After two homicide trials, Karen Learn was discovered not responsible within the dying of boyfriend John O’Keefe, a Boston police officer. Nevertheless, the story isn’t over, because the query stays: Who killed O’Keefe? Prison protection legal professional and former Manhattan prosecutor Mark Bederow solely warns In Contact that the world might by no means discover out.
“I feel there are such a lot of inherent flaws with the case,” Bederow tells In Contact Investigates’ Kristin Thorne. “Uncommon is the case the place you’ll ever say that one police division screwed up so badly and was so poor at proof assortment and investigation. You will have the Canton police and the Massachusetts State Police, who each did a dreadful job. They didn’t safe the crime scene.”
O’Keefe died at 46 years outdated at Good Samaritan Medical Heart in Brockton, Massachusetts, after he was discovered unconscious on the entrance garden of the house of a now-retired police officer on January 29, 2022. Learn, 45, who had found O’Keefe’s unconscious physique, was accused of deliberately hanging her boyfriend together with her automobile whereas drunk.
Mark Bederow
Learn was arrested on February 1, 2022, and charged with second-degree homicide, manslaughter whereas working a automobile underneath the affect, working underneath the affect and leaving the scene of an accident leading to dying. Nevertheless, her authorized workforce claimed throughout her trials that the crime scene was staged, that proof was planted and surveillance footage was destroyed.
Learn was in the end discovered not responsible of her homicide fees. Nevertheless, she was discovered responsible of working underneath the affect and was sentenced to 1 yr of probation.
Bederow tells Thorne that correctly securing the crime scene would have “worn out any risk of planting proof.”
“If any tail gentle items had been recovered on the scene, if that they had secured the crime scene, clearly, there’d be no alternative to try this,” he says. “However by abandoning the crime scene, by not photographing the situation of the automobile after they discovered it, by not investigating witnesses correctly. I imply, you could possibly go on and on; solo cups, leaf blowers, Cease and Store luggage. I imply, it’s simply terrible, terrible police work on this case.”
Bederow additionally shares his ideas on what might have actually occurred to O’Keefe, who died of “impression accidents to the pinnacle,” in accordance with his post-mortem. Medical expert Dr. Irini Scordi-Bello famous a “laceration to the again of his head, cranium fractures, a lower above his proper eye, abrasions on his nostril and arm, two black eyes, and a scratch on his proper knee.”
Karen Learn
“The neurologist was very clear that the attention damage, the lacerations, wouldn’t have been brought on by John O’Keefe smashing his head backwards, which begs the plain query, if that’s what occurred to him and he was discovered on his again, how did he get a few of these accidents to his face, in the event that they weren’t from the impression of the automobile?” Bederow asks.
After Learn’s verdict, a few of O’Keefe’s pals, who had been current on the night time of his dying and had been witnesses within the case, launched an announcement calling it a “miscarriage of justice.”
“Whereas we might have extra to say sooner or later, right this moment, we mourn with John’s household and lament the merciless actuality that this prosecution was contaminated by lies and conspiracy theories unfold by Karen Learn, her protection workforce and a few within the media,” the assertion continued.
Bederow says he’s uncertain there’ll ever be “true justice” for O’Keefe.
“For a lot of causes, essentially the most major of which is the police blew it early. I imply, they put no critical investigative or mental curiosity into something apart from, ‘She most likely ran him over,’ by not securing the crime scene, by not different individuals and different issues,” he concludes. “I feel, in need of a miracle of someone coming ahead and revealing issues which can be corroborated by different proof, it’ll most likely by no means get solved.”
