Original subtitles

Yes, they only make about four decent suits for women that

don't make you look like Hillary Rodham Clinton,

and I've got them all, so now I'm onto dresses.

[crew speaking]

[crew 2] Walking out.

[clapboard clicks]

I did not drive my car into John.

Didn't reverse it.

Did not hit John with my car.

There is zero chance this was an accident.

There was zero chance John was hit by a vehicle.

No, I just, no, I'm not tired of it.

I hate answering it because

I feel like I'm being so scrutinized, like,

did she blink three times or twice?

And did she like smirk or look to the right

or down and up and left and whatever.

And, like, it just feels so fake, even though it's true.

I'd rather like, explain everything else.

And I did not hit John with my car.

Like, I can't make it sincere enough.

I hate saying it.

[reporter 1] Karen Read is accused of hitting her boyfriend,

a Boston police officer, with a car and leaving him

to die in the snow.

Was this an accident?

What do they have against me? Why am I in shackles right now?

And then everything shifted from horrible accident

to second-degree murder.

[Ted] For law enforcement, this is one of their own,

and that raises the stakes.

I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.

Prosecutors have alleged she was angry,

she had been drinking, she killed him,

and then she tried to cover it up.

-[Adam] Objection. -[Judge Cannone] I'll let him have that.

There's a whole other side of the story.

Karen Read was framed.

There is corruption in this city.

[Ted] Phones being destroyed,

butt dials at two in the morning.

The most shocking part is that not a single witness

actually saw this happen.

I am a witness, and these people are

terrorizing me.

[Michael] She's a babe, no ass, no nudes so far.

[Alan] "No nudes so far."

Wow, are you kidding me, dude?

There were gasps, there was headshaking.

All eyes are on this now. People are following it.

-[horns beeping] -[protesters cheering]

In all my years of practice, this is the first time

I've ever shown up to a court hearing where there are people

cheering for a defendant.

[protesters cheering]

This is not about justice. This is about spectacle.

A quite literal murder carnival.

It's as though she was the happiest murder defendant

in America, walking a red carpet

on the way into her own murder trial.

Are we not at a trial for a police officer?

[Karen] Elle magazine wants to feature me.

-Can I do it? -[Alan] Damn right, you should do it.

[Alan] Karen Read is the face of this case...

[protesters cheering]

...but this is so much bigger than her.

[Alan] This so-called justice system here in Massachusetts...

[protesters] Free Karen Read!

...will never, ever, ever be the same after this.

[orchestral theme music playing]

[theme music fades]

My name is Karen Read. I'm 44 years old.

I've never been married. I don't have any kids.

I don't, like, envision myself having,

like, the white picket fence bullshit, um.

I've worked in a financial services company for decades.

I was a lecturer at Bentley University.

Now I'm being charged with murdering a Boston

police officer.

I could face life for second-degree, life in prison.

So, as we approach trial,

I'm moving to a hotel in Boston.

It's weird, like you're used to working all day and...

having a life and a career and a routine,

and then you don't have it,

and now you're fighting for your life.

I still can't believe what's happening to me.

[indistinct chatter]

- Christ our Lord, amen. -[woman] Amen.

[women] Very nice, Karen.

[Karen] I've lived most of my life in Massachusetts.

I have a older brother and a younger sister,

so I'm in the middle.

[singing incoherently]

[Karen] Definitely the most outgoing.

[singing]

[Karen] I've always been very reactionary, and I guess

a little maybe impetuous.

I'm private, but I'm open.

So when I'm with people, I'll tell them anything.

[Karen, archive] Welcome back to Lifestyles of the Almost Rich and Famous.

And I am your host, the lovely, the beautiful Karen Read.

[Janet] When she was a young girl, she would do plays constantly

when we'd have like, if we had cookouts or the pool.

[Karen, archive] We're gonna watch Mom. Everything you do is grand.

She was, always brought a lot of fun to -- yeah.

She's got a great personality, she really does.

[William, archive] There’s my darling daughter.

[William] I was Dean of Business at Bentley University.

I did that up until the time this event transpired.

