285: Proctor Thought Death Was Caused by Fight & Proof Tail Light Was Smashed in The Sally Port?!
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Hey true crime besties, welcome back to an all new episode of Serialistly.

Hey everybody, welcome back to an all new episode of Serialistly with me, Annie Elise. Sorry, I'm like just in a very good mood. It's Friday. I'm wearing this like tomato red sweater that is like blinding me and my monitors because it's so bright, but whatevs. I'm in a really good mood. My son had his kindergarten, like not graduation, but like song this morning at a little themed breakfast.

I'm just in a happy mood. But what we are here to talk about today is not my color of my sweater or my son and his beautiful seashell song and his vocal abilities, but we're here to talk about the Karen Reid trial. More specifically, everything that went down this week in trial. And this week was incredibly important, not only because all of the testimony, but because

but because it is most likely the last full week we are going to have. It's estimated that the defense is going to complete presenting their case by Tuesday or possibly Wednesday of next week.

Then how long do you think we'll be on verdict watch? I don't know. Do you think a day, two days, three days? We may very well know at this exact time next week if Karen Reid is found innocent, not guilty, framed, mistrial, guilty, all the different options of like and variations of how this might play out. So

We'll see. We are close to the finish line. Now, as I said, this week, let me pull out my notes here. This week was a very important week in the trial. And I'm going to, of course, have Elena join. She's going to break it all down for us in her beautiful science, you know, not science. Well, she is, I guess, a scientist. So in her scientist, beautiful, organized ability. But for now, let me give you just the table of contents, OK, of what we're going to be talking about.

We're going to be talking about Michael Proctor and the group chat and his text messages and how in those text messages he says how he initially thought that it was a fight in the house based on what paramedics and stuff said of what caused John O'Keefe's death.

But then, as we know, 12, 24, 36 hours later, he was completely changing his tune. We also are going to talk about Officer Dever. You may have already seen the clips that I put out on social media this week. She was a very hostile witness, not only in the sense of, like, the actual legal definition, but just her behavior and her attitude. She was very combative, very abrasive, just not, not...

Someone I would ever want to engage in a conversation with, to be quite honest. And what I found most compelling about her testimony is when she discussed the closed doors meeting she had. We all know her salary for a rookie cop, how as a rookie she was having some problems.

important meetings with some pretty high up people, how she said point blank that she saw Higgins go into the Sally port for a weirdly long amount of time or whatever she said. I'm paraphrasing. You'll hear the exact quote from Elena.

But then that she now is misremembering that it was a false memory, as she called it. We also are going to talk about the dog bite expert, all of the back and forth of was it taillight? Was it dog bite? Was it canine scratches? And like the brutal, uncomfy cross-examination that happened during that.

We also are going to talk about Sergeant Barrows, and he is very important in this because he said that the taillight in the picture from the sally port is not the same taillight that he saw at the house in the afternoon the day the saw was going down. That it was missing a piece, which he described being what, like six inches by three inches, I believe, but that according to his term,

when he saw the image of it in the Sally Port, now it was smashed out. Once again, inferring that somebody else had smashed that taillight because it wasn't in that condition earlier, then the pieces perhaps were scattered at 34 Fairview, and whatever you believe, the rest is history.

We also are going to be talking about Lucky. He is the snowplow driver, and his testimony was incredibly important because he said that when he drove by at 2.30 in the morning, there was no body. He had full visibility all the way to the front door, and there was no body. But then when he went back on his route at 3.30, he saw the Ford Edge out front, and he said that that was really weird because he

The Alberts had a huge driveway, a lot of space for multiple cars. They very rarely ever parked on the street. And even more than that, you're not allowed to park on the street in a snowstorm like that because then the plows can't get around you. So why this Ford Edge was now arriving at 3.30 and parked right there? Who knows? What do you think? Going back to previous conversation and speculation, it's been...

insinuated that that car possibly belongs to an Albert family member, Colin, and that he was there to pick up Chloe, the German shepherd, and take her away.

Is that true? I don't know. Just telling you what everybody's talking about. And then we wrapped up the trial this week with the ARCA experts on the stand who otherwise are known out there in the trial circuit as the crash daddies. So...

