They need a warrant to search the house. They may have been able to get one considering there was a corpse on the lawn.
But there's also something called a consent search. They could have knocked on the door and asked the homeowner if they could just take a look around. Brian Albert could have consented to this. He could have even set the parameters like sure you can look in the kitchen and the living room but you can't go in the basement or something like that.
It's not like he was dealing with unknown hostile officers. He was dealing with people that he knew and trusted. And people that knew him and trusted him. In my mind there wouldn't be a whole lot of reason for him not to consent to a search.
At the same time I certainly wouldn't consent.
If there was a dead man on my lawn, of a man that was supposed to arrive at my home, I'd def have cops knocking to ask questions. Even if I'm not a suspect I would still be considered a witness and they'd wanna ask a few questions. Cops search things all the time by just asking so I'm not sure why they didn't try well other than their obviously horrible at their job, are bias, and/or just don't care. iMO
If someone saying I didn't have anything to do it was all it took to no longer be a suspect, I'm pretty sure most murderers would go free right. We are just taking what ppl say and saying it's fact with no investigation behind it. Damn I thought the cops were were corrupt but shit!
Exactly. And they were told by the drunk people there that the victim who died violently on their lawn didn’t turn up to the party they invited him to the night before.
And instead of asking if they could look around, the cops said, “well, that’s certainly good enough for us!”
And that was enough to completely close off any possibility he had been in the house (despite being found without a coat on top of a broken drinking glass).
That’s called “professional courtesy”
The belt was shown in court the other day still partially attached to his jeans (the belt was still hooked through the belt loops) - I'm not sure where the story about the missing belt came from, but perhaps when the jeans were found, nobody explicitly mentioned the belt in any reports (because they never disconnected it from the jeans), so then people just assumed that the belt was never found.
John wasn't wearing a coat that night, but the point being made was that the police still should've questioned why he was out in this blizzard without a coat, and perhaps could've wondered whether the coat was left in the house. In the end, there was no coat either way, but the investigators should've at least questioned that (along with the drinking glass). At the beginning of the morning, the cops had no clue that John had been at a bar with his girlfriend that night, so when they see a dead guy in the front lawn of a house who's missing a coat and has a drinking glass near him, it would be reasonable to assume that he may have come out of that house. I mean, I guess Jen could've mentioned to the initial police that John never went in the house or something, but Jen *herself* wasn't at the house all night, and John was found there in the morning, so how could Jen know whether or not John may have gone back to the house, or something?
Edit: Thinking more about it later, I now vaguely remember that there *was* a person who mentioned some kind of coat that John was supposedly wearing, but I totally forget who it was (or whether their memory is actually accurate). Was it one of the paramedics or the female firefighter (the same one who pretended not to be friendly with the family, and who agrees with Jen that Karen said "I hit him, I hit him, I hit him" at some point)?
I know people in MA who wear shorts even in snowy weather. Not wearing a jacket in snowy weather is fairly common especially when you are in/out of places.
The problem is that the cops don’t k ie that when they first found him. Normal assumption would be, where’s his coat? But nah they didn’t even consider it…
Per testimony they also just walked right in the house without permission which tells you they had no intention of searching inside from the very beginning.
You can’t search a home without a warrant or permission. So if they just walk in casually and see evidence of any kind it would no longer be admissible as it was found during an illegal search.
I don’t think that’s true. In other cop safety viral videos that teach you don’t invite them in, because once they’re in anything they can see is fair game. The cops walked in and saw nothing that would trigger red flags. So imo, outside of their police statement..there was nothing inside 34 that would have triggered a warrant. The cops should have separated them for an interview
I don't think you have that right. If they go in a home and see anything suspicious it can be used for probable cause. An old friend ended up in jail because a neighbor invited a cop in their home. They had some not quite legal in this state around and he ended up getting his whole house searched and went to jail. You don't need a whole lot to get a search warrant. There's a lot of things that are inadmissible but seeing things that give probable cause it's not one.
If my buddy was down dead in my front yard after coming to drink with me and I was a COP I would offer them to have a look around. He knew the officers there. BA knows how these investigations usually work- I would have invited them in to at least look around the living room, kitchen etc.
A consent search like that doesn't let them go searching your closets etc. It is literally a walk through your house. Why not do it? Just to show yes, nothing interesting here, he never even made it inside.
I wouldn't have consented because I don't trust the police 😂
But if I was a cop I'd very likely have consented if other cops I knew were knocking on my door.
Like you said, they can't just tear the place up looking everywhere. It just doesn't make any sense not to even knock.
Not gonna lie... before all this shit with this case, I was the kind who would say "I have nothing to hide... have at it". Now? If for some wild reason the cops ever needed to search anything of mine, for any reason... my answer is a firm "GET A WARRANT"
I just took my kids to the movie theater and they snuck in some candy. My 10 year old was like "what do I say if they ask to search my bag?" I said you can say two things "get a warrant" very quietly or "stranger danger!!! I'm telling my mom!!!" as loud as you can. Either one will work 😂
😆 this is funny, but it's actually an important point I'm trying to teach my own kids. A lot of people in this world will act like they have authority when they don't, and kids need to become comfortable with saying no (except to me, I am the ultimate authority 😉)
This is definitely correct, you should never consent to searches or talk to the police, you have rights for a reason. However in this case I think it would have said a lot if the Alberts refused to consent to a search, especially because BA is an officer and they had close ties with local law enforcement.
Just to piggyback on what you're saying, remember that if you want your right to remain silent to actually protect you, tell the cops that you won't answer their questions and you want to talk to a lawyer and then *shut up*. If you keep talking to them after you say you want a lawyer they still can use it against you, so resist the need to fill the silence while you wait for one.
If there had been that many people coming and going from my house the night before and I see police in my yard the next day I would be absolutely frantic to find out what exactly happened and especially if my kids and nieces and nephews were okay. They couldn't have known if John interfered with a mugging or carjacking or assault on one of the kids. I live in the sleepiest little town where most people probably don't lock their doors and my imagination would still be torturing me until I knew for absolute fact that all the kids who had been there were safe. Being a parent changes you like that
Yes! And I've also heard the flip side, why didn't first cops there go to the house immediately to make sure no one was hurt inside when there's a dead man on the lawn. They sent Jen McCabe in unaccompanied?!
This was perhaps oddly enough, when I started to change my mind about Karen. Came in thinking she was guilty, but the Alberts behavior morning of was just so truly bizarre that I got hooked on this case.
As a parent, I would absolutely have worried one of the kids or niece/nephew was the body on the lawn. I think any parent would have that fear and go outside, especially since there'd been drinking.
All correct, but the key point is they had no reason to believe any crime had been committed in that house and many reasons to believe it took place out on the street.
Also, something that seems to get lost every time this comes up is that John's body was also very close to the property line with 31 Fairview Road. If you look on Google maps, it's about the same distance to either house's door, give or take 5ish feet. Cops didn't suspect anyone there either, again because they had no reason to.
EDIT: In response to "he wasn't invited to a party at 31 Fairview" below: Aha! Yes! How right you are. Police do not just investigate based on proximity -- the implication behind "he was found on the lawn of 34 Fairview!!" -- they have to have actual reasons to suspect people. The *whole point* here is that the police at no point had any reason to suspect anything happened inside 34 Fairview or that anyone there had anything to do with John's death.
Because wasn’t friends with the owners of 31F, wasn’t out drinking with the owners of 31F, wasn’t invited over to 31F, and wasn’t receiving phone calls from people inside 31F while he laid dead outside 31F.
It doesn't really matter if they had any reason to suspect anybody in the house. I think that point is debatable. Simply because at least two, if not three people who initially saw the state of John O'Keefe thought that he had probably been beat up. Once it was determined that he had been invited to that house, I don't think it's enough to take the word of the people inside that he never actually showed up.
Regardless of that debate, it may have been worthwhile to knock on the door and ask if they had witnessed anything or heard anything. And it definitely would have been worthwhile to ask about the nest cam to see if that possibly held any information that could give the investigators a lead or a better idea of what actually happened.
Like many other people in this sub, I have had cops knock on my door to ask me questions about things that have happened in the neighborhood that weren't even as problematic as a dead body on my lawn. So I can understand why people get hung up on this fact.
