Paula Borrows
speaker
132 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Paula Borrows’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
From Law & Crime, I'm Paula Borrows, and this is Karen. Outside Norfolk County Superior Court, on the brisk morning of April 29, 2024, a massive crowd was forming. The Free Karen Reid Movement, sequestered to their sanctioned area, were gathered, sporting pink shirts and holding handmade signs showing their support on this fateful spring day, the first day of Karen Reid's trial.
Inside the cramped, wood-paneled courtroom, a jury of 12 was seated, six women and six men, holding the fate of one of their peers in their hands. Judge Beverly Cannone opened the day emphasizing that the future of the defendant, Karen Reid, hung in the balance, and that their attention to every detail would be crucial to bringing about justice in this case, however they interpret justice.
Attorney Jennifer Roman says this was not an enviable position to be in.
A lot in this case could be considered an understatement.
With no guarantee of a unanimous verdict.
Making the ultimate decision more difficult for them, despite the deafening buzz around the case, the two people at the heart of it remained somewhat of an enigma.
And the lack of information about John O'Keefe's cause of death created another perplexing hurdle this jury would have to maneuver.
The jury was looking at a projected six to eight weeks to get to the bottom of that question. In opening statements, the prosecution and defense could not have presented more paradoxical arguments. Prosecutor Adam Lally approached the stand first, wearing a black suit with a checkered tie. Karen sat between her attorneys, David Iannetti and Alan Jackson, as Adam presented his side's position.
but that couldn't be further from the way David Yannetti saw things.
Keen ears noticed that omitted from Yannetti's opening statement was any explicit mention of who the someone else could be. But all that was required was enough reasonable doubt that it was not Karen. John O'Keefe's brother Paul was the first person called to the stand.
In a blue checkered button-down, he began his testimony painting a picture of his adoring older brother John, a dedicated family man and a loving partner to Karen, despite a few arguments between the two he had witnessed here and there. Then, he emotionally recalled the moment he saw John's lifeless body at Good Samaritan Hospital.
And Paul remembered John wasn't the only person he observed at the hospital that morning.
Karen's emotional exclamations came under further scrutiny on day two when Timothy Nuttall, Canton firefighter and paramedic who treated John O'Keefe the morning his body was discovered, was cross-examined.
But this isn't what every first responder heard.
Yannetti directed this line of questioning to Strawberry Blonde Canton Police Officer Stephen Mullaney. He was there the morning of January 29th, 2022. I did not.
The confusion as to whether or not Karen confessed at the scene continued when another first responder, Canton Fire Department Lieutenant Anthony Flamati, recounted a conversation he had with her in which he alleged she uttered, I hit him. Oh my God, I hit him. But Attorney Jackson called attention to video from the scene that would cast doubt on Flamati's memory.
While their conversation wasn't caught on tape, there was apparently evidence that Flamati related to a police officer in the investigation.
Onlookers of the trial thought it was curious that the exchange was notable enough to share with an officer, but somehow was overlooked in the official report.
It's hard to imagine that a detail as crucial and memorable as a confession could be omitted. Here's attorney Matt Timpanik with how he understood the confusion here.
Karen's utterances in the wake of discovering John's body were further probed on day three of the trial, when Adam Lally called upon firefighter and paramedic Francis Walsh to draw on his memory of that dramatic morning. Francis recalled there were three women on the scene, who we now know to be Carrie Roberts, Jennifer McCabe, and Karen Reed, all of whom were visibly shaken up, especially Karen.
Showing 61–80 of 132 · page 4 of 7
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