Like I said, I'm kind of in a funny mood today, guys. I don't know. But it was a lot of interesting testimony, a lot to get into. I told you last week I would let you know if my opinion has changed at all. And if I still feel like I'm in the third bucket of I don't know what happened, but that I think there's too much reasonable doubt to convict Karen, I'm still there. I'm still there. I haven't gone full stop to...

frame conspiracy but I will say I'm definitely inching my way closer over to that not necessarily well I mean yeah I guess I will say I am moving closer to that because the dog bites guys it's we talked about this weeks and weeks ago at the at face value when you hear about this case the the

Occam's razor easy conclusion of it all is that Karen was wasted. She hit John with her car. She questioned it as much saying, could I have clipped him? Could I have hit him? And doesn't even remember blacked out and drove away. But then you start bringing in all the other details.

The dog being rehomed, but there being seemingly dog bites on John's arm. A possible fight in the basement and them redoing the flooring and jackhammering out cement that they redid that flooring a year earlier and ended up even selling that home right after this. That doesn't make sense. The Google searches, the butt dials from all different people, not just one person, multiple people, call histories erased.

Higgins saying he was going to move cars at the precinct, but he only moved one. Someone at dispatch saying that he was in the sally port for a weird amount of time. Tail light not being found at the scene, then being found hours later after Karen's car is taken. All of these things make that what once might have been a simple explanation, not so simple. And...

It does not sit right with me at all. And I will say this too. I had a thought pop in my mind. Let me see if it comes back to me. As I was going through all of that.

Oh yeah, we also saw more, like, more close-up footage from Waterfall that night where it looks like Higgins is pretty pissed off, where he, like, waves in John's direction. It seems like the guy has to, like, calm him down, put his arm on him. Then he's texting, as we know, like, are you coming here? I heard you're coming here, whatever the heck he said. Again, paraphrasing. It just doesn't look good. And I don't know. So I'm curious to know what you guys think.

I still am very much a toss-up here. If I were on the jury, though, if I were on the jury right now, I would be voting not guilty. That's my personal opinion. What do you think? So now I'm going to kick it over to Elena. She's going to break it all down in her beautiful scientist way and let us know what happened this week. All right, take it away, Elena.

Hey, Annie. It's great to be back for week seven. We're well into the defense's case by now, and this week we've heard some of the most surprising testimony yet, so let's get right into it. Monday the 2nd was honestly maybe one of the wildest days we've had in court so far. First thing in the morning, we got to hear Judge Canone's ruling about those text messages between Proctor and his friends that we talked about last week.

And in a rare win for the defense, Canone said that the defense will be allowed to introduce those texts without calling Proctor as a witness. She said, quote, I do find that they're properly authenticated, and I find that they come in as they go to the state of mind of Trooper Proctor, specifically as that goes to potentially reflecting any bias or omissions in the police investigation, end quote. But she did allow the prosecution to redact some specific portions of the messages.

And it turns out we didn't have to wait that long to hear the texts, because the next witness was Jonathan Diamantes, who's Michael Proctor's longtime friend and someone who was in the group chat with those text messages. Now, interestingly, the defense introduced these into evidence, but they didn't actually have Jonathan read any of the texts, although the prosecution actually did.

Now, from what I've researched, this could be a strategy from the defense to make the text seem even worse coming from the prosecution's own side. Or it could be that the defense was, you know, saving the text for a bigger moment, but the prosecution happened to jump on them first to try to do some damage control. Now, as for the text themselves, they show that even Proctor thought that the people at 34 Fairview could have been involved in John's death. His friend asked, quote, So the owner of the house was a cop that beat him up.

Proctor said, quote, that's what I initially thought after talking to Canton paramedics. Then when talking about if the collision was intentional, Proctor said, quote, that's a whole nother animal we won't be able to prove. So even Proctor thinks that intentional homicide isn't provable. But still, he says, quote, zero chance she's skating. She's effed. Really professional conduct from a decorated state trooper, right? But just wait, it gets worse. One of his friends asked, quote, she hot at least?

