289: Karen Read: Verdict Watch, Closing Arguments & Powerful Final Week
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Hey guys, I am so excited because we are finally going back out on tour and this is going to be our biggest tour yet. We are hitting a lot of cities, coming to a city near you, and this tour is going to be unlike the last tour and unlike any episode or case that we have ever presented.

It's going to be an all-new exclusive case, an entirely new approach, interactive with you guys, and it is just going to be so great. I am so excited to connect with all of you guys. I am very eager for you to hear this case, and it's just going to be an unforgettable night. So tickets are on sale now, but grab yours now before they're gone. You can get all of the information at AnnieElise.com. I will also link it in the show notes, and I'm really excited to see you there.

So head to AnnieElise.com, grab your tickets, and I'll be seeing you soon. Karen Reid, accused of the January 2022 death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe, has consistently asserted her innocence, alleging a concerted effort by law enforcement to frame her. Charged with hitting her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe, with her SUV early Saturday morning and leaving him in a snowbank.

- The closely watched murder trial has ended in a mistrial. - The prosecution is indicating that it will retry this case. So the question becomes one of how will they do it? - Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all new episode of Serialistly.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialistly. With me, Annie Elise, and we are in our Karen Reid recap era right now, but actually it's the end of an era because this more than likely is the last recap. The next episode you hear where I'm talking about Karen Reid will be the verdict. And let me just say, this trial, it went on as expected. They had forecasted eight weeks. Well, technically, I guess it

may spill into nine possibly but it went on the full time which kind of surprised me because it seemed like when we were at that halfway point that it might end up being under eight weeks but this week was like a full banger of an ending because the

the defense continued to bring their witnesses. These witnesses really held their own and, in my opinion, illustrated a lot of proof and a very compelling argument that John O'Keefe was never hit by a vehicle. And what was really interesting this week, too, I feel like there were so many iconic moments, but Hank Brennan, on his own cross-examination, was kind of put into his place by some of these experts, where he tried to challenge them or make them look stupid by asking, you know,

well, isn't there something called a this, like a medical term? And I'm like, uh, I think you actually mean this. Like it was just, again, iconic. And there was one part midweek where they ended up calling for, the defense ended up calling for a mistrial with prejudice, meaning if it's with prejudice, they would never be, they wouldn't be able to file charges again. And they did that because during one of the cross examinations with ARCA, Brennan held up John O'Keefe's shirt and said, he asked the guy like, hey,

hey, look, see all these holes in the back of his shirt? Did you take any of this into consideration when you were doing your analysis? All of this. Come to find out, or not even come to find out, everybody who was watching it knew it at the time, except apparently Hank Brennan, but those holes were not caused from the incident or alleged incident. Those holes were cut after the fact. So then the defense,

The defense goes for a mistrial with prejudice, which then Brennan comes in and had to throw his tail between his legs, make this very uncomfy apology where he basically admits to Bev. The jury was out of the courtroom at this point. Like, I made a mistake. This is really what it is. And to everybody's, I don't even want to say everybody's disbelief. I think everybody could see it coming from a mile away. But Bev did not grant the mistrial. But it was a huge, epic mistake.

failure on the Commonwealth. And there's just kind of been a few of those, right? And the guilty poll that we have up, the public one, it went down this week. It went down back to 2%. So it'll be interesting to see what the jury's been thinking about all of this and what verdict they're going to come to.

So Thursday, we had the charge conference, which is basically where they go over all the jury instructions. They make any last minute motions or, you know, asks of the court of what to include in those jury instructions, what not to include. And then closing arguments was on Friday. And I got to say, nobody does a closer like Alan Jackson. It was strong. It hit hard and intense.

