Karen Reed was acquitted of the 2022 murder of Boston police officer John O’Keefe. Officially, it’s all over, but there’s a lot about the case that still doesn’t add up. In January 2022, Boston PD officer John O’Keefe was out drinking. >> That was what we did in Canton. Everybody [music] drank. >> There was a blizzard that night.
Early the next morning, his body was found in the snow outside of the home of fellow officer Brian Albert. A broken cocktail glass and pieces of a vehicle tail light were found at the scene. The medical examiner determined that O’Keeffe died from a combination of blunt force trauma to the head and hypothermia.
There were other more superficial wounds on his body as well. O’Keefe’s girlfriend, Karen Reed, was arrested for his murder. The prosecution alleged that after Reed let O’keefee out of the car, she hit him with her SUV and drove off. [music] Reed’s defense team argued against that theory, suggesting that O’Keeffe was involved in a fight and that crucial evidence had been covered up.
>> I did not drive my car into John. Didn’t reverse it. did not hit John with my car. >> Reed’s first trial ended with a hung jury, but in her 2025 retrial, she was found not guilty of seconddegree murder. But a not-uilty verdict doesn’t mean Reed was [music] actually innocent. And at the same time, she may be.

So, what really happened? >> The blue wall went up, and Karen Reed’s on the outside of that blue wall. In the moments after a deadly accident, emotions run high. There’s a theory that guilty people tell on themselves in moments like that. But was Karen Reed one of them? At her 2025 trial, Katie McLaclin, a paramedic who was among the first responders on the scene, testified that in those early moments, Reed repeatedly said, “I hit him.
” At first glance, that sounds incriminating. But as the trial progressed, it became less and less clear just what Reed [music] was talking about. Glocklin admitted that she didn’t ask Reed to specify what she meant, given how upset Reed was at the time. Did [music] Reed mean she hit John O’Keefe with her car? The relationship was volatile, especially when alcohol was involved.
So, could she have been talking about slapping or punching him? Another witness on the scene that night testified that she heard Reed ask, “Did I hit him? Could I have hit him?” So, was it a statement or a question? The difference is crucial. >> Wait a minute. Something doesn’t sound right about that.
None of the evidence fits. >> O’Keefe’s injuries raised more questions than answers. At Reed’s second trial, medical examiner Dr. Greenie Scorty Bellow concluded that he died from blunt force trauma to the head combined with hypothermia. She performed the autopsy for the state. So her word was the official cause of [music] death.
But in her court testimony, Scorty Bellow was careful to differentiate the cause and manner of death. Because she couldn’t determine how O’Keefe was [music] injured, she couldn’t rule it a homicide. Some things didn’t make sense. Scorty Bellow told the jury that O’Keefe had no injuries to his legs, which are common in vehicle strikes.
She also said that a laceration to his right eyelid wasn’t consistent with someone falling backward and [music] hitting their head. O’ke’s other wounds added to the confusion. Dog bite expert Dr. Marie Russell testified that in her opinion the wounds were consistent with the results of a dog attack. >> Having seen hundreds [music] and hundreds of car accident victims and um people hit by cars, I ruled that out very quickly.

>> There was no dog DNA found on O’Keefe’s clothing or body, though. [music] And weirdly, they did find pig DNA. There’s no explanation offered for that, although it could have come from cooked food, but the defense had one more [music] point to make. >> Could come from dog treats. >> Pardon me? Yes. >> O’Keefe’s body was found in the driveway of the Albert home.
He was about 6 ft tall and lying close to a flag pole. We know that at least six people left the house over the course of a few hours that would have had to pass very near O’Keeffe. But only one witness recalled seeing anything unusual. I did notice a like a something out of the ordinary um like a black blob um in the ground by the flag pole.
>> Likewise, a snowplow driver whom one presumes would have no connection to anyone at the scene and no interest in lying to authorities also failed to spot O’Keeffe when he passed by that morning. [music] Maybe the combination of all the drinking and the falling snow was at fault.
Even so, how could a whole group of people have overlooked O’Keeffe for as long as they did? We’ll just say it. The forensic procedures at the scene of John O’Keefe’s death were wonky. Evidence was collected in paper stop and shop bags and red solo cups borrowed from a nearby house because the police didn’t have the proper supplies. >> Solo cups. Solo cups.
>> Solo cups that typically you’d put keg beer in. >> In their defense, storing evidence in bags or cups can be a way to secure evidence when you’re [music] out in the middle of nowhere or when the weather is going to affect the integrity of the scene. But this didn’t seem to be the case here.

