The Bizarre Boston Case of Karen Read

0:00Hi, Bench Crew. When you're finished listening to this true crime story, go see Hunting Matthew Nichols in theaters. This film has all the elements of the true crime stories we love, a sprawling mystery, intrepid investigators, powerful people who know more than they let on. Two decades after her brother mysteriously disappeared on Vancouver Island, a documentary filmmaker sets out to solve his missing person's case. But, when a disturbing piece of evidence is revealed, she comes to believe her brother might still be alive. The film isn't select theaters now, but you can immerse yourself in the story by going to HuntingMatthew Nichols.com right now. That's HuntingMatthew Nichols.com. And welcome to The Hunt. Campside Media. Hi everyone. This week we're going to talk about a huge story in the true crime space. The Karen Reed case, and whether she killed her boyfriend, police officer John O'Keefe. Karen

1:04Reed, this very Massachusetts, upwardly mobile professional woman, was found not guilty in 2025 in a criminal trial. As you may know, if you follow true crime, but her civil trial is ramping up now. The family of John O'Keefe has sued her. And even though it hasn't had anything like the coverage that her criminal case had, civil trials have a much lower burden of proof, 51%. So what will happen there is anyone's guess. Plus, Karen herself has brought civil charges, which is very rare. Usually, defendants are the ones who get sued in civil cases like the way wronged Goldman's dad sued OJ for damages in civil court after OJ was found innocent in criminal court. But Karen's filed a civil suit saying she was framed, which is unusual and definitely bolsters the free Karen Reed movement. So we thought it was a good moment to go back to this case and all its ins and outs, from what it says about how we feel about

2:06police, to women accused of crimes, to the very specific, very Massachusetts culture it's steeped in. Let's get to it. Welcome back to Infamous Everybody at Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment production. I'm Vanessa Rigoriotis. And I'm Natalie Rubberman. So this week we are going to be talking about I would say the greatest true crime case of the past few years. And I don't mean to say that it isn't also a tragedy because somebody was killed. If you haven't been following it, the reason I think it grabbed so much attention is that it was not only about whether or not Karen was culpable for killing her boyfriend, John O'Keefe, on a very drunken, very confusing night in the middle of a snowstorm, but also about what we actually think about police today. Do we

3:08trust them to run a case where one of their own people are killed? On top of that, you had the Karen is so Boston, she's so there with the accent, with the fourth right-ness, but she's also in some ways playing the media. And it really is a case of how much things have shifted between back and the old school days where somebody who was on trial for murder wouldn't even talk to a journalist. She has given so many different interviews. Vanity Fair, I believe it was Boston magazine. There's an entire documentary where she's letting the filmmakers just be there for every moment of her defense. There's never been a case that I've seen that's divided a community like this case has. It's become a silver war in Boston. On both sides of the argument of people who are either sure Karen read did it or think Karen read didn't do it, John O'Keefe rarely comes up. He's supposed to be the focus here. This is justice for John O'Keefe and it has completely become the Karen read show. There is no one that is a better storyteller of this case than Rebecca

4:14LaVoy, who we are going to have on now to talk to us about what she thinks about all I just said. Why this case gripped the nation? Why it is just the stickiest thing ever. Yeah. Rebecca is a journalist and podcaster. Welcome to the show Rebecca. Thanks so much for having me. Vanessa has already introduced Karen read. Her boyfriend was Boston police officer, John O'Keefe. What do we know that happened on that night? It was late January 2022. Yeah. This really is, I think the most Boston case that's ever Boston. I mean, there's so many things about it. Most of the stories sort of unfolds in Canton, Massachusetts, which is a town outside of Boston, kind of like a wealthy suburban enclave, a lot of upper middle class, blue collar people, upper middle class, professional people. It's an really interesting town, and it's a small enough town where folks who went to high school there and who still live there

5:15are actually people that other people in town know. They get elected to local office, for instance, or they're high ranking police officers in town, or they just have family name recognition. The characters in this case are those people. So what happened that night was that Karen read and her boyfriend, John, were invited out to basically drinks at a bar in Canton, Massachusetts. They actually went from one bar to another with members of this family, the Albert Slash McCabe family, and with a DEA agent named Brian Higgins. So they're all at the bar together. They're all at this place called the Waterfall together, the second destination, and somebody says at some point, come back to our house. Now, that house belonged to Brian Albert, who was another Boston police officer, a Boston police detective who had been involved in many high profile cases. His wife, Nicole, and she was also invited by Brian Albert's sister-in-law, Nicole's sister, Jen McCabe. The idea was they were all going to go back to the Albert house and have some more drinks, hang out, etc. Karen didn't know these people very well. Karen says that she wasn't a 100%

