Editor’s word, June 18, 2025, 4:40 pm ET: On June 18, 2025, Karen Learn was discovered not responsible of the second-degree homicide of her boyfriend John O’Keefe. She was discovered responsible of drunk driving. This was her second trial; to learn our rundown of what was completely different on the retrial, click on right here. The story beneath was initially printed July 3, 2024.
Occasionally, a real crime case comes alongside that appears to be a Rorschach take a look at — the place there’s a lot difficult, compelling, and contradictory proof on all sides that it turns into straightforward to imagine what you need to imagine.
That’s arguably one of the best ways to explain why the case of Karen Learn, which deadlocked a “starkly divided” jury after an intense nine-week trial, has hypnotized and polarized the town of Boston, and more and more the remainder of the nation. Following Decide Beverly Cannone’s declaration of a mistrial, the prosecution instantly vowed to pursue a retrial; the second trial is at present scheduled to start in late January 2025. That seemingly means heightened public curiosity and additional entrenchment of the bitter camps on this case.
The prosecution alleges that Learn, a profitable finance analyst and adjunct professor who’s removed from the “typical” homicide suspect, killed her boyfriend, 46-year-old Boston police officer John O’Keefe, within the early, snowy morning hours of January 29, 2022. In line with prosecutors, Learn, who stood trial for second-degree homicide and manslaughter, intentionally backed into O’Keefe together with her SUV whereas she was intoxicated, then drove house, leaving him mendacity within the chilly. O’Keefe died from blunt power trauma and hypothermia. However at trial, issues had been something however clear; studies point out the jury would have unanimously acquitted Learn on prices of homicide and leaving the scene, however had been torn on the lesser prices, with a “gentle” 9-3 cut up in favor of conviction for manslaughter.
Among the many important items of proof within the state’s favor: Learn herself asking varied witnesses, “May I’ve hit him?” the following morning, after awakening and returning to the home to search for him.
Learn, however, alleges that she’s been framed, in a spiraling conspiracy that started with a celebration stuffed with witnesses mendacity about what occurred and shortly encompassed the whole Boston Police Division (BPD) and the prosecutor’s workplace. Whereas from one standpoint, Learn’s protection could also be greedy at straws in its try to color the case as a frame-up, from one other, it’s the type of police work Bostonians — and people in different cities throughout the nation — have come to count on.
The trial has developed from what initially appeared to investigators like an open-and-shut case right into a reckoning with a prison justice system the general public not trusts.
The murky information of the case
Learn claims that after she and O’Keefe spent till round midnight ingesting at a neighborhood bar, she dropped O’Keefe off to hang around on the house of retired BPD officer Brian Albert. A number of individuals who had been both members of the BPD or affiliated with the native justice system had been additionally on the home, however nobody who was there corroborates her story. Not certainly one of them says they noticed O’Keefe enter the constructing; as a substitute, all of them declare they’d no concept O’Keefe had even arrived on the home till his physique was positioned outdoors of it within the snow the following morning.
Learn, nonetheless, maintains that she watched O’Keefe go into the home earlier than she left the scene. She alleges that O’Keefe should have been injured inside the home, that the partygoers staged the crime scene to seem like a hit-and-run, and that they’ve lied about it ever since. Her protection argues that the accidents O’Keefe sustained resulted from a bodily combat and a canine assault from a German shepherd combine Albert owned.
The protection alleges the investigation was hindered from the beginning by a failure to deal with the Albert home as a potential crime scene and a failure to deal with the witnesses as potential individuals of curiosity; two of the first investigative staff members even have private hyperlinks to the witnesses. Additional undermining the police had been the weird strategies they used, together with utilizing leaf blowers to clear away snow (and doubtlessly proof) on the crime scene, and utilizing solo cups and grocery baggage to gather proof. Add to {that a} parade of unprofessional conduct and feedback from officers, significantly from a lead investigator who was fired instantly after the mistrial, and the case has morphed into a real public scandal.
All through the investigation and the broadly publicized trial, a extremely vocal contingent of supporters from Boston and past have made Learn into a real crime trigger célèbre; one Fb group supporting her has over 50,000 members. Because of a decade of thriving curiosity in true crime, trial-watchers are hyper-vigilant to potential injustices and the shortcomings of regulation enforcement. Within the eyes of many, the case has change into a referendum on corrupt cops — a topic Bostonians know all too properly after a long time of police misconduct starting from cover-ups to kickbacks.
Learn’s relentless conspiracy protection has been pushed by incendiary star lawyer Alan Jackson, a former prosecutor turned protection legal professional who’s defended each Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey. O’Keefe, the sufferer, has been absolutely overshadowed by the dialog across the case, with Learn’s supporters allegedly harassing his members of the family.
