Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe’s ex-girlfriend has kindled a friendship along with his accused killer Karen Learn as she believes the allegations in opposition to the defendant don’t add up.
NBC’s ‘The Night of the Nor’easter’ Dateline particular Friday night time highlighted O’Keefe’s earlier girlfriend Lindsay Higgins and Learn’s friendship.
Higgins and O’Keefe met by way of mutual mates in 2018 and dated for about six months.
“He was like a magnet,” Higgins mentioned of O’Keefe. “Everybody wanted to be around him and hang out with him. He was just very friendly, very generous, always the first to pick up a bill or help somebody out.”
Higgins recounted checking into an Airbnb in Florida, together with her telephone “ringing nonstop” earlier than she realized by way of a buddy that O’Keefe had died the morning of Jan. 29, 2022.
Learn, 44, of Mansfield, is accused of placing O’Keefe, her boyfriend of two years and a 16-year Boston Police officer, together with her automobile and leaving him to die in a serious snowstorm on the entrance garden of 34 Fairview Rd., in Canton — a property that O’Keefe’s BPD colleague Brian Albert owned on the time.
After attending O’Keefe’s funeral and following developments on the case, Higgins mentioned she obtained copies of court docket paperwork to grasp extra about what occurred.
“I read everything … and I’m like ‘Nothing is making sense here,’” Higgins mentioned
“I’m thinking of all of these allegations that she attacked him,” she added. “I’m just picturing it, I’m playing the scene in my head over and over again. … Nothing was adding up.”
Protection attorneys counter that exterior actors killed O’Keefe and conspired with state and native police to border Learn for his homicide.
Learn has pleaded not responsible and a trial on the fees of second-degree homicide, manslaughter whereas working a motorized vehicle below the affect and leaving the scene of a deadly accident led to mistrial when jurors indicated they had been deadlocked.
Her attorneys are interesting to have solely the manslaughter cost stay within the recent trial in January.
Higgins mentioned she wrote a message to Learn on Fb, introducing herself, noting how she used so far O’Keefe, believes Learn didn’t kill O’Keefe, and that she helps her.
“I’ve thought about you a lot over the last year and my heart breaks for you,” learn a part of the message included on the Dateline particular. “I’ve tried to put myself in your shoes and can’t even imagine the pain, sadness, loneliness, anger & abandonment you must feel. I just want to give you the biggest hug!”
“She wrote me back,” Higgins mentioned of Learn. “Ever since then, we’ve become closer and closer.”
In an interview with Dateline, Learn recounted how she dropped O’Keefe off at 34 Fairview Rd. in Canton for a home get together after an evening of ingesting along with his police mates. She mentioned she noticed him enter the house whereas ready exterior in her SUV in case O’Keefe got here again and informed her to go in.
“He didn’t come back,” Learn mentioned within the interview, “and it pissed me off, because one, I didn’t want to be there, and two, I had to go to the bathroom.”
Learn says she finally determined to go away and when she returned to O’Keefe’s house, she known as him roughly 50 occasions however he by no means known as again. Hours later, Learn awakened round 4 a.m. and O’Keefe wasn’t house.
“I didn’t know what the hell happened,” Learn mentioned. “How did the night end up like this?”
After frantically discovering O’Keefe unconscious exterior 34 Fairview Rd., round 6 a.m., Learn detailed how she was “put under a psychiatric watch just two vestibules down from where they’re working on John’s body” at Good Samaritan Medical Middle in Brockton.
Medical personnel pronounced O’Keefe lifeless round 7:50 that morning, with a medical expert later ruling the reason for loss of life as “blunt impact injuries of the head and hypothermia.”
“Then eventually, just before noon, my father comes into the room that I’m in. And I said, ‘Dad … how is he? And he said, ‘He’s gone. John’s gone, Karen.’ And I just collapsed on the floor.”
Higgins highlighted how she’s attended Learn’s hearings. Her first look to help Learn got here in Might 2023.
“I tried to save his life,” Learn informed reporters on the courthouse steps after that listening to. “I tried to save his life at 6 in the morning. I was covered in his blood. I was the only one trying to save his life.”