6:22store. They were welcome at the house. She thought maybe they just invited them to be nice. She didn't know. They then drive back to 34 Fairview in Karen's SUV, and this is where the story sort of diverges from what we know, no, no to what we think, to what the FBI thinks, and to what the state alleges. Karen says that she dropped off John O'Keefe outside of 34 Fairview and that he went into the house, which is the Albert home. That's the home of Brian and Nicole Albert on 34 Fairview. And we should say they're hammered. Yeah, there's a lot of alcohol. There's an alcohol soaked story. They're like people in their 40s, some of them have kids, some of them don't have kids, but they're party. They are, I mean, they still in many ways behave like they're still in high school together, right? They are clicky. They hang out together all the time. They seem to drink a lot. Some people classify the McCabe's and Albert's, which have been nicknamed portmanteau, McAlbert's, as peaked in high school and never stopped thinking that they peaked. Like that is the vibe here, right? Yeah. Yeah. And they're also characterized as town bullies,

7:29just FYI, Brian Albert's brother, Chris. He is a selectman in town, and the select board is like the board of five people that decide all this stuff for the town. So he actually isn't elected official in town. Brian Albert is this kind of scary, big beefy, former marine cop. And Jen and McCabe is like the queen of the town sports moms. And what about Karen? What's she an archetype of to you? Karen's an outsider. So Karen actually lived in a different community, and she knew John from when she was in her early 20s. They had dated briefly. And then when the pandemic started, she saw him on Facebook, and they connected again, and they started dating again. Karen was definitely a bit of an outsider for this group in terms of social status, in terms of professional status. She was a financial analyst at Fidelity. She was also a professor and very much steeped in the white collar world. Right. And then John is sort of a hometown guy. I mean, he does have that sympathetic angle as well, where his sister had died, and he had taken over the

8:32care of her two adolescent kids. Yes, we heard it characterize this way in court. He sort of has this reputation as like a stand up guy. Although I think through this case, some things have been revealed about Karen and John's relationship that point to it, not being a great relationship. I've sort of seen some of their communications with each other by a text. And there was tension there. John didn't like that. Karen was taking his niece and nephew to Duncan Donuts. She was really trying to be the soft one in their lives, and he didn't always like that. I mean, there's some of that stuff going on. It was a complicated situation. They weren't her kids, but they also weren't his kids. And they're both very Boston. So they're both at least we know she is. Yellers. There are some voicemails that came up in this case where Karen, after whatever happened happened, called John, something like 50 times, and is like screaming at him, and cursing at him. These are voicemails that I very much recognize as being of a certain Boston type of communication. They don't seem to

9:32me particularly different than voicemails. I've heard girlfriends of mine play on their phones. I wouldn't leave one like it. But yeah, you're a you're a effin loser. You're a loser. Basically from her telling, you know, they get to 34th Fairview. This is like the after party, right? Okay, we're going to keep the party going and drink some more. And she says, oh, it's all dark. I don't know where we really invited in. John, you go in and check out what's going on. And as far as she knows, he goes in the house and and she's sitting there and the snow's falling. And then she says, ah, forget it. He's not coming back. I'm out of here. And she drives back to the house where she's sleeping with with these two kids that he's taking care of and becomes convinced that he's cheating on her. And it's like, where are you, John? And that's when she starts calling him an effing loser, right? Right. So she's very hot under the collar. I mean, they appear on video at the waterfall bar looking very affectionate, very friendly. And so there's no reason to believe that

10:32they were driving to the house with any kind of conflict between each other already there. I think if you look under the hood of anyone's relationship or go through anyone's phone and they've taken multiple phones of mine, like, yeah, I've argued with John. We argued that day. If that's evidence that I of murder, then I guess a lot of people have evidence that they're capable of murder on their cell phones. I mean, I think for her, it was very much sparked by him going into the house or so she thought and never coming out and abandoning her. And it was freezing out. And it was like 10, 12-ish minutes. Timelines are a little bit wiggly and disputed in this case. But we know it was around that period of time that she texted him. She didn't hear from him. And she got pissed. And she left, which by the way, in my opinion, consistent with her personality to just be like, if this I'm out of here, I mean, from what we sort of have seen in her other communications. So that's kind of the moment of truth, right? That's where the state alleges she was really mad at him for some reason. They have a couple of theories. They threw out in the two different trials that did not match up, but kind of have the same themes. And that she in a fit