This polarization outdoors of the courtroom appears to have been mirrored within the jury. After deliberating for lower than every week, the jury tried repeatedly to declare themselves deadlocked to Decide Cannone, sending her notes to that impact. “We discover ourselves deeply divided by basic variations in our opinions and frame of mind,” a word from the day of the mistrial learn, citing “deeply held convictions that every of us carry, in the end main to a degree the place consensus is unattainable.”
A deadlocked or hung jury leads to a mistrial, after which the prosecution has to determine whether or not to retry the case. On this case, the prosecution appears intent on a retrial — regardless of the various, many issues with their arguments.
The prosecution’s case is a circumstantial mess
Regardless of presenting over 70 witnesses at trial, the prosecution’s major proof towards Learn stays largely circumstantial — that means there’s little or no direct or bodily proof backing their principle of what occurred — and Learn’s protection has supplied up various theories for a lot of it. The timeline of the night goes like this: After leaving a bar in Canton, Massachusetts, Learn — whose blood alcohol content material was seemingly over the authorized restrict — drove O’Keefe to Albert’s home. There, she both noticed him safely inside or backed over him within the snow. In both occasion, she left the scene and drove house.
Afterward, she left him an indignant voicemail declaring, “John, I fucking hate you.” All through the night time, Learn referred to as O’Keefe and quite a few different individuals. Early the following morning, she met up with two mates, together with main prosecution witness Jennifer McCabe, who can be Albert’s sister-in-law, and drove again to Albert’s home, the place they found O’Keefe within the snow. In line with witnesses, Learn repeatedly requested whether or not O’Keefe may have been hit by a snow plow, or whether or not she may have hit him. A number of first responders additionally testified to listening to Learn repeatedly exclaiming that she hit him, although none of them famous this of their preliminary studies from the scene.
This alleged repeated chorus of, “May I’ve hit him?” and “I hit him,” was one the prosecution leaned on closely as an argument for guilt. Nonetheless, per witness accounts, Learn additionally appeared to don’t have any clear concept what had occurred to O’Keefe.
What concrete proof the prosecution did provide was hotly contested inside in addition to outdoors the courtroom. One essential piece: a damaged taillight. An investigator who interviewed Learn at her dad and mom’ home that night time reported seeing “some harm” to the best rear mild of Learn’s SUV; he testified that it was allegedly “cracked and a bit was lacking.”
Practically three weeks after O’Keefe’s loss of life, the state’s lead investigator, Michael Proctor, allegedly positioned extra fragments of a tail mild on the crime scene and transported the proof to the crime lab. Prosecutors say they discovered minute traces of O’Keefe’s DNA on these fragments, in addition to tiny particles from the tail mild on a few of O’Keefe’s garments. But the protection hammered house the large delay in finding what would have been an extremely important piece of proof, in addition to the unreliability of proof instantly unearthed by Proctor.
That’s as a result of Proctor has a number of private ties to each the sufferer and the witnesses. In texts he despatched a day after the investigation started, he used a misogynistic slur to confer with Learn, made it clear he thought Learn’s guilt was apparent from the start, and even texted his sister that he hoped Learn would kill herself. The protection alleges Proctor helped body Learn for the homicide, intentionally damaging her tail mild in an effort to declare the harm was brought on when she hit O’Keefe together with her automotive. The truth is, a mysteriously altered video of Learn’s automotive that purportedly confirmed the harm made all of it the best way to trial earlier than the protection identified that the picture was misleadingly reversed — a “mirror” video with the tail mild in query inverted from its precise place.
It doesn’t assist any of those optics that Proctor’s sister texted him that Albert’s spouse Julie wished to ship Proctor “a present” after the investigation was over. Proctor protested on the stand that none of those texts impacted the integrity of the police investigation, however given Monday’s mistrial, some jurors might have disagreed with him. They evidently weren’t alone: State police introduced that they’d relieved Proctor of obligation instantly after the mistrial primarily based on “details about severe misconduct [that] emerged in testimony.” He was in the end fired — an terribly uncommon transfer on their half.
Different information of the case that on their floor may need supported the prosecution proved murkier on nearer inspection. O’Keefe died of blunt-force trauma from a cranium fracture and hypothermia, in keeping with the medical expert. He additionally had gashes on his arms that appeared unlikely to have been constructed from a automotive impression. The protection alleged these resulted from a canine assault on O’Keefe inside the home. O’Keefe additionally lacked most of the accidents you’d count on to see from a automotive impression, resembling damaged bones or important bruises.