Proctor replied, quote, she's a whack job c-word. Yeah, she's a babe. Weird Riverfall accent, though. No ass. Then he also made derogatory comments, the specifics of which I really don't want to repeat, about Karen having colitis and colon cancer. Now, obviously, these are all horrendously inappropriate, unprofessional, all of that.

But I actually think that this last one is the most damning in terms of showing Proctor's mindset in regards to the investigation. This is the one that shows that Proctor is not only a dirtbag, but a biased dirtbag. One front asked if the homeowner at 34 Fairview would quote, receive some shit for having, you know, a dead body turn up on his lawn. Proctor's response, quote, nope. Homeowner is a Boston cop too. He's not saying nope, homeowner didn't have anything to do with it.

Not, nope, it was definitely a car collision, nothing to do with the house. Those are not the reasons Proctor gives for why the Alberts won't be implicated. The reason he gives is much more telling. It's because he's a Boston cop, too. Now, if that's not clear evidence of the blue wall of silence, I don't know what is. And keep in mind, this is only 16 hours, less than a day into John's death. Well before a thorough investigation was done, but Proctor? His mind is already made up.

Now the defense's next witness was Boston Police Officer Kelly Dever, who was a patrol officer for Canton Police on the night of John's death. Dever is what's known as a hostile witness. That term doesn't actually have anything to do with the witness's attitude, although in this case, Dever certainly did have an abrasive attitude. But it actually means a witness who testifies against the party that called them. So in this case, she was called by the defense, but her stance lines up more with the prosecution's theory.

To give another example, if the prosecution had called, say, Karen's father, who was, by the way, on their witness list, if they had called him, he would be considered a hostile witness for the prosecution because his stance and beliefs align more with the defense. So despite how much clearly she did not want to be on the stand, the defense still wanted to call her because she said something really interesting in an August 2023 interview with federal investigators.

She told them that when she was observing video theater of the Canton PD garage on the day of John's death, she saw ATF agent Brian Higgins and former police chief Ken Berkowitz go into the garage together and alone with Karen's SUV for, quote, a wildly long time. Now, if that's true, that would be huge. That would be an eyewitness to two members of law enforcement

one of which is thought by many to be a suspect in John's murder, there would be an eyewitness to both of them in the garage with Karen's car for a suspiciously long amount of time. But Debra says it's not true. She says she was shown evidence that she actually left Canton PD well before Karen's car even came into the garage, so she retracted her first statement and called it, quote, a false memory. Now I totally get not being able to remember things.

Forgetting where you put your phone, forgetting the name of your friend's husband, that kind of thing. And if she was saying she couldn't remember, like, exactly what day this happened or mixed up the details of something, something like that, I'd get it. But, like, completely making up a false memory with vivid details about who and where and how long? Is she saying she basically hallucinated all of that? That seems a lot less likely to me.

Usually, we forget things, yes, but not falsely remember something that never even happened. Debra also added that the defense team threatened to charge her with perjury if she didn't stick to her original story. On a phone call with the defense, she said, quote, And the one word I can very definitely remember is that they said they would charge me with perjury.

Now on redirect, Jackson pointed out that defense attorneys can't actually press charges against people. They're not members of law enforcement. But I actually don't doubt that the defense used the word perjury when talking to Dever. I can totally picture that going down. And is it a bad look for the defense to be aggressive with witnesses, to be potentially threatening them? Yeah, it is.

Is it an even worse look for a police officer to give this really vivid interview to federal agents that implicates her colleagues in really serious misconduct and then suddenly retract that statement? I would say that's worse. And Karen seems to agree. Outside the courthouse, reporters asked her if she thought that Debra was bribed or threatened or coaxed by the police or something, something to change her testimony.

And she said, quote, I didn't suggest it. She did. She was called into the Boston Police Commissioner's office and then her story completely changed. She recanted. Then the final witness on Monday and going into Tuesday was Dr. Marie Russell. She's a retired emergency room doctor and a forensic pathologist with a special interest in dog bites. She said she's overseen more than 50 death investigations as a medical officer at a prison. And she was also both a professor and a cop. So she's really done it all.

