Viewers of Investigation Discovery’s A Physique within the Snow: The Trial of Karen Learn docuseries ought to count on a prosecutor and protection attorneys in full thrust and parry as Karen Learn, a former school lecturer, is tried for allegedly hitting and killing her boyfriend, John O’Keefe, together with her SUV on Jan. 29, 2022.
With the 2024 trial ending in a mistrial, and a 2025 retrial set to start out April 1, ID’s newest true crime sequence, airing over three nights beginning on Monday, makes an attempt to reply, with cautious diligence, who and what may have precipitated O’Keefe’s loss of life, whereas additionally going past the courtroom to extensively interview Learn and her authorized group with stunning entry.
That Learn’s boyfriend was additionally a Boston police officer whose physique was found on a fellow cop’s entrance garden leaves viewers dealing with vastly contrasting narratives through the first trial. The prosecution cites a poisonous relationship between O’Keefe and his girlfriend, resulting in an alleged drunk and indignant Learn hitting her boyfriend together with her automobile and leaving him to die in a snowstorm after an evening of heavy consuming at two bars.
Learn’s protection group, nonetheless, claims she is harmless and was framed to guard different Boston cops concerned in a confrontation with O’Keefe inside a house at 34 Fairview Highway in Canton, Massachusetts, earlier than he was dragged exterior to die from hypothermia.
Listed here are 5 takeaways from the docuseries on a homicide case and trial that has earned nationwide consideration, with quotes from director Terry Dunn Meurer in dialog with The Hollywood Reporter. A Physique within the Snow: The Trial of Karen Learn, produced by Unsolved Productions for Investigation Discovery, airs on ID and streams on Max over three nights beginning Monday at 9 p.m., with a one-hour finale on Wednesday.
Karen Learn’s authorized group reveals mysterious tip that blew the homicide case large open
A tip from a “Mike” that was referred to as into Learn’s lawyer David Yannetti in the end steered the protection to claiming fellow Boston cops allegedly killed O’Keefe and framed her for the crime. “He wasn’t a witness. However that tip was invaluable. It despatched us in a unique route very early on on this investigation,” Yannetti recollects within the ID docuseries.
The tipster wasn’t particular, fellow protection lawyer Alan Jackson provides, however was useful. “You should have a look at the oldsters contained in the Albert Home. You should have a look at the occupants of the home. One thing is greater than meets the attention,” Jackson stated of the house on Fairview Highway in Canton, then-owned by Brian Albert, the place O’Keefe was found lifeless and buried below a snowdrift within the entrance yard on Jan. 29, 2022.
With out that tip, the concentrate on O’Keefe’s loss of life might have remained on a automobile accident in a blinding snow blizzard, hampering claims through the first trial that Learn’s boyfriend had been killed contained in the Fairview Highway property and that his physique had been dumped out within the snow.
Is Trooper Michael Proctor the Mark Fuhrman of the Karen Learn trial?
If the protection claims are true, Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor will probably be to the Karen Learn retrial what LAPD Detective Mark Furhman was to the notorious O.J. Simpson homicide trial. Fuhrman was the detective investigating the slayings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman and who was accused by Simpson’s protection group of getting planted the bloody glove he claimed to have discovered behind Simpson’s home in Brentwood.
Proctor, the lead detective in investigating the loss of life of O’Keefe, admitted throughout Learn’s first trial that he had despatched vulgar texts about his essential suspect to his associates and supervisors. And the ID docuseries director Terry Dunn Meurer sees parallels between Proctor and Furman. “It’s an echo of O.J. Very related. You recognize, Michael Proctor in our movie is Mark Herman within the O.J. case, with accusations of a canopy up and conspiracy and planting proof,” Meurer tells THR.
Prosecutors used the broken taillight on Learn’s SUV to assert she was responsible of hitting O’Keefe and inflicting her boyfriend’s loss of life. However Learn’s protection group are captured within the docuseries alleging Proctor, who confiscated her cellphone and SUV as a part of the investigation, took shards from a damaged taillight cowl on her automobile and planted them on the scene as proof O’Keefe had been murdered exterior the house and never inside.
Legal professional Jackson says within the docuseries: “We imagine it’s not only a sloppy investigation. There’s lively planting of proof. Why? As a result of inside that home, there’s a Boston police officer, Brian Albert. And Proctor is aware of this household and has identified them for many years. The whole policing tradition there’s deeply, deeply linked to one another. And we imagine that results in ‘let’s look the opposite manner, let’s name it a favor, let’s do a strong for a buddy.’”