The prosecution’s witnesses are additionally controversial. Along with Learn’s former good friend McCabe, who had ties to each O’Keefe and the Alberts, the celebration attendees included a number of those that Learn’s protection argued ought to have been investigated by police earlier than taking the stand. Amongst them: Brian Higgins, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent who’d been sporadically flirting with Learn within the lead-up to O’Keefe’s loss of life, and Albert’s son Colin, who as a young person had made violent threats towards different teenagers.
Lots of the witnesses who had been on the celebration, together with McCabe and the Alberts, exchanged a litany of telephone calls to at least one one other all through the time O’Keefe supposedly lay on the garden, per telephone data. A number of later testified that the calls had been “butt dials,” positioned randomly and by full mistake. As circumstances go, it’s eyebrow-raising, to say the least.
The protection’s proof is equally unreliable
Regardless of all the issues with the prosecution’s case, the strongest proof for the protection is likewise absolutely debatable. One of many protection’s key witnesses was a veteran snowplow driver who made a number of journeys previous the Alberts’ home throughout the time O’Keefe was allegedly wounded within the snow, but claimed he noticed no physique mendacity wherever on the garden. Nonetheless, snow impedes visibility, even with a shiny snowplow mild, and eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.
One other piece of essential proof that many Learn supporters think about a “smoking gun” for the protection has additionally been absolutely debunked by prosecution analysts. At situation: Two searches McCabe made on her cellphone in some unspecified time in the future throughout the early morning hours surrounding O’Keefe’s loss of life, together with a misspelled question, “Hos lengthy to die in chilly.” The prosecution claims, and McCabe testified, that she made the searches round six within the morning when she and Learn discovered O’Keefe mendacity within the snow. The official cellphone data for the search, nonetheless, present the timestamp for the search at 2:27 am.
The implication is that if McCabe looked for this then, she was a part of a conspiracy to stage the scene and body Learn. However McCabe claims she merely opened that tab on her telephone browser at 2:27 am, left it open, and searched the phrase hours later, after she and Learn discovered him collectively. A number of knowledge analysts for the prosecution corroborated this interpretation of the cellphone knowledge. Nonetheless, the protection scored some extent of their favor by noting that their skilled witness, who argued the search occurred at 2:27, arrived at his conclusion through the use of a way developed by one of many prosecution’s witnesses.
Different findings that leaned towards the protection included O’Keefe’s health tracker app, which confirmed him taking about 80 steps across the time Reed claimed she dropped him off. But right here once more, nothing concerning the timeline or O’Keefe’s exercise is obvious or corroborated by witnesses. The protection’s argument that O’Keefe was attacked inside the home, together with by the household canine, can be speculative and unsupported by a lot proof — which they declare is as a result of the police by no means correctly investigated. A medical skilled testified on the stand in help of the canine chew principle, however forensic chew mark proof is extremely unreliable and has been roughly absolutely debunked, a minimum of in instances involving people.
So the place does all of this depart us?
Satirically, outrage for the police’s conduct on this case has united Bostonians throughout political traces, with group activists becoming a member of the likes of native conservative pundit Howie Carr. In the meantime, a whole bunch of Learn supporters traveled from throughout the nation to protest for her freedom outdoors the courthouse. They generally clashed with O’Keefe’s household and their supporters, who argue Learn’s protection has turned a transparent case of homicide right into a distorted media circus and fueled unfounded accusations of conspiracy.
The mistrial signifies that the narrative of the case has additionally expanded.
On the one hand, widespread resistance to the concept a profitable, articulate white girl may commit such a brutal homicide is perhaps fueling a great deal of the help for Learn — which speaks to a number of assumptions about how we view class, privilege, and who will get to be seen as a sufferer. We’re accustomed, in any case, to seeing girls like Learn within the position of the sufferer, regardless of that she is the one on trial right here. In relation to true crime, the media offers extra consideration and sympathy to engaging middle-class white girls than it does to male victims, a lot much less victims who’re poor or individuals of colour.
Alternatively, Boston police are famously corrupt, with a protracted historical past of bribery, fraud, and racial bias. The Learn case is being in comparison with one other potential murder involving a horrifying allegation of police conspiracy in close by Stoughton, however this isn’t only a regional situation. American cities are regularly beset by precise, confirmed police corruption. Boston isn’t distinctive. What does really feel distinctive is the quantity of public consideration and scrutiny being given to the position of potential corruption in such a high-profile trial. All of it provides as much as what might be a hopelessly irreconcilable pursuit of fact.
Replace, July 22, 2024, 3:40 pm ET: This story was initially printed on July 3, 2024, and has been up to date with the date for Karen Learn’s new trial in 2025.