MISTRIAL MA - Professor Karen Read, 43, charged with murdering police officer boyfriend John O'Keefe by hitting him with car, Canton, 14 Apr 2023 #16

[Charlot123]

RSBM

I suppose personally i would say "she did not kill JO in the way the State says"

Don't get my wrong. I am 100% in agreement that the State deservedly failed in this case and it is important they did. It should have been an NG verdict to punish them fully.

I also agree the State did not counter or challenge the D witnesses. A huge fail.

But I think because the crime/accident scene investigation was so poor, we never got any coherent explanation of what 'must have happened' - it was all very 'trust me bro' that the victim went sailing through the air - propelled via his elbow - bounced off the curb to his final resting place ...

We lost the chance to understand how this might actually have happened

MOO

If my friend would tell me, “I don’t understand what’s happening with my health. I’ve ruled out this and that, consulted such-and-such specialist, and nothing can explain it,” I’d say, “why don’t you see a medical geneticist.”
I have a faint feeling that something similar is needed here, specifically with these traumas. Perhaps all the case needs is a specialist who’d look at it from another angle. Another approach would be to send JO’s medical history to a thousand specialists in blunt force traumas and ask, what scenario seems to be the most rational to you? I am sure it is all explainable, only we are standing too close to the case and hence, are missing something.

 

[Trailbum74]

Interestingly, it looks like Judge Cannone will be presiding over the Brian Walshe trial. Another case where Trooper Proctor was a key player. Wondering how his suspension/reassignment will affect that.

 

[OldCop]

Is there an adult in the room?

Not in this particular case, no.

 

[kittythehare]

If there had been a decent relationship between KR and JOK, his family would not hate her so much IMO. The brother genuinely seems to believe that she was very likely to have killed him- and while women do kill male domestic partners, it is not that common IMO. Unlike the family, we WSers go into this with no background information. KS here though is driving JOK to this party and then going home to babysit his niece and nephew but she is the villain? all IMO. Is there an adult in the room?

here's the thing though, KR was very friendly with his wife.. sounded like a really nice friendship. His wife testified to that..

They all got on well and he testified himself that he had thanked her for her work with the children and making JOK's life better.

I did not get the impression that him and JOK were close though, they didn't see each other often at all..

Looks like he zoomed straight into hate there...and he's happy to stay there.. Ah well, whatevs..

 

[jepop]

I have explained this ad nauseum. JOK had not come home. JOK had young children at home he was caring for. Since taking care of those young children, JOK ALWAYS came home. So lets not act like him not coming home was some normal occurance and she should assume he's sleeping at a house he doesn't even know how to get to. JMO

Agree and just adding for the sake of accuracy. OP mentioned KR awoke niece and then niece and KR call to JMc occurred three hours post Fairview drop off (ie about 3.30am)? But that was an inaccuracy, or some might call it a misleading statement or even a lie, introduced by Lally in his opening statement.IMO

The actual evidence in trial was that this occurred closer to 5am. I have 4.53am stuck in my head as the time JMc received the call from niece/KR based on call records introduced. ICBW and Jmo

 

[Forest_Wood]

here's the thing though, KR was very friendly with his wife.. sounded like a really nice friendship. His wife testified to that..

They all got on well and he testified himself that he had thanked her for her work with the children and making JOK's life better.

I did not get the impression that him and JOK were close though, they didn't see each other often at all..

Looks like he zoomed straight into hate there...and he's happy to stay there.. Ah well, whatevs..

I agree. It didn’t seem he and JO’K were close. And even though he described his brother in a few words, like loyal and a good guy etc, I came away from his interview still not getting a deep sense for who his brother truly was. Maybe it’s because POK’s words are saying one thing but with very little emotion except for blame and anger. I didn’t find he had an emotional connection w his brother IMO. He also said they know what happened but they don’t know really. MOO

 

[kittythehare]

I agree. It didn’t seem he and JO’K were close. And even though he described his brother in a few words, like loyal and a good guy etc, I came away from his interview still not getting a deep sense for who his brother truly was. Maybe it’s because POK’s words are saying one thing but with very little emotion except for blame and anger. I didn’t find he had an emotional connection w his brother IMO. He also said they know what happened but they don’t know really. MOO

She was his brother's partner, she sat beside the child while he was telling him John had died..

She was still in her role.

Did anybody ask her how she was feeling having lost her beloved?

He testified he had hardly seen her back at the house, omitted that whole significant chapter about telling the child with her..

Oh Christ the blades are out..

I don't think she can take any more of this.. Nobody could.