11:36of anger pulled forward and then reversed her car. And I guess clipped him and caused him to have this fatal injury. She goes home back to John's house, not to her own house. She spends the night there. She wakes up on the couch. It's like five o'clockish in the morning and he's not there. And she absolutely freaks out his niece's home. His nephew is not, but she absolutely freaks out, runs up, talks to the niece and starts making phone calls. Who does she cool? Well, notably, she calls Jen McCabe. She calls Brian Albert sister-in-law Nicole Albert sister Jen McCabe, who they were with the night before. She and Jen didn't know each other well, but they had met up a few times and they had something in common. Karen Reed has MS and Crohn's disease. And I guess Jen also has MS, so they had talked about their medical conditions that they shared. You know, they weren't friends, but they were certainly friendly. And Karen knew that Jen was supposed to be at 34 Fairview the night before. So she was calling Jen to say,

12:40where's John? Where do you think he is? So they drive to John's house. They walk into the house and then they all leave John's house. He's not there, obviously. They begin driving around Canton and they end up in front of 34 Fairview, where Karen sees almost immediately John's body lying on the snow in front of and to the left of the front door of the house near the street, where there's a little flagpole like in some mulch around it. So she immediately sees him, goes flying out of the car, notably leaves her cell phone on the back seat of the car, the cell phone on which she was actually leaving a message for John in the moment. So that was the discovery of John. She and Carrie are trying to administer emergency aid. Jen McCabe calls 911. Eventually the cops arrive. He's taken to the hospital and declared dead at the hospital. There's a thing with hypothermia when they suspect hypothermia that somebody has to be warm and dead for them to be declared dead and he was cold. He clearly was deceased at that

13:42point, but very often they try to resuscitate somebody by warming them up first and then they're able to resuscitate them and they were not able to resuscitate John O'Keefe. Reaching your weight loss goals doesn't have to mean completely changing the way you live your life. What if you could make healthy progress with a treatment plan that included medication, access to 24-7 support, nutrition tips, and tools for tracking movement, hydration, and sleep? All personalized to go at your pace. That's weight loss by hers. Through hers you're connected with a medical provider who determines if treatment is right for you. If prescribed, your treatment plan is personalized to support you in reaching your goals. Turn to hers for comprehensive personalized health care you can count on. Feel like your best self again. Visit for hers.com slash infamous to get a personalized

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15:49Maybe she thought he was inside and partying and just never came back out to get her, and maybe she reversed to leave and hit him with the car. And John O'Keefe's phone did not move that night from the location where his body was found. But there are a lot of other theories that Karen Reed's defense put forward as to what happened to John that night, and that Rebecca argues for as well. Now, we should say that none of the people Rebecca is going to talk about have been charged with a crime in connection with John O'Keefe's death. So but meanwhile, all of this hubbub was going on and the guys that you were describing before, the ones who were hosting the party, these good sons of Kent and Massachusetts are just chilling in the house or maybe they're passed out. They don't even come outside. Brian and Nicole Albert say they slept through this huge police response and all the screaming happening in their front yard. That they claimed that they slept through it. They never came outside. It wasn't until Jen McCabe, when they were on the scene for a little bit, went into their

16:51house that they understood something happening outside, but they still didn't come out of the house. Yes, you basically have this attractive, highly educated finance professional who's now accused of killing her cop boyfriend and leaving his body on another cop's lawn. Right? That's right. So this is going to blow up in the Boston media and she gets charged with manslaughter, motor vehicle homicide, leaving the scene of the personal injury or death. She loses both of her jobs, her health insurance, her car and her life savings. She was hammered. She hit him on the front lawn. She was confused and this is what happens, but it feels like she's getting overcharged. Yes. In fact, she was upcharged. She was arrested twice and it was the second time she was arrested that they upcharged her to murder. Her attorney, David Yanetti, at her first arrangement, actually evoked the idea of a tragic accident in court and whether or not that was because he didn't know all the details or because Karen was still confused about the details. That's unclear, but after that court appearance, he received a phone call at his office. There was