She says she's seen at least 500 dog bite cases in her career, and using that knowledge, she said confidently that the injuries to John's arm were a result of a dog attack. She talked about the different patterns in the arm wounds and called them, quote, highly specific for a dog attack, although that last word attack was not allowed by the judge.

Dr. Russell also added that the position of the cuts suggests that they were defensive wounds, meaning that John sort of put his arms up to protect himself from something, exposing the area that ultimately got injured. Russell also testified that the injuries on John's arm happened before he died because they showed what's called a vital reaction, which is inflammation around the edges of a wound that can only happen when the injured person is still alive.

And she added that John's overall injuries are inconsistent with being hit by a car, particularly because he didn't have any bruises or fractures to his lower extremities. And finally, she said that hole on John's hoodie, that one I pointed out in the recap a couple of weeks ago, the one that was about the size of the tip of a finger with the fraying around the edges, she said in her opinion, that was made by a canine tooth.

Then Brennan stepped up for Cross. Now, like I said last week, because Brennan spent so much of his career as a defense attorney, I think he's much stronger on Cross than on Direct. Not that he's any, like, less annoying to listen to, because I still find him kind of infuriating on Cross at times, but I do think he's much better at making his points on Cross than on Direct.

Brennan first got Dr. Russell to admit that she's never testified before as an expert on dog bites, but she's since advertised herself as a trial expert and she's used a photo of herself testifying in the first trial to sort of promote her services. Attorney Brennan also took issue with Dr. Russell's claim that she's uniquely qualified to testify in this case and he pointed out that she hasn't earned any certificates or attended any seminars on the specific topic of dog bite pattern recognition.

But Dr. Russell doubled down, saying that she's the only doctor that she knows of who's done residencies in emergency medicine and forensic pathology and who has "a lifelong interest in dog bites." Then when Brennan pointed out that the medical examiner found that John's arm injuries were superficial with no puncture or depth, Dr. Russell said that that's actually consistent with her own conclusions that they're dog bites.

Remember, the prosecution's medical examiner, Dr. Scordi Bello, wasn't allowed to answer if she thought that John's injuries were consistent with a dog attack. So it is very possible that both doctors would agree that these are dog bites. Now, Dr. Russell also admitted that her stance has changed somewhat since the first trial. The first trial, she gave a more conservative testimony that the injuries were from some sort of interaction with an animal, and it could be from either teeth or nails.

But she says since, she's done more research. So, quote, my degree of certainty perhaps increased. Now, I will say it's a little ironic that Brennan, of all people, is upset with witnesses slightly changing their testimony between trials.

Because he's the one calling up people like Carrie Roberts, who changed her testimony about whether or not she heard Karen tell Jen to go go hypothermia. He's called up Timothy Nuttall, who changed his testimony about whether or not John was wearing a jacket. I could go on. And to me, those are bigger changes than what Dr. Russell did in changing her stance of, you know, some animal's teeth or nails to her now more specific stance of dog teeth.

It would be a bigger deal to me if she first said that the injuries were from a car crash and then totally changed her mind to dog teeth. But that's not the case. She's just going from a general claim to more specific. But nonetheless, as cross-examination continued into Tuesday, Brennan got even more heated. He asked if Dr. Russell had talked to the defense team since her testimony the day before, and she admitted that she did, specifically that attorney Alessi told her to always ask for a transcript during cross-examination.

Dr. Russell also admitted that someone from Attorney Alessi's office had helped her with organizing her report, but when she couldn't recall specifically who had helped her, Brennan asked her with this sort of sassy tone, "Do you have memory issues?" and Dr. Russell literally gasped out loud at that. She was clearly offended because you could tell that Brennan wasn't asking this in good faith. He was clearly taking a cheap shot at her age and I thought that was really uncalled for.

Then Brenna pointed out that the underside of John's arm didn't have any injuries, which he argued shows that they weren't caused by a dog because a dog's mouth is, quote, like a lever. But Dr. Russell said it's actually possible for only the upper jaw to hit the skin, which would leave the underside uninjured. Now, there was another tense moment when Dr. Russell was asked about the holes in John's hoodie and whether they had been swabbed for DNA.