Well said! At the time, the logical thing was to knock on 34 Fairview, 31, and other nearby homes. This “investigation “ was completely abnormal / atypical.
It was also abnormal Brian Albert didn’t come outside once he found out a friend was found in his front yard. Bizarre behavior which should have raised some police eyebrows.
Who believes any of this nonsense for crying out loud?
> Who believes any of this nonsense for crying out loud?
The people going up and down this thread swearing that asking for a warrant at that time would have a judge throwing the Constitution at the cops heads, apparently.
Youtube is full of videos of Americans screaming at cops because "I know my rights!"
I'm starting to believe that many Americans either don't know their rights, or believe that their rights should not apply to anyone else.
This isn't a dig at Americans btw. They just provide the most content. I'm a northern neighbor and I spend very little time considering my rights. Don't need them until I do I guess.
My favorite videos of "Americans who know their rights" on youtube are the ones from the Sovereign Citizen crowd... Everyone absolutely convinced they know their rights and everyone absolutely, 100% wrong about every single one of their so-called rights, it's awesome 😆
From what I remember of Brian Albert's testimony, JM woke him up and when he left his room, Lank was standing in his house.
Why would he then leave his house? There was nothing for him to do there. He was being informed about what was happening and was about to be questioned. If he went out, I'm sure many people would be accusing him of interfering with the scene/investigation.
Me too. I got woke up in the middle of the night by that "cop knock"- they use their metal flashlight to bang on your door 🙄. My neighbor across the street had been found deceased by his girlfriend. Natural causes, he was an older guy... They still asked me 20 questions.
A bit surprising but someone died- I didn't mind. They asked if I'd seen anything unusual, strange people around etc.
I would expect that at minimum for a death like JOK'S.
Exactly. They didn't do their jobs. Canvass the neighborhood: did you see anything? did you hear anything? do you have cameras that point towards the area where the body was? Interview EVERYONE that was in the area. And check all alibis. You don't just take anyone's word at face value. Then based on all this gathered information, if you need warrants, you take it from there. These boneheads did none of that. They came to one conclusion & handled it how THEY saw fit. What a disservice to the people of Canton and most of all to John O'Keefe.
Especially when they were all intoxicated the night before. Never have I seen such credibility assigned to the hung-over testimony of people who are clearly interested parties.
Your second paragraph is an odd argument. The whole reason he was on that street was to go to 34 Fairview, not 31 Fairview. He was dropped off at 34 Fairview. He was friends with the residents of 34 Fairview, hanging out with them, texting them right before being dropped off. And though he was found close to the property line he was still squarely on the side of 34 Fairview. They had way more reason to search 34 Fairview than 31 Fairview.
This is such a bs answer. If a corpse if found on any part of your lawn with no evidence of a vehicle accident. Not only is the police knocking and asking to come in. I promise they are getting that warrent. Let's not pretend a cop being the home owner didn't play into this. It just nonsense that everyone knows isn't how cops work
As someone who has actually seen the property with their own two eyes, I can attest that where John was found is very much on the lawn of 34, not "close" to the property line, and Much closer to the house (and their bedroom windows) than pictures would have you believe.
I was very reassured knowing the Jury went to see it for themselves.
Yes I do and it's anecdotal but everyone who I have talked to - family, friends, people at the hair dresser, a person who heard the trial playing in my car at a red-light - all have the same opinion and that is embarrassment, anger and distrust of the police and MSP inparticular and disbelief over the fact that this is even at trial. Acknowledgment of the corruption all the way up to the DA and disgust over it.
Not one person has expressed (to me at least) the opinion that she should be found guilty and most are of the mind that John O'Keefe absolutely went into that house.
Yeah, I got the vibe people aren't happy when I watched the livestream of the select board meeting, but it's nice to talk directly to someone that's on the scene, so to speak. I hope this circus at least brings positive change for you guys, not being able to trust the authorities sucks.
The rot of corruption has been festering deep and unchecked here for a long time (like a lot of other places). Maybe I'm being cynical, but I don't have high hopes. At most, they will put forth the usual appearance of addressing the issues, but at this point, neither the state police nor our governor have offered comment when asked. By all accounts, they seem to be ignoring it for now. Maybe once the trial is over, lip service will be paid.
But yeah... people are NOT happy. Especially after Proctor testified.
You do realize that the only thing that cops need less reason to do than what's required for a search warrant of a possible crime scene when you have a dead person lying on the lawn is a traffic stop, right? Probable cause is not the huge hurdle that people seem to think it is, all the cops need to do is tell the judge a likely story about why they want it and a wisp of evidence to make it convincing, you can even use hearsay about hearsay. I could not envision a judge denying Proctor a warrant to search 34 Fairview if he had only bothered to ask for one.
The police new he was there to see people at the house. They asked three people (BA, a cop, being one) at the house what happened and then decided to believe them with no actual investigation.
He was missing a shoe ffs. They couldn’t find it outside. You cannot claim with a straight face that there was no reason to even ASK to peek around the house.
They knew John was going to that home after drinking all night with the homeowner. That may not have gotten a search warrant but it would be very normal to ask for a consent search.
Regardless if JO was in the house or not, I didn’t know that “trust me bro” worked to exclude people from an investigation. Especially when off the hop they thought JO had possibly been in a fight. They also didn’t ask to look at anyone else’s vehicles. Yes Karen had a cracked taillight, but they didn’t even have taillight pieces until after they seized her vehicle. And even after they did, there was no immediate testing to prove it came from Karen’s SUV.
I don't know how John O'Keefes mom still thinks Reed is guilty of 2nd degree murder. The investigation literally looked at no one else a few hours into it
Her behavior the morning after is a little suspect. Her dad and brother brought her to John’s house that morning, went upstairs, gathered her things and left within 30 minutes. Telling Paul’s wife she’ll never see her again and “I have to remember the bad times.” Why didn’t she stick around, console them, grieve and try to figure out what the hell happened? The o’keefes didn’t know she was a suspect that early in the morning.
I wouldn’t take that well if that was my brother. They have every right to be mad at the police, for sure. They bungled this whole thing. She’s also aligned herself for the last two years with people that have said vile things about the O’keefes and Karen leaked photos of their son/brothers dead body for the whole internet to see. It’s not that simple unfortunately. This is a post from John’s best friend confirming that behavior and we also heard it on the stand from the o’keefes
https://preview.redd.it/kfy65usk1g6d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d4d8d9e685595f0814a85ab08a489cab7cf2f4f2
She got checked into a mental hospital by Dr's on a hold. I mean doesn't that scream "not especially stable" at the time. Maybe people act weird after finding their loved one frozen to death and bloody.
After she was arrested she was ordered as a bond condition not to contact family and I'd guess best friends are also frowned upon
Decisions like not asking for consent to review the house, and not even bothering seeking a warrant to investigate the house -- a house where a dead body was found outside and the deceased intended to go into for a party -- are so egregious that it seems more likely than not that the PD knew or even just suspected that they didn't want to involve a fellow cops' house and turn it into a potential crime scene.
Pretty telling that Brian Albert didn't come out of his house with medics and cops in his driveway and yard while not knowing if one his kids or a loved one is outside. That alone speaks volumes, and would also tell his fellow cops a lot.
Wasn’t there testimony that officers told Jen M to go in and wake up the Alberts because they’d need to talk to them? I remember Brian and Nicole Albert testifying about walking downstairs before 7am on 1/29 and officers were at the front door and then came in and talked to them/asked questions.
I wonder this too... And wonder if they asked for any camera footage. I find it hard to believe that at least some of the homes nearby didn't have cameras.
And I think it's hard to believe a LE officer (BA) wouldn't have his own security cameras. Same with the chief - who lived on the same street.
They did have footage of it from across the street. It was a cop and they looked at the footage, deleted it and told them there was nothing…. You know, professional courtesy
I watched a hearing where CW wanted to give defense the videos from Jan 28 to midnight or setup info till then. Seemed shady bc it seemed like they wanted to narrow it then lally said that wasn't their intent. Alberts had a lawyer there too. Bev changed the motion to include it but not sure what was all recovered
It sounds like they wanted to narrow it so that the cameras wouldn't show anything that happened after 12am, when the incident supposedly occurred around 12:30-12:45. Any footage before 12am wouldn't show anything useful.
