Sue Simpson

Good morning. Hey, I think everyone is here.

Well, prosecutors gave her a hard time saying that her opinions are subjective, not science.

Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, we'll be covering that. But another thing that happened on Tuesday is a judge sent a date for a similar hearing about the forensic expert who testified about that hotly disputed Google search. It was a hoth long to die in the cold, as you remember, Andrea. Yes. Well, that hearing is now scheduled for January 31st.

Just a quick recap. In 2015, a man named Aaron Quinn told police that his girlfriend, her name is Denise Huskins, He said that she had been kidnapped from their home.

And police still didn't believe them. They even gave a press conference saying the whole thing was a hoax.

Yeah, only there was a big, big difference in this case, of course. A couple of months after all of this started, a man named Matthew Muller, he's a disbarred attorney and he's an ex-Marine, he was arrested. And he later pleaded guilty to the kidnapping of Denise Huskins. And he was sentenced to 40 years.

Last week, two new charges were brought against Matthew Muller. In 2009, two separate women reported home invasions where they were drugged and a man threatened to rape them. The Santa Clara District Attorney's Office has announced that advances in DNA technology linked Matthew Mueller to these cases. So his arraignment on these new charges is set for next week. That is a big development. Yeah.

A whole lot of years, Andrea. He was sentenced to 130 years in prison. It was an emotional courtroom. Six of the girls' relatives gave victim impact statements. The judge said the girls' murder ranks right up there with the most hideous crimes. And just before she read his sentence, the judge accused Alan of rolling his eyes at her. So it was a whole, an incredible day in court.

I was, and that's right. As you know, she's headed back to trial later this year, but there's a lot of housekeeping before the retrial can even start.

Right. Prosecutors want the judge to exclude the testimony of a defense expert who testified at the first trial. She's a retired emergency room doctor. Her name is Dr. Marie Russell. And she said that the injuries on John O'Keefe's arm were consistent with dog bites. That's critical to the defense case.

Karen made dozens of calls to John O'Keefe's cell phone, and a lot of calls just, you know, went to voicemail, and man, they were fiery.

Happy to be here.

I am in the courtroom. It is so exciting.

That's right. So Brennan asked Katie McLaughlin about seeing Karen Reed at the scene. And McLaughlin testified that one of the firefighters there asked her to gather more information about what had happened. McLaughlin said she noticed Karen and she decided to approach her.

You're absolutely right. And the defense, of course, maintains that what Karen said was, did I hit him? Or could I have hit him? That she wasn't making a statement. She was asking a question. But, you know, if you wanted to simplify this case, Andrea, and boil it down to a few critical points, this would be one. How will the jury interpret those few words, that handful of words?

McLaughlin also testified that after Karen said, I hit him, Jen McCabe, who was standing right beside Karen, told her to calm down.

Well, Jackson asked if McLaughlin was sure that Karen wasn't asking a question. And Jackson asked if she was actually admitting to a crime, why didn't they arrest her right then and there?

No, no. No.

So Gallagher testified that he was responsible for trying to preserve the scene in the midst of a snowstorm and that the weather conditions, those awful weather conditions, made it difficult. And he actually testified that he didn't know it was a crime scene at the time.

Yeah, unconventional is a good word for it. I mean, they actually used a leaf blower to reveal blood in the snow and red solo cups to collect that blood.

Jackson really did push him on that.

Jackson pointed out that having unsealed and unsecured biological material, his words, was not within any normal protocol for securing evidence. They clearly want to show the jury that this evidence could be tainted. And if it's tainted, then how can they trust it? And then that raises the possibility of Reasonable doubt, which is exactly what they want to do.

Yeah, you know, they're so powerful, these voicemails. Karen made dozens of calls to John O'Keefe's cell phone after she dropped him off. And a lot of calls just, you know, went to voicemail and man, they were fiery.

The prosecutor wants to show the jurors just how angry she was at him. She was calling him a loser. She was saying, John, I hate you.

You know, the thing about these jurors are they really, for me at least, they don't show their emotions. They don't show their feelings. They listen. Their faces are impassive. I didn't notice a reaction there, startling. I will tell you, they land with a startle because Karen is sitting right in court.

And these angry, angry words of hers and the swearing, and clearly this is a woman who is passionate and has lost control of herself, they land in a court with a huge bang. Now, the defense decided not to cross-examine. The investigator who found these voicemails and these calls, they just let her words go and they moved on.

Well, this week, actually, on Wednesday, Karen Reid's attorney and the prosecutors appeared before Massachusetts High's court for a hearing. Hear ye, hear ye. SJC 13663, Commonwealth v. Karen Reed.

And this is because after the mistrial was declared, the defense team said they heard from multiple jurors who told them that the jury unanimously agreed that Karen Reed was not guilty on two of the counts against her. The defense team argued that she shouldn't be acquitted on these two charges. They should be dismissed.

Prosecutors got up and said, no, no, wait a minute, you should have spoken up in open court when the mistrial was declared. And those were the arguments made on Wednesday. The Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts has 120 days to make a decision after hearing these oral arguments.

That's exactly right. What I would say, though, is it's not necessarily clear they're going to go have that retrial in January because both sides actually filed a joint motion on Monday saying to the judge, could we please have an extension? They're asking both the defense and the prosecution for the trial not to start until April 1st. Okay. Thank you for that update, Sue.

The victims in the case were the mom the Brazilian au pair was working for and another man, a total stranger. Both of them were found dead in the family home. And the dad of the family, Brendan Banfield, has been charged with killing the mom, his wife, Christine, and that other man named Joseph Ryan. And prosecutors say that Banfield plotted to kill his wife and the au pair was in on it.

Our date-run team got their hands on body cam footage from the officers who first responded to the scene. The au pair, you may remember, was the one to call 911. On the body cam, you can see her gasping. She seems distraught. She's talking to officers.

Okay. Do you just want to tell me quickly what happened? I don't know what happened. Everything happened too fast. She tells them that she saw Joseph Ryan stabbing Christine and that Brendan shot him to defend his wife.

That's right. And we haven't heard, of course, Brendan's side of things yet. But the au pair says she's going to testify against him as part of a plea agreement that she made last week.

Yeah, it's been another intense week at that trial. The jury got to see over a dozen videos of Allen in prison from the time when he gave more than 60 confessions. And when the defense says that he was in great mental distress, we know they included footage of Alan being tased, eating feces, and being transported for medical treatment.

The defense was pushing their point that the confessions were a product of some kind of psychotic break. They weren't real. Any other big witnesses? There was also a tool mark expert who took a stand and raised concerns about the analysis of the state's examiner, who had said that the bullet found at the crime scene had cycled through Allen's gun.

And that's a big one, because the bullet is really the only physical evidence that the prosecution has to tie Allen to the scene.

Thanks, Andrea. It's always great to do it.

We're viewing everything that happened back then through a different lens.

All right, I'll take a pass on that.

Yes.

Those are the words.

Accurate? That's accurate.

Yes.

You know, the judge, it's the same judge, Beverly Canone, has set an even bigger buffer zone around the courthouse to keep the crowds at bay.

This time there's something called a randomizer, actually, which is selecting all the reporters in the tiny courtroom.

