When a loved one commits a crime

With a reflection on the Karen Read trial

This week, as we took in the outcomes of three major criminal cases, I found my attention drawn to the responses of the family members of the defendants.

In the Boise, Idaho, courtroom, as Bryan Kohberger pleaded guilty to stabbing the four university students to death, his parents, sitting near him, both appeared stricken. His father Terry teared up and placed a caring arm around his wife Maryann.

In the New York City courtroom, as the jury acquitted Sean “Diddy” Combs of racketeering and human trafficking, his seven children applauded, wiped tears from their eyes, and chanted “dream team” at his attorneys. As they exited the courthouse with their mother Janice, she gave a thumbs up.

And in the Dedham, Massachusetts, courtroom, after the jury found Karen Read not guilty of the murder and or manslaughter of John O’Keefe, her father Michael spoke of how the “fear that we could lose Karen to incarceration . . . has been abated” and “we were blessed by the Almighty” that “my daughter will be free.” Karen’s brother Nathan spoke of his “relief” as he argued once again for his sister’s innocence.

These three events took me back to an eighth-grade memory, when I came the closest I’ve ever come to a murder. About two o’clock on the Friday afternoon of November 3, 1978, one block from my home, 18-year-old Wayne Robinson shot and killed 15-year-old Christine Hitchcock (several days after she’d broken up with him) and 16-year-old Tim Walker. Wayne also shot Tim’s mother Evelyn, but she survived her wounds.

My mother and I heard sirens and walked out in front of our home. As our neighbor, Mrs. Ferguson, walked by us, Mom asked her what had happened. But Mrs. Ferguson was in a daze and looked absently ahead of her as she walked right by. Turned out that she had just witnessed the murders out her back window and had called the police. My sister had been at the Fergusons and had heard the shots.

About three years later, I sat with the mother of the murderer, Shirley Robinson, who was an English teacher and chair of the English department at my high school, Manzano High. There had been community condemnation (and a $12 million lawsuit) against she and her husband Marlin for storing his hunting rifle in Wayne’s bedroom. But as I sat there looking into her face while we talked, I felt the profound heaviness weighing down her whole being, and I found that I had far more compassion than judgment toward her.

I didn’t know till this week that as Wayne’s guilty verdict had been read in court in 1980 and he was led away to begin his life sentence in prison, his mom had held hands with her husband Marlin and had wept softly.

And I didn’t know until this week that at a cemetery less than six miles away from me, there are two sets of graves, one for the Walkers and one for the Robinsons, each with a shared headstone. At Sunset Memorial Park, beginning someday in the not-too-distant future, after Tim’s 89-year-old father Truman passes and Wayne’s 90-year-old mother Shirley passes, Wayne will lie in perpetuity next to his parents, as their beloved son, just as Tim will lie next to his parents in perpetuity as their beloved son:

Which has all gotten me thinking about how I would respond, how people I know would respond, how any of us would respond, if a family member whom we deeply love commits a major crime. I suppose that none of us can know until it happens. It would depend on the nature of the crime, including how vicious or heinous it was. We’d have a lot of thoughts running through our mind, a lot of feelings running through our heart.

Even through the fear and the emotional strain and the questions we’d have and the intense public scrutiny we’d be subjected to, we’d want to help our loved one, we’d want to be supportive, maybe we’d even want to be there for them every step of the way. We’d continue to love them and we’d very likely think that they don’t deserve to have their life ruined.

Every instinct we’d have would be to protect them and help them. But would we choose kin over the law, over justice, over what’s right?

And what if we knew they’d committed the crime but no one else knew? Would we turn them in? Or would we keep our mouth shut? Or would we go to the extreme of lying for them, even under oath? Would we be willing to take a morally questionable risk for them, and become an accessory to their crime?

Of course, if we think our beloved relative is innocent, we’d react as Terry and Maryann Kohberger did right after Bryan was arrested. They called on all of us to give Bryan the “presumption of innocence rather than judge unknown facts and make erroneous assumptions.”

Even before Bryan’s arrest, though, NBC’s “Dateline” informed us, one of Bryan’s sisters suspected him. She even searched his car for clues. And I think that almost all of us, no matter how much we loved our relative, if he murdered four innocent people, we’d turn him in.