We're going to see. They basically talk about many times, too, and they've done this throughout the trial, how the Commonwealth's own medical examiner could not rule that John was hit by a vehicle. Some of the experts even saying he was not hit by a vehicle. It couldn't have happened, especially the defense experts saying that, saying his injuries are just not consistent with a collision. And that really needs to be the very first question that is asked in the deliberation room. Before we vote on, you know, is Karen guilty, not guilty, like,

Let's vote on this. Was John O'Keefe hit by a car? And if anybody votes no,

Case closed right there. You can't convict her because that is what the entire case is built upon. That is the foundation. And I don't believe that the Commonwealth proved their argument in this. I don't. I know I've been mentioning how I think it leans way more in the reasonable doubt category. I think also after this week, it was such a compelling week. I still am sitting now. I'm leaning more towards just not guilty that there's something else here. And we've been talking about that for weeks too, right? That

It seems like it would be such a common, easy explanation. She was wasted. She hit John. He flew back, hit his head, was incapacitated, and then died in the snow. But then you layer in all of the other shady shit. The butt dials. The deleted search histories. The rehoming of the dog. The redoing of the basement. The lying about being in the Sally port. The this, the that. And it's like...

You know, how do you explain all of that? Unless you are the worst investigators on the face of the planet, which, spoiler alert, you probably are. But it's like, how do you explain all of that away? I will be shocked if Karen Reid is found guilty. I think they do have a lot of grounds for appeal, and I'm sure they will file appeals if she is, but...

I would be shocked if she's found guilty. So we're going to be on verdict watch. I will let you know as soon as we have a verdict and interested to know what you think. But anyway, as I said, this was probably one of the most iconic weeks in the trial so far. So I'm going to have Elena jump in. She's going to break down everything that went down this week for you all the way through closings.

And then we will be on verdict watch together. And just as an FYI, guys, I know Elena is very, very smart and you can hear that in her voice, but she's a scientist. She went to MIT. So she is like incredibly thorough and smart. So anyways, I just love when she breaks it all down, but I'll shut up now. Elena, take it away. Hey, Yenny. Well, both sides have rested and it's all up to the jury now. Let's break down the testimony that they heard this week, since this will be the freshest in their mind as they go to deliberate. We kicked off the week on Monday the 9th.

Now this was a full day, but I gotta say, it was a lot of sidebars, a lot of wadirs, a lot of breaks, and not a lot of new testimony. First thing, we finish up Dr. Daniel Wolfe's testimony. On redirect, and then recross, and re-redirect, and then re-recross, they covered a lot of the same things that we already talked about last week.

specifically about the different weights that were used in different tests. No, ultimately, neither the prosecution expert Welcher nor the defense expert Wolfe know the actual weight of John's arm. And they both used a medium-weight crash dummy. So it's kind of a wash in the end. But hey, at least Wolfe actually tested different speeds and different arm positions and different collision types. That reason alone is enough for me to give my vote to Wolfe over Welcher. Get this. We heard another motion for the defense for a mistrial with prejudice.

This is their third time asking for a mistrial in as many weeks. Do any of you guys have like a weekly chores list like me? Mine's like scrub the bathroom, take out the trash, hear the defense motion for a mistrial with prejudice, listen to Kanoni deny it. And that's exactly what happened. And all jokes aside, this one was actually a bit different and a bit more dramatic.

And it had to do with Brennan holding up John's hoodie to the jury and then asking Dr. Wolfe if the holes on the back of it could have been caused by him falling backward and hitting the road. Now the issue here is that both holes were actually cut by the prosecution's own forensic scientist, Maureen Hartnett. They clearly had nothing to do with how John died, so it was really out of line for Brennan to bring it up and act like they could be. And shockingly, Brennan actually admitted to this mistake.

He got up to the podium and characterized it as an honest mistake and said he simply didn't realize that Hartnett cut the hoodie. But the defense, they saw it very differently. Alessi for the defense said, quote, what could be more egregious? What could be more misleading? The prosecution picked the most opportune, sensitive time to pull this stunt. This is intentional. This is irremediable. And this is on the key issue of this case, whether there was any collision at all.

Even after that, unsurprisingly, Judge Kenoni denied the mistrial and instead gave the jury instructions that the cuts were made by Hartnett. What was really bad though is that she totally snapped at the defense while they were trying to figure out what to say to the jury. Jackson and Alessi were talking amongst themselves about this jury instruction and it must have been at the same time that Kenoni was trying to speak because she did that thing that you might hear from your middle school teacher

You know, where the teacher is like, well, if you're not going to listen, I guess I just won't talk. That kind of thing. She totally did that. And honestly, I found it pretty rude, especially during this really important moment for the defense. After that whole thing, we did hear briefly from private investigator John Tiedemann. He made measurements at 34 Fairview and he testified that the distance from the mailbox to the main door is 66 feet. The distance from the mailbox to the side door is 70 feet.

and the distance from the mailbox to the garage door is 78 feet. And those are all less than the 84 feet that we know John took leading up to his phone locking for the last time. But he did admit that the distance from the flagpole through the street and then back up the driveway would be more than 84 feet. He also testified that the garage at 34 Fairview had concrete flooring and steps with a ridge. And the defense is implying that that's where John could have hit his head.

