Paula Barrows
speaker
72 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Paula Barrows’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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From Law & Crime, I'm Paula Barrows, and this is Karen. At the turn of 2023 into 2024, nearly two years after the untimely death of John O'Keefe, chatter around the case of Karen Reed had quieted. But the calm was short-lived. On January 31st, 2024, a Massachusetts state police affidavit by Detective Lieutenant Brian Tully dropped a bombshell revelation.
Karen Reed and Turtle Boy had been in contact, and they weren't just exchanging glances in the court halls. In fact, the report alleged the two exchanged 189 phone calls lasting over 40 hours, dating back to April 2023. But how did the Massachusetts State Police get to those staggering numbers? In the investigation into Turtle Boy, a.k.a.
Aiden Kearney's witness intimidation charges, led by Norfolk County District Attorney Michael Morrissey, a warrant was ordered to seize two cell phones from Karen Reed's residence. The state troopers tasked with retrieving the cell phones were operating under the assumption that these phones could contain evidence of the ongoing conspiracy with Turtle Boy to intimidate witnesses.
But evidence of the phone calls between Karen and Turtle Boy were not the only thing they found. Here's prosecutor Adam Lally with what the investigation revealed.
In special prosecutor Ken Mello's investigation into witness intimidation, a new name popped up that caught his team's interest, Natalie Burschneider. Natalie was a college friend of Karen's based in California. The two had reconnected after Natalie had caught wind of the case.
Massachusetts State Police interviewed Natalie, who then claimed that Karen expressed interest in Turtle Boy reporting on her ongoing legal battle. Using the encrypted messaging app Signal, Natalie would send screenshots of her text conversations with Karen and send them to Turtle Boy. And what Karen shared with Natalie to pass along to Turtle Boy could, understandably, raise some eyebrows.
Natalie told investigators that Karen shared everything with her. Her charges, information about witnesses, photos of witnesses, the home address of trooper Michael Proctor, photos of the crime scene evidence, police reports, motions filed by her attorneys, and even John O'Keefe's autopsy report.
These messages were frequently signed off with notes like, "'Tell Turtle Boy,' from Karen, and, "'Not for public, but you and Aiden can see.'" Adding insult to injury, it was discovered that Karen also shared the audio of the 911 call when John O'Keefe's body was found, with the subject, do not share. And these discovery motions didn't just implicate Karen either.
Phone records revealed Turtle Boy had been in direct contact with her attorneys, Alan Jackson and David Yannetti, too. In response, the two claimed they had not spoken with Turtle Boy until after he began publishing information about Karen, insinuating they never fed the blogger information.
From the outside looking in, the defense team appeared to be in bed with someone charged with witness intimidation. Things were getting messy, to say the least. Come February, Turtle Boy's communication with Karen and her team wasn't the only evidence under scrutiny. On the 22nd, in a 3,000-page report, U.S. attorneys unveiled the long-awaited results of the crime scene evidence tests.
The primary pieces in question? Karen's broken taillight. Here's attorney Matt Timpanik with what they uncovered.
And the pieces of taillight that were big enough to recover from the scene and allegedly matched Karen's SUV came back with traces of John O'Keefe's DNA. Attorney Jennifer Roman remembers where the DNA was found.
But the when and how of the taillight pieces is still an enigma. Legal analyst Rich Schoenstein says right out the gate, the pieces of taillight in question became contentious.
These gaps in time in recovering the pieces of taillight gave the defense something to chew on. They refuted the evidence with their own theory.
Onlookers like Alita Majeka were flummoxed. Once the defense laid bare the gaps in the taillight investigation, she didn't know what to believe.
It's a potential issue jurors would have to mull over once the trial begins. If Ian Runkle were on the jury, he would be asking himself, Could this plastic have been placed there by an officer? And depending on whose argument is stronger, this evidence alone could have serious consequences for Karen Reed.
The physical evidence Jennifer Roman alluded to just now could alone allow jurors to come to a more formidable conclusion like Matt Timpanik.
And if she didn't strike John with her vehicle outside of the Alberts' home that night, where else could she have broken her taillight? Security footage from John O'Keefe's home on the morning of January 29th shows Karen backing out of his driveway, presumably on her way to look for him. His SUV is parked at the foot of his driveway.
Matt says this claim has holes in it, too. For him, it's the taillight pieces on John's clothing that are just too difficult to look past.
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