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, including McCabe's messages 'she is telling them everything' and 'I love it' while Roberts was being interviewed by state police in McCabe's home. The court instructed jurors that the electronic communications could be considered only for McCabe's state of mind, not for the truth of their statements; Jackson characterized the messages as witness coordination, which McCabe denied. Third, Jackson uses a GPS location document to challenge McCabe's testimony that she drove directly from One Meadows to Sergeant Lank's house on January 30th. The document lists a return home and a stop at 34 Fairview before Lank's house; McCabe acknowledged what the paper said but maintained a different memory, testifying that she slowly drove by 34 Fairview rather than going inside.

Defense attorney Alan Jackson resumes cross-examination of Jennifer McCabe across four major areas. First, he questions her about approximately 14 phone contacts with lead investigator Trooper Michael Proctor between January 29 and March 29, 2022, and resumed contact in summer 2023. McCabe acknowledged the number of calls but said she did not know whether some were answered. When Jackson asked about a statement attributed to her in a Lieutenant Tully report, she denied saying she had never met Proctor before September 2023 and said Proctor had been in her home in January 2022; the court sustained an objection to a later question characterizing the report as erroneous and instructed the jury to disregard it. Second, Jackson reviews seven calls from McCabe's phone to O'Keefe reflected in the extraction discussed at trial. McCabe said the 12:29 call was labeled answered but that she never spoke to O'Keefe, while later calls were described as missed. She offered an accidental-call explanation. Jackson asserted that the calls did not appear in McCabe's phone extraction; after initially agreeing to his premise, she said she was not aware of that asserted difference. Third, Jackson revisits the 2:27 AM Google search for 'how long to die in cold,' pressing McCabe about the Cellebrite extraction and her claim that Karen Read requested the search. Fourth, using dashcam clips, Jackson questions McCabe about her interactions with law enforcement at the scene. The court sustained his question whether she was 'controlling the narrative.' He then asks why she did not enter 34 Fairview Road to seek Brian Albert's help; McCabe says doing so would have taken her away from helping O'Keefe, getting blankets, giving compressions, and making calls to Nicole Albert.

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 asks whether McCabe ever refused to speak to police or to testify, and she answers no. 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, subject to the court's instruction that the messages were not to be used for their truth but only for McCabe's state of mind. Brennan asks to introduce the full text record subject to redactions; the court defers that matter.

Defense attorney Alan Jackson conducts a focused recross of Jennifer McCabe covering three areas. First, he asks about emergency vehicles and people yelling outside 34 Fairview; McCabe agrees there was sound and activity but qualifies where vehicles were positioned and whether every light and engine was on. Second, he revisits McCabe's redirect statement about speaking when asked by police, then asks about a separate interview with federal agents unconnected to MSP or Canton PD. McCabe says she stopped that interview to seek counsel, but also says she later met with the agents several times and answered the questions they asked. Third, Jackson contrasts the redirect text exchanges with the private Albert-McCabe group-chat thread. The redirect exchanges were not from that thread, but they included one-to-one texts with McCabe's sister Nicole Albert, a member of the four-person chat; Jackson also asks about Kerry Roberts being excluded from the group chat where the family discussed her 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 to 12:45 a.m. - the time she believed was specified in the district attorney's request - and estimates that the blood alcohol concentration could have been 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.'