On the other hand, in a stunningly unprofessional move, one officer used a leaf blower to clear snow and search for evidence, potentially blowing tiny but important forensic evidence who knows where. When former Canton Police Lieutenant Paul Gallagher, who was in charge of the evidence collection that day, was questioned at Reed’s 2025 trial, he claimed he’d used the [music] leaf blower because he was concerned that using a snow shovel would disturb evidence.
>> I have seen it used and to remove light layers of snow and it can be controlled. He also argued that grocery bags weren’t all that different from standard police evidence bags. [music] But why didn’t he bring evidence bags to a crime scene? >> I was in a personal car. If that bag is upside down, you wouldn’t know it didn’t say evidence on it.
>> Gallagher blamed his questionable decisions on the blizzard and his confusion as to whether O’Keefe’s death was an accident or murder, which is the whole purpose of evidence collection. But hey, we’re not law enforcement professionals, and why not give the potential defense team some reasonable doubt they can plant at a future trial, right? >> If anyone’s going to know how to cover up a crime, it’s Brian Albert.
>> O’Keefe died in front of fellow officer Brian Albert’s [music] home. So, it’s more than a little surprising that investigators never bothered to search the house. [music] Police were also indifferent, at least at first, about Albert’s German Shepherd dog, which may or may not have made the wounds on O’Keeffe’s arm.
>> Described that dog as being not great with strangers. Isn’t that true? >> I did describe it that way. Yes. >> Albert rehomed his dog months later, which is a really nice way of saying he got rid of the dog, but no one questioned it at the time. Reed’s defense team wasn’t satisfied and continued to question Gallagher about his nonarch of the Albert home.

Gallagher held firm. >> Nobody could put John O’Keefe in the house, including Miss Reed. >> Gallagher added that he’d been inside the house and hadn’t seen anything concerning. Never mind that guilty people, or at least the smart ones, don’t leave incriminating evidence on the kitchen table. >> I have a good faith obligation to present the truth to a judge.
>> Gallagher went on to say that if he failed to do so, his professional credibility would be irreparably damaged. The defense wisely pointed out that this was a weak justification for a huge oversight. >> We believe it’s very likely what happened to Jon happened [music] inside that house. Turtle Boy is blogger Aiden Carney of Turtleboy News, a Massachusetts-based outlet that avidly followed the Reed case.
Carney became an advocate for Reed herself and a proponent of the theory that John O’Keefe had been murdered and the crime covered up. To that end, he established a private Facebook group that raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Reed’s defense. >> We love her. >> There’s nothing wrong with that if that’s where it ended.
But Carney also confronted witnesses and even recorded himself doing so. He also allegedly obtained and released sensitive data, including a state trooper’s phone number and motor vehicle [music] information. Carney and his legal team claimed that he’s simply investigating and exercising [music] his freedom of speech by reporting the news.
Prosecutors didn’t see it THAT WAY. Carney was charged with witness intimidation and conspiracy [music] to intimidate. His trial is set for the end of 2026. One of the indisputable facts of the case is that the right rear tail lights on Reed’s Lexus SUV was broken. But how it was broken is unclear. Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab forensic scientist Marine Hartnet testified that she saw scratches and traces of what appeared to be glass and human hair on the SUV’s bumper.