My father loved his job so much and there's an old phrase,

"You love your job you never work a day in your life,"

and that's my dad and, I mean, my dad's gonna be 76.

I've just turned 44 and I need my dad more than ever.

John died two years, two months ago,

and we dated maybe just shy of two years.

OK, first thing you need is the graham crackers.

Reach into the bag, reach into the bag, and you pull out

a set of graham crackers.

OK, also inside the bag, if you look, there is some

chocolate bars.

Johnny and I grew up together on the same street.

We met when we were four.

I went to the same nursery school,

and we went to school, elementary, junior high,

high school, all the way through.

Stayed close friends during college, stayed close friends

when I was moving around the country for my -- my job.

Uh, he would visit me wherever I lived,

so I knew Johnny for over 40 years.

Johnny was from a family of five, his mom and dad,

and then his older sister, Kristen,

and he had a little brother, a younger brother, Paul.

Anyone that knew Johnny would say the same things,

Johnny was relentlessly generous.

He was funny.

I mean, all we ever did our entire lives growing up

was laugh.

He was loyal.

He was very, very tight with his family,

really protective of his family.

[Tara] Johnny and I started dating when I was around 25 years old.

We had a big love that evolved into a friendship that lasted

a really long time.

He was just a really sweet,

dependable, reliable,

honest guy -- very loyal,

selfless.

[John Jackson] I met Johnny in college.

We went to Northeastern together.

He was always gonna be a cop, and he went to school

for criminal justice.

His grandfather was a cop, and he just, it was always

just, it was never a question.

From what I hear on the job, he was a great cop, you know.

This is Johnny's badge number, 2490.

His grandfather, also John O'Keefe,

his badge number was 490.

So when he became a police officer,

he requested that badge number,

but they had retired it.

So he added a two.

So, in honor of Johnny, we wear his badge number

everywhere, his friends and his family, just to try to help

keep his legacy alive.

Nine years prior to John's death, Johnny's sister Kristen,

we call her Kristy,

Kristy was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

She fought hard, but she -- she passed

fairly quickly, I think it was five months, she was young.

Johnny was devastated. They were very close.

And then his brother-in-law died of a heart attack

almost two months to the day that Christy died,

like one day off,

and they had two children.

[Brendan] John, he entered a very difficult situation.

He has this niece and nephew that just lost

both of their parents.

And he said, "I'm taking the kids."

He said, "I think my sister would like it.

"I think she'd be proud of me.

I'm super close to the kids anyway, and I want to do this."

There was never a question for Johnny, it was never like,

"Oh, should I or could I?

I have all this other stuff I have to do."

It was just -- just did it.

He assumed that role rather seamlessly.

They needed somebody to be there, and he was there,

always there.

He loved them with all of his heart.

I think that's what guided all of his decisions.

I think, I think he, you know, he -- if he had kids

of his own, he would have been an unbelievable dad.

[Karen] I met John in February of 2004,

through a friend of his from high school.

And we maybe dated another couple of weeks after that.

And then I went to work that spring in Ireland,

just temporarily, but because of that I --

I stopped seeing him, and I just lost touch.

Then, at the beginning of the pandemic, I'd been home

working remote for about two weeks and was going stir-crazy.

And I hadn't been on Facebook in years.

[John Jackson] Johnny's a single dad, and, you know,

everything's going in lockdown, so from what I understand,

he put out a Facebook message to several ex-girlfriends,

and she was the one to reply.

[Karen] I didn't answer right away, because it was like a picture

of him with a bunch of kids.

I thought, oh, he looks like he's married and he's got

kids, and then I ended up reaching back out to him,

and then I learned the backstory of where these

kids came from.

I knew John for only two years, but I knew a lot about him.

He loved life.

There were things he liked to do.

There were things that made him laugh and smile,

and songs he liked, and Red Sox games he liked to tune into.

And John loved his sister more than anyone or anything.

And he loved those kids.

I didn't really aspire

to have kids,

but I cared about John's kids.

Prior to Johnny's death,

everybody in Johnny's orbit liked Karen.

There wasn't a single person that said,

"You know, I don't think he should be dating her."