When jury selection started on Tuesday, I was there very early in the morning and there are metal barricades up all around the court, more than in the past. I saw Dedham police going by on bicycles and, of course, their Massachusetts state troopers stationed in front of the court as they were last time. It feels like there's more security. I saw really small groups of protesters.

They were waving huge flags and they were wearing pink.

Oh boy, it is going to be a challenge. And people are saying, the judge is saying it could take two to three weeks. So on the first day, almost 100 prospective jurors were brought into the courtroom. And here's why it's going to be a problem. Three quarters of them said that they'd heard about the case with many of those people saying that they'd already formed an opinion about it.

And that's not, of course, what either side wants to hear. One more thing I want to say, having watched the proceedings on Tuesday when jury selection started, it's really interesting to see how deeply involved Karen is in working on the jury selection process. She is going through the questionnaires with the attorneys. She's sometimes at sidebar with them as they grill prospective jurors.

I'm not surprised at all. Is Alan Jackson there, her L.A. attorney? Yes. He is. And they've also added a New York attorney. And they actually added an alternate juror from the first trial, somebody who came forward who's an attorney. And she's working with the team. So she was going through questionnaires Tuesday as well with Karen. Fascinating.

Yeah, they have. They winnowed down about 100 prospective jurors to 13 men and three women. So that will be the 12 and four alternates. They filled out online questionnaires, you know, what have you heard about the case? She's rolling the dice here by representing herself.

Yeah, and so that led to a pretty intense moment in court earlier this week when they were still working their way through pretrial motions. Lori's trying to have a speedy trial, but the prosecution has said it's too speedy, that they don't have enough information about what she's planned for her defense. And they actually said she's trying to conduct a trial by ambush.

And Lori kind of took offense to that.

The judge was trying to get her to tell him about the relevancy of each of her witnesses, and they had this exchange.

Yeah, the total was actually over 60 until this week when one of those suits was dismissed by a judge because the plaintiff didn't identify herself. So this claim was brought in federal court in the Southern District of New York, so Manhattan. And the plaintiff said that back in 1995, she was at a party for a music video and she and Combs started kissing in the bathroom.

And when she stopped, she says he struck her and then he raped her. He is denied this allegation. So when she filed the suit in October, the judge said the plaintiff could stay anonymous because putting her name to those allegations would get her, quote, significant, potentially harmful attention from the media and the public.

But in January, that same judge said the plaintiff had until March 20th to come forward. When she didn't make that deadline, the judge dismissed her suit. Right. On Monday. Yes, yes. Comstein put out a statement after that dismissal came down, which said, For months, we've seen case after case filed by individuals hiding behind anonymity.

The other claims, like the one dismissed today, also will not hold up in a court of law.

I am. I am. I'm here for the start of jury selection in Karen Reid's second trial. You'll remember she's charged with hitting and killing her police officer boyfriend, John O'Keefe, with her SUV a little over three years ago now. She's pleaded not guilty. And the scene here in Dedham is still kind of wild.

Is it possible he could have been in shock? Objection, speculation.

Did Alex tell you that he got hit in the head with the bat? Objection, your honor. Here's a prior ruling.

This is the man who's dealing with the heart of the whole case. Did that Lexus hit John O'Keefe?

Hello, Andrea. Hello.

Well, Andrea, it was a really slow start on Tuesday. There was a long sidebar. And then the court got going eventually. But Karen's defense attorney, Robert Alessi, was speaking of this sidebar very passionately to the judge and the other attorneys there. You know, I couldn't hear his words, of course, but his voice and his demeanor were intense. And we know why.

The next witness would be asked the question at the very heart of this case. Did Karen Reed's Lexus strike John O'Keefe or not? Prosecutors put that witness, Dr. Judson Welcher, on the stand before his testimony started for a brief voir dire, and we should point out Welcher is a new expert. He did not testify at the first trial.

The defense objected to some parts of his testimony saying they were outside his area of expertise, and they also wanted to know if Dr. Welcher made changes to his presentation in the past two weeks after talking to prosecutors. In other words, did the prosecution exert last-minute influence on his testimony? there were some tense exchanges.

Well, he started out by explaining his background, which is in both accident reconstruction and also biomechanical engineering, explaining how accidents impact the body.

There was a lot there, Andrea. First, he gave a long list of things that he'd reviewed in the case. The police reports and witness statements, ring camera video from John O'Keefe's house, other surveillance video from the bars that John and Karen had been to that night. He looked at photos and videos from the scene, cell phone data, jams.

GPS data, weather reports, and the media interviews that Karen did, including her interview with Dateline. He also told jurors that he went to the front lawn. He lives in California, and he traveled to the front lawn in Canton, Massachusetts, where John O'Keefe's body was found. He took photographs there, and he made measurements, and he came up with a computer model.

He even bought the same type of SUV that Karen was driving that night to do some testing.

He did. He did. Really? He bought an SUV. Yes, indeed. You know, all of which is to say if the prosecution was hoping to show jurors that this guy did his homework, he did everything to persuade them that he deserved an A. Sue, much of his testimony was quite technical.

Yeah, he had a huge amount of data to get through and simplify for them. So he began to walk through the timeline he created of what happened that night. He showed a computer model he made using data he collected about how Karen Reid's car moved. He then tested the data with the car he bought that matched Karen's SUV, and he tried to explain why John O'Keefe might have had the injuries he had.

Welcher is himself a similar height and similar weight to O'Keefe. So he said that he acted as him in testing, and we could see videos of him actually standing in front of that SUV, doing some of the testing, wearing clothes similar to what John O'Keefe was wearing that night, right down to the same make of sneakers.

And he covered the taillight in paint, and then he kind of swiveled into it, trying to show where the injuries would be on John O'Keefe's arm. He had a driver back the car into a crash dummy later to show what might have happened, you know, if the car did hit John O'Keefe.

And, of course, he dealt separately with the lacerations at the back of John O'Keefe's head because the prosecution said that John O'Keefe fell over into hard ground. He did point out, of course, that it's really hard to exactly model what would have happened when O'Keefe was hit by the car. Ultimately, the prosecutor asked what all of the testing and reviewing of the data led Welcher to conclude.

He is. He is the prosecution's closer. So he is the witness that the prosecution wants the jury to remember the most. This is the man who's dealing with the heart of the whole case. Did that Lexus hit John O'Keefe? And so that's why, you know, he's so critically important.

So the defense was spirited when he was testifying and they were just as spirited when it came time for them to do their own cross-examination.

Well, Andrea, you know, I am sure they have a few surprises planned. Karen has said they're planning on calling more witnesses this time. And Karen says they also have a more robust case this time around than they did in the first trial.

And ultimately, I think, you know, this case is going to come down to the battle of the accident reconstructionists, you know, experts on both sides who offered their view of what happened that night. And it's going to come down to, of course, what argument the jury finds most compelling.

Well, the prosecution and defense both made arguments, and Andrea, things got pretty heated. The defense pushed back on allegations the prosecution made last week, which were that the defense collaborated with two expert witnesses on their testimony and paid them more than $23,000 without disclosing that to the prosecution.

Now, the judge has not yet made a decision on whether or not the defense acted inappropriately, and we'll see what she says after more hearings next week.