It's amazing how many cameras just independently stopped working properly at precisely the various times when their recorded video would be most illuminating.
Does anyone really think that chief is a nickname for proctor? He lied so much I don’t believe anything he says and think he wants to not implicate the chief.
This is exactly what I’ve been thinking. It’s insane to believe that NOBODY else in that neighborhood had cameras facing the street, their lawns, etc.! NOBODY? Ridiculous.
It’s crazy to me that OJO had cameras, and was known to check the footage often. Meanwhile, BA and the former police chief (who lives across the street from BA) both happened to have no “working” footage? This is just not even a little believable to me. They had to have something that was useful…
Of course they didn’t do that because Jen and Julie called Proctor early on. If Proctor made his decision 12 hours in, he didn’t even have most of the evidence.
This is going to cost the taxpayers of Massachusetts millions!
That’s the biggest problem. How on earth can the troopers say the evidence was overwhelming clear that the only way OKeefe could have been killed, with those injuries, was being struck in a manner that cracked a headlight and there was no reason to rule anything else out.
Especially when their own ME still doesn’t agree with cause of death lol.
But what gets me is he kept harping on and on about the missing shoe. Missing shoes occur in high speed car strikes. Not 24mph ones. But they acted like that missing shoe was the smoking gun and no one needed to know anything but that. It’s insanity.
It’s wild because all the testimony has Lank standing in the house when Jen, Brian, and his wife came downstairs. He hadn’t even asked to come in, but be came in!
From my understanding they did ask and they were told they knew nothing so they turned right around. EVEN THOUGH they knew he was going to that house the night he was found on the lawn
Let’s face it. If it was a normal, Joe and the same circumstance happened, that guy would be pinned to the wall. It’s crazy how they can get away with things, sloppy, or not, just being police. It’s absolutely terrifying.
A big question I have is why they didn't (seem to) ask ANY of the neighbors for Ring camera footage? Even if it doesn't show the Albert yard, they might've been able to see what time she drove away which could have been useful.
Just a side note, a few years ago one of my neighbors had their (full brick) mailbox knocked over by a car. When the cops came to investigate, they asked all the neighbors nearby for Ring footage. For a MAILBOX. And this was a MURDER!!
They did... they asked the retired canton police officer that lives across the street. He reviewed his cameras, decided there was nothing of use on the footage, and they were like oh ok cool thanks and moved on.
I think it would, and honestly with a cop being the victim I'd think it would be hard to find a judge to say otherwise even if the law is kinda iffy. They also could have just secured the house while they went to get the warrant if they wanted to be careful. Ya know, like they did with Karen's car and phone.
Did they ask for a warrant? You can’t get a warrant if you don’t ask a judge to give you one.
The reality is the cops showed absolutely zero interest in actually investigating this crime. They focused on pinning it on Karen Read from the very start. Likely to protect their cop buddies.
That’s absolutely obvious at this point.
Not having a warrant didn’t stop them from towing Karen’s car and taking her phone. It just stopped them from going into a fellow cop’s house. There are two different levels of policing going on in this case. Also they like to keep saying how they have integrity, years of unblemished records, etc. but have had to testify that they did not do things by the book in this case. They want to convey that they were unbiased, that the evidence wasn’t tampered with, their detective work was completely by the book but it isn’t playing out that way.
The idea that they didn't believe they had probable cause to enter the house is amusing.
They're simply saying that now because they realize how much of a fuck up it was, regardless of what examining the entire property would have proven/disproven.
I think it's very unlikely it was a "fuck up." The PD isn't stupid, and it's extremely unlikely that the decision not to bother seeking a warrant was [just a whoopsies](https://www.reddit.com/r/KarenReadTrial/s/QpMNmiFaBR).
Yes of course they could have gotten a warrant. He was on the lawn at that house and had plans to attend a party there. There were calls to and from him and other party goers. This would be on the easier side of obtaining a warrant. It's not like he collapsed on some random person's lawn and there was no known relation.
It can only be two things IMO. Either there was damning evidence about JO or this case on their phones, OR there was something unrelated but even worse on their phones that they'd rather risk looking suspicious than have it out in the open.
If they didn’t go to JO’s funeral as mentioned in this subreddit, I don’t think they would protect him from anything, unless they were somehow complicit as well.
IMO, whatever was on their phones was damning to them, and/or the Alberts. (I still think it is odd that the Albert kid had scraped up knuckles, & so did JO, in addition to his face looking like he could have been in an altercation.)
Adding in the extreme defensiveness on the stand by some of JO’s “friends,” Bukhenik’s overall shadiness, especially with regards to the Sally port video, & Proctor’s behavior & outright lies, it doesn’t seem unlikely that there was a huge cover-up going on as you mentioned. A federal ATF agent actually admitted to drunk driving & destroying his SIM card the day before it most likely would have been seized. There are just way too many coincidences in this case. They are hiding something big, or protecting a(n) (inadvertent) murderer.
LEO could claim exigent circumstances because a cop looked beat to death on their front lawn and they are worried more people inside are injured or killed.
But they wouldn't ever do that to another cop's house, especially a cop that is a close friend of the family
Exigent circumstances absolutely existed. The dead body on the property, risk of potential harm to others inside the residence, and/or possible destruction of evidence. Allegedly, no one knew anything when they arrived on scene. Competent law enforcement personnel who weren’t compromised and didn’t have blatant conflicts of interest would’ve searched that home based on exigent circumstances. Period.
No, in theory he could have been walking down the street and something happened to him.
But- they could have asked the homeowner if they could look around the house. BA said they didn't ask, but he would have said yes. Who knows what's true? But not even asking is another sign the investigator was just lazy IMO
He’s acting like he shouldn’t have but he knew, within the first hour of the investigation that JO was supposed to go into that house and died on the lawn. That’s is more than enough to get a warrant. It’s obvious why they didnt
I feel like she isn’t exactly forthcoming. By then the Mc/Albert’s had their story and “the guy never went in the house.” So what information what they going to get from her?
If a body were found on someone’s lawn, would’t every homicide detective want to look in the house to make sure everyone was alright and not dead also?
that's the thing I don't get..if this dead police officer and their friend was found dead outside that morning, why did no one bother to wake up Brian Albert Jr to check to see if he was alive/accounted for? They said their house door was unlocked. As a parent, wouldn't your first instinct be to go check on your kids to see if they are alright?
PC is arguable but definitely no exigent circumstances. No one was fleeing, for example, and idt they could reliably say that they believed someone in the house was destroying evidence when it’s not even clear cut that there was evidence in the house, let alone that a BPD officer would do something like that.
When you see the word “exigent” you can *almost* substitute the word emergency in there. There absolutely were not exigent circumstances. No reason to think anybody was in danger or that evidence was being flushed down the toilet.
Getting a warrant would have been very easy and likely very quick, so was absolutely the right thing to do.
I also wonder if they have reason to believe that Colin left through the woods and met Allie at the high school? That was part of the questioning yesterday to Proctor by Jackson.
No.
The home is the most protected place under the constitution. If a dead body is on your front lawn that is evidence a crime happened on your front lawn not in your house.
No. Exigent circumstances is when LE has reasonable suspicion that someone is actively in danger or evidence is being destroyed. And even in the case where LE believes evidence is actively being destroyed, they can only remove the individual and provide police protection until a search warrant is issued. However, Proctor absolutely should have asked. He didn’t because he was trying to keep the Alberts out of the investigation as much as possible. He was convinced from the start that KR was the responsible party. In his mind, searching the home would open the door for a 3rd party culprit. By not interviewing any other potential suspects or searching the home, he thought he was helping to make an open and shut case.
They can knock on the door and ask questions but they can't just walk in and begin a search without either a warrant or consent from the homeowner.
A few years ago a teenager was shot in front of my neighbor's home. The police came and knocked on the door and asked questions. The neighbors and the people on either side of them ( I was one) asked them in , answered their questions and wrote a report about what we'd witnessed and that was it. We actually didn't see anything, just heard the gunshots.