Everything we could see

looked like a happy relationship.

But the key to that is that you don't know what happens

behind closed doors.

[Karen speaking, archived]

This is my version of testifying.

Doing this film is my -- my testimony.

This has happened to me,

and, you know, I -- I know what happened between John and me.

I know what happened in our life

and time spent together before then.

I know the events of that morning.

I know what I said. I know what I didn't say.

And I haven't been able to -- to say it.

It's incredibly frustrating.

I want to say what happened

exactly as it happened.

John and I argued the morning of the 28th, Friday morning.

Most of our arguments were about his kids,

and that he thought I spoiled them.

And I thought it was a real low blow of him to get on me

for that -- it pissed me off.

And I said, "I -- I gotta get out of here for a minute."

So I came down here to my house in Mansfield,

sat in the other room, and I worked remote all day.

[meteorologist] Forecasters anticipate Boston will experience one of

the biggest single-day snow totals on record.

[Karen] That day, everyone was getting ready for this massive blizzard,

but I realized I didn't want to be shut in here with the snow.

I'd rather be up there with John and the kids,

and doing something fun.

And we always had fun on the weekends.

[phone ringing]

And then, at about 6 p.m., either I called my father

or he called me, and he said,

"How was your day? What are you up to?"

And I told him what happened,

and I hated complaining about John to my parents

because they liked him a lot.

And my father just said gently to me, "Karen, why don't

you stay home tonight? It's gonna snow."

But I didn't.

Dad, if I'd listened to you,

none of this would have happened.

I think I left here in Mansfield at 8:30, and I met

John at a bar in Canton, C.F. McCarthy's, at 9:00.

And then we went to the Waterfall,

right next door to McCarthy's.

At the Waterfall, it was Jen and Matt McCabe.

We saw Jen McCabe all the time.

She coached John's niece's basketball team, so we saw

her two or three times a week.

And then Brian and Nicole Albert

and Brian Higgins were there.

The previous weekend, I had met the Alberts for the first time

with the McCabes, and then it was getting late,

and John said, "Jen just invited us to the Alberts'."

And my attitude always when I was out and about with John

was, you know, he's gotta blow off steam.

It suits us all if John blows off a little steam,

because he always has steam.

Uh, so I said, "Sure, let's go.

This can't last forever, right?"

Everybody was some level of intoxication.

That was what we did in Canton. Everybody drank.

They leave these bars, they're in their little

enclaves where they can all go drunk driving on the way home,

and nobody gets pulled over.

So I'm driving, and John got on the phone with Jen,

and he's telling me it's 34 Fairview.

And we arrive at 34 Fairview.

It didn't look like there was any soiree going on.

It didn't look inviting.

The outside was dark,

and I didn't see any familiar-looking vehicles.

And I said, "John, can you make sure we're welcome?"

He said, "I'll run in."

So when John got out of the car at Brian Albert's house,

he took my full vodka soda,

which is sitting in the -- in the cup holder,

and he walked up the driveway.

And John always walked, kind of skipped and walked

at the same time. He was always in a rush.

And I saw him reach the breezeway door,

which is the second, the side front door.

And he opened the door and went to walk in.

And I waited probably a minute and he doesn't come.

And it only took like two or three minutes, that,

for -- for me to be irritated. So I started -- I called him.

I didn't want to wait for him to respond to a text,

and he didn't answer.

I said, "You've gotta be [bleep] kidding me.

"What are you doing?

"You just went in and I'm sitting here.

"Um, either we're welcome or we're not, but it shouldn't take

you five minutes to -- to determine that."

And then about 10 minutes went by, and I...

I left, and I was not happy.

[Karen speaking, archived]

And little did I know,

John was not getting my phone calls.

And then that was it. The last I ever talked to him

was when he got out of my car at Brian Albert's house.

[reporter 2] Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe, a veteran with

the department, was found face up in the snow

on Saturday morning during the blizzard on Fairview Road

in Canton around 6 a.m. He later died...

What happened that morning was on a local news program.

And on the morning of, uh, January 29th, 2022,

I got a call from, uh, another close friend saying that

Johnny had died.