Correct. These federal investigations are always wrapped up in mystery, right? The federal authorities, of course, are not commenting, but we believe they were looking into allegations of corruption in local law enforcement. And those allegations provided the context for the defense argument that Karen Reed was framed by corrupt local law enforcement officials.

But it's been widely reported that the investigation is officially over with no charges being filed.

If you've ever listened to the hit podcast Serial, you know the story of Adnan Syed. He was convicted in 2000 of murdering his high school ex-girlfriend, Haymin Lee, who was found strangled to death in 1999. But Syed has always maintained his innocence, and he and his attorneys have disputed the state's evidence against him. So there's been some back and forth with his conviction?

No, it's been a wild back and forth, a real seesaw. In 2022, his conviction was vacated, but later it was reinstated. And then last August, the Maryland Supreme Court said Syed could have another hearing about vacating his conviction.

But all that came to an end this week when the Baltimore City State's attorney withdrew the motion to vacate, saying it contains false and misleading statements that undermine the integrity of the judicial process. NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt spoke with the prosecutor about the decision.

So what is next for Syed? Well, his chance to have his conviction fully vacated is now gone. But Syed's attorneys filed a motion in December to get his sentence reduced to time served with the period of probation. He's already out of prison, so he'd remain free. There's been no ruling on that yet, but the state's attorney's office says it supports that motion.

On Tuesday, the jury found Eric Thompson guilty of second-degree murder and possession of a firearm in connection with the killing of John Tokuhara. Thank you, Sue. So many updates.

Yeah, love being here. Thank you, Andrew.

The extortion plot at the beginning is really a great red herring.

Well, the prosecution and defense both made arguments, and Andrea, things got pretty heated.

Hank Brennan was hired by the Norfolk County DA's office as a special prosecutor to try the case. He is well-known in Massachusetts because he represented notorious Boston crime boss James Whitey Bulger during his 2013 trial. You probably remember that, Andrea.

He was very calm, almost soft-spoken, but he's also crisp. He goes through things very matter-of-factly, very straightforwardly.

He approached his opening remarks as if he were telling a story to the jury. You know, the time, the morning, the alarm bell. We're living in a certain POV, a perspective of a firefighter, paramedic Timothy Nuttall, one of the first responders who came to the scene.

He is important because he heard Karen say, I hit him, meaning I hit John. And the prosecution says, Karen confessed at the scene by saying these words, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.

Karen contends that she phrased it as a question, not as a statement. Could I have hit him? So by playing it, the prosecution apparently wants to show jurors that Karen in the moment was trying to work out how she could possibly have injured John with her car.

What I think, Andrea, is that he focused on data. He focused on the technical aspects and the technology of the case. And he said all of those would show that Karen Reid killed John O'Keefe.

He focused on location data, on health data, and interesting here, the temperature of the cell phone battery. You know, what he did was he picked plot points where John and Karen were and what the temperature was, you know, at certain points in their storyline that night. He also said there'd be evidence from the black box, he called it, from Karen's Lexus, her SUV.

And some of that evidence will be new because the prosecution retested her car after the first trial.

Well, Alan Jackson has such a different style in court than Hank Brennan. And you probably remember that, Andrea. I mean, Alan Jackson's style, right? He's more forceful and really understands the spectacle of a criminal trial.

Yes, he did. So right off the bat, Jackson focused on Michael Proctor, who was the lead investigator in the case, who sent demeaning and derogatory text messages about Karen during the investigation.

That's right. I mean, they say that the people who were at the house during this party at Boston Police Officer Brian Albert's home. that they all work together to create a story and to conspire to make her what Alan Jackson calls the outsider as the killer.

Well, so that constraint, Andrew, it's interesting, is really just for opening statements. So Jackson, in his opening, obviously didn't accuse anyone specifically, but he did draw the jury's attention to the behavior of some of the people who were at the party that night. You know, Brian Albert was the homeowner.

We'll get into all of it, too, Andrea.

So, Andrea, last time we spoke on the podcast, we were waiting for a judge to rule on whether or not a dog expert could testify for the defense at the retrial. And that ruling has now come in. The dog expert will be allowed to testify.

That's a big win for the defense because this expert testified during Karen Reid's first trial that the injuries on John O'Keefe's arm were consistent with a dog attack, not with being struck by a car, as you know, the prosecutors allege.

It is remarkable, isn't it? You know, in Rhode Island, our affiliate NBC10 spoke with Karen Reid's brother, Nathan. Here's what Nathan had to say about how he and his family are feeling about the retrial.

Well, Andrea, last week's witnesses painted a vivid picture of what happened in the days leading up to Michael's death. And it's pretty remarkable. how all these people were in and out of the Cochran's house and they were watching his health deteriorate. One friend testified about Natalie's refusal to take Michael to a hospital to be looked at.

No, she said she was going to let him sleep it off. And a contractor working for the couple recalled speaking to Michael a few months before his death and that Michael told him he was feeling dizzy and that he felt he'd been poisoned.

This chemist confirmed that one of the vials was, in fact, insulin. But during cross, when he was asked if he could confirm whether he knew the vial had been used, this chemist said that was not in his area of expertise. The defense argued that if you're going to murder someone, why would you keep the murder weapon in your fridge, right? Well, we'll keep an eye on this one.

It has been a long time. 1996, to be exact, and that's when Shakur was... fatally shot. He was sitting in the passenger seat of a BMW when a white Cadillac pulled up alongside the car and shots were fired.

It was really his own words, authorities say, that put him there. He wrote six years ago in his 2019 memoir that he provided the gun that was used in the drive-by shooting.

Davis's attorney claims that his client's constitutional rights were violated because of a delay prosecuting the case. Witnesses have died. Evidence has potentially been lost. You know, all of that could negatively impact the fairness of a trial. How did the judge rule this week? The judge rejected the motion and upheld the murder case against Davis. Davis has pleaded not guilty. What's next?

Murder trial is still on, happening in March. Sue, thank you so much for joining us.

The defense argued that if you're going to murder someone, why would you keep the murder weapon in your fridge, right?

Let's not jinx it. I did win.

That's right, Andrea. The first witness, Nicholas Bradford, was a DNA expert who testified during the first trial, and he looked at the DNA on that taillight, and he found that there was very strong support, his words, that the DNA matched John O'Keefe and two other unknown, unrelated individuals.

Exactly. Remember, the defense alleges that John O'Keefe was beaten up at this afterparty and dragged outside and left for dead in the snow. And on cross-examination, Alan Jackson pointed out several members of law enforcement were present at the after-party the night John O'Keefe died, and their DNA was not compared to the DNA on that broken taillight.

And in this clip, the defense is basically naming two of the people they claim beat up John O'Keefe, ATF agent Brian Higgins and former Boston police officer Brian Albert.

Yes, this was a man named Shannon Burgess. He's an expert in digital forensics in vehicles and cell phones at a company called Aperture. And he was on the stand for the better part of two days. His testimony was so technical, Andrea, at times it was just laced with strings of numbers. But basically, he took a look at the data found in what's called the infotainment module from Karen Reed's SUV.

And that data includes things like when the car turned on and turned off and when and how the car moved and what time those movements happened.