Another forensic scientist from the same crime lab, Andre Porto, told jurors that DNA found on the broken cocktail glass at the scene belonged to John O’Keefe. Two other scientists testified that O’Keefe’s DNA was found on taillight pieces recovered outside the home. This might seem pretty straightforward and pretty damning, but Reed’s defense team raised questions about the damage and the recovered fragments, even wondering if they could have been planted.
Accident reconstruction specialist Daniel Wolf testified that test done with a similar SUV produced [music] results inconsistent with the marks on Reed’s vehicle. However, the prosecution called out Wol’s use of a lightweight test dummy compared to the heavier O’Keeffe. What’s more, that DNA evidence may not have been a slam dunk.
Trace DNA found on an intact tail light could have been from O’Keeffe or one of two other unknown men. Delays in finding the tail light fragments didn’t help, and neither did video evidence submitted to the court that accidentally included mirrored footage of the SUV, potentially misleading viewers as to which tail light was broken.
In the end, if we’ve all learned anything from sensational trials, DNA evidence doesn’t mean a whole heck of a lot to a jury. Digging into data evidence often pulls up very handy timestamps, but even that has proven oddly contentious in the hands of attorneys at the Reed trial. The search in question was done on the phone of Jennifer McCabe, Albert’s sister-in-law and one of the people at his house that night.
>> We saw Jen McCabe all the time. She coached [music] John’s niece’s basketball team. So, we saw her two or three times a week. >> That night, it was McCabe who gave O’Keeffe directions to the Albert home. She texted and phoned him repeatedly [music] that night, but claims those calls were inadvertent butt dials.

>> It depends on if the jury believes that there really were eight butt dials over the course of two hours between three or four different people. >> There’s no such thing as an inadvertent butt web search, though. On the night in question, McCabe searched how long to die in cold. The search history was later deleted, though investigators were able to recover it.
[music] An analyst testified that McCabe made the search at 2:27 in the morning, 3 and 1/2 hours before Opie’s [music] body was found. But the prosecution has alleged that the search actually happened about 4 hours later after the fact. >> Jen McCabe, it’s me or her. Either I’m going down, Jen, or you are. >> McCabe testified that Reed asked her to make the web search after O’Keeffe was found.
McCabe also claimed that she’d searched via an already open tab, which accounted for the earlier timestamp. That’s not how timestamps work. But as we all know, computers and phones have funny ways of creating false [music] records, so there’s that. Massachusetts state trooper Michael Proctor was once the lead investigator in the Reed case [music] until he couldn’t stop talking.
Proctor not only contacted non-p police friends to share sensitive information, but he did so via text on his personal cell phone. In some texts, Proctor discussed contempt for Reed in vulgar terms, even going so far as to wish that she would harm herself. used crass language to discuss Reed’s body and shared an image of her being escorted from a building.
>> You literally said that you hoped that Karen Reed, the subject of your investigation, that she would just die. It’s a figure [music] of speech. >> The defense team used this cascade of deeply unprofessional communications, [music] including similar text between Proctor, his wife, family members, and police colleagues to lend further weight to the coverup [music] narrative.
They argue that Proctor had said Reed was done for long before trial. If nothing else, it was a sign of blatant bias. >> The lead investigator, trooper Michael Proctor, to this day, to my knowledge, has never walked into that house. Proctor’s behavior was so bafflingly bad that he was not only fired by the state police, [music] he was suspended by the state standards and training board in December 2025, barring him from working in Massachusetts law enforcement.

[music] This is quite rare. In fact, a 2020 Boston Globe investigation found that Massachusetts state troopers facing criminal charges [music] usually keep their jobs or just move to a different department in a different city and carry on like nothing happened. The fact that Proctor didn’t further underlines his bizarrely [music] bad choices.
>> Karen Reed was framed. Throughout her two trials, Reed’s defense team repeatedly argued that there was a conspiracy [music] to frame her to the point that she filed a 2025 civil lawsuit against both police investigators and some witnesses. [music] But like so much else in the case, there are enough confusing details to make either side seem almost reasonable or totally nonsensical.
>> It just feels so fake, even though it’s true. If, as Reed alleges, she dropped off an intoxicated but otherwise whole O’Keeffe at the Albert home and his injuries really weren’t consistent with a vehicle strike, there may be something to the conspiracy allegations. >> And we know who spearheaded this cover up. You all know.
>> Yes, we do. >> And no, she didn’t do it. No, she didn’t do it. >> Boston police departments have been linked to shady [music] business before, but in Reed’s case, the conspiracy allegation requires the acceptance of a scenario filled with unknowns. [music] You do realize for this conspiracy to be true, it would take 30 to 50 people.
>> Albert insisted that the frame read would have required the collaboration of officers from two police departments, civilians, emergency responders, and the medical examiner. But anything’s possible when there’s just a thin blue line between departments. So, what’s the real answer to how Jonno Keefe died? We’re certainly not sure, but sometimes there’s more than one right answer, and it could be a combination of things that happened that snowy evening in Canton.