[John Jackson] Johnny? Like, what?

Not John. Like, John, well, how, how?

Like...

you know, he was --

uh, I'm stunned.

Just stunned. Um, devastated.

[Tara] I was just in utter disbelief.

I was screaming, like,

"Please God, not John O'Keefe, not John."

All I could think about was the children,

and Paul, and Peg, and Papa.

I still can barely believe it.

They don't make people like that anymore, you know?

Sorry, I can't.

My daughter is, uh,

was one of Johnny's godchildren.

And so my -- my oldest, I had to tell her.

So that was rough. That was rough.

We had no detail.

At that point, I immediately called Johnny's brother, Paul,

and Paul started to fill in some of the gaps.

I think the very first explanation that I got was that

Karen had hit John with her car.

[John Jackson] When Brendan called me, we both went, "Wait, what?

Did she do this? Did she do this?"

He's like, "I don't know yet, but it looks that way."

Everybody liked Karen,

and everything changed on the morning of January 29th.

[reporter 3] Karen Read left the courthouse after posting bail,

charged with hitting her boyfriend,

Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe,

with her SUV early Saturday morning.

Suddenly, John's death was on the six o'clock local news.

[Jennifer] They had somebody saying that

Karen Read hit John O'Keefe in her SUV.

The wounds that he suffered were commensurate with what

EMT said was being hit by a blunt object, the vehicle.

Everything you're seeing there is presenting

as a motor vehicle accident,

that she hit him,

and left him to die in the snow.

Just three days after John died, they arrested me here,

literally where I'm sitting right now.

This is my dining room at my house.

They had already seized my vehicle and my cell phone,

so I knew I was a suspect.

And I wasn't hearing about anybody else being a suspect,

so I -- I knew they were coming for me.

It was about 7:45 at night, I was on the phone,

and I heard a bunch of car doors shut at the same time.

And I looked out,

and they brought about a dozen cops.

It was like a SWAT team.

I was being charged with vehicular manslaughter.

My wife gets all the notifications on her phone

for everything, and I heard her kind of gasp,

and I said, "What?"

And she goes, "Your sister's been arrested."

It felt so surreal to see your sister paraded in front of

cameras in handcuffs and being made to look like

the worst person on the planet.

[Karen] I remember it all perfectly.

I remember being in jail, I remember the hearing,

the cameras, my parents,

and I remember the statement of the case.

I was just...

dying to know, "What do they have against me?

Why am I in shackles right now?"

I felt embarrassed

for the position I was in, and I wanted to get back to

my home base and figure out what the hell was going on.

[Tara] When I first heard an explanation about how

Johnny died, it was that Karen Read was driving drunk.

And she had hit John with her car,

and she was arrested.

And I thought, "Well, that's a simple open-shut case."

I figured she was remorseful.

I figured...

she must be devastated at what she had done,

like, she was just gonna fall on the sword,

and it was not that complicated.

I had no idea just how out of hand things were about to get,

and still had no idea just how big things were gonna be.

[siren wailing]

When John was killed, David Yannetti is the first

and only call I made for local counsel.

So he's been with me from the beginning.

Then he went on TV.

This is a defensible case.

I will tell you that my client has no criminal intent.

She loved this man.

I've had my own firm since 1999.

Before that, I was an assistant district attorney,

a prosecutor, and I spent the majority of my time there

investigating and prosecuting homicides.

When I heard that an officer was killed, I knew that there's

a heightened sense of importance

that is given to those cases.

Even if prosecutors thought that they had a case that

they couldn't prove,

they were not gonna let this one go.

It became clear that this was going to require a lot of work.

So somebody else would have to be brought in.

[Karen] So I called Harvard's Criminal Justice Institute,

and a professor got on the call, and he said,

"You need to look into the Kevin Spacey case,

look into the attorneys, maybe you can get some help there."

And long-story-longer, that's how I found Alan Jackson

and Liza Little.

[airport PA] Good afternoon, customers.

If you just arrived on flight 288 from Los Angeles,

your bags are being offloaded on carousel number seven.