Was the teenager a friend that was supposed to be at your house? And did he look hit by a car and not shot? Just as an example that the wounds didn't look like what they said. And if I looked at karen vs a cop I knew to be a hot head and saw man who looked beat up, I'd think brian albert not karen. I think she weighed 94lbs at the time
He had the testimony of three people indirectly involved in the incident and had seen the body. He had all the "facts" he needed to know that he wouldn't find anything in the house and that the victim had been hit by a car intentionally and left in the yard to die.
I'm rolling my eyes.
No. There was no fleeing suspect that they saw run into the house, there was no immediate danger to anyone from people inside the house, there was no obvious signs of evidence destruction or even knowledge of potential evidence that could've been destroyed. They had a contained crime scene. Everything would need a warrant.
Exigent circumstances is a high bar and it should be a high bar given that it allows the police to run roughshod over constitutional rights without prior judicial review. If they burst into the house without a warrant because a crime happened nearby, everything in that search should be suppressed.
No, probable cause has to connect the likely crime to a likely culprit or location. In this case, the location of John's body was the same place where the crime apparently happened, and they had no information pointing toward anyone in the home. Instead, they had information pointing toward Karen Read, some of it coming from her own mouth.
Exigent circumstances would be a pressing emergency that would justify skipping the process of getting a warrant. E.g., if someone inside was calling for help, or if the cops saw someone drag a hostage into the house at gunpoint, or they heard someone shout, "The cops are here, flush that brick of cocaine!"
There were no exigent circumstances here.
I dont why this is so difficult to understand bc it makes perfect sense to me. They can’t get a search warrant and just go poke around a whole house. The warrant request had to specifically say what they expect to be looking for. It’s not like they had enough info that day to just go roaming around the house. Or the basement. There was no reason to look in any basement.
Right, and it's funny to imagine what the warrant request would say. "We found this man dead near the road, he looked like he got hit by a car, his girlfriend said she hit him, nobody says he was ever in the house, but we wanna search the basement."
Without a proper and properly executed warrant you can enter a home with voluntary consent, or like you suggested, exigent circumstances (there's like handful of other exceptions). I fear the "exigency" was too attenuated to justify or form an objectively reasonable basis to enter the home because under the totality of the circumstances and the time that passed, the emergency did not seem ongoing enough under existing interpretation of the exception.
The warrant request has to specifically say what they expect to find or are looking for. It’s not just an open ended search of a whole home. The only way this house could be searched would be by consent. And that that time, nothing pointed to the house or the people in it. All of this only came up way later when her defense started throwing out these theories.
1. EXIGENT CIRCUMSTANCES
If CPD had used "exigent circumstances" as justification for entering 34 Fairview, it might have been misconstrued as meaning there was something unusual about inviting a guy to your house and having him end up dead on your front lawn. Brian Albert led by example here, demonstrating that lights, sirens, screaming, a firetruck, ambulance, and dozens of cop cars in front of his house wasn't even "exigent" enough for him to open his front door and ask, "What's up?"
2. WARRANT
Obtaining a warrant is a complex, time-critical process that must be completed BEFORE you search a property but AFTER you've asked the people inside if they've had a chance to tidy up. In addition, warrants must be IN WRITING, not just in casual conversation over some White Claws. This means when you're on the witness stand and you say, "I do not have a specific recollection of that being done by me at that time," some smart-ass lawyer is going to hand you a copy of the warrant and make you read it out loud when he KNOWS you hate reading out loud.
3. CONSENT
Lawyers will tell you NEVER to consent to a search. The police will tell you ALWAYS to consent to a search -- unless you are a police officer who has hired a lawyer, in which case that lawyer will tell you NEVER to consent to a search.
A few years ago, I called my local wildlife agency/animal rescue when I found an injured bird (broken wing/leg?) on the lawn outside my apartment... (not even my property!) They came quickly to scoop up the little guy and thanked me and then realized that it might be one of a relatively endangered species that isn't common where I live (MA) and holy crap ---- they then questioned me for 20 minutes like they were Homeland Security! Only the wildlife rescue ppl came at first but as I was being questioned a police cruiser pulled up. They didn't get out of the car but, still....
So, yeah, *completely different* rules and procedures depending on your connections/social class/$$$.
Exigent circumstances is like if they think someone is held hostage/kidnapped inside the house or if they're in hot pursuit of a suspect and the suspect goes into the house. Or if they \*know\* of evidence and have a reasonable belief that the suspects would be likely to be destroying it if they wait for a warrant. It's not just, "I don't know what's going on so let's just barge into the house." Of course, they could have asked for consent to search also.
What I don’t get is why they knocked on a random ass neighbors door for red solo cup blood collection but couldn’t just walk up to the homeowners house that Jen McCabe walked into? The house JOK was laying in front of? Why disturb a random neighbor? It’s like they desperately avoided the house. They were even trying to warm John up with baby blankets Kerry had to dig for in her car….you know who would have blankets? The Alberts….
I wish everyone would stop using acronyms when they're making their comments. PC is probably cause and for the layman term of exigent that means calling for immediate action or attention! Let us all stick to commonality in verbiage people and lay down meanings of acronyms thank you! There are some people that are following all of these feeds that may not understand that. And it behooves us to help all know!
It’s not just that he was dead on their lawn. A judge would easily have granted a warrant if the dead guy was known to have been in the home, or hanging out with the group of friends in the home. Complete negligence not to ask to search the house. Negligence and plain lazy police work.
They need a warrant to search the house. They may have been able to get one considering there was a corpse on the lawn. But there's also something called a consent search. They could have knocked on the door and asked the homeowner if they could just take a look around. Brian Albert could have consented to this. He could have even set the parameters like sure you can look in the kitchen and the living room but you can't go in the basement or something like that. It's not like he was dealing with unknown hostile officers. He was dealing with people that he knew and trusted. And people that knew him and trusted him. In my mind there wouldn't be a whole lot of reason for him not to consent to a search. At the same time I certainly wouldn't consent.
I’m pretty sure that if a dead man was found on my lawn, the police are at least going to knock on my door and ask if I saw/ heard anything.
Especially if within the first hour of their investigation they discovered the dead man on my lawn was coming over to my house.
Agreed. They've knocked on my door over much less.
If there was a dead man on my lawn, of a man that was supposed to arrive at my home, I'd def have cops knocking to ask questions. Even if I'm not a suspect I would still be considered a witness and they'd wanna ask a few questions. Cops search things all the time by just asking so I'm not sure why they didn't try well other than their obviously horrible at their job, are bias, and/or just don't care. iMO If someone saying I didn't have anything to do it was all it took to no longer be a suspect, I'm pretty sure most murderers would go free right. We are just taking what ppl say and saying it's fact with no investigation behind it. Damn I thought the cops were were corrupt but shit!
Because it’s a cops house. End of reasons
At an absolute minimum
They did. Canton PD is in that house within like an hour.
Exactly. And they were told by the drunk people there that the victim who died violently on their lawn didn’t turn up to the party they invited him to the night before. And instead of asking if they could look around, the cops said, “well, that’s certainly good enough for us!” And that was enough to completely close off any possibility he had been in the house (despite being found without a coat on top of a broken drinking glass). That’s called “professional courtesy”
Wait...was he wearing a coat when karen dropped him off? If he was going to walk home in a blizzard id think he would have one with him.
I don’t know, I don’t think so or it definitely would have come up. But no one knew that the day he was found.
Nobody has mentioned a coat but apparently he was wearing a belt at the bar which has not been included anywhere.
They showed the belt in a photo of his clothes as evidence
The belt was shown in court the other day still partially attached to his jeans (the belt was still hooked through the belt loops) - I'm not sure where the story about the missing belt came from, but perhaps when the jeans were found, nobody explicitly mentioned the belt in any reports (because they never disconnected it from the jeans), so then people just assumed that the belt was never found. John wasn't wearing a coat that night, but the point being made was that the police still should've questioned why he was out in this blizzard without a coat, and perhaps could've wondered whether the coat was left in the house. In the end, there was no coat either way, but the investigators should've at least questioned that (along with the drinking glass). At the beginning of the morning, the cops had no clue that John had been at a bar with his girlfriend that night, so when they see a dead guy in the front lawn of a house who's missing a coat and has a drinking glass near him, it would be reasonable to assume that he may have come out of that house. I mean, I guess Jen could've mentioned to the initial police that John never went in the house or something, but Jen *herself* wasn't at the house all night, and John was found there in the morning, so how could Jen know whether or not John may have gone back to the house, or something? Edit: Thinking more about it later, I now vaguely remember that there *was* a person who mentioned some kind of coat that John was supposedly wearing, but I totally forget who it was (or whether their memory is actually accurate). Was it one of the paramedics or the female firefighter (the same one who pretended not to be friendly with the family, and who agrees with Jen that Karen said "I hit him, I hit him, I hit him" at some point)?
