What We Learned From Karen Read's Appearance on '20/20'
The short answer? Not much.
And trust me when I say I'm tempted to just leave it at that and get back to my precious Saturday. (When you were born in the 1960s, you start to realized you only have a finite number of these left.) But I didn't turn away from that sloppy, amateurish, badly produced, 17-penalty, four turnover violation of international law in Brazil last night to watch a news program, just to fail to follow up on it. My Friday nights are valuable too. So I've got to do my due diligence here. But I plan on being brief.
So Karen Read went on 20/20 last night. Presumably to plead her case to the sorts of True Crime junkies and geriatrics who stay in on a Friday to watch this kind of content. Which isn't my thing. And if I was giving her legal advice, I'd have reminded her she's still accused of murdering her boyfriend, is in the On Deck circle of a retrial, and can only hurt her cause by talking, not helping it. (I'm charging her a Billable Hour for that.) But she did it. And as the lawyers love to say, you can't unring a bell.
We honestly didn't learn much. The show barely broke the surface of a long and complex legal matter that has been playing out over the course of 2 1/2 years. It was like if Netflix made The Last Dance and it consisted of "Michael Jordan went to North Carolina and then got drafted by the Bulls and he was really, really good. He dunked a lot. Then endorsed some sneakers. Scotty Pippen wasn't as good, and sometimes they didn't get along. They won six championships. The end."
And I say this even though the episode was a full two hours long. But if ABC had edited out the video of Read walking into the courthouse, discussions of Read walking into the courthouse, descriptions Read walking into the courthouse, and Read herself picking out which outfit to wear for walking into the courthouse, this thing would've clocked in at maybe 20 minutes. The point being, they added a lot of water to the content Kool-Aid on this one.
Not that the grand entrances she made every day aren't a part of the story. It's not every court case where you see dozens and possibly even hundreds of people taking time out of their lives to support an accused murderer. A point that is made at least 20 times in the episode. But we saw that same footage ad nauseum all throughout the 10 or so weeks of the trial. And there are only so many shots you can see of people with loads of free time on their hands holding up signs and yelling stuff.
Where the show actually did make an interesting point about the "Free Karen Read" crowd was in talking to the people on John O'Keefe's side. They described the verbal abuse they took for the sin of showing up to watch the trial of the person accused of killing their loved one. And they had footage of an unhinged, red-faced, pre-diabetic goblin screaming through the car window at a member of Officer O'Keefe's family wishing them harm. It's deranged. And I come down on the side of she's innocent and being framed.
As far as the trial goes - the investigation, the testimony, the evidence presented - it's pretty much the surface of the surface. More or less the amount of detail you'd get into if you were explaining this case to a 12-year-old. The CCTV footage from the two bars everyone was drinking at. Read's taillight and the conflicting stories about how cracked it was and when it was cracked. The differing accounts of "I hit him!" vs. "I hit him???" (As we learned on Grammar Rock when I was a kid, punctuation is important.) "Hos long to die in cold." And of course, lead investigator Trooper Michael Proctor's texts. Except heavily edited for TV, so you don't get the full effect of "balloon knot," "leaking poo" and especially "cunt."
Which is fine. Par for the course when you're watching a broadcast network crime show. Where 20/20 drops the ball is in not presenting the obvious inconsistencies and blatant conflicts of interest in the prosecution's case. The people who testified to hearing Read confess but kept that rather important detail to themselves until they were on the witness stand gets like one mention. The EMT who was asked if she knows the Alberts' daughter, acted like she barely had ever heard of her, only to have the internet spew out dozens of photos of the two of them together is never brought up. Hell, the fact the Alberts "rehoused" their dog after seven years wasn't mentioned. Nor is the fact two of the officers involved separately destroyed their phones the day before a court ordered they preserve them.
Most importantly, they skip over the fact that Proctor has had a close relationship with the Alberts and McCabes for years. Yet still took control of the investigation into a dead police officer on their front lawn without ever mentioning that to anyone. Or knocking on their door on the night in question. Which is the equivalent of Netflix never mentioning Jordan's MVPs or championships. It's kind of central to the entire plot.
If we did learn anything in those two hours, it was an important lesson that can't be brought up enough: John O’Keefe was a human being. From all accounts, a very good one. It's an obvious point, I know. But the show presented more photos and videos of him than I've seen anywhere else. And they present a guy who deserved a long, healthy life. Not someone's whose untimely and senseless death would be the center ring of a media circus. O'Keefe playing with the niece and nephew he was raising after illnesses to both their parents left them orphaned. Dancing to Katy Perry for the little girl's benefit. At Red Sox games. Photobombing family members, and so on.
Rarely can you tell about someone just from images. Or even from the interviews with their family and friends. Live long enough and lose enough people, and you'll catch onto the fact there are some with a weird proclivity to make themselves the hero of the story. To act like they're grieving more than anyone else. Or that the deceased practically died in their arms. That their's was the last name on the lips of the person who died as they were being mauled by that bear or whatever. I'm not saying that's the case with the interview subjects in this show. I have no idea what they're relationships to O'Keefe were, and wouldn't dare speculate. I just take that with a grain of salt because death does weird things to people. And the chance to be on network television does even weirder things.
All I can say is the gut feeling you get from watching 20/20 and Karen Read spin their wheels for two hours is that Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe was a good person. And his loss is a horrible tragedy, that deserves justice be done. If that's all we get out of this, that'll do just fine.