. 


But turtleboy wanted to be even more involved than that, he wanted to be treated like an actual investigative journalist by the media, and he started coming to the trial with a bullhorn where he’d shout rallying cries to the people who had travelled to be there. He also started contacting witnesses and showing up to their homes and places of business, and was eventually arrested and charged with multiple counts of witness intimidation. 


Even though the outside of the trial looked like Karen had a lot of support, photos taken of Karen inside of the courthouse started tarnishing her image. Karen often smiled to herself, and was caught on camera a few times laughing with her defense team. At one point, the judge even dismissed everyone early for the day because they found it disrespectful that Karen was laughing


Now maybe you aren’t the type of person who would show up to a courthouse with a sign and scream at witnesses as they walked in, but perhaps you can see now why so many people were this passionate about the trial. It was starting to smell like a coverup. Even though everyone at the party that stood trial STILL insisted that John never made it into the house, their behavior was seeming stranger and stranger. 


It was starting to feel like there would be no way to convict Karen, there just wasn’t enough evidence.


Well, it felt that way, at least, but the prosecution held firm in their faith that they had everything they needed to convict Karen, and it hinged on a few pieces of plastic. 


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


Well, eventually the blizzard stopped, and temperatures rose just enough so that a few days later, all the snow had melted in the Albert’s yard. The prosecution showed a photo on a screen to the jury, there, lying in the dead grass, is pieces of red and white plastic.


Those pieces were collected and brought in for testing, and they were reconstructed to fit exactly into Karen’s taillight. Every piece of that light was collected at the crime scene. 


And not only that, but John was found near pieces of a shattered cocktail glass from the Waterfall, pieces of that glass, along with John’s hair were found in Karen's bumper. 


The prosecution brought forward multiple witness who reported hearing Karen screaming I hit him, I hit him, I hit him, that night, including EMTs on the scene, and her friend Kerri Roberts who helped her search for John. 


But that wasn’t what she meant, Karen insisted in a 20/20 interview she did. She said “I hit him” was preceded by DID, and ended with a question mark. She was concerned that she may have hit him, but wasn’t admitting to guilt at the scene. 


It is hard to deny, though, that that’s damning evidence. John’s hair and cocktail glass in her bumper, her light at the scene. 


The one person who should have been there to talk about this evidence, though, was lead investigator Trooper Proctor. He was, after all the one who saw the taillight was broken in the first place.


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


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


But the fact of the matter, was Trooper Proctor seemed to have a bias in this case. Texts he sent to other officers shortly after he started working on this case called Karen a Whack Job. one even read “I hope she kills herself”. 


Others joked about finding nudes or rejected the notion Brian Albert would get in trouble. He wrote “Nope. Homeowner’s a Boston cop too.”


Proctor insisted that these texts and his personal feelings did not impact his ability to do his job, but an FBI probe felt differently, and he was pulled from the case. 


But this brings up an interesting theory. If Trooper Proctor was the one who found the cracked tail light, and the pieces weren’t found at the crime scene until days later, is there a chance that he broke the tail light and then transferred the pieces?


On June 25th of this year, the prosecution and defense rested their cases and the jury went to deliberate. By June 28th, the jurors slipped the judge a note saying they were deadlocked. On July 1st, Trooper Proctor was relieved of his duties as a State Trooper.


On July 9th, Kevin Albert is put on leave from his job as a cop.


And now it was up to the Jury to take everything they had heard and try to come to an agreement. On one hand, multiple people at the scene heard Karen say “I hit him” that night, and Johns hair was found on her car.


But on the other hand, could they look past the chance that Karen was being framed. On July 10th they decided they couldn’t, and they alerted the judge that they were still hung. The judge then declared a mistrial. 


As of now, Karen lives a free life, but a retrial  is set to start at the end of January 2025, that’s just a few weeks away. In the mean time, John’s family has sued Karen for wrongful death as well as the two bars the group was at the night of John’s death. They claim that they overserved Karen that night.


We may never know what happened to John O’Keefe the night he died. There’s a chance that he was the only person who saw what happened, and took that secret with him. But on the chance that a group of people are culpable, can they keep a secret? And if so, for how long?


There’s one piece of evidence that I see people online go back to over and over and over again, and it’s a piece of testimony that was given by an expert witness called by Karen’s attorney.


An expert reconstructionist hired by the FBI had evaluated John O’Keefe’s injuries in relation to Karen’s car. The expert concluded that “The damage on the car was inconsistent with having made contact with John O'Keefe's body”.


Karen is set to have another trial, and we’ll see if anything changes. But before we go, I just wanted to note that this is a real trial with real people involved. No one has been found guilty, and even though you may feel with every fiber of your body that you know who did it, do not contact any witnesses, jurors or anyone  involved in this case. Especially not the jurors, I mean if you’ve gotten jury duty before you know it’s hard enough as it is. 


And in the mean time, we can follow Karen’s second trial and see if we can finally get to the bottom of what happened to John O’Keefe.

Kaelyn Moore
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