Welcome to Boston.

[Alan] You’re good? All right, let’s do this.

My name is Alan Jackson. I'm an attorney in Los Angeles.

I got an email, and, uh, the subject line of the email

was something along the lines of "murder of a Boston cop."

I took one look at one of the autopsy photos of John O'Keefe,

and I saw his arm, and I said, "Are you kidding me?"

He was hit by a car?"

And I actually remember Alan calling me into his office

and saying, "Liza, you gotta read this.

You'll like this case."

[Alan] Let's call Karen Read.

The motions that we really need to put some effort into have

not been done yet. -[Karen] Mm-hmm.

You know, police misconduct and, and --

[Liza] Alan and I have been working together for

almost nine years now.

We've both worked on the Spacey case,

and we've done several big murder trials in Los Angeles.

[Alan] I do want to see the war room, though.

Can you meet us down there?

[Karen] Right.

Nice, nice, nice, nice. This is perfect.

Where are our boxes? Oh, shit.

In this little corner.

[Alan] Oh, my god. Um, Karen, do me a favor?

-[Karen] No. -And just unpack all this shit.

-I knew you were gonna say that. -[laughing]

That's why I said no.

We're right on the cusp of the trial.

Uh, it's gonna start in a couple weeks.

Most of this is just for the courtroom, right?

-[Liza] So there's three sets of witnesses -- -No, no, no, no.

[Karen] I'm on trial for my life right now, but I'm not...

afraid of whatever emotional or mental hurdles

I know I will be facing in the next two months.

I know I'm innocent.

[Alan] I like it.

Um, welcome home.

In this case, everybody has an opinion, and it's binary.

Either you think that she did it,

backed into her boyfriend with her SUV,

and there he lay, and tragically he passed away.

Or you think, "Wait a minute, something doesn't sound right

about that -- none of the evidence fits."

Evidence was missed,

bizarrely missed, and then later found.

There are two conflicting, contrasting theories,

and the public doesn't have an answer yet.

So it's sort of a classic "whodunit."

[Alan] We need to look deeper at what actually happened

to John O'Keefe.

[Karen] The day after this happened, the day after John was killed,

I was confused and bewildered.

There was no memory of anything happening,

but I had been drinking, and it was late.

I never heard from him again, ever,

um, obviously.

So I thought, "Could I have run him over?

Did he try to get me as I was leaving, and I didn't know it?"

I mean, I've always got the music blasting.

It's snowing. I got the wipers going, the heater blasting.

Did he come and hit the back of my car, and I...

hit him in the knee, and he was drunk and passed out

and asphyxiated or something?

And then, when I hired David Yannetti,

I asked him those questions the night of January 29th.

Like, "David, what if, I don't know, what if I ran his

"foot over or what if

"I clipped him in the knee and he passed out

"and, or went to

care for himself and he threw up or passed out?"

And David said, "Yeah, then you have some element of culpability."

So that's how I thought about things for about three days.

[David] I'm looking at a police report that says that she accidentally

hit her boyfriend with a car.

And based on what she said, my thoughts were,

"This is a district court motor vehicle homicide case."

Stakes are much lower,

but of course, the case became much more than that after that.

[bagpipes playing]

[reporter 4] Hundreds gathering to pay tribute to

Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe.

His wake held Sunday at St. Francis of Assisi Church

in Braintree.

[Tara] I remember it was a really raw day -- it was cold out.

And the media was kind of swirling again everywhere,

and hundreds of people were waiting in line patiently.

[Brendan] The pallbearers, we were situated on the inside of

the front door of St. Francis Church,

and we could hear a bagpipe.

And we were instructed that the hearse had arrived.

And when we opened the large church doors and saw,

it wasn't one bagpipe,

it was 50 bagpipers

and hundreds of police in formation.

[bagpipes playing]

[Brendan] And there were a handful of local Boston news outlets

covering the memorial.

Support was overwhelming.

It was surreal carrying his casket.

Just to think that, you know, years earlier,

he was in my wedding party, and here was this

friend of 40 years that

was always there.

He was just always there.

He was part of my life.