17:55a message waiting there for him that indicated something else may have happened. Okay, so tell us about that. Okay. So David Yanetti received a phone message at his office that he returned and the person on the phone, which we now know was a man named Steve Scanlon, who was, again, a canton resident who had a daughter who was the same age as somebody who was in the house that's Brian and Nicole Albert's nephew, Colin Albert. He said that he in some form or fashion was aware that John O'Keefe died inside the house. There had been a fight that he had passed out, that he vomited a whole lot of times and that that was the cause of his death, not a car crash outside the house. He didn't just die of hypothermia, right? He had all these other injuries that maybe fit with being hit by a car or maybe don't. Can you talk me through what his injuries work? Absolutely. So this is the crux of the case, honestly. This is the thing that when I tell

18:59people my opinion about this case, I show them the photos of John O'Keefe's injuries because they are incredibly important. John O'Keefe had a devastating laceration in the back of his head and the lower part of his skull. He also had on his arm what appear and what I believe are a series of dog bites and scratches. He had no broken bones, basically no injuries below the neck, except for on the arm and their theory of the case is that he was hit by a car hard enough to hit his head on the frozen ground and cause this injury which appears to have been caused by a sharp object, like a corner of something, and they say he received that injury from falling back on the frozen ground. Right, and let's be clear that the Albert also owned a dog, correct? They owned a dog with a history of biting people, but not for long because they gave away the dog. That's right. They had had this dog for something like nine years. Her name was Chloe. She was a shepherd, Malinois mix, which is, you know, Malinois is a very difficult, aggressive, big dog,

20:01but their police dogs or military dogs, same with German shepherds. They can also be police or military dogs, and there were reports in the town at the animal control office that this dog had actually bitten other people. Their dog being difficult to be, say it kindly, was a known fact and a well-documented fact. They got rid of their dog, not only did they get rid of their dog, but they also sold the home that had been in their family since like 1970. Right. And I mean, the backdrop of all of this is that all of these people, the people whose house it is, everyone else, they're incredibly well connected. That also ties back to another story about this dog that Vanity Fair reported, which was that our Canton resident said that their dog was attacked by Chloe, the Albert dog, and allegedly, after the woman whose dog was injured by this dog, left her information with Canton police, she says that Kevin Albert contacted the woman's husband with a message from the then police chief saying, quote, how can we make this thing go away?

21:03That's right. Now, Kevin nor Canton police responded to Vanity Fair's questions, so that hasn't been denied or refuted or commented upon. But I bring that up to say that there's a lot going on here with who these people know and who their connections are. And there was also a phone that was destroyed. There were two phones, two very important phones destroyed. So the defense is ramping up and they want the phones preserved so that the phone preservation is like that the people can't delete their information or change anything on their phones or get rid of their phones. They had a hearing about phone preservation orders. The day after that hearing ish like before these people were served with their notice that they had to preserve their phones. Brian Albert says he upgraded his phone and got rid of his phone. And Brian Higgins, the DEA agent, who's a very important figure in this case, drove to a military base on Cape Cod,

22:03took the SIM card out of his phone, put the SIM card and the phone in a dumpster. That's completely normal behavior, I say. But okay, let's do the other side. Let's talk about the prosecution because it is also true that Karen did, you know, as you were saying earlier, her phone picked up, her talking about different stuff and she does say some stuff like could I have hit him? She doesn't, she doesn't, she doesn't. This is what people point to as proof that Karen read Higginoki, that she allegedly said, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him. Okay, she didn't say that, but she did say something to her girlfriends as they're going over there. Could I have hit him? Right? She says that if she said anything like that, it would have been, could I have hit him, okay? But the origin story of that I hit in my hit in my hit in my hit in is very interesting. After the first responders leave, 34th air view, the early morning of January 29th, the family, Nicole Albert, Brian Albert, Jen McCabe, Matt McCabe, they all gather together at the

23:09Albert Residence. So they're doing something there. We don't know what they were doing. At about nine o'clock in the morning, Ish, the Ken Police gets a phone call that Jen McCabe says, like, you need to come over here. And when she gets there, she says, I remembered something that I forgot to tell you earlier. And that is where she mixed the claim that Karen read said something like, could I have hit him? For what it's worth, a firefighter paramedic who responded to the scene also says that Karen read says, quote, I hit him. But that paramedic also happened to go to high school with the Albert's daughter. The thing to know is that Karen read did have a crack on her tailate, a little crack on her tailate. Ring video shows her backing out of John O'Keefe's garage and actually striking his car on the corner, which is likely where that crack came from. But wait, but she did do it. I mean, is your assertion that she never hit him on that front lawn and that he indeed did go in the house? She did not hit him. Okay. But let me ask you this question. You

