Now Reading: Karen Learn trial heats up with Jen McCabe’s tear-filled testimony
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Karen Learn trial heats up with Jen McCabe’s tear-filled testimony
Karen Learn trial heats up with Jen McCabe’s tear-filled testimony
Karen Learn’s case started when her boyfriend’s physique was found January 29, 2022. It has become a years lengthy whodunnit saga. On Tuesday, jurors heard from a key witness in Learn’s protection.
Karen Learn’s second homicide trial begins with new jury
Karen Learn is beginning her second trial after being prosecuted for the 2022 loss of life of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, final 12 months.
The sound of screaming coming by way of the telephone at 4:53 a.m. was so loud that the lady’s husband shot up in mattress and one in all her kids rushed into the room.
On the opposite finish of the road was Karen Learn, the previous monetary analyst accused of murdering boyfriend John O’Keefe. Learn, 45, is on trial in Massachusetts for the second time for the loss of life of the Boston police officer after a trial in 2024 led to a hung jury.
Jennifer McCabe, a key witness in Learn’s protection and a good friend of the couple, delivered lengthy, emotional testimony on Tuesday concerning the early morning telephone name in addition to discovering O’Keefe’s physique within the snow later that day in January 2022.
McCabe’s tearful testimony is the newest within the case because it stretches right into a second week. Jurors additionally heard from a digital intelligence skilled on Tuesday who testified about what mobile phone knowledge exhibits about the place O’Keefe, 46, spent his closing hours and when he was first discovered.
The case, which started when O’Keefe’s physique was found January 29, 2022, has become a years lengthy whodunnit authorized saga that has garnered huge intrigue from true-crime followers throughout the nation, spurring an array of podcasts, motion pictures and tv exhibits.
Prosecutors allege that Learn, a 45-year-old monetary analyst, purposefully ran over O’Keefe, a 46-year-old cop, along with her SUV whereas the 2 had been drunk and combating. They are saying she then left his unconscious physique mendacity within the snow and chilly in entrance of a Boston police officer’s home.
However Learn’s protection has lengthy argued that she was framed for the homicide by legislation enforcement officers, paramedics and others. They floated a concept throughout Learn’s first trial that O’Keefe entered the opposite Boston cop’s home, the place he was crushed by his colleagues, attacked by a canine, after which dumped within the snow.
McCabe is the sister-in-law of one of many officers, Brian Albert. She additionally was out ingesting with Learn and O’Keefe that night.
Specialists have informed USA TODAY that witness testimony seems to be setting the stage for elaborate arguments down the highway.
Proof introduced to jurors so far contains detailed telephone location knowledge of O’Keefe’s whereabouts the night time he died, which prosecutors say exhibits he by no means enter the cop’s house; texts between O’Keefe and Learn that exposed a fraying relationship; and blood exams revealing that Learn was intoxicated when O’Keefe died.
The trial is anticipated to last as long as eight weeks. Listed below are the newest updates from Day 6 of the trial.
‘I couldn’t imagine that was him mendacity there‘
Learn had raised concern a number of instances the day O’Keefe’s physique was discovered that she hit him the night time earlier than, McCabe stated. Learn, she stated, requested to go to the house the place his physique could be found.
About 20 or 30 yards earlier than they drove as much as the home, McCabe stated Learn requested her and Kerry Roberts, one other good friend, whether or not O’Keefe was being untrue of their relationship. As they approached the home, Learn started screaming “one thing to the impact of there he’s” McCabe stated, however she informed prosecutors that she and Roberts may solely see snow coming down out of their home windows.
Learn yelled “cease,” McCabe stated.
However it wasn’t till McCabe bought out of the automotive and walked over to a patch of the garden the place Learn and Roberts had congregated that she noticed O’Keefe. Roberts, she stated, was eradicating snow from his face.
“I couldn’t imagine that was him mendacity there,” she stated, crying. “It seemed like him however simply frozen.”
“I believe I knew in that second that John, you already know, was useless,” she informed Prosecutor Hank Brennan. McCabe then stated she known as 911 as she walked to the again of her automotive to search for blankets and towels. She tried to present O’Keefe compressions till police got here, she stated.
Her testimony is anticipated to renew April 30.
Brennan started questioning McCabe a bit after 2 p.m. A lot of her early testimony revolved round her relationship to O’Keefe and Learn, in addition to the occasions that occurred the night earlier than O’Keefe was discovered useless.
McCabe stated she was completely happy to see each Learn and O’Keefe after they joined her and different pals, together with Brian Albert, on the Waterfall Bar and Grille in Canton, Massachusetts, early within the night. She stated she knew Learn by way of O’Keefe and loved spending time along with her.
The group determined to go to Albert’s home round midnight to proceed the night, McCabe stated. She informed Brennan that O’Keefe had texted her someday between 12:15 a.m. and 12:30 a.m., and she or he known as him again on her drive to Albert’s to relay the plan.