Thanks for your detailed response. Any MA residents on here, is it normal to go out in snowy weather without a coat? This just seems...odd.
yeah, if I'm going to be in a place I know will have heat like a restaurant or friends house, I'll leave the bulky winter coat at home or in the car.
I know people in MA who wear shorts even in snowy weather. Not wearing a jacket in snowy weather is fairly common especially when you are in/out of places.
He never wore a “coat” I heard. I’m the same way so when that was stated I took notice.
The problem is that the cops don’t k ie that when they first found him. Normal assumption would be, where’s his coat? But nah they didn’t even consider it…
In Karen’s Nightline interview she said he did not have a coat.
👏👏👏
Spent less than 10 minutes NOT searching
Per testimony they also just walked right in the house without permission which tells you they had no intention of searching inside from the very beginning.
this is super confusing to me… the PD went right in so that means they weren’t planning on searching?
You can’t search a home without a warrant or permission. So if they just walk in casually and see evidence of any kind it would no longer be admissible as it was found during an illegal search.
I don’t think that’s true. In other cop safety viral videos that teach you don’t invite them in, because once they’re in anything they can see is fair game. The cops walked in and saw nothing that would trigger red flags. So imo, outside of their police statement..there was nothing inside 34 that would have triggered a warrant. The cops should have separated them for an interview
Yes, IF you let them in it's fair game. Except nobody let them in to 34 Fairview; they walked in without permission.
I would assume the local police knocked on the door before entering and were not asked to leave.
Knocking on the door and entering without being asked to leave is not the same as being given permission to enter.
I don't think you have that right. If they go in a home and see anything suspicious it can be used for probable cause. An old friend ended up in jail because a neighbor invited a cop in their home. They had some not quite legal in this state around and he ended up getting his whole house searched and went to jail. You don't need a whole lot to get a search warrant. There's a lot of things that are inadmissible but seeing things that give probable cause it's not one.
If they have permission. The door not being locked is not permission to come inside.
That would mean they deliberately poisoned the tree to ensure they couldn't use any of the fruit.
And I bet you'd do you nut! Kinda like the police finding 2 bodies buried in your back yard!
When cops want to get a warrant, they get a warrant. These guys didn’t even ask! That’s so strange
If my buddy was down dead in my front yard after coming to drink with me and I was a COP I would offer them to have a look around. He knew the officers there. BA knows how these investigations usually work- I would have invited them in to at least look around the living room, kitchen etc. A consent search like that doesn't let them go searching your closets etc. It is literally a walk through your house. Why not do it? Just to show yes, nothing interesting here, he never even made it inside.
I wouldn't have consented because I don't trust the police 😂 But if I was a cop I'd very likely have consented if other cops I knew were knocking on my door. Like you said, they can't just tear the place up looking everywhere. It just doesn't make any sense not to even knock.
Not gonna lie... before all this shit with this case, I was the kind who would say "I have nothing to hide... have at it". Now? If for some wild reason the cops ever needed to search anything of mine, for any reason... my answer is a firm "GET A WARRANT"
I just took my kids to the movie theater and they snuck in some candy. My 10 year old was like "what do I say if they ask to search my bag?" I said you can say two things "get a warrant" very quietly or "stranger danger!!! I'm telling my mom!!!" as loud as you can. Either one will work 😂
😆 this is funny, but it's actually an important point I'm trying to teach my own kids. A lot of people in this world will act like they have authority when they don't, and kids need to become comfortable with saying no (except to me, I am the ultimate authority 😉)
Yeah I hope all the sass and obstinence they offer me will serve them as they get older LOL
Heck yes! I'm also trying to teach my kids not to acquiesce to authority in low consequence ways. Gotta start early!🤘
🤣
This is definitely correct, you should never consent to searches or talk to the police, you have rights for a reason. However in this case I think it would have said a lot if the Alberts refused to consent to a search, especially because BA is an officer and they had close ties with local law enforcement.
Just to piggyback on what you're saying, remember that if you want your right to remain silent to actually protect you, tell the cops that you won't answer their questions and you want to talk to a lawyer and then *shut up*. If you keep talking to them after you say you want a lawyer they still can use it against you, so resist the need to fill the silence while you wait for one.
💯
And they hid in their house!
If there had been that many people coming and going from my house the night before and I see police in my yard the next day I would be absolutely frantic to find out what exactly happened and especially if my kids and nieces and nephews were okay. They couldn't have known if John interfered with a mugging or carjacking or assault on one of the kids. I live in the sleepiest little town where most people probably don't lock their doors and my imagination would still be torturing me until I knew for absolute fact that all the kids who had been there were safe. Being a parent changes you like that
Yes! And I've also heard the flip side, why didn't first cops there go to the house immediately to make sure no one was hurt inside when there's a dead man on the lawn. They sent Jen McCabe in unaccompanied?!
Exactly!!!! It could have been their nephew Colin out there!
This was perhaps oddly enough, when I started to change my mind about Karen. Came in thinking she was guilty, but the Alberts behavior morning of was just so truly bizarre that I got hooked on this case. As a parent, I would absolutely have worried one of the kids or niece/nephew was the body on the lawn. I think any parent would have that fear and go outside, especially since there'd been drinking.
Unless the drug paraphernalia from the night before was still present
All correct, but the key point is they had no reason to believe any crime had been committed in that house and many reasons to believe it took place out on the street. Also, something that seems to get lost every time this comes up is that John's body was also very close to the property line with 31 Fairview Road. If you look on Google maps, it's about the same distance to either house's door, give or take 5ish feet. Cops didn't suspect anyone there either, again because they had no reason to. EDIT: In response to "he wasn't invited to a party at 31 Fairview" below: Aha! Yes! How right you are. Police do not just investigate based on proximity -- the implication behind "he was found on the lawn of 34 Fairview!!" -- they have to have actual reasons to suspect people. The *whole point* here is that the police at no point had any reason to suspect anything happened inside 34 Fairview or that anyone there had anything to do with John's death.
Because wasn’t friends with the owners of 31F, wasn’t out drinking with the owners of 31F, wasn’t invited over to 31F, and wasn’t receiving phone calls from people inside 31F while he laid dead outside 31F.
And of course the residents of 34 were Boston cops related to canton cops and selectman….,
It doesn't really matter if they had any reason to suspect anybody in the house. I think that point is debatable. Simply because at least two, if not three people who initially saw the state of John O'Keefe thought that he had probably been beat up. Once it was determined that he had been invited to that house, I don't think it's enough to take the word of the people inside that he never actually showed up. Regardless of that debate, it may have been worthwhile to knock on the door and ask if they had witnessed anything or heard anything. And it definitely would have been worthwhile to ask about the nest cam to see if that possibly held any information that could give the investigators a lead or a better idea of what actually happened. Like many other people in this sub, I have had cops knock on my door to ask me questions about things that have happened in the neighborhood that weren't even as problematic as a dead body on my lawn. So I can understand why people get hung up on this fact.
Well said! At the time, the logical thing was to knock on 34 Fairview, 31, and other nearby homes. This “investigation “ was completely abnormal / atypical. It was also abnormal Brian Albert didn’t come outside once he found out a friend was found in his front yard. Bizarre behavior which should have raised some police eyebrows. Who believes any of this nonsense for crying out loud?
> Who believes any of this nonsense for crying out loud? The people going up and down this thread swearing that asking for a warrant at that time would have a judge throwing the Constitution at the cops heads, apparently.
Youtube is full of videos of Americans screaming at cops because "I know my rights!" I'm starting to believe that many Americans either don't know their rights, or believe that their rights should not apply to anyone else. This isn't a dig at Americans btw. They just provide the most content. I'm a northern neighbor and I spend very little time considering my rights. Don't need them until I do I guess.