I was just trying to process how that...

it just changed.

[Tara] Part of the highway was closed down.

Like, the city shut down for John O'Keefe's funeral.

That's an honor, you know?

I remember being touched by that, being on the highway,

and just the highway being cleared for him.

And then...

people were lined up with their hands on their hearts,

wearing blue ribbons.

It was beautiful -- it was like his legacy had spread

far and wide already,

even before this was sensationalized.

I think he would have been very proud to have earned

that kind of send-off.

[Karen] As soon as I was arraigned publicly on February 2nd,

they said there was a stay-away order

between me and any member of his family.

So I -- I did not go to John's funeral

or any memorial for John.

I've never been to his grave.

I was really looking forward just to have this behind me.

New developments tonight in the case of Karen Read.

A Massachusetts woman accused in the death

of Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe.

[Karen] I didn't think I was gonna get arrested again

for John's death, but I was wrong.

This nightmare was just beginning.

After Karen Read was charged with manslaughter,

the prosecution took the case to a state grand jury

and presented second-degree murder,

and that returned an indictment.

The grand jury said, "Yeah, there is enough evidence

here for this case to -- to go to trial."

[David] Involuntary manslaughter is an unintentional killing

that's done as a result of acting recklessly,

causing the death of another.

Karen's charged with second-degree murder,

which is essentially murder with malice of forethought.

And I was floored.

You know, my first thought was,

um, you know, what do they have?

He's a Boston cop.

I mean, that tells you all you need to know.

The blue wall went up,

and Karen Read's on the outside of that blue wall.

She's the outsider.

She's the patsy.

[Karen] I heard the car doors again, and there they all are again.

Not quite as theatrical as the first time I was arrested,

but I saw the two lead detectives,

Trooper Proctor and Trooper Bukhenik.

At first, I thought they were here to ask me

questions or something.

When they went around back, I thought they were gonna

hurt me, because I heard them say, "Let's do it around back."

And so I'm shaking like a leaf.

I opened the door and I said, "What's going on?"

And they said, "You're under arrest."

I said, "For what?"

And they said, "You've been indicted

on second-degree-murder charges, and you're under arrest."

And they read me my rights. Again.

And I backed away,

and Trooper Proctor came and grabbed me and tried to

turn me and get my arm.

And I kept trying to writhe away from him

because I didn't understand why I was being arrested.

[Karen] I was upcharged, so the charges got upgraded from

vehicular manslaughter to second-degree murder,

which means there's an element of intent

that I knew what I was doing, it wasn't an accident.

[David] Second-degree murder carries a life-in-prison sentence.

You would be eligible for parole,

but there's no guarantee that you'd make parole.

It's a life sentence.

I mean, 10 years or life at this point

feels the same to me.

I've spent two -- two nights, two days in prison,

and it felt like an eternity.

So you could lock me up for six months, and I'd,

at the -- at the outset, it would feel like a lifetime.

I mean, I'm 44 years old, so...

20, 30, 40, uh...

it's the rest of my...

productive life.

There's an arrest warrant issued for you.

[Karen] I was cuffed by Proctor.

I had on boxer shorts, no underpants, a tank top,

and I had thrown a cardigan on it when I heard them out front,

and I had on my slippers.

We're gonna take care of it.

I was taken in the cruiser,

up to the barracks again, booked again.

I knew I was gonna be paraded around again.

It's scary.

I'm in a completely vulnerable position here,

so your -- your mind just races.

They're about to lock you up, and they think

you're a murderer.

That -- that's when I realized this was for keeps.

They wanted a pound of flesh for me.

[Karen] The second night was much, much worse in jail

than the first,

because I started to think I wasn't going home again.

So that night was one of the worst in my life.

[David] The first time Karen was arrested,

I remember going back to my home office that afternoon

and my paralegal told me that

a guy named Mike had called the office and he has

important information for me.

I called him back

and I -- I have a memory of sitting at my desk

at home in my office.

And, you know, he had a gravelly voice,

and, you know, it was like a "holy smokes" moment

because he said that

perhaps someone else caused the death of John O'Keefe.