Burgess said when the data was initially downloaded, an SD card was missed. He got his hands on it, and he testified that he was able to get information from it that gave him a clear idea about the timeline of what actually happened that night. So Burgess testified that the car was turned on at 12.12.36 a.m. and turned off about 30 minutes later.

So that would cover the time that Karen and John left the bar and drove to the after-party, and then when Karen returned to John's house alone. Burgess also testified about a backup maneuver.

No, it changes things. I mean, it allows them to make the case. John O'Keefe was using an app on his iPhone that night, you know, Waze, which gives you directions to places. Burgess testified that Karen put her car into reverse between—now here come the numbers—1232-04— And 12-32-12, Burgess said that John O'Keefe last used his iPhone at 12-32-09 while Karen was still backing up.

And then O'Keefe never used his phone again. So the prosecution is using Burgess' testimony to establish a timeline to say that Karen Reid did hit John O'Keefe.

That's right. The defense was on the attack from the jump. Attorney Robert Alessi, he's a new member of Karen Reid's team, hammered Burgess' credibility, accusing him of misrepresentation for saying that he had a bachelor's of science degree when he doesn't.

This is a strategy, Andrea, that we've seen the defense use before. In the first trial, they went after the credentials of another accident reconstructionist who did not have a bachelor's degree either, and they took him apart. You know, he's clearly hoping that the jury will believe that neither the witness nor his work can be trusted because of this.

You know what amazed me about that? Honestly, Andrea, if it was me, I would have crumpled. But he really stayed calm.

Well, after Alessi finished his cross-examination, the prosecutor did push back on the idea that Burgess needed a degree to be an expert in the field.

Well, Andrea, the prosecution case is so streamlined this time around, the second trial, there are many fewer witnesses.

What we have seen is a very strong emphasis on technical, on science, on data, on things like the dwindling battery power in John O'Keefe's cell phone the night he died, showing what the prosecution says that, you know, he lay out on the lawn, he was slowly dying of his injuries and hypothermia.

And, of course, we have another accident reconstructionist to come in the prosecution's case, and he's expected to lay out exactly how prosecutors believe John O'Keefe was killed. And prosecutors hope that he'll wrap up the case for them.

It was a huge challenge to seat a jury in a case that is as public and controversial as this one.

Yeah, it really is big. Judge Canone wanted 18 jurors, and she got them Tuesday afternoon, nine men and nine women. All of the jurors are going to be seated for the entire trial, but after closing arguments, only 12 of them are going to be chosen to deliberate.

Blaine, it was a huge challenge to see the jury in a case that is as public and controversial as this one. Let's just look at the numbers from court for Tuesday's jury pool. Pool number 10. There were 54 people. 43 had heard of the case. 26 had formed an opinion. And that's about half of the people there. And eight reported having a bias. So then you have other conflicts.

For instance, nine of the jurors said they knew witnesses. Four knew either some of the lawyers involved in the case or the district attorney. Outside of court this week, Karen Reid said she wasn't bothered by the long selection process.

Yeah. So I was up there for the start of jury selection and there are metal barricades around the courthouse. There are more Massachusetts State Police. It's a very different vibe. Karen Reed has a lot of supporters and many of them wear pink to show their support.

During the first trial, they had signs and they had bullhorns and even dressed up their dogs in pink to show that they were standing with her. But they were kept back from the actual courthouse. There was a buffer zone for the first trial. It's just grown bigger for the retrial.

Judge Canone ordered an expanded buffer zone, and four of Karen's supporters filed a lawsuit in federal court arguing that it limited their right to free speech. On Monday, a judge denied the suit and said that Canone's expanded buffer zone, his words, directly advanced the goal of ensuring a fair trial. An attorney for the protesters said they're going to appeal.

Yes. Karen was outspoken after her first trial, and she's been speaking out ahead of her second trial. She's done a lot of media interviews. She sat down with Dateline, of course, for a lengthy interview, but she also talked to documentary makers and to magazine writers. And now the prosecution wants to turn her statements against her.

Their strategy is basically to take her words to help make their case. Karen was asked about that strategy outside of court, and she answered with a bit of bravado. You know, come at me were her exact words. Come at me. But she also wanted to make it clear that she knew what she was saying in each interview. As she put it, I would not have said anything that I wouldn't say again.

Yeah, Michael Proctor was the lead investigator in the case, and he was fired by the Massachusetts State Police earlier this year due to misconduct, including, and this is very big, sending demeaning and derogatory text messages about Karen Reed during the investigation. His testimony was a really dramatic part of the first trial.

Defense attorney Alan Jackson forced Proctor to read some of those text messages he sent on the stand.

We expect Proctor to take the stand. It's a tough call for the prosecution, though, because if they don't call him, you can bet the defense will.

She's almost a fully fledged... She's almost a fully-fledged member of her own defense team. She knows the facts inside and out. But, you know, always the case, and you know this, Blaine, the defense is going to give the prosecution a real target if they put her on the stand.

You know, Blaine, it's almost a letdown. And I can tell you when I go up there this time, I am putting that soccer chair in my trunk. I'm going to have it with me as kind of a talisman for the retrial. But this time, let me tell you what the system is. You know, there's a lottery system. I mean, it's something called a randomizer.

Selects 10 reporters from about 30 who want to sit inside the court. There's only 10 seats in this tiny, tiny courtroom. But, you know, whether I'm in the court or streaming the trial online, I'm going to be watching it very closely and reporting back to tell you about it. And, you know, I might be sitting in my chair when I do it.

Hi, Andrea. It's a pleasure.

I am a winner. Yay, okay.

Yuri Buchanik is a sergeant with the Massachusetts State Police.

Buchanek and Proctor worked together to develop the theory of how John O'Keefe was killed. Now, Michael Proctor was fired earlier this year due to misconduct, in part because of demeaning and derogatory text messages he sent about Karen to his friends and even to his supervisors during the investigation. Buchanek was on one of those group text chains, and he even liked one of the messages.

The prosecution is trying to make Sergeant Buchanek the face of the investigation and minimize Proctor's role because of those demeaning text messages he sent. Andrea, you probably remember how damaging Proctor's testimony was in the first trial, so they're trying to avoid a repeat of that. And they're trying to avoid mentioning Michael Proctor's name as much as possible.

Prosecutor Hank Brannan did things like refer to Proctor as the case officer instead of the lead investigator. And they also had Buchanek show physical evidence collected from the scene to the jury instead of getting Michael Proctor to do that.

So the defense, of course, had exactly the opposite strategy. Alan Jackson insisted that Proctor was really at the center of the investigation. Remember, Jackson called him a cancer in his opening argument. And just as he did when he cross-examined Proctor during the last trial, Alan Jackson really hammered Buchanek about how the investigation was conducted.

He asked him about procedural missteps, like witnesses being interviewed in groups. and not being brought down to the station, for instance, to be recorded. And Buchanek was often evasive when Jackson pushed him and tried to pin him down about Proctor's role in the case.

Oh, they were very attentive. There's no question about that. And I have noticed one man on the jury where every time Alan Jackson gets up, you get the sense that this guy, if he could applaud, he would. Oh, wow. Other jurors are more studious. They're taking notes. But this gentleman is clearly enjoying the spectacle, the theater that Alan Jackson brings.