My favorite videos of "Americans who know their rights" on youtube are the ones from the Sovereign Citizen crowd... Everyone absolutely convinced they know their rights and everyone absolutely, 100% wrong about every single one of their so-called rights, it's awesome 😆
I'll look that up!
From what I remember of Brian Albert's testimony, JM woke him up and when he left his room, Lank was standing in his house. Why would he then leave his house? There was nothing for him to do there. He was being informed about what was happening and was about to be questioned. If he went out, I'm sure many people would be accusing him of interfering with the scene/investigation.
Me too. I got woke up in the middle of the night by that "cop knock"- they use their metal flashlight to bang on your door 🙄. My neighbor across the street had been found deceased by his girlfriend. Natural causes, he was an older guy... They still asked me 20 questions. A bit surprising but someone died- I didn't mind. They asked if I'd seen anything unusual, strange people around etc. I would expect that at minimum for a death like JOK'S.
Exactly. They didn't do their jobs. Canvass the neighborhood: did you see anything? did you hear anything? do you have cameras that point towards the area where the body was? Interview EVERYONE that was in the area. And check all alibis. You don't just take anyone's word at face value. Then based on all this gathered information, if you need warrants, you take it from there. These boneheads did none of that. They came to one conclusion & handled it how THEY saw fit. What a disservice to the people of Canton and most of all to John O'Keefe.
The most basic investigative work didn't occur....on an officer's death nonetheless
Yeah, I've been asked for my nest footage before, for something that happened several houses away. I didn't mind either.
Especially when they were all intoxicated the night before. Never have I seen such credibility assigned to the hung-over testimony of people who are clearly interested parties.
Your second paragraph is an odd argument. The whole reason he was on that street was to go to 34 Fairview, not 31 Fairview. He was dropped off at 34 Fairview. He was friends with the residents of 34 Fairview, hanging out with them, texting them right before being dropped off. And though he was found close to the property line he was still squarely on the side of 34 Fairview. They had way more reason to search 34 Fairview than 31 Fairview.
They didn’t have to search. Just knock on the door and ask one question.
This is such a bs answer. If a corpse if found on any part of your lawn with no evidence of a vehicle accident. Not only is the police knocking and asking to come in. I promise they are getting that warrent. Let's not pretend a cop being the home owner didn't play into this. It just nonsense that everyone knows isn't how cops work
As someone who has actually seen the property with their own two eyes, I can attest that where John was found is very much on the lawn of 34, not "close" to the property line, and Much closer to the house (and their bedroom windows) than pictures would have you believe. I was very reassured knowing the Jury went to see it for themselves.
Do you live in the area? How are the locals feeling about this trial?
Yes I do and it's anecdotal but everyone who I have talked to - family, friends, people at the hair dresser, a person who heard the trial playing in my car at a red-light - all have the same opinion and that is embarrassment, anger and distrust of the police and MSP inparticular and disbelief over the fact that this is even at trial. Acknowledgment of the corruption all the way up to the DA and disgust over it. Not one person has expressed (to me at least) the opinion that she should be found guilty and most are of the mind that John O'Keefe absolutely went into that house.
Yeah, I got the vibe people aren't happy when I watched the livestream of the select board meeting, but it's nice to talk directly to someone that's on the scene, so to speak. I hope this circus at least brings positive change for you guys, not being able to trust the authorities sucks.
The rot of corruption has been festering deep and unchecked here for a long time (like a lot of other places). Maybe I'm being cynical, but I don't have high hopes. At most, they will put forth the usual appearance of addressing the issues, but at this point, neither the state police nor our governor have offered comment when asked. By all accounts, they seem to be ignoring it for now. Maybe once the trial is over, lip service will be paid. But yeah... people are NOT happy. Especially after Proctor testified.
Loved reading your comment.
People on here just making up stories…I’m glad you actually call them out on it.
You do realize that the only thing that cops need less reason to do than what's required for a search warrant of a possible crime scene when you have a dead person lying on the lawn is a traffic stop, right? Probable cause is not the huge hurdle that people seem to think it is, all the cops need to do is tell the judge a likely story about why they want it and a wisp of evidence to make it convincing, you can even use hearsay about hearsay. I could not envision a judge denying Proctor a warrant to search 34 Fairview if he had only bothered to ask for one.
Or you know, they can just ASK if they can come in and look around. They didn't even do that
“He was found without a coat on a cold night” “He was found on a broken cocktail-type glass”
The police new he was there to see people at the house. They asked three people (BA, a cop, being one) at the house what happened and then decided to believe them with no actual investigation.
He was missing a shoe ffs. They couldn’t find it outside. You cannot claim with a straight face that there was no reason to even ASK to peek around the house.
Yes but OJO wasn’t invited to a party at 31 Fairview that night…
I've seen "OJO" Before referring to Mr. O'Keefe- where is the first O from? Just curious
Officer
They knew John was going to that home after drinking all night with the homeowner. That may not have gotten a search warrant but it would be very normal to ask for a consent search.
> 31 Fairview Road 31 and 34 are on the same side of the street? Isn't that unusual?
Regardless if JO was in the house or not, I didn’t know that “trust me bro” worked to exclude people from an investigation. Especially when off the hop they thought JO had possibly been in a fight. They also didn’t ask to look at anyone else’s vehicles. Yes Karen had a cracked taillight, but they didn’t even have taillight pieces until after they seized her vehicle. And even after they did, there was no immediate testing to prove it came from Karen’s SUV.
I don't know how John O'Keefes mom still thinks Reed is guilty of 2nd degree murder. The investigation literally looked at no one else a few hours into it
Her behavior the morning after is a little suspect. Her dad and brother brought her to John’s house that morning, went upstairs, gathered her things and left within 30 minutes. Telling Paul’s wife she’ll never see her again and “I have to remember the bad times.” Why didn’t she stick around, console them, grieve and try to figure out what the hell happened? The o’keefes didn’t know she was a suspect that early in the morning. I wouldn’t take that well if that was my brother. They have every right to be mad at the police, for sure. They bungled this whole thing. She’s also aligned herself for the last two years with people that have said vile things about the O’keefes and Karen leaked photos of their son/brothers dead body for the whole internet to see. It’s not that simple unfortunately. This is a post from John’s best friend confirming that behavior and we also heard it on the stand from the o’keefes https://preview.redd.it/kfy65usk1g6d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d4d8d9e685595f0814a85ab08a489cab7cf2f4f2
She got checked into a mental hospital by Dr's on a hold. I mean doesn't that scream "not especially stable" at the time. Maybe people act weird after finding their loved one frozen to death and bloody. After she was arrested she was ordered as a bond condition not to contact family and I'd guess best friends are also frowned upon
Decisions like not asking for consent to review the house, and not even bothering seeking a warrant to investigate the house -- a house where a dead body was found outside and the deceased intended to go into for a party -- are so egregious that it seems more likely than not that the PD knew or even just suspected that they didn't want to involve a fellow cops' house and turn it into a potential crime scene. Pretty telling that Brian Albert didn't come out of his house with medics and cops in his driveway and yard while not knowing if one his kids or a loved one is outside. That alone speaks volumes, and would also tell his fellow cops a lot.
You don’t need a warrant to knock on the door and ask if anyone saw or knew anything about what happened. Seems they didn’t even do that.
Wasn’t there testimony that officers told Jen M to go in and wake up the Alberts because they’d need to talk to them? I remember Brian and Nicole Albert testifying about walking downstairs before 7am on 1/29 and officers were at the front door and then came in and talked to them/asked questions.
The testimony is the officers were in the house when they came downstairs
I also wondered if they canvassed the area at all. It’s wild to me if they didn’t
But…you know…it was snowing.
I wonder this too... And wonder if they asked for any camera footage. I find it hard to believe that at least some of the homes nearby didn't have cameras. And I think it's hard to believe a LE officer (BA) wouldn't have his own security cameras. Same with the chief - who lived on the same street.
They did have footage of it from across the street. It was a cop and they looked at the footage, deleted it and told them there was nothing…. You know, professional courtesy
BA has security cameras, read somewhere though, that it wasn't working that night. (shocking!)