(Media reports indicate that, had the Kohberger case gone to trial, prosecutors were going to call Bryan’s parents and sisters to testify against him. Could any of us testify against one of our closest relatives?)

Diddy, of course, was accused of sexual crimes. While he was found innocent of major federal crimes, most of us believe he drugged and raped some people. With Diddy, it’s like somebody rolled R. Kelly, Bill Cosby, and Harvey Weinstein into one person, and opened up a new level down into Hell. Perhaps someday he’ll be held accountable for a state sex crime, if a district attorney chooses to charge him.

At the same time, most of us have been at parties later into the night than we probably should have been. Many of us have wrestled with what we would have done at a Diddy party, especially after 2 a.m.

I have often thought of Denzel Washington, who one anonymous source says stayed at a Diddy party after 2 a.m. once in 2003, saw something that horrified him, yelled at Diddy “you don’t respect anyone!”, and stormed out of the party. That’s what a good person does. I like to think that’s what I would have done. I like to think that’s what all my friends and relatives would have done.

William Read intrigues me. He says publicly that his daughter Karen told him at the hospital that morning, “I remember backing up and hitting something.” But he convinced himself that she was thinking of when she just bumped into John O’Keefe’s car with her SUV when she went out to look for him, and he became confident, at least publicly, that she was innocent.

Why was this case one of the most compelling of our lifetimes? One reason, surely, was the way that the Albert and McCabe families responded.

First, while I would have, as a juror, voted to acquit Karen Read, this is nonetheless what I think happened:

After a night of drinking at two bars, with Karen driving and her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, in the passenger’s seat, they pull up in front of Brian Albert Sr.’s home at 12:24 a.m. on January 29, 2022. Karen and John sit and speak with each other for 6 or 7 minutes, and argue. John sees a text from Jennifer McCabe, who’s inside the house, and closes his phone.

John gets out of the car. In 20 seconds at 12:32 a.m., John walks 36 steps. At the same time, Karen drives forward 33 feet, then shifts her SUV into reverse, steps on her gas pedal, presses it down 73 percent of the way, and backs up 62 feet, reaching a speed of 24 miles per hour. John’s cell phone locks up.

Karen probably does not remember and none of us can ever know whether Karen intended to harm John. She might have. Or she might have backed up to yell out one last comment at him — to get in the last word in their argument.

As best I can surmise, the SUV’s back right taillight hits his right bicep. As he is knocked out of one of his sneakers, his body spins around counter-clockwise in the air before sliding up the snowy grass and landing several feet from the vehicle. As he is hit, his body and his whiskey glass crack the plastic taillight, and the taillight leaves abrasions on his arm as the pieces scratch into it. His head then hits something — the curb, a patch of ice on the frozen lawn, a tree root, the utility box, or the foundation of the flagpole — that creates a two-inch gash in the back of his head, fractures to his skull, and injuries to his face. The head trauma causes his death, along with hypothermia.

(More proof from his cell phone: Over the next hour, the temperature of his cell phone battery — his cell phone lands under his body — drops from 72 degrees to 50 degrees. His cell phone does not move again until his body is found just after 6 a.m.)

Karen arrives back at John’s place at 12:41 a.m., and in text and voicemails to him wonders why he isn’t coming home. She doesn’t seem to realize that she hit him. In the morning, after driving around looking for him, she calls John’s friend Kerry Roberts and says, “I’m afraid John might be dead. He might have gotten hit by a plow . . . I don’t remember anything from last night, we drank so much I don’t remember anything.” After they find John’s body, she keeps asking, “Did I hit him?” and saying things like, “I hope I didn’t hit him.” An hour or so later, she points to her broken taillight and asks Kerry, “Do you think I hit him?”

When she arrives at John’s body, Karen pulls a shard of his whiskey glass from his nose, and the jagged broken base of the glass is found near his body. His body is surrounded by blood splatter. Tiny red and clear plastic pieces are found in John’s clothes, and there are nine holes in his right sleeve caused by nine pieces of the taillight.

That evening, by which time 15 or more inches of snow have accumulated where John died, state police shovel up John’s sneaker (upside down, flush against the curb) and two red pieces and one clear piece of plastic from the taillight of Read’s SUV. As snow melts in coming days and weeks, dozens more pieces of the taillight are found.

So if I think this is what happened, why would I have voted to acquit Karen Read?