Well, yes. I mean, first of all, let me say that Karen Reed, the defendant, has become kind of the voice of the defense team because there is a gag order. Remember, Andrea, the lawyers were gagged even before the trial started, so we can't talk to them. So Karen will sometimes talk to the media after a day in court, and

I asked her one-on-one, you know, what is going to happen with Michael Proctor, and she said TBD. They're still deciding. And it's a really interesting debate, Andrea, about whether or not they're going to call him. The defense may be thinking that Alan Jackson's cross-examination has left jurors with the impression that Proctor is the bad actor in the investigation.

And the calculation the defense team has to make is this. If they put Michael Proctor on the stand, will they in some way humanize him? And is that a risk that they're willing to take? So they've got a big decision to make, and they have to make it relatively soon.

You know, Andrea, you know that's the million-dollar question, right? It's something she's asked about almost every day. And so far, all she said was that's also to be determined.

Thank you, Andrea.

So last week, Andrea, we heard investigators read text messages from Karen's phone establishing that John and Karen had a fight in the hours before John's death. Those text messages show that they made up, two of them made up, but the prosecutor wanted jurors to know that their relationship was far from perfect.

The prosecutor's next big witness on Monday morning was someone who could use John's phone to tell jurors what happened next in the timeline. The prosecution's version of events, of course.

Yes, yes. Prosecutor Brannon got Ian Whiffen to talk about the temperature of the battery in John's cell phone. something I honestly knew nothing about until this retrial started.

So the prosecution's theory is that John O'Keefe was lying grievously wounded in a blizzard, so you'd expect his phone, if he had it with him, to get colder and colder and colder from the moment Karen drove away. Remember, this is the prosecution's POV. So apparently our phone batteries log their own temperature often. and that's to make sure they don't overheat.

Now, investigators can use that data to figure out how cold or hot it is outside where the phone is. So when Whiffen was on the stand, the prosecution had him walk the jury through a graph he'd created that showed John's phone getting colder on the drive to the party, from the bar to the after party, and then getting steadily colder and colder.

The prosecution argued this means that John's phone never went inside the house.

Right, right. So we know that there was a blizzard, as I've said, on the night that John died, and as all our listeners know. But John O'Keefe's phone stays somewhere between 50 and 40 degrees from 1.30 a.m. to 6 a.m. Then it gets colder right when Karen finds John and John's phone is discovered under him.

You know, it's really confusing. The whole picture isn't straightforward. And remember that this kind of data hasn't been used often. It hasn't been widely studied.

Right. And to remind everyone, Jen McCabe is the good friend of John O'Keefe's. She was also with Karen the next morning when they discovered John's body. So this is the second time that I have seen Jen McCabe on the stand.

And I did notice this time that she repeated again and again that there was a lot of screaming that morning, that Karen was screaming at phone calls, that Karen was screaming at her when they met.

Jen also testified that Karen did not remember going to the after-party house.

There were three women out looking for John O'Keefe early that morning in the dark, in the wind, in the awful snow. Carrie Roberts, another good friend of John's, Jen McKay, both in the front seat, and then Karen in the back. Remember, Karen was the first to see the body, and she basically kicked her way out of the car because the other women couldn't see this dark blob lying on the snow.

Then I got out of the car, walked around the back of the car. And when Jen came around, she realized when she saw Carrie Roberts wiping the snow off John's face, she realized, that's my friend. That's my really good friend. And she got choked up on the stand for the first time.

Right. So Jen McCabe testified that she went home from the after party. She was in bed and it was 2.27 in the morning. And she was just Googling her daughter's sports teams and various things in that realm of her life.

So she said, of course, that she didn't type in Haas long to die in the cold until about 6.23 in the morning at the scene of John's body when Karen asked her to please find out how long it takes for somebody to die in the cold.

According to the prosecution and the expert from earlier, Ian Whiffen, Jan McCabe opened a browser window to 27 in the morning, and when Karen asked her at 6.23 in the morning, find out how long it takes to die in the cold, she was using the same browser window. I've always wondered about that.

And just here's an example. I got to court on Tuesday morning at 8 a.m. I wanted to see what the scene was outside because obviously I remembered it from the last trial. And I counted one by one and there were only 19 protesters. And it even looked like, you know, some of their signs were kind of beaten up and they were weathered. Now, of course, things could change.

The weather's going to get better. But it was just a moment in time where I thought, yep, Things have changed.

Karen made dozens of calls to John O'Keefe's cell phone, and a lot of calls just, you know, went to voicemail, and man, they were fiery.

Happy to be here.

I am in the courtroom. It is so exciting.

That's right. So Brennan asked Katie McLaughlin about seeing Karen Reed at the scene. And McLaughlin testified that one of the firefighters there asked her to gather more information about what had happened. McLaughlin said she noticed Karen and she decided to approach her.

You're absolutely right. And the defense, of course, maintains that what Karen said was, did I hit him? Or could I have hit him? That she wasn't making a statement. She was asking a question. But, you know, if you wanted to simplify this case, Andrea, and boil it down to a few critical points, this would be one. How will the jury interpret those few words, that handful of words?

McLaughlin also testified that after Karen said, I hit him, Jen McCabe, who was standing right beside Karen, told her to calm down.

Well, Jackson asked if McLaughlin was sure that Karen wasn't asking a question. And Jackson asked if she was actually admitting to a crime, why didn't they arrest her right then and there?

No, no. No.

So Gallagher testified that he was responsible for trying to preserve the scene in the midst of a snowstorm and that the weather conditions, those awful weather conditions, made it difficult. And he actually testified that he didn't know it was a crime scene at the time.

Yeah, unconventional is a good word for it. I mean, they actually used a leaf blower to reveal blood in the snow and red solo cups to collect that blood.

Jackson really did push him on that.

Jackson pointed out that having unsealed and unsecured biological material, his words, was not within any normal protocol for securing evidence. They clearly want to show the jury that this evidence could be tainted. And if it's tainted, then how can they trust it? And then that raises the possibility of Reasonable doubt, which is exactly what they want to do.

Yeah, you know, they're so powerful, these voicemails. Karen made dozens of calls to John O'Keefe's cell phone after she dropped him off. And a lot of calls just, you know, went to voicemail and man, they were fiery.

The prosecutor wants to show the jurors just how angry she was at him. She was calling him a loser. She was saying, John, I hate you.

You know, the thing about these jurors are they really, for me at least, they don't show their emotions. They don't show their feelings. They listen. Their faces are impassive. I didn't notice a reaction there, startling. I will tell you, they land with a startle because Karen is sitting right in court.

And these angry, angry words of hers and the swearing, and clearly this is a woman who is passionate and has lost control of herself, they land in a court with a huge bang. Now, the defense decided not to cross-examine. The investigator who found these voicemails and these calls, they just let her words go and they moved on.

Mm-hmm.

He does. Totally right, Andrea. And we saw them get at that with a new witness they called. His name is Jonathan Diamandis, and he's a childhood friend of Michael Proctor's.

Diamandis was on one of those now infamous text chains where Michael Proctor texted vulgarities about Karen Reid. I'm sure you remember them, Andrea. Yes. And the reason the defense called him is so they could get into those text messages without calling Proctor himself.