Because right after Brennan asked this, Alessi stood up and said, quote, The defense moves strongly, vigorously for a mistrial with prejudice. His argument was that since the prosecution didn't call their dog DNA expert during their case, they don't have any basis to bring it up during Dr. Russell's cross-examination. But unsurprisingly, the judge denied the motion and allowed the prosecution to continue with their line of questioning.

And Dr. Russell confirmed that the holes in the hoodie didn't contain any dog DNA, but they did contain pig DNA, which a lot of people think could be from dog treats. And finally, Brennan confronted her with a report from Dr. John Walsh. And that report said that John's arm injuries could not have been the result of a dog attack. But Dr. Russell argued that Walsh works in a military clinic, so his knowledge of dog bites might be less or smaller in scope than hers as an ER doctor.

Now, overall, I thought that Dr. Russell held up well against cross-examination, and she proved to be a pretty solid witness for the defense. Remember, it's on the prosecution to prove that the injuries were from a taillight, not necessarily on the defense to prove that the injuries were from a dog bite.

all the defense has to do is bring up enough doubt in the jurors' minds. And if those jurors aren't totally sure that the injuries came from a tail light, it might be hard for them to convict. Now the next witness for the defense was Dighton Police Sergeant Nicholas Barros. And I was honestly surprised to see him on the defense's witness list, because he was called by the prosecution in the first trial. But it turns out Sergeant Barros had testimony that I think was actually a huge win for the defense.

On January 29th, he joined Michael Proctor and Yuri Buchanik as they towed Karen's car from her parents' house in Dayton. At the time of the towing, Karen's taillight had, quote, a crack missing, but was not completely damaged.

And Barros went on to specify that the one piece that was missing was only about the size of a dollar bill. And then when Jackson showed a picture of Karen's car at Canton PD and asked if that was consistent with the taillight damage that Barros originally saw, he said, quote, absolutely not. That taillight is completely smashed out.

So to me, this is huge. We have a police sergeant who's courageous enough to basically be a whistleblower, to go against the Canton police, the state police, and more or less the entire town of Canton and say, hey, that's not right. That taillight in the Canton PD garage is not the same as when we picked up the car from Karen's house. I've said before that I think the taillight evidence is one of the most problematic pieces of the puzzle for the defense. Because

Because I can imagine a juror asking themselves, well, okay, if Karen didn't hit John, how did her tail light get all over 34 Fairview? We know, of course, the defense's answer to that question is that it got there because it was planted by the state police. That's kind of a tough jump for 12 jurors to make. But honestly, the defense has done a good job of building the foundation for it and giving the jurors the tools they might need to make that jump.

They got Gallagher to admit that he and his trusty leaf blower didn't find any pieces of taillight on the initial search. They got Lieutenant Kevin O'Hara to admit that the scene was not closed off, completely accessible to anybody. They established a timeline that shows there was this chunk of time between the state police seizing the car and the taillight fragments appearing on the lawn.

We've got that Sally Port video that shows Proctor was messing around in the area of the right taillight, and they showed that it was inverted, maybe on purpose. And now we've got an eyewitness, a cop nonetheless, who's testifying that the taillight was way more damaged in Canton PD than it was in Cairns driveway. All that together, they just might be able to convince 12 jurors that this is a conspiracy. Now, to be completely fair, Brennan did make some decent points on Cross.

He first got Barrows to admit that he didn't actually see either Proctor or Buchanick actually touch or damage the taillight in any sort of way. Although I will say that doesn't necessarily disprove anything, because the defense is saying that they manipulated it or broke it or whatever at or on the way to Canton PD, not there in Dighton in the driveway.

And Brennan also pointed out that Barros didn't really name the specifics of the damage to Karen's tail light in his report. He said that it had damage, but he didn't write anything about the size or the extent or the specific location of where the damage was. So it is a little bit hard to know for sure exactly what he saw. And Barros also admitted that his testimony has changed a bit since the last time he testified. Like I said, in the last trial, Barros was actually called by the prosecution.