First, lead investigator Michael Proctor of the Massachusetts State Police, who was thinking and texting horrible things about Karen Read within hours of taking on the case, decided within 16 hours than she was guilty. He was such a bad cop that he was terminated earlier this year, and he corrupted the investigation.

There were missing and deleted texts, voicemails, phone logs, and videos in this case, including video from the camera that was watching Karen Read’s SUV at the Canton police department’s “sally port” garage. A police officer said that federal agent Brian Higgins and the Canton police chief were with the SUV “for a wildly long time” — which made her feel weird. But after a police commissioner called her into his office, she changed her testimony, and said she had “a false memory,” even while admitting under oath that “my whole entire career depends on what I say on the stand.”

There was video of investigator Proctor and a man in a hoodie hanging around the right rear red taillight of Karen’s SUV. No taillight pieces were found during daylight in three inches of snow, but after dark in 15 or more inches of snow, three pieces were easily found, and over the next few weeks almost 40 more pieces were found. The sergeant who helped get Karen’s SUV moved to the sally port claimed there was a much smaller piece of the taillight missing before it went to the Sally Port.

Thus Karen Read’s defense attorneys made a plausible argument that someone in law enforcement knocked out much of her SUV taillight and spread the plastic shards around where John died.

Reasonable doubt? For sure.

Second, the defense created reasonable doubt that John’s bodily injuries were not consistent with a vehicle collision. There was no blood, skin, or tissue on any glass or plastic shard. They made it seem plausible that John may have been hit in the back of the head with an object, punched in one eye and in his other temple, and scratched and bit by a dog.

Third, the defense raised a viable possibility that three males in the house — Boston police officer Brian Albert Sr. (the homeowner), his 17-year-old nephew Colin Albert, and federal ATF agent Brian Higgins — had motive, means, and / or opportunity to cause John’s death. And all three had had plenty to drink.

Brian Albert Sr. was a trained boxer who’d sucker-punched fellow police officers Steven Ridge and Heriberto “Eddy” Hernandez at a 2019 Christmas party.

Brian Higgins made aggressive gestures toward John just before Brian left the bar to head to the Albert home. Another older Albert brother, Chris, tried to calm Brian Higgins down. Not long before this, the two Brians were making fighting moves with each other for fun. And Higgins, who’d kissed Karen, flirted with her a lot by text, and even that night — as John and Karen were right across the bar table from him — texted “ummm well?” to Karen. From Brian Albert’s house, he texted John at 12:20, “You coming here?”

Colin Albert, a high school senior, was shown on at least two videos to have violent tendencies and there were rumors he was dealing narcotic drugs and John knew about it. In a February 12 photo, Colin had a swollen black eye, and in a February 26 photo, the knuckles of Colin’s right hand were scraped and scarred.

Fourth, snowplow driver Brian Loughran said there was no body on the lawn at 2:30, and that around 3:30 a Ford Edge was in front of where John’s body would soon be found. Brian Albert owned a Ford Edge and so did Colin Albert and Kevin Albert. (However, we can question Loughlan’s sight in that weather and his memory, and Loughran had been threatened into testifying by the pro-Karen activist named Aidan Kearney and nicknamed Turtleboy. Loughram admitted under oath that he wanted to avoid confrontation and avoid being attacked.)

Thus it seemed plausible that as John walked across the lawn toward Brian Albert Sr.’s house at 12:32 a.m., Colin Albert and / or Brian Albert Sr. and / or Brian Higgins jumped him in the garage or side yard or (with far more witnesses) the basement, joined by the family dog Chloe, a German shepherd that had already landed two people in the emergency room.

Once we get this scenario into our imagination, it’s not so easy to get it back out. But then, each and every conspiracy theory works — when it does work — because we get a scenario going visually in our imagination.

Which brings us to the conduct of Albert and McCabe family members and Brian Higgins. They have said and done many things that seem strange and that can or do generate suspicion. On the one hand, they’ve acted like you’d act if you’re protecting a family member who’s killed someone. On the other hand, they’ve acted like you’d act if you’re a law enforcement family with a sense of entitlement that is out to convince people of your innocence.