Now, it was interesting. The defense did not have Diamandis read the text messages, but on cross, the prosecutor asked him if he would. And you know what? Diamandis declined, saying he felt uncomfortable with the language. So the prosecutor read them.

Well, a couple of the jurors made faces, but I've got to say, Andrea, that things were about to get a lot more intense in the tiny courtroom that we're in with the next witness.

This was Officer Kelly Dever. And the morning that John O'Keefe's body was discovered, Kelly Dever was working an overnight shift and she was put on the dispatch desk. And the defense wanted her to talk about what she said she saw. But almost immediately, the interaction between Dever and Alan Jackson, who was leading the questioning for the defense, became combative.

So Jackson then started asking Debra questions about what she'd seen in the Sally Port garage of the Canton Police Department that morning. But that's where Karen's SUV was being held. And the reason that Jackson was asking about this is because Debra had been interviewed about what she saw by two other law enforcement agencies in relation to this case.

Ultimately, Debra said she told law enforcement officials that she saw the chief of the Canton Police Department and Brian Higgins an ATF agent, go into the Sally Port garage where Karen's SUV was and stay for a while.

So she's saying she has a false memory, that she couldn't have seen what she thought she saw when the previous officers talked to her because the timeline didn't work out.

It's rare, you know, Andrea, to see such a hostile witness take the stand. So jurors were riveted. But how they're going to process that testimony is anyone's guess.

This witness is a woman called Dr. Marie Russell. So she testified that she's dealt with at least 500 dog bite injuries over the course of her very long career, as well as treating many people who had injuries from being hit by cars. And she walked the jury through how she developed her opinion that John O'Keefe's injuries on his arm were caused by dog bites. And

that they would have had to have happened before John O'Keefe died.

Brannon accused Russell of reaching out to the attorneys and wanting to be involved in this case, and also of exaggerating her expertise on dog bites.

Okay. You know, watching in the court on the second day of cross-examination of Dr. Russell, it began to feel a bit like a slam dunk for the prosecutor until Russell came back with two points. First of all, she spoke very confidently about how a broken taillight could never in and of itself cause the kind of arm injuries that John O'Keefe had.

And she also spoke about how people often blame themselves for accidents, sometimes for years afterwards, calling it acute grief reaction. So basically, she offered an explanation of why Karen might have been asking if she hit John with her car that morning.

Thank you, Andrea. Talk soon.

You know, the judge, it's the same judge, Beverly Canone, has set an even bigger buffer zone around the courthouse to keep the crowds at bay.

This time there's something called a randomizer, actually, which is selecting all the reporters in the tiny courtroom.

When jury selection started on Tuesday, I was there very early in the morning and there are metal barricades up all around the court, more than in the past. I saw Dedham police going by on bicycles and, of course, their Massachusetts state troopers stationed in front of the court as they were last time. It feels like there's more security. I saw really small groups of protesters.

They were waving huge flags and they were wearing pink.

Oh boy, it is going to be a challenge. And people are saying, the judge is saying it could take two to three weeks. So on the first day, almost 100 prospective jurors were brought into the courtroom. And here's why it's going to be a problem. Three quarters of them said that they'd heard about the case with many of those people saying that they'd already formed an opinion about it.

And that's not, of course, what either side wants to hear. One more thing I want to say, having watched the proceedings on Tuesday when jury selection started, it's really interesting to see how deeply involved Karen is in working on the jury selection process. She is going through the questionnaires with the attorneys. She's sometimes at sidebar with them as they grill prospective jurors.

I'm not surprised at all. Is Alan Jackson there, her L.A. attorney? Yes. He is. And they've also added a New York attorney. And they actually added an alternate juror from the first trial, somebody who came forward who's an attorney. And she's working with the team. So she was going through questionnaires Tuesday as well with Karen. Fascinating.

Yeah, they have. They winnowed down about 100 prospective jurors to 13 men and three women. So that will be the 12 and four alternates. They filled out online questionnaires, you know, what have you heard about the case? She's rolling the dice here by representing herself.

Yeah, and so that led to a pretty intense moment in court earlier this week when they were still working their way through pretrial motions. Lori's trying to have a speedy trial, but the prosecution has said it's too speedy, that they don't have enough information about what she's planned for her defense. And they actually said she's trying to conduct a trial by ambush.

And Lori kind of took offense to that.

The judge was trying to get her to tell him about the relevancy of each of her witnesses, and they had this exchange.

Yeah, the total was actually over 60 until this week when one of those suits was dismissed by a judge because the plaintiff didn't identify herself. So this claim was brought in federal court in the Southern District of New York, so Manhattan. And the plaintiff said that back in 1995, she was at a party for a music video and she and Combs started kissing in the bathroom.

And when she stopped, she says he struck her and then he raped her. He is denied this allegation. So when she filed the suit in October, the judge said the plaintiff could stay anonymous because putting her name to those allegations would get her, quote, significant, potentially harmful attention from the media and the public.

But in January, that same judge said the plaintiff had until March 20th to come forward. When she didn't make that deadline, the judge dismissed her suit. Right. On Monday. Yes, yes. Comstein put out a statement after that dismissal came down, which said, For months, we've seen case after case filed by individuals hiding behind anonymity.

The other claims, like the one dismissed today, also will not hold up in a court of law.

I am. I am. I'm here for the start of jury selection in Karen Reid's second trial. You'll remember she's charged with hitting and killing her police officer boyfriend, John O'Keefe, with her SUV a little over three years ago now. She's pleaded not guilty. And the scene here in Dedham is still kind of wild.

Is it possible he could have been in shock? Objection, speculation.

Did Alex tell you that he got hit in the head with the bat? Objection, your honor. Here's a prior ruling.

This is the man who's dealing with the heart of the whole case. Did that Lexus hit John O'Keefe?

Hello, Andrea. Hello.

Well, Andrea, it was a really slow start on Tuesday. There was a long sidebar. And then the court got going eventually. But Karen's defense attorney, Robert Alessi, was speaking of this sidebar very passionately to the judge and the other attorneys there. You know, I couldn't hear his words, of course, but his voice and his demeanor were intense. And we know why.

The next witness would be asked the question at the very heart of this case. Did Karen Reed's Lexus strike John O'Keefe or not? Prosecutors put that witness, Dr. Judson Welcher, on the stand before his testimony started for a brief voir dire, and we should point out Welcher is a new expert. He did not testify at the first trial.

The defense objected to some parts of his testimony saying they were outside his area of expertise, and they also wanted to know if Dr. Welcher made changes to his presentation in the past two weeks after talking to prosecutors. In other words, did the prosecution exert last-minute influence on his testimony? there were some tense exchanges.

Well, he started out by explaining his background, which is in both accident reconstruction and also biomechanical engineering, explaining how accidents impact the body.

There was a lot there, Andrea. First, he gave a long list of things that he'd reviewed in the case. The police reports and witness statements, ring camera video from John O'Keefe's house, other surveillance video from the bars that John and Karen had been to that night. He looked at photos and videos from the scene, cell phone data, jams.