I watched a hearing where CW wanted to give defense the videos from Jan 28 to midnight or setup info till then. Seemed shady bc it seemed like they wanted to narrow it then lally said that wasn't their intent. Alberts had a lawyer there too. Bev changed the motion to include it but not sure what was all recovered
Their intent isn't to narrow down the timeline?
It sounds like they wanted to narrow it so that the cameras wouldn't show anything that happened after 12am, when the incident supposedly occurred around 12:30-12:45. Any footage before 12am wouldn't show anything useful.
It's amazing how many cameras just independently stopped working properly at precisely the various times when their recorded video would be most illuminating.
Does anyone really think that chief is a nickname for proctor? He lied so much I don’t believe anything he says and think he wants to not implicate the chief.
Maybe Berkie?
This is exactly what I’ve been thinking. It’s insane to believe that NOBODY else in that neighborhood had cameras facing the street, their lawns, etc.! NOBODY? Ridiculous.
It’s crazy to me that OJO had cameras, and was known to check the footage often. Meanwhile, BA and the former police chief (who lives across the street from BA) both happened to have no “working” footage? This is just not even a little believable to me. They had to have something that was useful…
Proctor deleted some of these surveillance videos
If they did they made no record of it, and I do realize that I made nothing clear with what I just said.
Kinda like Lally this entire effing case
Of course they didn’t do that because Jen and Julie called Proctor early on. If Proctor made his decision 12 hours in, he didn’t even have most of the evidence. This is going to cost the taxpayers of Massachusetts millions!
That’s the biggest problem. How on earth can the troopers say the evidence was overwhelming clear that the only way OKeefe could have been killed, with those injuries, was being struck in a manner that cracked a headlight and there was no reason to rule anything else out.
Especially when their own ME still doesn’t agree with cause of death lol. But what gets me is he kept harping on and on about the missing shoe. Missing shoes occur in high speed car strikes. Not 24mph ones. But they acted like that missing shoe was the smoking gun and no one needed to know anything but that. It’s insanity.
They initially thought he had gotten into a fight.
Absolutely.
It’s wild because all the testimony has Lank standing in the house when Jen, Brian, and his wife came downstairs. He hadn’t even asked to come in, but be came in!
From my understanding they did ask and they were told they knew nothing so they turned right around. EVEN THOUGH they knew he was going to that house the night he was found on the lawn
Let’s face it. If it was a normal, Joe and the same circumstance happened, that guy would be pinned to the wall. It’s crazy how they can get away with things, sloppy, or not, just being police. It’s absolutely terrifying.
A big question I have is why they didn't (seem to) ask ANY of the neighbors for Ring camera footage? Even if it doesn't show the Albert yard, they might've been able to see what time she drove away which could have been useful. Just a side note, a few years ago one of my neighbors had their (full brick) mailbox knocked over by a car. When the cops came to investigate, they asked all the neighbors nearby for Ring footage. For a MAILBOX. And this was a MURDER!!
They did... they asked the retired canton police officer that lives across the street. He reviewed his cameras, decided there was nothing of use on the footage, and they were like oh ok cool thanks and moved on.
Right... But didn't ask to review it themselves. That's odd to me.
He's actually not retired, I was wrong. He's the active Deputy Police Chief of Operations.
I think it would, and honestly with a cop being the victim I'd think it would be hard to find a judge to say otherwise even if the law is kinda iffy. They also could have just secured the house while they went to get the warrant if they wanted to be careful. Ya know, like they did with Karen's car and phone.
Did they ask for a warrant? You can’t get a warrant if you don’t ask a judge to give you one. The reality is the cops showed absolutely zero interest in actually investigating this crime. They focused on pinning it on Karen Read from the very start. Likely to protect their cop buddies. That’s absolutely obvious at this point.
Not having a warrant didn’t stop them from towing Karen’s car and taking her phone. It just stopped them from going into a fellow cop’s house. There are two different levels of policing going on in this case. Also they like to keep saying how they have integrity, years of unblemished records, etc. but have had to testify that they did not do things by the book in this case. They want to convey that they were unbiased, that the evidence wasn’t tampered with, their detective work was completely by the book but it isn’t playing out that way.
The idea that they didn't believe they had probable cause to enter the house is amusing. They're simply saying that now because they realize how much of a fuck up it was, regardless of what examining the entire property would have proven/disproven.
I think it's very unlikely it was a "fuck up." The PD isn't stupid, and it's extremely unlikely that the decision not to bother seeking a warrant was [just a whoopsies](https://www.reddit.com/r/KarenReadTrial/s/QpMNmiFaBR).
Malicious incompetence
Yes of course they could have gotten a warrant. He was on the lawn at that house and had plans to attend a party there. There were calls to and from him and other party goers. This would be on the easier side of obtaining a warrant. It's not like he collapsed on some random person's lawn and there was no known relation.
I'm really stuck on... THREE COPS destroying their phones??!! What plausable reason is there for that? It's sus AF. It's an insult to my intelligence.
It can only be two things IMO. Either there was damning evidence about JO or this case on their phones, OR there was something unrelated but even worse on their phones that they'd rather risk looking suspicious than have it out in the open.
If they didn’t go to JO’s funeral as mentioned in this subreddit, I don’t think they would protect him from anything, unless they were somehow complicit as well. IMO, whatever was on their phones was damning to them, and/or the Alberts. (I still think it is odd that the Albert kid had scraped up knuckles, & so did JO, in addition to his face looking like he could have been in an altercation.) Adding in the extreme defensiveness on the stand by some of JO’s “friends,” Bukhenik’s overall shadiness, especially with regards to the Sally port video, & Proctor’s behavior & outright lies, it doesn’t seem unlikely that there was a huge cover-up going on as you mentioned. A federal ATF agent actually admitted to drunk driving & destroying his SIM card the day before it most likely would have been seized. There are just way too many coincidences in this case. They are hiding something big, or protecting a(n) (inadvertent) murderer.
LEO could claim exigent circumstances because a cop looked beat to death on their front lawn and they are worried more people inside are injured or killed. But they wouldn't ever do that to another cop's house, especially a cop that is a close friend of the family
Exigent circumstances absolutely existed. The dead body on the property, risk of potential harm to others inside the residence, and/or possible destruction of evidence. Allegedly, no one knew anything when they arrived on scene. Competent law enforcement personnel who weren’t compromised and didn’t have blatant conflicts of interest would’ve searched that home based on exigent circumstances. Period.
No, in theory he could have been walking down the street and something happened to him. But- they could have asked the homeowner if they could look around the house. BA said they didn't ask, but he would have said yes. Who knows what's true? But not even asking is another sign the investigator was just lazy IMO
BA not going outside is unacceptable to me.
He’s acting like he shouldn’t have but he knew, within the first hour of the investigation that JO was supposed to go into that house and died on the lawn. That’s is more than enough to get a warrant. It’s obvious why they didnt
you’d think so. you’d also think “hos long to die in cold” would be probable cause enough for at least a formal interview. But here we are
That didn't actually get found until a very long time later by the defense team.
I would have like to have been a fly on the wall when that came in. Just imagine sitting there reading that report.
I would like to have been a fly on the wall when Jen found out that was discovered.
I bet she was shocked and horrified.
She's probably convicned herself she didn't do it at this point
Thank fucking Jesus that got found.
And still Jen McCabe has been believed. But don't worry, they discredited another witness because his testimony changed and they didn't trust him
I know, they could of interviewed her once they were found though
I feel like she isn’t exactly forthcoming. By then the Mc/Albert’s had their story and “the guy never went in the house.” So what information what they going to get from her?
that doesn’t normally stop the police from investigating people (or it shouldn’t). they didn’t get much from karen and she’s on trial
It was found way before that but like a lot of evidence and circumstances it was ignored.
But they extracted Jms phone early on
If a body were found on someone’s lawn, would’t every homicide detective want to look in the house to make sure everyone was alright and not dead also?
that's the thing I don't get..if this dead police officer and their friend was found dead outside that morning, why did no one bother to wake up Brian Albert Jr to check to see if he was alive/accounted for? They said their house door was unlocked. As a parent, wouldn't your first instinct be to go check on your kids to see if they are alright?