And at that time, he didn't testify to any difference between his observations in Cairns Driveway and in Canton PD.

So of course, as we've said, changing your testimony, it never looks good. Whether it's because someone genuinely forgets what happened, or they lied the first time, or they've been paid off so now they're gonna lie the second time, whatever it is, it's not a good look. I get it. But what I want to point out is that unlike a lot of the other witnesses who have changed their testimony in this case, Barros doesn't really stand to gain anything for changing his testimony besides maybe a clean conscience.

Remember, he's employed as a police sergeant in Dayton, just 30 miles away from Canton. And in some ways, he's probably putting his livelihood on the line here. And what does he really gain in return?

It's not like he's paid one of these giant lump sums like the expert witnesses are or anything like that. So in my opinion, he has nothing to gain and everything to lose by speaking out. And yet he did it anyway, and that's what makes me believe him. Then on Wednesday, we moved on to another really important witness for the defense. This was Brian Loughran, who goes by the nickname Lucky.

Lucky was working as a snowplow driver in the early morning hours of John's death, and during that time he plowed past 34 Fairview several times. He said on his initial passes, which were between about 2:40 a.m. and 3 a.m., he said he had a clear view of the entire lawn and that flagpole area, and he saw absolutely nothing.

Certainly not John's 6 foot 200 pound body. Then by the time he came back for another pass around 3:30 a.m., he said that it was snowing more heavily, but he still had a good view of the flagpole. And again, he saw nothing in that lawn area. But he did notice something, and that was a Ford Edge truck parked in the road outside the house. And he said that stood out to him for a couple of reasons.

First, he said that the Alberts never really parked their car in the road because they had quite a bit of parking right there in their driveway. And two, parking like that is actually against the rules during a snow emergency. And Luckey was supposed to report it, but he chose not to report Brian Albert because he himself is a police officer. The prosecution's cross-examination of Luckey focused on how pressure from the media, particularly from Turtle Boy, could have maybe affected his testimony.

Now, in case you're not familiar, Aiden Kearney, aka Turtle Boy, he's been a huge presence online and offline throughout both trials.

And depending on who you ask, he should either be hailed as a hero for bringing media attention to the case or thrown in jail for intimidating witnesses. According to Lucky, though, Turtle Boy has never threatened him. He did admit that some people online were posting unsavory photos of himself and his family, and he said he found that aggravating. And he said he felt relieved when he was, quote, "embraced rather than attacked" after testifying for the defense in the first trial.

But he also said he didn't really have that much time to give thought to the media either way, because the poor guy was dealing with the death of his wife. Now, I can't speak for what Turtle Boy or his following have or have not said about Lucky, or any of the other witnesses for that matter, and how it could affect their testimony.

But what I do want to point out is that Lucky gave his initial statement to the defense lawyers well before Turtle Boy even started posting about him. Then Brennan also tried to show that Lucky might not have been paying very good attention to the road while he was plowing, and he did this by asking which yard on the road of Fairview had a dumpster that morning.

When Lucky said he didn't see any dumpster at all, Brennan then showed the jury dash cam video of a dumpster across the street from 34 Fairview. On redirect though, Lucky was able to point out that the Ford Edge stuck out more to him than a dumpster would because of the reasons we just talked about: because the Albert's never parked there before, and because it was against the rules and it forced him to have to physically maneuver his plow around it in a weird way.

So it's not so far-fetched to think that he could recall that, but not a dumpster that was well into someone's yard that didn't require him to move around it. Overall, I thought that Lucky stood up well to Cross, even as Brennan kept, you know, trying to trick him. And honestly, I think it's hard not to trust Lucky.

He's a widow and he's clearly a hard-working guy. He works as a snowplow driver, a Zamboni driver, and a food delivery driver. And I think a good portion of the jurors are going to find this normal blue-collar kind of guy to be reliable and trustworthy. And it's also worth noting that Lucky has known all six Albert brothers since they were children. You could argue he does have something to lose by testifying for the defense, by going against the almighty Albert family.

