Day 8 - May 2, 2025

Defense attorney Alan Jackson resumes cross-examination of Jennifer McCabe in Trial 2, covering three main areas. First, he establishes that McCabe omitted a 5:07 AM phone call to her sister Nicole Albert at 34 Fairview from both her Trooper Prince interview and grand jury testimony, listing only Karen Read, Julie Albert, and Tom Bey as contacts that morning. Second, Jackson presents text messages between McCabe and Nicole Albert, and a four-person group chat (McCabe, Nicole Albert, Brian Albert, Matt McCabe) from January 29 and February 1, 2022, showing the family monitoring Kerry Roberts's police interview in real time — McCabe texted 'she is telling them everything' and 'I love it' while Roberts was being interviewed by state police in McCabe's own home. Third, Jackson uses GPS location data to challenge McCabe's testimony that she drove directly from One Meadows to Sergeant Lank's house on January 30th, showing she actually returned home first, then stopped at 34 Fairview for several minutes, before arriving at Lank's house where she stayed approximately 45 minutes.

Defense attorney Alan Jackson resumes cross-examination of Jennifer McCabe across four major areas. First, he establishes through Verizon records that McCabe had at least 14 phone calls with lead investigator Trooper Michael Proctor between January 29 and March 29, 2022, plus resumed contact in summer 2023 — then confronts her with a statement to Lieutenant Tully claiming she had never met Proctor before September 2023. Second, Jackson walks through seven calls from McCabe's phone to O'Keefe between 12:29 and 12:50 AM that appear only on O'Keefe's phone extraction (not McCabe's), challenging her 'butt dial' explanation by detailing the multiple steps required to place each call on an iPhone. Third, he revisits the 2:27 AM Google search for 'how long to die in cold,' pressing McCabe on the Cellebrite extraction showing three searches with only the 2:27 AM entry marked as deleted, and establishing that no witness — including Kerry Roberts — can corroborate McCabe's claim that Karen Read demanded the search. Fourth, using dashcam video clips, Jackson demonstrates that McCabe was the primary person engaging with law enforcement at the scene, then builds to the central question of why McCabe never entered 34 Fairview Road to wake Brian Albert — a trained first responder sleeping 30 feet away — during the minutes O'Keefe lay dying in the snow.

ADA Hank Brennan conducts redirect examination of Jennifer McCabe covering four areas. First, he establishes the weather conditions — snow accumulating through the night and poor visibility the following morning — to contextualize why McCabe did not see O'Keefe's body during her earlier visits to 34 Fairview. Second, he emphasizes McCabe's consistent cooperation with law enforcement, noting she never refused an interview, grand jury appearance, or court testimony. Third, he contrasts McCabe's relaxed state of mind at 2:27 AM (browsing her phone before bed) with her panicked state the next morning, framing the Google search 'how long to die in cold' as something Karen Read asked her to do after they found O'Keefe. Fourth, Brennan reads extensively from McCabe's text messages with Kerry Roberts and Nicole Albert from January 29-31, 2022, presenting them as evidence of genuine shock and grief rather than the coordinated collusion suggested during cross-examination.

Defense attorney Alan Jackson conducts a focused recross of Jennifer McCabe covering three areas. First, he establishes that when first responders arrived at 34 Fairview, there was a cacophony of emergency vehicles with flashing lights, running engines, and people screaming — contextualizing the chaotic scene. Second, he revisits McCabe's claim of full cooperation with law enforcement, extracting her admission that she stopped her interview with federal agents (not connected to MSP or Canton PD) and refused to answer further questions. Third, Jackson systematically demonstrates that the text messages Brennan read on redirect were all with people outside the private Albert-McCabe family group chat — Kerry Roberts, unidentified numbers, and friends — none of whom were part of the four-person chat (McCabe, Brian Albert, Nicole Albert, Matt McCabe) where the family discussed the case and monitored Roberts's police interview.

Forensic scientist Hannah Knowles of the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab toxicology unit is qualified through her education, training, and experience. She explains serum-to-blood alcohol conversion methodology and retrograde extrapolation analysis. Using Karen Read's Good Samaritan Medical Center blood draw at 9:08 a.m. on January 29, 2022, which showed 93 mg/dL serum ethanol, Knowles converts this to a whole blood alcohol concentration of 0.078–0.082%. She then performs a retrograde extrapolation back to 12:45 a.m. — the incident time specified by the district attorney's office — and calculates Read's BAC at that time was between 0.14 and 0.28%.

In a brief cross-examination limited to approximately five minutes by the court, defense attorney David Yannetti methodically establishes the distinction between the MSP Crime Lab's accredited forensic standards and the unknown standards of Good Samaritan Hospital's lab. Yannetti elicits concessions from Knowles that her lab maintains rigorous accreditation through independent external review, strict protocols, and quality assurance — none of which she can confirm for the hospital lab whose blood test results formed the basis of her retrograde extrapolation calculations. Knowles acknowledges that she has no direct knowledge of Good Samaritan's QC procedures, accreditation requirements, or testing protocols, and that her calculations are 'only as good as the numbers that I was provided.'