DEDHAM – Testimony The case of Karen Reid Friday continued as Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent Brian Higgins took the stand in a Massachusetts murder trial and read several “active” text messages exchanged with the defendant.
Reed is accused of killing 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.
Who is Brian Higgins?
Higgins was at the after party that night at the 34 Fairview Road home owned by Brian Albert. Higgins was one of three people nominated by the defense Alternative suspect On O’Keefe’s death.
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The defense showed up earlier Surveillance video Higgins and Albert show up in a bar fight before a party from the Waterfall Bar and Grill in Canton.
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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 Reed.
“I considered him a friend,” Higgins said. “I even considered her a friend.”
Higgins said that night in Falls, she texted him something to the effect of, “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 West Roxbury home around 2 a.m. after stopping at the Canton Police Department to move police vehicles out of the plow lane.
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 dozens of texts between himself and Karen Reed. Higgins gets his number and strikes up a conversation.
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 one Saturday night in January, Higgins said, Reed “planted a kiss” on him.
“Not like a friend,” Higgins testified. “Lip to lip.”
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.
Several weeks’ texts show that Higgins kept asking Reid what he wanted from him. Reed said he was single and wanted the “real deal,” but says he was confused.
“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 whether Reed had begun “ghosting” Higgins while they were both in the falls on January 28. Jackson asked Hickin if he was upset that Reed seemed to be ignoring him at the bar.
“I don’t feel neglected, it doesn’t upset me,” she said.
Security asked Higgins how he didn’t see O’Keefe’s body on the lawn of 34 Fairview after he left the party.
“If I did, I would have done him something,” Higgins replied.
The defense indicated that the 22-second phone call with Brian Albert at 2:22 a.m. that Higgins did not have a conversation with Albert at the time may have been a “butt dial.”
Before testimony ended Friday, the defense accused Higgins of using federal sources to download “highly selective” information from his phone to turn over to law enforcement.
Who is Karen Reed?
The study was a 45-year-old Massachusetts woman. She was dating O’Keefe when he died.
Reid pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating while intoxicated, personal injury and leaving the scene of 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 that Kerry Roberts found his friend O’Keefe in the snow. She cried as the prosecution played police dashboard camera video showing first responders arriving at the scene. “I wondered if O’Keefe had 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. After the Memorial Day holiday next week, the jury will hear testimony Tuesday.
Experts tell WBZ-TV both sides Risk of losing arbitration Because the investigation is taking longer than expected.