And just like Sergeant Barrows, he did it anyway, and I think that says a lot about his character. And finally, we heard briefly from Karina Kalikifas. She's friends with Jen McCabe and was at the waterfall with Jen, John, Karen, and the rest of the old Canton gang on the night of the incident. She testified that on that night, Karen and John were very affectionate to each other. They were so affectionate, in fact, that when John kissed Karen on the forehead, Karina looked over at her husband and said, "Hey, why don't you ever do that kind of nice thing to me?"

She called it, quote, the sweetest thing I've ever seen. Karina also said that although Karen had been drinking, she didn't appear to be really impaired in any way, and she had, quote, no concerns about her driving home that night. Then on Friday, we got started with the much-anticipated testimony from ARCA. The first ARCA witness was Dr. Daniel Wolfe, who's the director of accident reconstruction. On direct, it was clear that attorney Jackson wanted the jury to know that Dr. Wolfe and ARCA were not hired by the defense initially.

We know that the ARCA experts were originally hired by outside federal investigators, but all the jury is allowed to know in this trial is that the experts were hired by some sort of outside entity. Then Dr. Wolf testified to two main types of testing that his group did to try to figure out if the damage to Karen's car and the injuries to John's body were consistent with being in a collision.

In the first type of test, Dr. Wolf wanted to see if the damage to Karen's taillight could have been caused by something other than hitting John. Specifically whether throwing a cocktail glass at that taillight could cause the damage. So his team designed a cannon, a literal cannon, that could launch cocktail glasses at different model taillights. And he found that firing the cocktail glass at 37 miles per hour could cause damage to the taillight that was consistent with what was found on Karen's car.

Then when asked to compare his test to Dr. Welcher's blue paint test, Dr. Wolfe pointed out that Welcher only showed that it was possible for John's arm and the taillight to align at the same height.

But the test doesn't really prove much else besides that. It doesn't show what kind of force would be generated or what kind of injuries it might cause. Then in his second series of tests, Dr. Wolf used a Lexus that was the same model as Karen's, along with a crash dummy and a special dummy arm, and he used these to try to model what a collision between the car and the arm would look like at different speeds. He did the tests at 10, 15, 17, 24, and 29 miles per hour,

And he experimented with other variables too, like suspending the dummy arm from either a forklift or attaching it to the crash dummy, and then trying both head-on and sideswipe type collisions. And he testified that all of his tests at all speeds and no matter how the crash arm was positioned, all of those tests showed that the damage to the example taillight was, quote, completely inconsistent with the damage to Karen's taillight.

and he said that the damage to the clothing on the crash arm was also inconsistent with the tears to john's clothes in particular he noted that the diffusers that are inside of karen's taillight were completely broken which didn't occur in any of his tests and likewise john's hoodie had puncture marks and holes on it that were not found in his tests either

After that, I thought that Brennan did an okay job of cross-examining Dr. Wolfe, but probably not good enough to discredit him or his findings or make him look worse than Dr. Welcher, honestly. One point we knew Brennan would make is that the defense team asked Dr. Wolfe to communicate with them over Signal, which is an encrypted app that doesn't save messages. And Wolfe also admitted to deleting between 50 and 100 text messages between himself and the defense team,

But he argued that that was just a normal part of his routine after a case was done. Now, I'm not sure how much weight the jury will give that. It is a little sketchy. Is it sketchier than all of the communication going on with the prosecution witnesses? You know, the butt dials and everything? Probably not.

Brennan also took issue with the fact that in previous proceedings, Dr. Wolf gave the defense a list of questions that he would like to be asked and also said how he would answer those questions. Attorney Brennan tried to frame it like it was a script, like Dr. Wolf was pre-writing these questions to intentionally mislead the jury.

And maybe there's some truth to that, but I also don't think it's that strange for one of these paid expert witnesses to make an outline of what's important to emphasize during direct examination.

And again, I could be totally off base here. Maybe the jury is actually giving a lot of weight to these things, but the way I see it, this probably falls within how you'd expect a witness to prepare for questioning. Now, when it comes to questions about the actual science and experiments, the biggest point the prosecution made was that the dummy arm that Wolf used was probably lighter than John's arm.