24:10know, they have the first trial stuff comes out that is not looking good, right? For the cops. For example, the the trooper who says 16 hours in his investigation, he texts his friends, there will be serious charges brought on the girl. She's a whack job cut. Zero chance she skates. She's she's fucked. Even in a later group text, he tells his supervisor, she's searching reads phone and he says, Hey, here's my progress. Quote no nudes so far. So, you know, certainly we are seeing a lot of dirty stuff happen. But there is a trial in which Karen read does address a pretty much everything that you just said. She put forth those allegations and it ends in a hungry and there's a second trial in that second trial. She doesn't talk about anything you just talked about, right? They planned to present all of this evidence. And ultimately, the strategic decision that the defense team made to a for lawyers have given extensive interviews about this. They made the decision that what the state presented was so weak that they were going

25:16to focus on this one aspect of the case that there was no collision. Now, the issue people have with this case is that they believe that an order for John O'Keefe to have been killed in the house or the garage or something that there had to have been this huge conspiracy involving lots of people who were lying in order to keep this whole thing a secret. And that is simply not true. We are talking about five people with a hell of a lot to lose who would have been lying. And we're talking about a cop who walked into it with a story and then very likely put his finger on the scales to make his story the right story. And I believe that this is the kind of cop that he was. So I'll give you a very specific example of this. Michael Proctor is the name of this police officer. He ended up becoming this very polarizing figure in the case. Karen Reed's car was impounded by the police. Her car was parked at her parent's house in Dayton, Massachusetts. Okay? Michael Proctor wrote the time of that taking of the car an hour later than he actually took it.

26:21And he repeated that wrong time over and over and over and over again. The Reed's have a ring camera and they were able to document the time that he took the car. If he took it at the later time, then he would have had the car after the first piece of tail light was found in the Albert's yard. So okay, wait. So what do you believe happened? I mean, you said it a little bit already, but you believe that that don't keep one in that house. There is a reason why there could have been an altercation in the house. There is a dog that's known to not be good with people and anybody who has an aggressive dog knows they are very likely to attack somebody that they perceive is in conflict with their owner. And it is not unlikely that they would have kept Chloe in the garage when they had a bunch of people at their house, which they did. It was also Brian Albert's son's birthday and he had a bunch of friends over. It's not unlikely that they would have kept her away from the people, right? So John goes into the garage,

27:22quick altercation happens. He falls, he's injured, he's immediately incapacitated and during that altercation, Chloe jumps up and bites him on the forearm, which is exactly if you've ever seen this police dog training videos, exactly what those dogs do. They bite you right here and they grip. So Toby at 2 has come home to Disney Plus. Let's go! Get ready for a new case. We're the greatest partners of all time. New friends. Do it this night. And your last name? This night. Dream team, new habitats. So Toby has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record breaking phenomenon at home. So Toby at 2 now available on Disney Plus rated PG. Right now, you can get Disney Plus in Hulu for just $4.99 a month for three months with a special limit to time offer ends March 24th. After three months playing auto renews at $12.99 a month terms apply. Your little one grew three inches overnight. Adorable. Also expensive.

28:28Sell their pint-sized pieces on D-Pop and list them in minutes with no selling fees. Because somewhere, a dad refuses to pay full price for the clothes his kid will outgrow tomorrow. And he's ready to buy your son's entire wardrobe right now. Consider your future growth bird budget? Secured. Start selling on D-Pop. Where taste recognizes taste. Payment processing fees and boosting fees still apply. See website for details. So in the wake of John O'Keefe's death, Rebecca argues that Karen may not have run him over. Karen's own defense team has pointed out that it's pretty weird that quote, it doesn't seem like he had any broken bones. Rebecca also says there's a lot of inconsistency and investigation credibility problems. There's concerns about how evidence was collected and handled at the scene. Bloody snow reportedly scooped into solo cups, evidence stored in grocery bags, unclear chain of custody. Plus, lots of witnesses and investigators had personal or