But the judge told the jury to strike that part of the testimony, which basically means that they can't consider it. And then on Monday and into Tuesday, we heard testimony from Dr. Elizabeth LaPasada, who's a forensic pathologist and a medical examiner. Before that though, Judge Canone ruled that a bunch of her testimony had to be excluded, especially the parts about dog bites and car crashes. And I thought this was disappointing because Dr. LaPasada seemed very qualified to me.

She's a professor of pathology at Brown University, and she was previously the chief medical examiner for the entire state of Rhode Island. She's done over 3,000 autopsies, and of those, she said hundreds were on car crash victims, and at least 50 were on dog bite victims. But Canone still didn't find her to be qualified. Now, after some back and forth with the lawyers, Canone did agree to at least let Dr. LaPasada testify about animal bites, but not about dog bites specifically.

And after all that mess with the lawyers, Dr. LaPosada was still able to give some really powerful testimony for the defense. She said, quote, And when she was asked if the injuries were consistent with John hitting flat ground, she said, quote,

It has to be a surface that has some ridges in it to make those little vertical patterns." Which directly disagrees with what we heard from the prosecution expert, Dr. Isaac Wolf. La Posada also said that she looked at pictures of the lawn at 34 Fairview and she didn't see anything that would cause the type of skull injury that John had. And also, that cut to John's right eye? She said it was consistent with being punched with a closed fist.

She added that all of the injuries to his torso area, like those rib fractures and the bleeding to his stomach lining, were caused by medical chest compression, not by being hit by a vehicle. Now Cross definitely got a little interesting. Dr. LaFasada was the first defense witness to really go toe-to-toe with Brennan, to give him a little bit of sass.

And it started right off the bat when Brennan got to the podium a couple of minutes before noon and said, "Good afternoon, Doctor." And she replied, "Uh, it's not afternoon for six more minutes." That really set the tone for the cross. And I didn't realize this before, but apparently Brennan and La Posada have some sort of history. Not romantic history, obviously, but legal history. When Brennan was a defense lawyer, he himself hired Dr. La Posada at least a couple of different times.

But this week he said, quote, "I don't use her anymore. I'm not going to disclose why I don't use her anymore, but I don't use her anymore." Weird verbiage, by the way, Brennan. But the point is, these two have some bad blood and it definitely showed. Now, as for the substance of Cross, there wasn't all that much because these two could not agree on anything. They argued about how quickly John's brain would have started swelling after the impact.

They argued about when blood would have pooled under his eyes. They argued about the specifics of hypothermia. They argued about whether or not this counts as a classic wound. They even argued about how similar the brain is to tofu. Brennan also tried to call her credentials into question by bringing up her work at the Station Nightclub Fire in Rhode Island.

She admitted that she received, quote, a flurry of negative press for showing up late to the scene, but she said it was without basis and she came as soon as she was called. Now, in another line of questioning, Dr. LaPosada did admit that a wound on a dead person wouldn't spurt blood, which calls into question if John was actually passed away when Karen found him.

Because remember, she said she pulled out a piece of glass from his nose and blood gushed out. And finally, after the prosecution went through all of that effort to get Dr. LaFaceta's testimony regarding car crashes thrown out, Brendan asked her about it anyway. He specifically asked if she knew how fast Karen's car was going at the time of the incident. And she replied, quote, Well, it didn't hit him, so it doesn't matter. It was not relevant to my opinion. By looking at the body, I could tell there was no evidence of impact with the vehicle.

