Facts

After Trump was elected in 2016, we were introduced to the concept of “alternative facts”. I scratched my head in wonder and thought “what, the hell, are alternative facts?” It wasn’t too long before I learned that any story you’d like to spin cobbled together with half-truths equals a plausible whole truth, that is if you squint your eyes and ignore all the other truths you’ve seen, heard, forgotten about, remembered, then dismissed. Trump had the biggest turn out for his inauguration ever. What? The pictures tell you a different story? That’s the angle, you just weren’t shown all the other angles because everyone and everything is corrupt, especially the media and don’t get me started on the government because you can’t trust that either. Law enforcement? Crooked.

Something broke on the day of that inauguration and none of us fully appreciated the weight of that. When you can create whatever narrative you want and find enough “evidence” to “prove” it, the world is your oyster and, as it turns out now, your guilt is another person’s innocence—so much so that you can cast aside your own guilt you feel deep inside. In fact, you can do this to the point that you believe the narrative yourself, even if you know the narrative to be false. We all want to believe we are good, don’t we?

This brings me to Karen Read, of course. I’ve been following this story since it broke two years ago and have heard this woman’s story change, morph, alter, and catapult to next level crazy with the help of a crafty journalist, with whom she’s had A LOT of contact, named…Turtleboy. This reptilian facsimile of a “journalist” and a million internet sleuths have cobbled together all of the reasonable doubt Read needed to get off this one way train ride to jail. Suddenly, her calling Kerry Roberts at 5 AM saying “John’s dead” and hanging up is irrelevant. Her saying repeatedly “Did I hit him?” on the way over is inconsequential. She said “I hit him. I hit him. I hit him.” after finding his body, covered in snow, when no one else could see anything at all? She has really good eyesight. In the dark. In a snowstorm. As she said in her Nightline interview re her admission of guilt on scene: “that was preceded by a “did”and proceded with a question mark.” Who talks like that?

I’ve watched and listened to a lot of the interviews and testimony. A forensic scientist pieced Read’s taillight back together from the pieces in the snow. But, of course, that evidence was planted by a bunch of drunk cops and their wives and kids who decided, after a long night of drinking, to beat O’Keefe up, oops he got attacked by the dog, dump his body outside, go find Read’s car, crack her taillight, place pieces on ground/on his clothes, and hope against hope that all 15 people will stick to the story.

What really happened? She was drunk, got ragey mad at him outside the home, began to wail on him (those nails can cut through sweatshirt and skin-why they never looked for her DNA on those arm scratches I’ll never know), whacked him in the head a couple times (maybe with a cocktail glass??), told him to get the eff out of her car, backed up, hit him, and took off. Oh, and she called him on the way home calling him a “f——in loser” and told him that she hated him. But, sure, the crooked cops did it and everyone is in on it. Meanwhile, the two kids he took in have not just lost their Mom, Dad, and uncle but have also had to testify for the prosecution because they too know the truth of what happened.

When I get obsessed with things, it’s annoying. I have learned, through copious amounts of therapy and Prozac to turn away from my obsessions and to “not scratch the itch” because it takes away from my real life. However, every so often I find myself trapped in an obsession that, despite my best attempts, I can’t shake. So, I indulge it. I try to understand it. I look at it from all angles. I dive deeper and deeper into the evidence, details, etc until I finally come up for air with my own knowledge that I can rely on to be, at the very least, mostly true. A man died in the bitter cold because someone was careless with his life and we have a lot of evidence pointing to exactly who that someone was—Karen Read. I hope she sees this piece and crumbles under the weight of having to believe her own false narrative. I hope she has trouble sleeping at night. I hope, most of all, that we as a species can get back to trusting that the majority of people looking out for us are mostly decent humans who try to keep other humans alive and well—particularly humans whose job it is to care for two young ones. Those were his friends, they loved him. Karen? She thought he was a “f——-in loser. Time to trade those fashionable power suits your defense has bought you for a different outfit. I hear orange is the new black. 🤚🏼 🎤