29:30professional ties to each other and to law enforcement. It's all a big mess and it means that it's very hard to figure out whether Karen read did or did not kill John O'Keefe beyond a reasonable doubt. Now, Rebecca is going to continue to describe Karen's theory of what happened that night, rather than the state of Massachusetts, which argued that Karen reversed and hit John O'Keefe with her lexas, hence the cracked tail light, causing him to fall and suffer a skull fracture, and then left him to die in a blizzard. Karen and her lawyers argue that the people in the home are at fault. But FYI, according to NBC News, an attorney representing some of the people you're going to hear about has described this theory as, quote, false defamatory without merit. And quote, a baseless conspiracy narrative that has damaged reputations. You said you believe that there may have been a conflict that happened inside that house. What do you think the reason would be for there to have been a conflict between John O'Keefe

30:32and the people in that house? I mean, what motive do they have? First of all, I don't think they planned to kill John O'Keefe. I don't think that was ever on the table. That's why I assert this is something likely very dumb. So the real dumb thing that happened was that Karen and John were kind of unhappy. She was becoming increasingly unhappy with him, and she does a thing that sometimes people do when they're unhappy in their relationships, which is to seek validation from other people. One of the people that she did that with, as far as we know, the only person she did that with was Brian Higgins, the DEA agent Brian Higgins, who's friends with John O'Keefe and will come over to John O'Keefe's house to watch football games and so forth. She starts flirting with him by text. They have this lengthy, extremely embarrassing text back and forth relationship over a few period of days. The defendant said, hey, we're single and we don't have kids. We can do whatever we want. Then I said, what do you like about me? The defendant responded, I just feel like you're from my neighborhood, and I think you're hot. You really think that? I have always thought that about you,

31:35that you're hot, smart, witty, but I didn't think you were interested. She kisses him outside of John O'Keefe's house at one point, at one point they get together, and then she completely ghosts him. He starts writing her text. She's just not replying, not replying, not replying, not replying. The day before John O'Keefe died, Brian Albert and Brian Higgins, they were on a trip to New York for an officer's funeral in New York. I don't know if you know this, but cops actually get paid detailed to go to those big parades in funerals, so that's what they were doing. They went to one of these funerals where they all stand there in blue. They were driving back. It's not unlikely that Brian Albert, whose best friends with Brian Higgins, got some of this information. Got this. Karen says that she's unhappy with John. We've been kissing, blah, blah, blah. We've been texting, and then she ghosted me. The reason that's not unlikely is because at the waterfall on the video, you can see at one point, Brian Higgins picks up his phone and text Karen, even though she's standing literally right there with her boyfriend, John, and he sends her one word, well with a

32:38question mark. So then he and Brian, you can see them together, sort of like confabbing all night. When it's time to leave, Brian Higgins is standing at the door with Brian and Chris Albert and makes a gesture like he's going at John O'Keefe like he points at him. It looks like he's yelling something. Chris Albert grabs his arm and pulls him back. So if anything, what I think could have happened is that Brian Albert likes and wants to defend his friend. Brian Higgins is all hot under the collar because he's drunk. And I believe that maybe they were planning on telling John what Karen did. We're saying something to John about the fact that Karen had been flirting with Brian, which is maybe why they wanted them to come by the house because Brian Albert's pissed on Brian Higgins' behalf, that there's this woman who's like doing this thing to him, right? So what I think happened, this is my opinion, is that John O'Keefe is walking toward the house. Perhaps Brian Higgins and Brian Albert are in the garage talking about this. They see him approaching. They're like committing here, Johnny. Let's talk. And then something happens. Someone

33:38says something. Someone gets hot under the collar. Punches John O'Keefe in the face. Dog attacks him. He falls backwards and hits his head on this little ledge that's all the way around the inside of the garage that's made of concrete. So okay, but how does he get outside? So you think they took they took him out onto the lawn. Right. So Snow Plow Driver, Lucky Lockeran. Lucky went to high school with all these folks too. Okay, of course. He says and he showed a picture of his truck, the Franken truck is what he called his plow truck because it was made of all different parts of different trucks. Very descriptive about his truck. And he shows the lights and how they actually illuminate all of the areas around his truck. He made a couple of passes by 34 Fairview at like 2.30 in the morning, 3.30 in the morning, and there was nobody on the lawn. None. Later, he sees parked in front of the Albert House, a Ford edge, a car, a Ford edge. That's not supposed to be there because it's actually against the law to park there when there's a snow operation going on. Right. And he decides to not report them or not call it in as a courtesy to the Alberts.