She described the temper at Albert’s home as “celebratory.” McCabe stated she seemed out the glass entrance door a number of instances throughout the night and noticed a darkish SUV with break lights on in several areas every time: at one level straight in entrance of the home, then close to a flagpole within the garden, then additional up the highway. He didn’t reply.
McCabe informed Brennan that she texted O’Keefe as she was trying on the automotive, first “right here?” after which when she noticed it close to the flagpole, she informed him he may pull behind her automotive. The snow by that time had picked up, she stated.
By about 1:30 a.m. she and others in the home started to depart. The circumstances outdoors had been windy and moist and McCabe stated she ran to her automotive along with her husband and two different girls. As they pulled out, they had been speaking, joking and laughing, she stated.
Then, at 4:53 a.m., she stated she bought a name from O’Keefe’s niece. McCabe stated she may hear Learn screaming within the background. Learn informed her that O’Keefe hadn’t returned house, they’d gotten right into a struggle and she or he thought she had left him on the Waterfall.
By 5:30 a.m. McCabe stated Learn was in entrance of her home screaming they usually deliberate to go seek for O’Keefe collectively. She stated Learn’s taillight was damaged. At that time, one in all O’Keefe’s different pals, Kerry Roberts, was additionally at McCabe’s home. She informed jurors she hadn’t spent a lot time with Roberts as much as that time. The highway circumstances had been terrible, she stated.
Protection lawyer Robert Alessi questioned witness Ian Whiffin, a digital intelligence skilled with the corporate Cellebrite, a couple of name O’Keefe obtained from his good friend Jeffinger McCabe at 12:29 a.m. Whiffin stated O’Keefe answered the decision, after which confirmed that two calls from Learn at 12:33 a.m. and 12:34 a.m. went unanswered.
Alessi requested Whiffin to substantiate that one model of software program confirmed a timestamp round 2 a.m. for McCabe’s Google search “hos (sic) lengthy to die in chilly.” Wiffin informed jurors April 28 that forensic knowledge confirmed the Google search occurred at about 6:23 a.m.
However when questioned by prosecutors, Whiffin gave a reside demonstration of why, in line with his evaluation, the two a.m. timestamp is inaccurate. Whiffin opened a brand new tab in Google and made a search, whereas the telephone was related to forensic knowledge software program. He then refreshed the tab a number of instances and minimized it. He stated that, regardless of these actions, the information software program solely confirmed “the timestamp that the tab was created.
He stated the method confirmed that the “final seen time” the protection group was to find out the time of McCabe’s Google search was “unreliable.”
Prosecutors and protection attorneys have spent hours questioning Whiffin in what seems to be an try to point out whether or not O’Keefe entered the house of a Boston police officer after he exited Learn’s automotive the night time earlier than he died.
Whiffin beforehand walked jurors by way of his evaluation of O’Keefe’s location by evaluating knowledge sources from his Iphone, together with from the Waze navigation app, the well being app and the battery temperature.
Collectively, Whiffin stated the knowledge indicated to an affordable diploma of certainty that O’Keefe by no means entered 34 Fairview after he left Learn’s automotive. He stated the house telephone remained within the space close to the flagpole on the entrance garden, from round 12:24 a.m. to when O’Keefe was discovered round 6 a.m.
Upon cross-examination on April 29, Whiffin stated it was “potential” that O’Keefe’s telephone moved towards the house at 12:31 a.m. Protection lawyer Robert Alessi requested whether or not the low accuracy of the placement knowledge could possibly be a results of the telephone getting into a constructing, comparable to a home. Whiffin responded: “right.”
Alessi later questioned Whiffin’s testimony about O’Keefe’s telephone battery. Whiffin beforehand testified that the battery temperature dropped from round 80 levels when it reached the house at 34 Fairview to an eventual low of 37 levels hours later.
When he performed an experiment placing a telephone’s battery within the freezer, the temperature dropped by round 50 levels in quarter-hour. He additionally positioned a telephone outdoors in temperatures of about 33 levels. The battery dropped from 66 levels to about 35 levels in the identical period of time.
Alessia stated there was a “far more dramatic drop in temperature” throughout the experiments than what occurred on O’Keefe’s telephone.
Prosecutor Hank Brennan upon redirect requested Whiffin to elucidate why he accomplished the experiments on the telephone battery. Whiffin stated the exams had been designed to substantiate that the telephone’s battery reacted to the temperature change, however that the precise temperature did not matter as a lot.
CourtTV has been masking the case in opposition to Learn and the felony investigation since early 2022, when O’Keefe’s physique was discovered outdoors a Canton house.
You may watch CourtTV’s reside feed of the Learn trial proceedings from Norfolk Superior Courtroom in Dedham, Massachusetts. Proceedings start at 9 a.m. ET
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