This week, I’ve found myself thinking about the Alberts and McCabes as a family at the same time that I’ve been thinking about Karen Read’s family and Diddy’s family and Bryan Kohberger’s family and Wayne Robinson’s family. We tend to love and stand by our kin even when we know they’ve done something reprehensible, even when we know they’ve murdered. And we absolutely stand by our kin when we’re confident that they are innocent. In which of these two groups are the Alberts and McCabes?

The two Brians called each other after 2 a.m. on the morning of the 29th. They claim to have butt-dialed each other, but one call lasts 38 seconds. Wow.

In September 2022, a judge ordered Brian Albert Sr. and Brian Higgins to preserve their phones. But before the men could receive the judge’s orders, someone tipped them off. Albert got rid of his phone. Higgins replaced the SIM card in his phone, placed his phone and its SIM card in separate trash bags, drove them to an Army base, and put them in a dumpster. Wow!

After Brian Albert Sr. received a federal grand jury subpoena in April 2023, Brian’s brother Kevin Albert contacted Brian Higgins, who had stopped returning Brian Albert’s phone calls after the FBI began investigating them. Kevin said to Higgins, “Look, you went off the grid and Brian doesn’t understand. You haven’t called him. You haven’t checked in on him since these subpoenas go out. Everyone got a subpoena but you.” Brian Albert was worried that Brian Higgins had flipped on him? Wow!

Brian Albert also ripped out his entire basement floor, sold his house, and got rid of his dog Chloe. Wow!

The people in that house that night were talking and texting with each other all day on January 29th. They say they were consoling each other and trying to “piece together what happened,” as Jennifer McCabe put it under oath. But you’d do the same thing if you were coordinating your alibis and stories.

Brian Albert Sr., his wife Nicole, and Jennifer McCabe and her husband Matt were all closely monitoring John’s friend Kerry Roberts as she was interviewed by police. That’s what you’d do if you were guilty, and it’s what you might well do if you were just intensely curious what Kerry was saying.

Jennifer developed a timeline of events. You’d do that if you were framing Karen. And you might well do that if you were just trying to figure things out.

At the same time, the Alberts and McCabes were telling people what to tell reporters. Again, you can see this as suspicious behavior.

From the morning of January 29th, 2002, to this day, the Albert and McCabe family has been relentlessly trying to shape and even control the public narrative. And this has drawn accusations, aroused suspicions, and left people wondering about them.

As for Colin Albert, no one admitted for many months that he was even at the home that night. Then everyone insisted he left the home before John O’Keefe arrived.

Over the next several months, Colin’s mother Julie had 67 phone conversations with investigator Proctor. Under oath on the witness stand, Colin testified “I don’t remember” or “I do not remember” dozens of times — which could mean he was not willing to think about what he was being asked, not going to try to remember. He also tended to say things under oath like “I wouldn’t say so.” or “I’m not sure.”

There is a screenshot of Colin and his friend Allie McCabe (daughter of Jennifer and Matt) texting that night that includes Allie picking him up at 12:10. But he says he passed people in the foyer on his way out — people who did not arrive till several minutes later. The screenshot also seems fake; among other things, there is a comma after the day, but iPhone texts don’t have a comma after the day. Allie and Colin say she drove him straight home — a drive of a few minutes — but Colin’s dad says Colin got home 35 minutes later. And the actual phone texts from that night have never been produced. If you believe the screenshot is made up, the Alberts and McCabes certainly appear guilty.

(The app Life360 has Allie leaving home at 12:06 and arriving back home at 12:23, and then leaving two more times by 1:30. She denies the second two trips occurred.)

Key actions don’t seem to add up. Jennifer McCabe says she went into the home to wake up Brian Albert Sr. and his wife Nicole about 6:40 that morning. But by then, the screams and sirens and other noise had been going on just feet from their bedroom for about 35 minutes. Why didn’t Brian and Nicole wake up? And why didn’t their dog Chloe? In fact, Jennifer had called Nicole earlier. When FBI agents came to interview her at her home, she ended the interview quickly and refused to answer any more questions. And why would Jennifer wait 35 minutes to go inside to check on her sister after finding a dying man in her sister’s lawn?

The biggest smoking gun, if you believe this version of events, is that Jennifer McCabe did a Google search at 2:27 a.m., asking how long it takes to die in the cold. If this really happened, Karen Read is obviously innocent.