So whether a vehicle was going slow or fast was not relevant, end quote. And that was about it for Cross. I was surprised that Brennan didn't really press her on her most damning opinion, which were that John's injuries could not have been caused by falling backwards onto a flat surface, and that hypothermia did not contribute to his death. Now, I'm really interested how the jury will weigh the testimony from Dr. LaPasada and Dr. Russell against that from Dr. Isaac Wolfe and Dr. Scordi Bello.

because in my opinion, all four of them were extremely reliable medical experts with some solid reasoning to back up their opinion. Then on Tuesday afternoon and into Wednesday, the defense called their last witness Dr. Andrew Rentschler, a biomechanist who's also from the reconstruction firm ARCA. Now Dr. Rentschler, he was a good witness for the defense, don't get me wrong. The actual content of what he testified to was really important.

But I didn't find him quite as, you know, calm, cool, and collected as the other defense witnesses. He said some odd things, like he gave a shout out to his kid for his birthday, which I don't think is appropriate at all for a murder trial. But anyway, I digress. And getting to his actual testimony, Renshler's main conclusion was that John's injuries were not consistent with being hit by Karen's car.

He did searches in the literature, he looked at Aperture's report, and he did his own field testing to come to his conclusion. And he also considered if either a head-on collision or a sideswipe collision could explain John's injuries. He testified that a head-on collision would have caused much more damage to Karen's car than was actually found, while a sideswipe collision would have pushed John's body into a completely different position than it was actually found in.

He said, quote, "I see no evidence anywhere in this case that would suggest that if you get a glancing blow, that somehow would produce enough force to push you eight to ten feet into a yard." He also pointed out that there are 36 injuries on the outside of John's arm, but only nine holes in the sleeve of his hoodie, which doesn't make sense if he was injured while wearing the hoodie. He said that the lack of internal injuries to John's arms and legs is also significant.

He said, quote, at these speeds, you would likely expect fractures, certainly to the hand and likely to the ulna and radius in the forearm if the hand was struck by the rear of the SUV. And likewise, all of Rensselaer's testing showed serious damage to the dummy's leg, which John didn't have at all. And then he explained why the cut on John's nose is also inconsistent with the collision.

He said, quote, the shard can't come out, make a hard right hand turn, and then somehow embed itself on the left side of the nose, end quote. Then Dr. Rensselaer also directly called Dr. Welcher's studies out. He testified that during the blue pain experiments, Welcher physically pushed himself into the taillight area and leaned into the impact, which is not at all how an actual pedestrian would act.

He added that the paint test didn't involve any force calculations, it didn't show how John's arm would have moved after this alleged collision, and it didn't show how the taillight would actually break. Rentschler said, "You have to explain how these things happened. If you don't have details, if you haven't performed a proper analysis, then you can't come to a conclusion that something happened. You can't depend on just your experience." Now after that we moved on to Cross, which was

Tiring, I guess, is the best word I can think of. Maybe I just have trial fatigue at this point. Probably everyone does. I'm sure the jury does. And don't get me wrong, again, Dr. Rentschler, he did do a good job. There was just a lot of sidebars, a lot of objections, a lot of questions that weren't very relevant in my opinion. And all of that made it feel pretty tense and tiring. Now we kicked things off with the whole debate over a sandwich. Seriously.

Basically, Brennan asked Dr. Rentschler if he had communicated with the defense after the first trial, and he said that he had a ham sandwich with them. Now, I guess this was to show that ARCA isn't impartial at this point. You know, they're buddy-buddy with the defense. But hey, Aperture isn't impartial either. Now, after Sandwich Gate, Dr. Rentschler said he was aware of studies that say crash dummies shouldn't be used to study soft tissue injuries. But he argued that he didn't actually do that in his analysis.

He also admitted that he determined that John didn't have any internal arm injuries just by looking at x-rays, which can only show fractures and breaks. They don't show things like muscle tears or nerve injuries. Although I will say if those injuries had been present in John's arm, I do think the medical examiner Dr. Scordibello would have documented them. So I think it's fair to say that John didn't have any internal injuries to the arm. Vandenbronning spent a lot of time pressing Rensselaer about his opinions on Dr. Welcher in kind of a bizarre way.

He basically kept saying, "Well, how can you say that Dr. Welcher didn't do a good job if he wasn't even trying to reenact the collision?" Brennan asked this in like six different ways. And each time, Rentschler was like, "Uh, well, if your expert wasn't trying to replicate the collision, then what the heck was he doing? What's the purpose of his studies?" And I agree with Rentschler here. It's so odd to me that Brennan would try to discredit Rentschler by making his own witness look bad.