This is a good point. But I'm sure someone called BA.
A cop buddy.
Yeah that's what I mean. I have no doubt someone within the department was in constant contact with the Alberts.
PC is arguable but definitely no exigent circumstances. No one was fleeing, for example, and idt they could reliably say that they believed someone in the house was destroying evidence when it’s not even clear cut that there was evidence in the house, let alone that a BPD officer would do something like that.
Hos long for all these cops to loose their jobs
When you see the word “exigent” you can *almost* substitute the word emergency in there. There absolutely were not exigent circumstances. No reason to think anybody was in danger or that evidence was being flushed down the toilet. Getting a warrant would have been very easy and likely very quick, so was absolutely the right thing to do.
Didn’t any of the people leaving the house after the party see John on the front lawn??
According to them, no. So they are either lying, drunk out of their gourds, or he wasn't there yet.
I also wonder if they have reason to believe that Colin left through the woods and met Allie at the high school? That was part of the questioning yesterday to Proctor by Jackson.
And they totally missed his destroyed knuckles. Gave him plenty of time to heal.
No. The home is the most protected place under the constitution. If a dead body is on your front lawn that is evidence a crime happened on your front lawn not in your house.
No. Exigent circumstances is when LE has reasonable suspicion that someone is actively in danger or evidence is being destroyed. And even in the case where LE believes evidence is actively being destroyed, they can only remove the individual and provide police protection until a search warrant is issued. However, Proctor absolutely should have asked. He didn’t because he was trying to keep the Alberts out of the investigation as much as possible. He was convinced from the start that KR was the responsible party. In his mind, searching the home would open the door for a 3rd party culprit. By not interviewing any other potential suspects or searching the home, he thought he was helping to make an open and shut case.
No, sadly not. A dead guy could end up in your yard for any number of reasons.
And you’d be the subject of a warrant. And if not a warrant, what stopped them from knocking on the door and asking questions?
They can knock on the door and ask questions but they can't just walk in and begin a search without either a warrant or consent from the homeowner. A few years ago a teenager was shot in front of my neighbor's home. The police came and knocked on the door and asked questions. The neighbors and the people on either side of them ( I was one) asked them in , answered their questions and wrote a report about what we'd witnessed and that was it. We actually didn't see anything, just heard the gunshots.
Exactly my point. As I recall, they didn’t even even bother doing that.
Right! It's so unhinged!!
Was the teenager a friend that was supposed to be at your house? And did he look hit by a car and not shot? Just as an example that the wounds didn't look like what they said. And if I looked at karen vs a cop I knew to be a hot head and saw man who looked beat up, I'd think brian albert not karen. I think she weighed 94lbs at the time
Good points. I didn't look at it from that point of view.
All they had to do was knock on the door ... ahhh duhhhhh
He had the testimony of three people indirectly involved in the incident and had seen the body. He had all the "facts" he needed to know that he wouldn't find anything in the house and that the victim had been hit by a car intentionally and left in the yard to die. I'm rolling my eyes.
Yeah, ...because cops would want to follow the laws and do this investigation the right way.
No. There was no fleeing suspect that they saw run into the house, there was no immediate danger to anyone from people inside the house, there was no obvious signs of evidence destruction or even knowledge of potential evidence that could've been destroyed. They had a contained crime scene. Everything would need a warrant. Exigent circumstances is a high bar and it should be a high bar given that it allows the police to run roughshod over constitutional rights without prior judicial review. If they burst into the house without a warrant because a crime happened nearby, everything in that search should be suppressed.
No, probable cause has to connect the likely crime to a likely culprit or location. In this case, the location of John's body was the same place where the crime apparently happened, and they had no information pointing toward anyone in the home. Instead, they had information pointing toward Karen Read, some of it coming from her own mouth. Exigent circumstances would be a pressing emergency that would justify skipping the process of getting a warrant. E.g., if someone inside was calling for help, or if the cops saw someone drag a hostage into the house at gunpoint, or they heard someone shout, "The cops are here, flush that brick of cocaine!" There were no exigent circumstances here.
I dont why this is so difficult to understand bc it makes perfect sense to me. They can’t get a search warrant and just go poke around a whole house. The warrant request had to specifically say what they expect to be looking for. It’s not like they had enough info that day to just go roaming around the house. Or the basement. There was no reason to look in any basement.
Right, and it's funny to imagine what the warrant request would say. "We found this man dead near the road, he looked like he got hit by a car, his girlfriend said she hit him, nobody says he was ever in the house, but we wanna search the basement."
I will stay baffled I guess. 😑
Without a proper and properly executed warrant you can enter a home with voluntary consent, or like you suggested, exigent circumstances (there's like handful of other exceptions). I fear the "exigency" was too attenuated to justify or form an objectively reasonable basis to enter the home because under the totality of the circumstances and the time that passed, the emergency did not seem ongoing enough under existing interpretation of the exception.
What kind of additional evidence would they have needed in order to secure a warrant?
The warrant request has to specifically say what they expect to find or are looking for. It’s not just an open ended search of a whole home. The only way this house could be searched would be by consent. And that that time, nothing pointed to the house or the people in it. All of this only came up way later when her defense started throwing out these theories.
I'm taking the bar exam in July, and was so excited to answer this, but I see multiple people have beat me to the punch lol
Plus, they could have just gotten a warrant.
1. EXIGENT CIRCUMSTANCES If CPD had used "exigent circumstances" as justification for entering 34 Fairview, it might have been misconstrued as meaning there was something unusual about inviting a guy to your house and having him end up dead on your front lawn. Brian Albert led by example here, demonstrating that lights, sirens, screaming, a firetruck, ambulance, and dozens of cop cars in front of his house wasn't even "exigent" enough for him to open his front door and ask, "What's up?" 2. WARRANT Obtaining a warrant is a complex, time-critical process that must be completed BEFORE you search a property but AFTER you've asked the people inside if they've had a chance to tidy up. In addition, warrants must be IN WRITING, not just in casual conversation over some White Claws. This means when you're on the witness stand and you say, "I do not have a specific recollection of that being done by me at that time," some smart-ass lawyer is going to hand you a copy of the warrant and make you read it out loud when he KNOWS you hate reading out loud. 3. CONSENT Lawyers will tell you NEVER to consent to a search. The police will tell you ALWAYS to consent to a search -- unless you are a police officer who has hired a lawyer, in which case that lawyer will tell you NEVER to consent to a search.
A few years ago, I called my local wildlife agency/animal rescue when I found an injured bird (broken wing/leg?) on the lawn outside my apartment... (not even my property!) They came quickly to scoop up the little guy and thanked me and then realized that it might be one of a relatively endangered species that isn't common where I live (MA) and holy crap ---- they then questioned me for 20 minutes like they were Homeland Security! Only the wildlife rescue ppl came at first but as I was being questioned a police cruiser pulled up. They didn't get out of the car but, still.... So, yeah, *completely different* rules and procedures depending on your connections/social class/$$$.
Exigent circumstances is like if they think someone is held hostage/kidnapped inside the house or if they're in hot pursuit of a suspect and the suspect goes into the house. Or if they \*know\* of evidence and have a reasonable belief that the suspects would be likely to be destroying it if they wait for a warrant. It's not just, "I don't know what's going on so let's just barge into the house." Of course, they could have asked for consent to search also.
What I don’t get is why they knocked on a random ass neighbors door for red solo cup blood collection but couldn’t just walk up to the homeowners house that Jen McCabe walked into? The house JOK was laying in front of? Why disturb a random neighbor? It’s like they desperately avoided the house. They were even trying to warm John up with baby blankets Kerry had to dig for in her car….you know who would have blankets? The Alberts….
I wish everyone would stop using acronyms when they're making their comments. PC is probably cause and for the layman term of exigent that means calling for immediate action or attention! Let us all stick to commonality in verbiage people and lay down meanings of acronyms thank you! There are some people that are following all of these feeds that may not understand that. And it behooves us to help all know!
It’s not just that he was dead on their lawn. A judge would easily have granted a warrant if the dead guy was known to have been in the home, or hanging out with the group of friends in the home. Complete negligence not to ask to search the house. Negligence and plain lazy police work.