(However, Jennifer says she had done something else with her browser at 2:27 that experts confirm could make it look like she did something at 2:27 that she actually did at 6:23 and 6:24. Jennifer says she did this search at 6:23 and 6:24, at Karen’s request to “google hypothermia” after John’s body was found.)

There’s one other thing that would prove it, if we believe it. On February 3, 2022 — just five days after John’s death — Karen Read’s attorney and private investigator, David Yannetti and Paul Mackowski, met with a private investigator named Steve Scanlon. Mackowski asked Scanlon if he’d heard of Brian Higgins or Colin Albert. Scanlon had not, but a third man, Jack Hollow, was soon telling Scanlon that Mackowski was looking at the homeowner, his nephew, and a federal agent for beating up John inside the house and later planting John’s body on the front lawn. Yannetti later claimed that Scanlon told him this version of events on the phone and at that meeting. Does Scanlon deny doing so to protect his daughter, who would have heard it from a female peer who was in the house that night? If you believe that, you believe the defense. If not, Karen Read and Yannetti and Mackowski made the whole thing up to frame the Alberts and McCabes as well as Higgins — and they started doing so as soon as Karen Read was arrested on February 2.

So it hasn’t been difficult for us to imagine young Colin being hustled away from the scene, and around 3 or 4 in the morning, Brian Albert Sr. and Brian Higgins moved John’s body out on the lawn. Perhaps they were planning to say that he must have gotten hit by a snowplow but then realized they could frame Karen Read.

This all brings us back to what I’ve been thinking about this week. Family tend to protect family, even when one of them causes another person’s death. And we’ve been watching and assessing the words and behavior of the Albert and McCabe family through the lens of our awareness about how families respond when one of their own commits a crime.

The Albert-McCabe family definitely come across as a family that protects family. Colin wears a tattoo of the Albert family crest on his chest. Tim Albert, Brian Sr.’s brother, posted this on Facebook on October 16, 2022: “I stand by my family 100%. You don’t fuck with them. You do, and I won’t hesitate to make you the most miserable person.”

That is what you might post if you were confident all your relatives were innocent. But it’s also what you might post if you knew one or more of them were guilty. Either way, Tim’s declaration does nothing to endear us to the Albert and McCabe family and it cannot be morally justified.

Again, if I was a juror, given the abominable conduct of investigator Michael Proctor and all the suspicion-generating conduct of the Alberts, the McCabes, and Higgins, I would have voted to acquit Karen Read of both murder and manslaughter. I’d have had too much reasonable doubt to find her guilty.

However, in the last analysis, what matters most to me is that Karen Read backed up her SUV for 62 feet just before John O’Keefe’s cell phone stopped its activity for the last time. So, while the prosecution’s case doesn’t (in my view) meet the legal standard for "beyond a reasonable doubt” — and the defense led by attorney Alan Jackson certainly succeeded in raising reasonable doubt — I do believe that Karen ended John’s life.

To me, the Alberts and McCabes have acted the way the families of accused, charged, or convicted criminals tend to act. But they have also acted the way a protective family acts when they have so many friends and colleagues involved in the investigation and when they have so much status and such a strong sense of entitlement.

In the end, the Alberts and McCabes can teach us how not to act in such a situation, however tempting. Instead, let’s act like Bryan Kohberger’s sister — ready to turn in one of the people we love the most in this world, if he does something vicious and heinous enough.

There’s another lesson from the tragedy in Canton, Massachusetts. Everyone that night was drinking like a fish. Most of them were intoxicated, including the guy who lost his life. So it’s a lesson in alcohol use. Alcohol can disrupt our mood or emotions, impair our thinking and decision-making, and make us less inhibited and more angry and aggressive. Tension, conflict, and violence are far more likely when we’re drunk — and for that and many other reasons, we should never get drunk.

If Karen took his life, deliberately or not, does the fact that she was drunk (even in a blackout state) make her less responsible? If Colin did it, would him being wasted justify his family protecting him from ruining the rest of his life? Either way, if it was a tragic death caused by a passing fit of anger fueled entirely by alcohol, does this mean that the person who did it does not deserve to spend years or decades in prison?

Ultimately, whatever our views of these defendants and these cases, let’s learn from John O’Keefe’s death and choose to act like Denzel Washington. And let’s learn from and act on Denzel’s warning to people who are going to potentially dangerous parties: “You leave thirty minutes before the Devil get there. Okay?”