 

[MerlinFalcon]

She was his brother's partner, she sat beside the child while he was telling him John had died..

She was still in her role.

Did anybody ask her how she was feeling having lost her beloved?

He testified he had hardly seen her back at the house, omitted that whole significant chapter about telling the child with her..

Oh Christ the blades are out..

I don't think she can take any more of this.. Nobody could.

I do have to wonder what JOK was really like. Usually when someone passes, all you hear are great things. Outside of adopting his sister's kids, we've heard nothing. Between the crown and his brother, you'd think we would get more of a glimpse into his life and his character.

MOO

 

[Kittybunny]

@OldCop shared this some time ago, I just now got round to reading it.
It's worth your time.. It's not that DA's first rodeo

The state medical examiner concluded that Birchmore had died by suicide, and, in a separate investigation, the same district attorney’s office that pursued the charges against Karen Read found no evidence of foul play in Birchmore’s death. But, earlier this month, a forensic pathologist hired by Birchmore’s estate concluded that she had been strangled to death. The report also noted that a rape kit and fetal tissue taken from her body were never sent for DNA analysis.

The Irresolvable Tragedy of the Karen Read Case

The trial, which ended on Monday in a deadlocked jury, became an object of obsession for offering up a mix of conspiracy, corruption, and hard-drinking oblivion.

www.newyorker.com

From that article:
“Above all else, a totalizing drinking culture is what both defined and obscured this unresolved, perhaps irresolvable case. It opens the elevator shaft onto a bottomless enigma. Did Read—who allegedly woke up thinking she’d last seen O’Keefe at a bar—ever piece together any reliable memory shards from that night? Or did her mutating account of events generate itself from a primordial soup of liquor, panic, guilt, and conjecture? Did visitors to Fairview Road miss O’Keefe’s body on the lawn because it wasn’t there, or because they were too drunk to notice? Do any of these people really remember what happened?

Even under ideal circumstances, memories aren’t retrieved, exactly, so much as they are reconstructed. (Like a car crash, you might say.) The blackout drinker, it follows, has no materials to build with. Blackouts occur when alcohol interferes with receptors of the hippocampus that aid in memory consolidation, rendering the drinker incapable of making and storing new memories. She can be an engine of a narrative, but she cannot tell the story. Others may know her (provided they are not also blackout drinking), but she cannot know herself; she is absent from her own consciousness.”

Add to the above the snow, and the egregious incompetence of the investigation, and I believe we will be left forever in the dark about the truth of what happened that night.

My heart aches for John O’Keefe’s family. To lose two children, or two siblings…and then go through the spectacle and harassment of crazy internet bloggers in this whole ordeal…If I were Paul, I would be angry too. I can see how he can interpret Karen Read’s attitude and demeanor as her enjoying her celebrity, and be infuriated by it. It would just be the final straw because he 100 percent believes she killed her brother, even if many of us don’t or even if we think it’s possible she did, but do not believe it was proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

It’s all just such a horrible tragedy.

 

[Forest_Wood]

I do have to wonder what JOK was really like. Usually when someone passes, all you hear are great things. Outside of adopting his sister's kids, we've heard nothing. Between the crown and his brother, you'd think we would get more of a glimpse into his life and his character.

MOO

That’s exactly how I feel! Well put, thank you.

 

[KSwizzle]

My biggest takeaway from his interview was he doesn’t care about the evidence, Karen did it and she didn’t act the way they wanted after and she did it, and she did it.

The family has been through an unimaginable amount of trauma it’s hard to blame them for their convictions, but I’ll just have to respectfully disagree with his opinion that Karen hit him with a car, I don’t think he was even hit by any car

 

[Misy]

absolutely.
I'm not at all sure she was drunk, I do think she was in desperation stage of co-dependency. I think she either believed he was with a woman or that she had let him walk home drunk and without a coat in a blizzard and it was likely he had got hit by a snow plough en route. She would have been aware he did not know the host well.

Likewise when she discovered the object of her obsession was dead she likely entered a deep deep state of shock and alarm.
'Remembering the bad times' would have been a psychological trick to stop her falling into that chasm of despair.

At this point she would have been highly susceptible to the words of others.

That's my opinion as viewed through my own filters and experience.

The facts however are unaltered.
He did not die from a vehicular impact.