Blogger Aidan “Turtleboy” Kearney: Journalist or social media provocateur?
Among the many most passionate supporters of Learn exterior the courthouse throughout her first trial was Aidan Kearney, also referred to as Turtleboy, who argued an harmless lady had been framed for homicide. The rub is the controversial blogger has been charged with witness intimidation and probably faces new expenses as Learn’s retrial is ready to get underway.
Kearney has pleaded not responsible to the fees and claims he’s a journalist. Prosecutors declare Kearney and his megaphone rants from the courthouse steps helped the protection current a false narrative a few police cowl up, and are making jury choice within the coming retrial an uphill battle.
“It’s the collateral injury — it is a very private opinion — however the collateral injury that he’s finished by way of the lives of those witnesses, who’re simply witnesses, as Jennifer McCabe says on the stand, ‘I’m only a witness,’ it’s actually regarding and disturbing,” Meurer tells THR.
She’s referencing key prosecution witness Jennifer McCabe, whose Google search on how lengthy it takes to die within the chilly (which she says was finished on the request of Learn after O’Keefe’s physique had been found and never earlier, because the protection group claimed) made for a dramatic second through the first trial.
Brendan Kane, a longtime good friend of O’Keefe who seems within the docuseries, recalled a right away change in sentiment amongst pink-clad supporters of Learn exterior the courthouse owing to the intervention of Turtleboy and different on-line bloggers. “They have been booing Johnny’s household as they walked into the courthouse. At first, I had bother processing that. Why are they doing it?” he recalled asking himself throughout an interview within the docuseries. He concluded the Free Karen PR marketing campaign, inspired by Turtleboy, was at work.
“You’re scorching:” Key prosecution witness reads out Karen Learn’s steamy textual content messages in open courtroom
ATF agent Brian Higgins, a key prosecution witness through the first homicide trial, introduced his soiled laundry to the stand when flirty textual content messages exchanged with Learn have been learn out within the open courtroom. Higgins put into proof texts like Learn telling him, “You’re scorching.” He then responded: “Are you critical or messing with me?” To which Learn responded: “No I’m critical,” which was adopted by Higgins texting: “Feeling is mutual.”
For the prosecution, the alternate of texts solely weeks earlier than O’Keefe was allegedly murdered, with Learn flirting with Higgins, supplied a doable motive for why she might allegedly have needed to finish a failing relationship. However the steamy texts additionally gave the protection group proof to assert, on the night time of the alleged crime, that Higgins and O’Keefe had an argument inside 34 Fairview Highway. Or, as lawyer Jackson put it within the docuseries, “created a really, very clear motive for Brian Higgins to go to hurt on John O’Keefe.”
Behind the scenes, Learn says within the docuseries: “It felt just like the partitions have been closing in through the Higgins textual content messages. I may really feel my mother and father shrinking. That was painful,” she recollects.
Right here’s a secure wager: the prosecution gained’t carry Trooper Joseph Paul again to the stand in Learn’s upcoming retrial
Trooper Joseph Paul’s cross-examination through the first trial by Learn’s protection group about his reconstruction of the alleged SUV crash was devastating for the prosecution. On the stand, Paul conceded he knew little about kinematics, or the geometry of mechanical movement, held no levels in arithmetic or physics, and had solely an diploma within the administration of justice.
“I’ve been dying to know for 2 and a half years, what was the purpose of affect on John’s physique?” Learn questions within the doc sequence. It didn’t come definitively from Trooper Paul, who appeared flustered on the witness stand, and needed to be advised by the presiding courtroom choose to talk extra slowly and clearly.
And the protection introduced two of its personal accident reconstruction specialists to the stand to testify after being employed by the FBI to have a look at the Learn case. Their conclusion was that knowledge didn’t level to a automobile hanging and killing O’Keefe, not least as he had a blunt pressure wound to the again of his neck.
Site visitors accident reconstruction skilled Daniel Wolfe, when requested if it was doable the broken taillight on Learn’s SUV struck O’Keefe’s head, answered: “From a injury standpoint, it was inconsistent.”
A Physique within the Snow: The Trial of Karen Learn releases in three components beginning Monday at 9 p.m., concluding with a one-hour finale on ID and streaming on Max Wednesday.