GPS data, weather reports, and the media interviews that Karen did, including her interview with Dateline. He also told jurors that he went to the front lawn. He lives in California, and he traveled to the front lawn in Canton, Massachusetts, where John O'Keefe's body was found. He took photographs there, and he made measurements, and he came up with a computer model.

He even bought the same type of SUV that Karen was driving that night to do some testing.

He did. He did. Really? He bought an SUV. Yes, indeed. You know, all of which is to say if the prosecution was hoping to show jurors that this guy did his homework, he did everything to persuade them that he deserved an A. Sue, much of his testimony was quite technical.

Yeah, he had a huge amount of data to get through and simplify for them. So he began to walk through the timeline he created of what happened that night. He showed a computer model he made using data he collected about how Karen Reid's car moved. He then tested the data with the car he bought that matched Karen's SUV, and he tried to explain why John O'Keefe might have had the injuries he had.

Welcher is himself a similar height and similar weight to O'Keefe. So he said that he acted as him in testing, and we could see videos of him actually standing in front of that SUV, doing some of the testing, wearing clothes similar to what John O'Keefe was wearing that night, right down to the same make of sneakers.

And he covered the taillight in paint, and then he kind of swiveled into it, trying to show where the injuries would be on John O'Keefe's arm. He had a driver back the car into a crash dummy later to show what might have happened, you know, if the car did hit John O'Keefe.

And, of course, he dealt separately with the lacerations at the back of John O'Keefe's head because the prosecution said that John O'Keefe fell over into hard ground. He did point out, of course, that it's really hard to exactly model what would have happened when O'Keefe was hit by the car. Ultimately, the prosecutor asked what all of the testing and reviewing of the data led Welcher to conclude.

He is. He is the prosecution's closer. So he is the witness that the prosecution wants the jury to remember the most. This is the man who's dealing with the heart of the whole case. Did that Lexus hit John O'Keefe? And so that's why, you know, he's so critically important.

So the defense was spirited when he was testifying and they were just as spirited when it came time for them to do their own cross-examination.

Well, Andrea, you know, I am sure they have a few surprises planned. Karen has said they're planning on calling more witnesses this time. And Karen says they also have a more robust case this time around than they did in the first trial.

And ultimately, I think, you know, this case is going to come down to the battle of the accident reconstructionists, you know, experts on both sides who offered their view of what happened that night. And it's going to come down to, of course, what argument the jury finds most compelling.

Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.

I'd never been called for jury duty before. So it was definitely intriguing and honestly a little nerve wracking just not knowing what to expect, you know.

to experience jury selection firsthand. I was seated in the gallery for, like, the majority of the voir dire process. It was definitely intense, though. They started out with basic information like, what is your job? Like, what's your profession? And are you married? And then it just goes into, like, have you ever been arrested? How do you feel about police?

Yeah. So after the jury selection in Davidson County in Nashville, they said, you could be gone 10 to 14 days, pack what you need for two weeks, meet back here at the courthouse on Sunday. And then they took our phones away at the beginning right before we got in the vans. We put our luggage in and got in and drove to Chattanooga. And we were sequestered in a hotel for the whole trial.

In the hotel...

You don't have your TV. They've taken like the clock radio out of there. Of course, we don't have our phone or anything. It's just silence. It was wild.

Yes. Yeah. Think about it. You're completely cut off. So in some ways it forces you to be really present, but it's also stifling. Like you're with strangers and the only thing connecting you all is this one tragic event that you're not even allowed to talk about. So everything just kind of stays in your head. And at least that was the case for me.

All of the questions and emotions and details, you just carry them around in silence. It's almost like an emotional pressure cooker.

Right. Absolutely. Those were the hardest parts was seeing, honestly, both moms on the stand, but Katrina being the first witness that we saw. I mean, it smacks you right in the face. Not only does she look just like Jazzy, but the emotions make you want to want justice. Right. And the facts and the details, they just they have to be the things that guide you.

I had a strong sense, but I stayed open. Like we kind of after choosing our foreperson, we put it to an initial vote. with the plan kind of being to begin discussions if the vote was not unanimous, which it wasn't, there was two of us that, myself included, that were hesitant.

And I think for me, it was me just really myself needing to understand the definition of what premeditation meant and how that applied to this case.

Yeah, it was much quicker than I think anyone expected.

Yeah. I mean, it didn't really hit me until about halfway through the trial. I just remember it just smacked me in the face like, oh my gosh, like, I could bring this unique perspective from sitting in the jury box and hearing this story unfold day after day, just like as I heard it in the trial. I wanted our listeners to kind of have that same experience.

I mean, I'm assuming this is the kind of experience that is now going to stay with you forever. Yeah. Oh, yeah. This whole thing has changed me. I still haven't processed it all. I pretty much jumped right into telling this story. And yeah, it was just a very profound and life-changing experience.

Yeah, I feel honored to be.

Absolutely. It was so great to talk with you. Thank you again.

All of the questions and emotions and details, you just carry them around in silence. It's almost like an emotional pressure cooker.

It was a huge challenge to seat a jury in a case that is as public and controversial as this one.

Yeah, it really is big. Judge Canone wanted 18 jurors, and she got them Tuesday afternoon, nine men and nine women. All of the jurors are going to be seated for the entire trial, but after closing arguments, only 12 of them are going to be chosen to deliberate.

Blaine, it was a huge challenge to see the jury in a case that is as public and controversial as this one. Let's just look at the numbers from court for Tuesday's jury pool. Pool number 10. There were 54 people. 43 had heard of the case. 26 had formed an opinion. And that's about half of the people there. And eight reported having a bias. So then you have other conflicts.

For instance, nine of the jurors said they knew witnesses. Four knew either some of the lawyers involved in the case or the district attorney. Outside of court this week, Karen Reid said she wasn't bothered by the long selection process.

Yeah. So I was up there for the start of jury selection and there are metal barricades around the courthouse. There are more Massachusetts State Police. It's a very different vibe. Karen Reed has a lot of supporters and many of them wear pink to show their support.

During the first trial, they had signs and they had bullhorns and even dressed up their dogs in pink to show that they were standing with her. But they were kept back from the actual courthouse. There was a buffer zone for the first trial. It's just grown bigger for the retrial.

Judge Canone ordered an expanded buffer zone, and four of Karen's supporters filed a lawsuit in federal court arguing that it limited their right to free speech. On Monday, a judge denied the suit and said that Canone's expanded buffer zone, his words, directly advanced the goal of ensuring a fair trial. An attorney for the protesters said they're going to appeal.

Yes. Karen was outspoken after her first trial, and she's been speaking out ahead of her second trial. She's done a lot of media interviews. She sat down with Dateline, of course, for a lengthy interview, but she also talked to documentary makers and to magazine writers. And now the prosecution wants to turn her statements against her.

Their strategy is basically to take her words to help make their case. Karen was asked about that strategy outside of court, and she answered with a bit of bravado. You know, come at me were her exact words. Come at me. But she also wanted to make it clear that she knew what she was saying in each interview. As she put it, I would not have said anything that I wouldn't say again.

Yeah, Michael Proctor was the lead investigator in the case, and he was fired by the Massachusetts State Police earlier this year due to misconduct, including, and this is very big, sending demeaning and derogatory text messages about Karen Reed during the investigation. His testimony was a really dramatic part of the first trial.