34:42So there's a theory here that John's body, if it especially makes sense if it happened in the garage, was put in that Ford edge. The Ford edge was driven up to the lawn in order to conceal across the street to being if from being able to see where they were putting his body. So in the second trial, as we said, they don't talk necessarily about all of this, but they do make arguments that end up sticking because the jury begins to liberations on June 13th, 2025. And wow, they return an acquittal for the most serious charge. They find her not guilty of second-degree murder at manslaughter. She gets guilty of driving under the influence. Certainly, she is somewhat dang. I mean, there are these flirtatious texts that she's sending saying, you know, hey, we don't have kids, we guess. Yeah, we get hung up with anybody. Plus, the case has really turned into a referendum between people who believe that she was framed and the free Karen read movement, which is primarily made up of women. Why is it drawing in all these women? Not just primarily made of women,

35:47but also made up of a lot of conservative women. One of the things that's very interesting about this case and one of the other reasons why I'm completely fascinated by it kind of obsessed with it, there is an entire online social media and in-person campaign around Karen read. Some of this was absolutely fomented by her attorneys. She initiated this relationship with this local blogger and she was feeding him information about her case. So yes, part of the campaign was designed by the team as is common with defense teams in murder trials. This is not unusual, but what's interesting to me is how this case absolutely crosses political lines. Because of the makeup of this part of a very blue state, by the way, but this makeup of this part of the state is like a little bit redder. You have a lot of people who say when they were talked to outside the courthouse, they've always been blue lives matter people. They have never believed ever in police corruption, police misconduct, or wrongful convictions. But they see

36:47Karen read and they hear these details about the missing video, by the way, the inverted video at trial, the phones being thrown away, the dog being given away, this dirty cop, and they finally believe it. They believe that somebody could be set up by the cops or have the scales of justice measured against them. They've never seen it before and all of a sudden, they're like, this could happen to me. In many ways, the prevailing story here is about corruption and less about whether Karen read Kill John O'Keefe because one thing that we know of my history in the United States is that corruption, like the real enemy, the one that has power over all of us, is something that can unite us even when we disagree on everything else. And it's important because perhaps some of these people are going to be more likely inclined to believe someone in the future, maybe a person of color, maybe a person without money, when they say they were screwed by the police. What is the larger cultural takeaway here? What can we take from this whole story? I think we can take from this and this is not a new story. It's just a new story to this

37:51particular audience in this section of America, right? That people get upcharged all the time. They usually get upcharged in order to force a plea. And I do believe that Michael Morrissey was expecting that result with Karen Read. But the story here is that when someone has the resources to fight back, it can open a can of worms that reveals like the rot inside that can. And I believe that that's what happened here. So tell me Rebecca, where can people find you if they want to hear you talk more about this as well? Well, I have a podcast on YouTube called Some Things Off, in which me and another podcaster, Mel Barrett, talk about all sort of criminal stuff, but we talk about the read case a lot because the civil trials are ongoing, etc. But you can also listen to my podcast where I review other podcasts called crime writers on. Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on in for us. So as we said earlier, there's a couple of civil trials going on now.

38:52John O'Keefe's family is suing Karen. And then Karen is suing Brian Albert, Nicole Albert, Jim McCabe, Matthew McCabe, and Brian Higgins, as well as members of police enforcement. She's looking for damages alleging gross misconduct of the Massachusetts state police and a conspiracy to frame her for the death of John O'Keefe. So this story is still active and we'll see what juries think when they have a lower burden of proof than a criminal trial. Regardless, a lot of lives were ruined here and a lot of corruption all after a night getting drunk in Boston bars in the snow. That's it for infamous. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a rating and review and tell your friends. If you want to follow me on Instagram, you can find me at Nat Robe, that's N-A-T-R-O-B-E. And if you want to support Vanessa's work, you can buy her book, blurred lines,

39:55rethinking sex, power, and consent on campus. See you next week. Hi, this is Alex Cantrowitz. I'm the host of Big Technology podcast, a longtime reporter and an on-air contributor to CNBC. And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing the business world and our lives. So each week on Big Technology, I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it. Asking where this is all going, they come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices, and meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties, listen to Big Technology podcast wherever you get your podcasts.