Karen Read Retrial Week 2 Concludes With Some Damaging Testimony From One of the Commonwealth's Most Controversial Witnesses

I didn't intend to come back to this so soon because I have no intention of doing gavel-to-gavel coverage of this trial. I have neither the time to invest or the inclination to turn this blog into CourtTV. I'll leave that to some of the ladies in my life who watch the livestreams when they can and have the trial in their headphones when they can't. Besides, as I've mentioned often in the past, I have almost two decades of barely paying attention when the MA Trial Court was paying all my bills. And try to put everything I learned about multislacking to good use by only catching the highlights of this thing. 

But today dovetailed too perfectly with yesterday's post:

... by giving us yet another full day of testimony from Karen Read's arch nemesis, Jennifer "Google Queen" McCabe. I'll keep this as brief as possible (Wish me luck; yesterday's was almost 2,000 words.) and just stick to the highlights. 

I repeat what I said yesterday, McCabe has been much more composed than she was during the first trial. Less combative. Less high strung. I guess what I'm saying is less Norfolk County sports mom. As kids nowadays put it, IYKYK. But there have still been the occasional bouts of this kind of thing:

The problem for McCabe, and I'll correct that and say it's much more of a problem for ADA Hank Brennan and the Commonwealth, is that when she's on the stand, she's not so much helping to prosecute Read as she is having to defend herself. Which even if I'm trying to see this through the eyes of the jury and be as objective as possible, doesn't feel like some clever legal maneuvering by Read's lawyers. Some "best defense is a good offense" strategy. Though it is that. It feels more like something that has to be done because there are just so many Whiskey Tango Foxtrot aspects to her involvement in all of this. 

What the prosecution has gotten out of McCabe in the sequel is pretty much what they got in the original. Like with Anchorman 2, in Commonwealth v. Karen Read 2: The Retrialing McCabe doing the same bits as last time. Read was drunk. She was hysterical. She was saying "I hit him." She asked Jen to Google hypothermia at 6:30am after they found John O'Keefe in the snow outside 34 Fairview. It wasn't in fact, something McCabe did on her own at 2:27am like her phone data indicates. We've established that no one else heard this request. Kerry Roberts, who corroborated that story in front of the Grand Jury has already admitted she never heard it. And today McCabe herself was boxed into acknowledging no one else could've heard it either. 

But there's so much more. Yesterday it was how, when the FBI - or what jurors are hearing as "officers from another law enforcement agency" showed up to her place, she gave them a fake name, asked if she could make some phone calls before she spoke to them, made five calls, told them she made two, then cut the interview short. Which is problematic in the sense that fibbing to the government agency that locks up CEOs, mob bosses and congressmen for bending the truth before they break for lunch every day is "problematic." Even allowing for the fact this is the same department that once tried to talk MLK Jr. into Aaron Hernandezing himself and protected Hank Brennan's client Whitey Bulger, having a casual relationship with the truth around these guys is never in your best interest.

But what's so hard to swallow is that McCabe and her sister and brother-in-law the Alberts have never been under suspicion. Not to the Commonwealth, at least. Not officially. As far as the state is concerned, her only involvement is she went out in a blizzard to help her crazy, distraught, drunken acquaintance look for her missing boyfriend. All the Alberts did was sleep blissfully through the night, unaware that a Boston Police Officer they know had been struck by an SUV driven by his crazy, distraught, drunken girlfriend. 

That is the DA's theory of the case. No one else was ever a suspect. Or even suspect:

Advertisement

So why then was McCabe so central to all that went on that night and the days that followed? The Google search, whatever time it was. All the texts to all her extended family, which certainly don't read like they were just bystanders in all this. In some, they discussed legal strategy, long before Read was ever charged:

… thought Karen Read would fold. 

A corrupt MSP thought she’d take the fall.  

A dirty DA’s office thought she wouldn’t fight for her freedom.  

But for 3+ years, Karen Read has stood toe-to-toe with all these monsters. 

 And guess what? She’s winning.  

They fucked with the wrong woman.

That text exchange happened at 4:35pm on February 1st. Read was arrested three hours later. The only assumptions are either these are some of the best legal minds in Canton, MA, or they were in constant contact with the people handling the investigation. And speaking for me, none of these witnesses so far strike me as The Lincoln Lawyer.

For sure we know this friends circle texted incessantly throughout the investigation. At least until they hit the point when they realized it was best not to:

…  Jen back: “We'll get more info tomm. Don't want to text about it.” Don’t want to text about what? 

As one real mob boss was of saying, "Never write when you can speak. Never speak when you can wink. And never wink when you can nod." Good advice for mafiosos and innocent non-suspects in a homicide investigation both.

But I'm going to end on one key element from today that didn't just jump out at me; it leapt across the room and attached itself like FaceHugger Xenomorph. It came up in Alan Jackson's re-re-redirect. Jen McCabe comes rolling up to her sister's house with Read and Roberts. They find John O'Keefe near death. McCabe calls 911. The other two begin CPR. And Jackson was able to get this into the form of a question: Was there anyone she might know of in the area - on that very same property - who might happen to be a highly trained first responder with extensive knowledge of CPR? 

Advertisement

Her brother-in-law Brian, O'Keefe's fellow member of Boston's Finest with decades of experience on the force, was allegedly sleeping in the bedroom that overlooked the scene they were a part of. It was a matter of life and death. Seconds counted. And the play here was to call an ambulance and wait for it to scramble to Fairview Rd. In a blizzard. 

Make that make sense. Even if you want to defend McCabe for losing it in the panic of the moment, that's not what was on the 911 tape. That was the voice of someone who was keeping it together. But sure seems like someone who didn't want her sister and brother-in-law involved in what was going on outside their house. Even through this scene:

That is some aggressive levels of uninvolvement. Of incuriousity. That's why the prosecution has been on the defensive for the first two weeks. 

And I don't expect that to turn around any time soon. Not with all the investigating LEOs still to come. Next week should be wild.