Defense attorney Alan Jackson forced Proctor to read some of those text messages he sent on the stand.

We expect Proctor to take the stand. It's a tough call for the prosecution, though, because if they don't call him, you can bet the defense will.

She's almost a fully fledged... She's almost a fully-fledged member of her own defense team. She knows the facts inside and out. But, you know, always the case, and you know this, Blaine, the defense is going to give the prosecution a real target if they put her on the stand.

You know, Blaine, it's almost a letdown. And I can tell you when I go up there this time, I am putting that soccer chair in my trunk. I'm going to have it with me as kind of a talisman for the retrial. But this time, let me tell you what the system is. You know, there's a lottery system. I mean, it's something called a randomizer.

Selects 10 reporters from about 30 who want to sit inside the court. There's only 10 seats in this tiny, tiny courtroom. But, you know, whether I'm in the court or streaming the trial online, I'm going to be watching it very closely and reporting back to tell you about it. And, you know, I might be sitting in my chair when I do it.

Hi, Andrea. It's a pleasure.

I am a winner. Yay, okay.

Yuri Buchanik is a sergeant with the Massachusetts State Police.

Buchanek and Proctor worked together to develop the theory of how John O'Keefe was killed. Now, Michael Proctor was fired earlier this year due to misconduct, in part because of demeaning and derogatory text messages he sent about Karen to his friends and even to his supervisors during the investigation. Buchanek was on one of those group text chains, and he even liked one of the messages.

The prosecution is trying to make Sergeant Buchanek the face of the investigation and minimize Proctor's role because of those demeaning text messages he sent. Andrea, you probably remember how damaging Proctor's testimony was in the first trial, so they're trying to avoid a repeat of that. And they're trying to avoid mentioning Michael Proctor's name as much as possible.

Prosecutor Hank Brannan did things like refer to Proctor as the case officer instead of the lead investigator. And they also had Buchanek show physical evidence collected from the scene to the jury instead of getting Michael Proctor to do that.

So the defense, of course, had exactly the opposite strategy. Alan Jackson insisted that Proctor was really at the center of the investigation. Remember, Jackson called him a cancer in his opening argument. And just as he did when he cross-examined Proctor during the last trial, Alan Jackson really hammered Buchanek about how the investigation was conducted.

He asked him about procedural missteps, like witnesses being interviewed in groups. and not being brought down to the station, for instance, to be recorded. And Buchanek was often evasive when Jackson pushed him and tried to pin him down about Proctor's role in the case.

Oh, they were very attentive. There's no question about that. And I have noticed one man on the jury where every time Alan Jackson gets up, you get the sense that this guy, if he could applaud, he would. Oh, wow. Other jurors are more studious. They're taking notes. But this gentleman is clearly enjoying the spectacle, the theater that Alan Jackson brings.

Well, yes. I mean, first of all, let me say that Karen Reed, the defendant, has become kind of the voice of the defense team because there is a gag order. Remember, Andrea, the lawyers were gagged even before the trial started, so we can't talk to them. So Karen will sometimes talk to the media after a day in court, and

I asked her one-on-one, you know, what is going to happen with Michael Proctor, and she said TBD. They're still deciding. And it's a really interesting debate, Andrea, about whether or not they're going to call him. The defense may be thinking that Alan Jackson's cross-examination has left jurors with the impression that Proctor is the bad actor in the investigation.

And the calculation the defense team has to make is this. If they put Michael Proctor on the stand, will they in some way humanize him? And is that a risk that they're willing to take? So they've got a big decision to make, and they have to make it relatively soon.

You know, Andrea, you know that's the million-dollar question, right? It's something she's asked about almost every day. And so far, all she said was that's also to be determined.

Thank you, Andrea.

So last week, Andrea, we heard investigators read text messages from Karen's phone establishing that John and Karen had a fight in the hours before John's death. Those text messages show that they made up, two of them made up, but the prosecutor wanted jurors to know that their relationship was far from perfect.

The prosecutor's next big witness on Monday morning was someone who could use John's phone to tell jurors what happened next in the timeline. The prosecution's version of events, of course.

Yes, yes. Prosecutor Brannon got Ian Whiffen to talk about the temperature of the battery in John's cell phone. something I honestly knew nothing about until this retrial started.

So the prosecution's theory is that John O'Keefe was lying grievously wounded in a blizzard, so you'd expect his phone, if he had it with him, to get colder and colder and colder from the moment Karen drove away. Remember, this is the prosecution's POV. So apparently our phone batteries log their own temperature often. and that's to make sure they don't overheat.

Now, investigators can use that data to figure out how cold or hot it is outside where the phone is. So when Whiffen was on the stand, the prosecution had him walk the jury through a graph he'd created that showed John's phone getting colder on the drive to the party, from the bar to the after party, and then getting steadily colder and colder.

The prosecution argued this means that John's phone never went inside the house.

Right, right. So we know that there was a blizzard, as I've said, on the night that John died, and as all our listeners know. But John O'Keefe's phone stays somewhere between 50 and 40 degrees from 1.30 a.m. to 6 a.m. Then it gets colder right when Karen finds John and John's phone is discovered under him.

You know, it's really confusing. The whole picture isn't straightforward. And remember that this kind of data hasn't been used often. It hasn't been widely studied.

Right. And to remind everyone, Jen McCabe is the good friend of John O'Keefe's. She was also with Karen the next morning when they discovered John's body. So this is the second time that I have seen Jen McCabe on the stand.

And I did notice this time that she repeated again and again that there was a lot of screaming that morning, that Karen was screaming at phone calls, that Karen was screaming at her when they met.

Jen also testified that Karen did not remember going to the after-party house.

There were three women out looking for John O'Keefe early that morning in the dark, in the wind, in the awful snow. Carrie Roberts, another good friend of John's, Jen McKay, both in the front seat, and then Karen in the back. Remember, Karen was the first to see the body, and she basically kicked her way out of the car because the other women couldn't see this dark blob lying on the snow.

Then I got out of the car, walked around the back of the car. And when Jen came around, she realized when she saw Carrie Roberts wiping the snow off John's face, she realized, that's my friend. That's my really good friend. And she got choked up on the stand for the first time.

Right. So Jen McCabe testified that she went home from the after party. She was in bed and it was 2.27 in the morning. And she was just Googling her daughter's sports teams and various things in that realm of her life.

So she said, of course, that she didn't type in Haas long to die in the cold until about 6.23 in the morning at the scene of John's body when Karen asked her to please find out how long it takes for somebody to die in the cold.

According to the prosecution and the expert from earlier, Ian Whiffen, Jan McCabe opened a browser window to 27 in the morning, and when Karen asked her at 6.23 in the morning, find out how long it takes to die in the cold, she was using the same browser window. I've always wondered about that.

And just here's an example. I got to court on Tuesday morning at 8 a.m. I wanted to see what the scene was outside because obviously I remembered it from the last trial. And I counted one by one and there were only 19 protesters. And it even looked like, you know, some of their signs were kind of beaten up and they were weathered. Now, of course, things could change.

The weather's going to get better. But it was just a moment in time where I thought, yep, Things have changed.