Now I say "probably" because the dummy arm was about 9 and a half pounds, and Brennan claimed that John's arm was almost 12 pounds.

But it later came out that no one has actually measured the weight of John's arm. This 12-pound figure is just an educated guess based on John's total body weight, so no one really knows. But regardless, Brennan pointed out that using a lighter test arm would show less damage to the taillight than if Dr. Wolfe had used a more accurately weighted arm.

But Dr. Wolff argued that this 2.5 pound difference in the arm probably wouldn't matter compared to the 6,000 pound car. Then Wolff and Brennan went back and forth about this for a while, about different weights, different speeds, different scenarios. And Dr. Wolff eventually admitted that the weight of the arm could matter to some extent. Like, if the dummy arm was only 5 pounds, so half of its weight, he said that could make a difference.

So it sounds like the weight of the arm does, or at least could matter in some scenarios. But honestly, if neither the prosecution experts nor the defense experts know the actual weight of John's arm, I don't really know what the jury is supposed to make of that. And finally, Wolf also admitted that in his test, the crushed dummy was harnessed in place, which can't fully replicate how a real unrestrained person would move after they'd been hit. And that wrapped up questioning for this week.

But we can definitely expect to hear more from Dr. Wolff next week. So far though, I will say that when it comes to comparing Dr. Wolff's accident reconstruction to Dr. Welcher's, personally, I give my vote to Wolff. For one, I found him to be much more collected on the stand, less abrasive, easier to understand, all of that. And outside of personality, I found Dr. Wolff's analysis to be a lot more scientific.

It seemed like he made a much better effort to test out multiple scenarios and variables and replicate the alleged collision as closely as possible. And I also think it's important to add that Dr. Wolf and his colleague, yes, they're currently on the defense's payroll. I do get that. But remember, when they did these tests, came to their original conclusions, gave their original testimony, they were hired externally by federal investigators.

They were basically third-party investigators and they came to the conclusion that the damage to Karen's car isn't consistent with a collision. And I think that's huge. And that wraps up another crazy week. I've got to say, I think the defense is doing their job pretty well so far. They've only called eight witnesses, but so far they've been pretty impactful.

We heard Matthew DeSogra say that John's phone was most likely used after Karen's car backed up. We saw those gross texts from Jonathan Diamantes that showed Proctor's bias. We had Officer Dever up there that showed how people can dramatically change their testimony after the state police get to them. Then we had Dr. Russell saying that John's injuries definitely did not come from a dog. We had Sergeant Barros directly calling out the changes to the taillight.

Of course, our lovable Lucky Loughran saying that there was no body on the lawn after Karen left. Karina saying that Karen and John were anything but fighting on the night in question. And now we have Dr. Wolf saying that the damage to Karen's car is definitely not consistent with hitting a pedestrian. So all in all, so far I think the defense does stand a real shot of getting a not guilty verdict.

The question is, how many more witnesses until they rest? I think we can expect them to wrap up early to mid next week, and then we'll move on to rebuttal witnesses and closing arguments. I can't wait to be back to break it all down with you guys. Thanks, Annie. See, guys, Elena just keeps me grounded. She just has a way of with words to where it's like I kind of go off the handle and like off the rail sometime and she just regroups us, reorient us and like

keeps us grounded and can convey that information in a more sensible way than I can. So that is it for this week. I will be back with you Monday with an all new deep dive. And this one is so twisted, so crazy and like truly unbelievable that people not only are capable of such evil, but think they can get away with it. It really blows my mind. So make sure you check out Monday's episode. Other than that, have a fantastic weekend. Love

Love you guys so much. Thank you for being here. Let me know what you think. Karen Reed, guilty, innocent, framed, too much reasonable doubt to convict. What do you think? All right. Until the next one, be nice. Don't kill people. Don't be combative if you ever have to testify on the stand. Definitely. I don't know. I don't even know what to say anymore. So I'm just going to wrap up. Be nice. Don't kill people. All right. Bye, guys.