100%

 

[kittythehare]

From that article:
“Above all else, a totalizing drinking culture is what both defined and obscured this unresolved, perhaps irresolvable case. It opens the elevator shaft onto a bottomless enigma. Did Read—who allegedly woke up thinking she’d last seen O’Keefe at a bar—ever piece together any reliable memory shards from that night? Or did her mutating account of events generate itself from a primordial soup of liquor, panic, guilt, and conjecture? Did visitors to Fairview Road miss O’Keefe’s body on the lawn because it wasn’t there, or because they were too drunk to notice? Do any of these people really remember what happened?

Even under ideal circumstances, memories aren’t retrieved, exactly, so much as they are reconstructed. (Like a car crash, you might say.) The blackout drinker, it follows, has no materials to build with. Blackouts occur when alcohol interferes with receptors of the hippocampus that aid in memory consolidation, rendering the drinker incapable of making and storing new memories. She can be an engine of a narrative, but she cannot tell the story. Others may know her (provided they are not also blackout drinking), but she cannot know herself; she is absent from her own consciousness.”

Add to the above the snow, and the egregious incompetence of the investigation, and I believe we will be left forever in the dark about the truth of what happened that night.

My heart aches for John O’Keefe’s family. To lose two children, or two siblings…and then go through the spectacle and harassment of crazy internet bloggers in this whole ordeal…If I were Paul, I would be angry too. I can see how he can interpret Karen Read’s attitude and demeanor as her enjoying her celebrity, and be infuriated by it. It would just be the final straw because he 100 percent believes she killed her brother, even if many of us don’t or even if we think it’s possible she did, but do not believe it was proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

It’s all just such a horrible tragedy.

Re snow, it was falling lightly.
Not a hope in hell he would have been covered by it when the party guests departed or when Lucky passed..

 

[kittythehare]

I do have to wonder what JOK was really like. Usually when someone passes, all you hear are great things. Outside of adopting his sister's kids, we've heard nothing. Between the crown and his brother, you'd think we would get more of a glimpse into his life and his character.

MOO

That was the strangest thing.
In any other trial the name and image is held up by the prosecution.
It didn't happen during this one.
I don't know why.

 

[IDK]

IMO, the beginning of a snowfall can be extremely dangerous when driving. The wet snow combines with oils and grease on the road surface and creates a very slick coating. The beginning of a snowfall is notorious for accidents, IMO. Police officers especially would be aware of the risk.

 

[Forest_Wood]

IMO, the beginning of a snowfall can be extremely dangerous when driving. The wet snow combines with oils and grease on the road surface and creates a very slick coating. The beginning of a snowfall is notorious for accidents, IMO. Police officers especially would be aware of the risk.

If Karen had hit him with her vehicle, he would have been in the roadway, not 30’ away on the grass, with his phone under him and glass beside him. I initially believed he was scooped up by the snow plow and pushed up on the lawn. But the experts say that’s impossible. MOO

 

[Kittybunny]

Re snow, it was falling lightly.
Not a hope in hell he would have been covered by it when the party guests departed or when Lucky passed..

True, but by the time they got around to actually processing the scene there was a lot of snow, and they definitely used it as an excuse as to why things were done shoddily or evidence was missed.

 

[jepop]

IMO, the beginning of a snowfall can be extremely dangerous when driving. The wet snow combines with oils and grease on the road surface and creates a very slick coating. The beginning of a snowfall is notorious for accidents, IMO. Police officers especially would be aware of the risk.

Afai aware, at 12.30am, the snow fall hadn't started? I know BH claimed he plowed the driveay when he arrived from the Waterfall. However several posters have pondered on that since there likely wouldn't have been much,if anything, as Lally might say, to plow away. I could be mistaken. Jmo

 

[kittythehare]

True, but by the time they got around to actually processing the scene there was a lot of snow, and they definitely used it as an excuse as to why things were done shoddily or evidence was missed.

I reckon that if he had died as they claimed, his body would have been clearly visible to all who passed.. nobody saw him..

Somebody put up a snow map for that day some time ago.. they had plenty of scope if they had processed it immediately after his body was taken to the hospital.. they just didn't do it.

 

[mrjitty]

If Karen had hit him with her vehicle, he would have been in the roadway, not 30’ away on the grass, with his phone under him and glass beside him. I initially believed he was scooped up by the snow plow and pushed up on the lawn. But the experts say that’s impossible. MOO

This is the part I struggle with, and I think was missing from the reconstruction. What angle would the vehicle have to hit him on, to throw him so far clear of the verge - yet he also has to hit the verge with his head to suffer the head injury - and then bounce to his final location? Or did he walk/crawl the last part

Maybe this is possible but surely it has to be mapped out and shown that the physics works?