Brendan also repeatedly asked if Rensher knew specific details about the collision, like the angle and the position of John's body, things like that. And each time Rensher was like, no, I don't know, because there was no collision. He really got to drive that point home, even in cross-examination, that he believes there was no collision at all.

And given that, I'm not surprised that the defense used Renshler as their last witness. We know that no collision is the cornerstone of their case. And I think Renshler made that point well for them. And with that, the defense rested their case. And then, get this, after spending all of that time filing so many motions to get their rebuttal witnesses in, the prosecution decided not to call any of them. Not their dog bite experts, and not even Dr. Welcher.

This really surprised me. I thought for sure Brennan would be chopping at the bit to get Welcher back up on that stand. He must have either been so confident in Welcher's original testimony that he doesn't feel like he needs him again, or on the other end of things, he felt like Welcher already got torn apart by Rentschler, so he didn't want to bring him back and leave a sour taste in the jury's mouth. I don't know which one it is, and I'm not even going to try to get into Brennan's head and guess.

But either way, both sides are done with testimony. And the last thing that the jury heard a witness say was that there was no collision. And I think that might really stick with them. Now, comparing all of this witness testimony from this trial to the first trial, a couple of things stick out to me. Both trials were similar in length, but I felt that both sides put on a stronger case this time. And I think the biggest reason for that is that they both focused on experts instead of eyewitnesses.

There's a whole host of characters who testified last time that we didn't hear from at all this time. Obviously the ones that stick out are Michael Proctor, Brian Albert, and Brian Higgin. But we also didn't hear from Colin Albert, Matt McCabe, Allie McCabe, Nicole Albert, Caitlin Albert. Most of the gang was missing. And I think that was strategic on both sides. Think about it. If you're the defense, you probably don't want to call a bunch of eyewitnesses who are going to say your client did it.

And if you're the prosecution, you probably don't want to call a bunch of witnesses who are sketchy as hell. It's going to make you look untrustworthy. Instead, both sides honed in on a couple of key eyewitnesses: Carrie Roberts and Jen McCabe for the prosecution, and Lucky Loughran and Karina Kalikithis for the defense. And then they made up the bulk of their cases with expert witnesses and members of law enforcement, which I do think was smart on both sides. And then on Friday morning, we heard closing arguments for both sides.

Alan Jackson gave what I thought was a really great closing statement for the defense. And he focused on the same two main prongs that he started with in opening statements. First, that there was no collision. If there was a motto for the defense, that would be it. There was no collision. There was no collision. There was no collision. He said it three times just like that. And he added, they cannot and they will never be able to prove that John was struck by a vehicle.

Jackson pointed out that not a single medical expert on either side of the case has ever testified that John was hit by a car. The prosecution's own medical examiner said she didn't see any evidence of an impact site, and she refused to conclude that the death was a homicide. And John's arm, that one that was supposedly hit by a 6,000-pound car? No breaks, no fractures, not even a bruise. How about those tests from Aperture?

Jackson says all they prove is that John was tall enough for his elbow to hit the taillight. He added that every single test done at every single speed shows damage that's inconsistent with what was found on Karen's car. The internal diffuser in her taillight was very badly damaged, and no expert on either side could produce a test that showed that level of damage. But John's DNA was on the taillight. What about that?

Well, Jackson said, remember, it was only on the outer smooth part of the taillight housing where John could have brushed against it doing anything. It was not on the taillight shards. In fact, those shards didn't have DNA or blood or human tissue at all. And speaking of the taillight shards, how did they make 36 cuts in John's arm, but only nine cuts in the sweatshirt?

Now Jackson's second main point was that former trooper Michael Proctor ruined the investigation from the start. Remember eight weeks ago when I said that in his opening statement Jackson was giving the jurors glasses to view the case with? Those are the Proctor is biased glasses.

And now Jackson is asking the jurors to put those glasses back on and view all the evidence during deliberations through that lens, through the lens of whatever the prosecution might have, it can't be trusted because it was collected by a biased source, a source that's now fired for his conduct in this case. Jackson said, quote, their investigation was flawed from the start because their investigator was corrupted from the start.

