Karen Reed plates for Vanity Fair: “They’re setting me up.”

Here are some key takeaways from the first part of the extensive interview.

Read that authorities filed a murder charge to scare her into pleading guilty.

Reed was arrested days after O’Keefe’s death on charges of manslaughter and leaving the scene of an accident, and a grand jury later charged her on those charges and second-degree murder, which carries a life sentence with parole eligibility in 15 to 25 years.

“I believe it was done to scare me into some sort of plea deal,” Reed said of the murder charge. “Serve two years for the lesser manslaughter (charge) and you’ll be free. Which we never intended to consider.”

Reed says O’Keefe’s killers wanted to ‘teach him a lesson’ and the situation got out of control

Reed told the magazine she doesn’t think O’Keefe’s attackers initially intended to kill him.

“I believe that whatever happened to John was an attempt to teach him a lesson or to set him up, and it got out of control,” Reed said. “No one would decide to kill someone in their own home and then arrange it so casually.”

She also suggested that Brian Albert, a police officer who owned a house in Canton, may have harbored animosity toward O’Keefe, who worked in an office to better care for his niece and nephew who had lost their parents. Albert, who retired in 2023, served on the fugitive apprehension unit and appeared on the police reality show “Boston’s Finest.”

“I could see how someone could look at John and say, ‘I’m a real cop.’ I’m the head of the fugitive unit, I worked in the narcotics unit, in the gang unit,” Reed told the magazine. Albert’s lawyer told the publication that there was no disagreement between the men and that Albert attended O’Keefe’s wake and fundraiser for O’Keefe’s sister.

During Reed’s first trial, Albert testified that O’Keefe never entered his home on the night of his death.

“Absolutely not”, Albert testified. – I wish he would.

Reed turned to literature amid her legal troubles

Reed said that while fighting criminal charges, she drew inspiration from both canonical and contemporary books. wrongful death claim.

She told Vanity Fair that Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo, whose protagonist is falsely accused of treason but ultimately wins, has been a source of solace, and the magazine noted that a copy of David Rudolph’s 2021 book An American Injustice ” , which details prosecutorial misconduct, sits on a “stack of financial books” in the home of a former equity analyst.

Reed keeps a ziplock bag ready in case she gets arrested again.

The magazine reported that Reed had a ziplock bag hidden in the cafeteria “in case of surprise arrest.”

What’s in the bag?

“Advil, melatonin, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a comb, drugstore lipstick, a strip of paper with her lawyer’s phone number on it and a bottle of Laura Mercier foundation from her previous life,” the magazine reported.

The criminal case caused financial damage

Reed lost her job as an analyst and adjunct professor at Bentley University. following her arrest and currently owes more than “$5 million in deferred payments” to her powerful defense team, which includes Alan Jackson, David Yannetti, Elizabeth Little and Martin G. Weinberg, the magazine reports.

She’s lost all her savings and is “living on what’s left of her 401(k),” the magazine reported. And when she was charged with murder, Yannetti gave her disturbing financial news.

“The day after I was charged extra, David said, ‘Look, I know this is the worst time to have this conversation, but my fees for murder are doubling,'” Reed told Vanity Fair.

After being charged with murder, Reed told the publication: “David (Yannetty) and I realized it was (expletive) dirty. … This is intentional. They’re setting me up.”

Reed volunteered to hire security for the Vanity Fair interview.

Reed arranged for Vanity Fair Hollywood correspondent Julie Miller to stay at her Mansfield home, where she has lived ever since. sold to pay legal fees for three days in August to hear her side of the story.

But the reporter and subject were not alone.

“Reid told me she had a security officer staying overnight,” Miller wrote. “The security guard in question turned out to be a volunteer, a friend of sorts, who declined to give his name in this story, but looks like (professional wrestler and action star) John Cena and has a gun license. As Reed said: “The strangest sleepover ever.”

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Travis Andersen can be reached at [email protected].