Very early on in the case, it was just the fog of war, right.

David didn't know what he was dealing with.

He came -- comes in on this case,

he had never met Karen before.

She's accused of hitting this guy, a cop, with her car,

and he ends up dying, and David is standing there

with his hands out, going, "I -- I wonder what happened.

I need some evidence. I don't have anything."

But then he got a call at his office,

and this person said

in almost whispered tones,

"You need to look at the folks inside 34 Fairview."

You need to look really hard at the homeowners.

You need to look really hard at the occupants of the house.

Something here is more than meets the eye.

[David] We didn't have any inkling that there might have been somebody

else out there who did it.

So, you know, it -- it was a turning point.

I called him into my office,

and he came and sat with my investigator and me.

And, you know, it didn't really

go anywhere with him beyond that.

It's not like he was a witness or that we could use him,

but that tip was invaluable because it sent us

in a different direction very early on in this investigation.

Had that tipster never provided that information, I'm not sure

if we'd necessarily be here.

Because initially, David was saying

something to the effect of it was a bad accident

and she's not criminally liable.

But then, after this tipster,

we start seeing the new defense,

which is they're saying Karen Read's been framed.

[reporter 5] The defense says that Read did not hit O'Keefe,

but that he was actually beaten inside of the home,

and that his body was later dumped outside.

It feels we're the only ones fighting for the truth of what

happened to John O'Keefe.

[reporter] Karen, just to be clear, you didn't do it.

We know who did it, Steve. We know.

And we know who spearheaded this cover-up.

-You all know. -[man] Yes, we do.

And no, she didn't do it. No, she didn't do it.

This is an innocent woman. -[cheering]

[Vinnie] The defense has an alternative story

about what happened here.

There's an alleged police cover-up here.

John O'Keefe went inside that house, and the allegation

is that something happened in there.

-Who do you think did it? -Well, certainly

the Massachusetts State Police is involved.

[Liza] There are people that were in that house that are involved.

Brian Albert is involved. Jennifer McCabe is involved.

The rest of the folks that were in that house.

There's some level of involvement by everyone on it.

[Liza] The people in the house that night included Brian Albert,

the owner of the home, and Brian Higgins.

Brian Albert is a Boston police officer.

He's the head of the fugitive unit.

Brian Higgins is a federal ATF agent and friends

with the chief of police of the Canton Police Department.

This all happened outside of the home

of a Boston police officer.

And so, for the first two years of this case, we knew something

wasn't right, and we were fighting tooth and nail to try

to get access to cell phone data, electronic information

that we knew was the key to this case.

You can't prove a conspiracy

by just asking tough questions of witnesses.

You have to have the data to back that up.

One of the things that we've tried extraordinarily

hard in this case to do is to

uncover all of the electronic communications.

How do you prove a conspiracy?

You need to see people's phones.

We live in the 21st century.

That's how conspiracies are conducted.

And that's one of the things that Alan and I had actually

had previous success on in the Spacey case.

[Alan] The prosecution did an extraction

of Jen McCabe's phone.

She was one of the women that was in the house that night.

She was one of the people who had suggested that John

come over to the house that night.

So we hired a computer forensics expert to look

through her extraction.

And lo and behold,

I'll never forget, I was standing in this office,

and I get a call, and our computer forensics guy,

he didn't know much about the case...

didn't know what the timing was, didn't know what

the impact of certain dates and times were.

Nothing.

And he said, "I just wanted to tell you, I don't know if this

"means anything to you,

"but in Jennifer McCabe's phone,

there's a Google search for 'how long to die in the cold.'"

She misspelled the word "how," spelled it H-O-S.

And I said,

"What?

"Are you sure?

Because that wasn't in their report."

He said, "Yeah, I'm sure."

And he said, "It was at 2:27 and 40 seconds."

"OK. What date?"

He said, "January 29th."

And I thought, "This -- this can't be.

This can't be."

Jennifer McCabe, according to the evidence that we have

from her phone,

Google searched "how long to die in the cold"

at 2:27 and 40 seconds a.m.,

three and a half hours before John's body was discovered.