DEDHAM – Testimony The case of Karen Reed CONTINUED TODAY Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Agent Brian Higgins takes the stand in a Massachusetts homicide investigation and reads several “hot” text messages exchanged with the defendant.
Reed is accused of hitting her Boston police officer boyfriend John O’Keefe with her SUV and leaving him to die in the snow outside their Canton home in 2022. Alleging a cover-up Includes law enforcement.
You can watch the Karen Reed trial live in the CBS News Boston video player above.
Who is Brian Higgins?
Higgins was at an after party that night at a 34 Fairview Road home owned by Brian Albert. Higgins was one of three people nominated by the defense Alternative suspect On O’Keeffe’s death.
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The defense showed up earlier Surveillance video From the Waterfall Bar and Grill in Canton, it shows Higgins and Albert fighting at the bar after the party.
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“It speaks for itself,” Reid attorney Alan Jackson said of the video. “Two people fighting, fighting, looking like fighting. Practicing fighting techniques.”
Albert testified that the two were “fooling around.”
In a new discovery notice filed this week, the prosecution said five pages of Higgins’ medical records have been turned over to the defense.
Asked outside Norfolk Superior Court on Wednesday what to expect during Higgins’ cross-examination, Jackson responded with just one word: “Fireworks.”
What is Brian Higgins’ relationship with John O’Keefe and Karen Reid?
Higgins testified that he had known O’Keefe for about a year and would see him at the Hillside Pub in Canton. He says he even went to O’Keefe’s house to catch the end of the New England Patriots game. Higgins said O’Keefe was often with Reid.
“I considered him a friend,” Higgins said. “I even considered her a friend.”
Higgins said that night in Falls, she texted him to read something that said, “Umm, okay,” and told the jury, “To be honest with you, it’s a funny text.”
Higgins said he never saw Reid or O’Keefe again that night after leaving the falls. He also said he believed he was the first person to leave the after-party at 34 Fairview. He said he arrived at the home in West Roxbury around 2 a.m
Higgins testified that Brian Albert called him around 6:30 a.m. to say he had been found on O’Keefe’s front lawn.
“It doesn’t make sense to me,” Higgins said. “I can’t do the math in my head because I know John O’Keefe and the defendant, they never — they never show up. It doesn’t make sense.”
Texts between Brian Higgins and Karen Reed
Before O’Keefe’s death in January 2022, Higgins read several texts between himself and Karen Reid.
In one of the texts, Reed Higgins says, “You’re hot.”
“Are you serious or just messing with me?” Higgins responds.
“No I’m serious,” Reid says.
After watching a Patriots game at O’Keefe’s house on a Saturday night in January, Higgins said Reed “bombed” him.
“Not like a friend,” Higgins testified.
In another series of messages, read Higgins’ “Come to my house” texts.
Reid said she never wanted children and that O’Keefe had been texting her niece and nephew about how taking care of them was straining their relationship.
In a message, Higgins considered Reed to be happy with his situation.
“I was. But things got worse,” she replied.
More texts. Karen in grey, Higgins in blue. We’re coming up on an hour (50 minutes so far) of Brian Higgins & Karen Reid’s text messages being read aloud in open court. Jurors are glued to the screen. John’s brother leans in to see it too. #WBZ pic.twitter.com/5sNcWoMUBu
— Kristina Rex (@KristinaRex) May 24, 2024
Also read O’Keefe showed Higgins a video of his interaction with Higgins via text message.
“He was like, ‘Christ, are you hot?’ As such,” Reid reports.
Afterward, Higgins said, Reid came to her home for a face-to-face conversation to determine “what it’s all about.”
“I’m not proud of these text messages, for what it is, I take responsibility for them. But John was a friend at the same time … If they were at the end of their relationship, they were at the end. But I wasn’t going to use myself against someone I loved, it was a different experience.
The last message shown in court between the two was Higgins texting, “John is dead.”
Cross-examination of Brian Higgins
Reed’s defense began cross-examining Higgins before the jury’s lunch break.
“Are you sexually attracted to her?” Jackson asked.
“I was physically attracted to her … I think I texted ‘You’re hot.’
Who is Karen Reed?
The study was a 45-year-old Massachusetts woman. She was dating O’Keefe when he died.
Reed has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating while intoxicated, and leaving the scene of personal injury and death.
What happened at the Karen Reed murder trial this week?
The week has begun Contentious cross-examination Between Jennifer McCabe and Reid’s defense. McCabe was with Reid and Kerry Roberts when they found O’Keefe’s body in the snow.
McCabe, Brian Albert’s sister-in-law, Googled “hos (sic) long to die in cold” on the morning of O’Keefe’s death. McCabe testified that Reed urged him to look for hypothermia after finding O’Keefe’s body after 6 a.m. and how long it would take for him to die of cold. Security says Cell phone data Show that the first search actually took place at 2:27 a.m. McCabe later deleted it.
AB, Greg Terr/The Patriot Ledger via Poole
“Did you delete that search because you knew it would implicate you in John O’Keeffe’s death if it was found on your phone?” Jackson asked her.
“I’m not canceling that search,” McCabe replied. “I didn’t do that search at 2:23.”
McCabe later testified about Kerry Roberts finding his friend O’Keefe in the snow pile. She cried as the prosecution played police dashboard camera video showing first responders arriving at the scene. “I thought O’Keefe might have been hit by a plow,” Roberts recalled.
“She said ‘Do you think I hit him? Do you think I hit him? And I said ‘No I think you may have hit something, but we have to look for him,'” Roberts said.
Two sisters who testified Wednesday, Laura and Marietta Sullivan, both said there was tension and jealousy between the couple on a New Year’s Eve trip to Aruba just weeks before O’Keefe’s death.
Schedule for the Karen Read test
Court is not in session on Thursday. The jury will hear testimony Tuesday after next week’s Memorial Day holiday.
Experts tell WBZ-TV both sides Risk of losing arbitration Because the investigation is taking longer than expected.
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