He reminded us about some of those nasty texts that Proctor sent his friends and even his boss. She's a whack job c-word. There will be some serious charges brought on the girl. Zero chance she skates. No nudes yet. How about the homeowner? Is he gonna get in trouble for all this? Proctor says nope. Homeowner's a Boston cop too.

Jackson added, quote, "He was fired for this blatant bias. If the Massachusetts State Police can't trust him, how can you trust him with the investigation, with your verdict, and with Karen Reid's life?" And about that taillight evidence, Jackson reminded us that not a single piece of taillight evidence was found at the scene until after Proctor had access to Karen's car.

He said, quote, "This is the man who touched every single piece of important evidence in this case. All the evidence that was brought before you in this trial went through his hands one way or another. Remember that. The shirts, the shards, all in Michael Proctor's possession." Jackson also emphasized the sketchy behavior of Brian Higgins, and he pretty clearly pointed the finger at him for John's death, and he laid out exactly how he thinks it happened. He reminded us about Higgins' text with Karen.

his motioning to John in the bar, and him coaxing John to 34 Fairview. Then once he got to 34 Fairview, remember John took 84 steps in a westerly direction toward the house. That's from Ian Whiffen, the prosecution's own witness. Then at that point Jackson says, "Remember that John's phone battery? It dropped 20 degrees in temperature over an hour. I meant it stayed constant at 50 degrees for four hours."

Jackson says that's because John was not outside at all. Quote, "He was someplace warmer, like a basement or a garage." And Dr. LaPosada confirmed that. She said, quote, "He did not die of hypothermia because he was not outside." So if not hypothermia, how did John die? Well, according to Jackson, the injury to the back of John's head and his eyelid show that he was punched and fell backward. And then at some point, Chloe, the Albert's German Shepherd, she must have gotten involved.

Jackson pointed out that no medical expert from the prosecution disputes that John's arm injuries are from a dog. Alright, well now John is dead, what does Higgins do? Well, according to Jackson, he takes that late night trip to Canton PD to mess around with some evidence. And then later, Higgins and Police Chief Ken Berkowitz, they're in the garage with Karen's car for quote, a wildly long amount of time. At least that's what Officer Kelly Dover said before the police chief told her to do the right thing.

Then Jackson outlined why some of the other main players for the prosecution can't be trusted. We've got Matt McCabe texting "tell them to say the guy never came into the house" and Brian Albert agreeing "exactly." We've got Jen McCabe googling "house long to die in the cold" and then deleting it. We have Kerry Roberts admitting to incorrectly testifying that Karen told Jen to google that. We've got Jen not going inside to the Alberts house, to her sister's house, to see if they were okay.

Jackson says, quote, the only way that makes sense is if she knew what happened already. We also have the Sally Port video shown completely inverted. So it looks like Proctor didn't go near the right taillight, but he did. We have Dr. Welcher leaning into the impact during his blue paint test. We've got Brennan holding up John's hoodie to the jury saying this happened on January 29th, but we know it didn't. Jackson says all of those examples and more show why you can't trust the prosecution.

And Jaxta also reminded the jurors about the meaning of reasonable doubt, that they must be absolutely certain beyond all reasonable doubt of all of the facts in this case to convict Karen. He reminded them that if they think it's likely, even very likely, that the prosecution is right, that's not enough. They have to be certain. And he said in this case, it's impossible to be certain. There are, quote, "dozens and dozens of holes of reasonable doubt." Then Brennan gave his closing statement for the prosecution.

And if the prosecution had a motto, it would be, quote, she was drunk, she hit him, she left him to die. Brennan started by reminding us of the person that John was. He was only 46 years old when he died. He was described as someone who was kind, hardworking, and quick to help. He took in his niece and nephew when they had no one else and they had lost both of their parents.

And he said that when John, John who was someone who was always quick to help others, when he himself was laying in the snow dying and needed help himself, Brennan says Karen didn't help him. Brennan painted a pretty bleak picture of Karen and John's relationship. He played those voicemails of Karen saying, John, I effing hate you. He recalled the testimony from John's niece, who said that their trip to Aruba was ruined by Karen's jealousy. And Brennan said that it's that jealousy that was the motive for the murder.

