Timestamp 27:18
Now she said, "This is my testimony without getting cut off."
So, why is an interview or documentary safer than testimony? Well, it's like I've said many times to clients that I worked with is I've never seen a lawsuit lost in a conference room. And your story goes a whole lot better when you're the only one telling it. when it's just you telling the story and nobody is really critically thinking, nobody is challenging, nobody is dismantling your story, nobody is offering forensic evidence, nobody's creating a timeline and challenging all the different things.
And when you're in the court of public opinion, evidence can be offered that wouldn't meet the standard in trial. hearsay can be considered. I mean, there's a whole different standard of proof.
So, your story goes a whole lot better when you're the only one telling it. And that's what she decided to do.
I'm going to tell my story where I'm the only one telling it.
And if rumors about Karen and her lawyer weren't enough, there was another voice stirring the pot outside the courtroom, a blogger that called himself Turtle Boy. Uh, his real name is Aiden Kernney, but to his thousands of followers online, he's the loudest guy in the room when it comes to this case.
Now, Turtle Boy didn't just write a couple of blog posts, and then move on.
He turned Karen Read's story into his personal crusade and he went live on social media, broke down police reports
line by line, leaked private text messages, and accused investigators and witnesses of being involved in a cover up.
Now, to her supporters, he was a hero, shining a light on corruption and standing up to the so-called blue wall.
To her critics, he was a reckless agitator, fanning the flames, intimidating witnesses, and muddying the waters. At one point, Turtle Boy himself got tangled up in legal trouble, tied to his role in the case, arrested on charges related to witness intimidation.
And when that happened, you'd think, okay, this will shut him down. It only made his followers more loyal. They saw him as a martyr for Karen's cause.
And after the first trial ended in a mistrial in July of 2024, Turtle Boy, he didn't fade into the background. He went into overdrive.
And while Karen's defense team filed motions and prosecutors regrouped, he kept the story alive online. Remember I said there were 9 and 1/2 months between the end of the first trial and the beginning of the second and he stayed plugged in the entire 9 and 1/2 months. His blog and live streams became a kind of parallel courtroom where he insisted Karen was innocent and pushed hard on the theory that John O'Keeffe was killed inside the Albert house and that police covered it up.
He was out there digging up text messages, sharing documents, calling out witnesses by name, and telling his
followers this was bigger than one case. This was about corruption in law enforcement.
Timestamp 31:16
Now, when you're seated on a jury panel, the judge gives you instructions in the beginning and says, "Look, you're not to look at anything about this case in the news media. You're not to talk to anybody about this case.
If you're in a room where it comes on the news, you need to get up and leave the room. If it comes on your car radio, you need to change the channel or turn it off. If you get a popup on your social media, do not click on it. Do not read or discuss or listen to anything about this case outside of this courtroom because none of that is vetted. None of that's verified. You can't rely on anything that the court has not ruled on as admissible. It hasn't been verified in any way.
Now, I think most people maybe make a conscious effort to try to not wade into that, but human curiosity
being what it is and us being in such a ubiquitous environment where we're in a 30 minute news cycle, it's on your computer, social media platforms, television, I mean, It's almost impossible to not run into a headline story. I've talked to so many jurors after the fact and ask them if they were successful in avoiding all the media and they've just said, you know, I you really can't.
Some have confessed over time that they look stuff up to verify things or they research stuff and said, "I made an attempt not to let it influence me, but sometimes lawyers did such a bad job of presenting something, I just wanted to figure it out myself."
So, if you've got somebody out there like Turtle Boy who is just hammering away, you've got to realize that it may very well have an impact. You just can't ignore it. And in the new trial, he was still very much part of the story. Protesters
held up his blog posts like they were gospel. He had built an army of online supporters who chanted free Karen Reed outside the courthouse.
Inside, witnesses who had been targeted on his platform were asked on the stand about the pressure they felt. His name came up in testimony. His blog posts were referenced in media coverage and his presence turned the second trial into another circus.
Disclosure: John's sister would not have said [guessing it was a cousin of John or his SIL]:
Timestamp: 40:01
John's sister said, "This has just become a circus." And the ring master is Karen Read.