And after that, Brennan spent a lot of time laying out the prosecution's timeline of the case, calling it "impenetrable" and based on data that can't be disputed. Brennan also relied a lot on clips from Karen's interviews to support his arguments. To try to show that even Karen herself knew she was too impaired to drive, Brennan played a clip where she said, quote, "Well, I've had a few drinks and I drive. I always drive extra slow, so I know my alerts aren't as sharp as they should be, and I shouldn't have been driving."

To try to show the prosecution's theory that Karen knew she made contact with John, Brennan played a clip where she said, quote, But could I have clipped him? Could I have tagged him in the knee and incapacitated him? He didn't look mortally wounded, as far as I could see. Then along a similar vein in the next clip, Karen said, quote, And I was looking to find him on the side of the road. I was expecting I'd find him.

And finally, to try to discredit the defense's theory that the eyewitnesses were mistaken about what Karen said at the scene, Brennan played a final clip where Karen says, quote, Now, when it comes to the inconsistencies in John's injuries, like the lack of an impact site, Brennan argued that car accidents affect every person differently.

And the lack of low robotic injuries doesn't necessarily mean that no impact occurred. Brennan also admitted that Proctor's conduct, it was deplorable. But he argued that the Commonwealth doesn't even need Proctor to prove their case. He said, quote, it's distasteful and dishonorable, but it doesn't give a read of free pass. When you read those text messages, they're hard to look at. It's unfair. But it has nothing to do with justice in this case. It just doesn't.

There was not one piece of evidence that was tampered with, planted, or distorted. Then Brennan looked to call the credibility of the defense witnesses into question. He pointed out that one of the defense's star witnesses, Dr. Wolf, used signal and deleted his text messages with the defense. Brennan also implied that Sergeant Nicholas Barros changed her story for attention to ride on the fame of this case. Similarly, he said that Dr. Marie Russell inserted herself into the case and didn't use reliable methods when assessing the dog bites.

And Brendan pointed out that Dr. Russell and Dr. LaPosada, they don't even entirely agree about the dog bites. Dr. Russell said that John's arm didn't have any puncture marks, while Dr. LaPosada said it had many. Then Brendan described what it takes to get a second-degree murder conviction, and clarified exactly what the Commonwealth is accusing her of. Brendan said that Karen intended to put her car on reverse and impact John.

He says, "If the jurors believe that she intended to hit her car's accelerator, then that's second-degree murder." He added, "It's not a matter of intending to kill. It's not a matter of intending to hit. It's the conduct of the operation. Did her conduct create a clear, plain, strong likelihood of death?" And he ended by reminding us of the prosecution's theory of the case. She was drunk. She hit him. She left him to die. And now it's all in the hands of the jury.

My guess is that it could take a couple of days to hear the verdict, even into late next week, because I think the jury has a lot to consider. How are they going to weigh the different medical examiners? How are they going to weigh the different reconstructionists? Are they going to take these interview clips from Karen as admissions? Are they going to see the entire investigation as botched or just Proctor as one bad character? There's really a lot for them to comb through. It's going to be really interesting to see what happens with the verdict.

Now, my personal opinion, I do think the prosecution has some decent circumstantial evidence against Karen. I think the taillight evidence, plus the three witnesses who say that Karen said I hit him, plus her interview, plus that text stream data that shows that John's phone locked for the last time sometime around when Karen backed up, all those things together, on the surface, I think they make an okay case.

But when you look deeper at the damage to the taillight and the injuries to John, I think there is reasonable doubt as to if they collided. And I also think that the investigation was so botched from the beginning that it's hard to trust really any of the evidence from the prosecution. And for those reasons, I personally think that Karen should be found not guilty on all three charges. But I don't really think any verdict here would be true justice for John.

And I really hope that through all of this, we don't lose sight of John and the person he was and what he meant to his family. And with that, it's been a long eight weeks for everybody. But I'm so grateful to Annie for having me on for these recaps. And I'm thankful for all of you who've been so welcoming. Thank you, guys, and stay safe. Well, there you have it. So we are officially on Verdict Watch. We will see what the jury comes back with. I am curious to know how you would vote.

And we'll see what happens. We'll see where we go from here. And we need to figure out what the next trial is we're covering. I know we're covering Idaho, but I feel like, you know, I'm not ready to say goodbye to Elena. I love having her on here every week. All right. Thank you guys so much for tuning in to today's Karen Reid recap. All

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