141: What if you witnessed a horrific act? 31:50

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I just felt something inside of me that was so sickening. There's no way to describe that feeling. It's just like this point of realization, like almost like your biggest fear in that moment had come true. Welcome to the Permatemp Corporation, a presentation of the audio podcast, This Is Actually Happening. Episode 141.

What if you witnessed a horrific act? This Is Actually Happening is sponsored by ADT. ADT knows a lot can happen in a second. One second, you're happily single. And the next second, you catch a glimpse of someone and you don't want to be. Maybe one second, you have a business idea that seems like a pipe dream. And the next, you have an LLC and a dream come true. And when it comes to your home, one second, you feel safe.

And the next, something goes wrong. But with ADT's 24/7 professional monitoring, you still feel safe. Because when every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com today. I grew up in a small Midwest town in Missouri. I've gone to the same school since I was in kindergarten. And I really appreciate being in small-town America, but I love to travel.

I was in second grade whenever my parents divorced. It wasn't so rough on me because I was such a young age, but it just kind of happened. And I have a good relationship with my mom. I have a decent relationship with my dad. Really, really love my grandparents since they're not going to be around forever, but neither is anybody else.

Me and my brother are three years apart. So we kind of fight back and forth, but I love him Anyway, I am really quirky and outgoing. I love to be on stage and perform I love show choir and drama and I love to run track just a outgoing person I am currently 15. I'm not popular, but i'm not not popular. I

I know just about everybody in my high school and everybody knows me because I'm so outgoing. I can make friends with just about anybody you put in front of me. I know what it's like to be left out and not have a friend group. So whenever I see that person that's left out and doesn't have a friend group or isn't sitting with somebody at lunch, I do my best to try and invite them over.

I'm not friends with everybody, but I know everybody. Everybody knows me. I joined the track team in seventh grade, which was the earliest that we could. And I did it because my stepsister did it. And I was like, well, if she's going to do it, I'm going to do it too. And so I joined it and they were like testing us at what events they think that we would be good at.

I didn't really like excel in anything until they put me in high jump and I loved it. And then in eighth grade, they put me in hurdles, which now I am in love with. And right now I'm working on breaking my school record and I want to get a scholarship to U of A for track because it's the best school in the nation. I don't particularly like running, but I'm good at it. And if it pays for my college, go for it.

I was at a track meet in seventh grade and one of my friends wanted to go see her friend who went to a different school and she didn't want to go by herself. So I went with her and that's whenever I met Ryan.

He's a year older than me, and it was just kind of, hey, I know you. Hey, I know you. We didn't talk or anything. And then in eighth grade, I saw him at the same track meet. My freshman year, we connected through Snapchat, and it just kind of became a friendship.

He was a little shy at first, but I am good at breaking people out of their shells because I'm so outgoing. We didn't really get to hang out that much because he went to a different school and neither of us could drive. But I went to a funeral with him. He lost one of his friends and he needed support, so I went with him. And so I'd say it was a close friendship, but we didn't get to hang out that much.

He was very country. He's in an even smaller town than I'm in, so he was very country. He did quick draw with a pistol, and I thought that that was kind of cool. And he helped build cabinets, and he was very hands-on. He wanted to be a Marine and then open a carpenter shop.

He drank some, which I'm not like super fond of, but it wasn't like getting drunk all the time. It was like being a teenager. He was just so funny and he made me laugh all the time. He always would say, I like pizza for no reason whatsoever. Like just in the middle of a conversation, say, I like pizza.

We did have this one conversation where he was just like, oh, like, I'm stupid. I'm dumb. And just that kind of stuff. And I was like, no, you're not. Like, what are you talking about? You're super cool. And he's like, like, nobody's ever going to love me type of thing. And I'm like, well, like, I don't love you like boyfriend girlfriend way. But, you know, like, I'm here for you.

And I'm like, your family loves you. I know that you and your brother are really close. You and your sister are really close. And he just kind of snapped out of it five or six minutes later. And then it was just kind of back to normal until I got that phone call.

I had kind of fallen asleep on the couch watching TV and I noticed that my phone was buzzing and I kind of like figured that someone was calling me.

And I kind of figured that it was like an 800 number trying to sell me something. And so I picked up my phone and it said Ryan. And so I answered it and I said, what the heck are you doing calling me at 1230 in the morning? And then he started crying. So then I felt bad. He was just kind of being really negative about himself and he was mumbling. So I couldn't like understand what he was saying.

So then I made the decision to switch to FaceTime because I like face-to-face conversations. And with him being 45 minutes to almost an hour away, that was the best that we could have. He wouldn't show his face. And I was like, what's wrong? I'm here for you. You know, like spill. It'll make you feel better. Because if you bottle everything up, it's not going to help. And so he starts going on this like rant thing.

And I can't even remember what he was saying, but it was like very like quiet. He ended the phone call and I called him back and he kept declining my phone calls. And so finally I got through to him. I think it was like the eighth or ninth time that I called. We were back on FaceTime. He was like pacing around and pacing around and

I was like, okay, you know, sit down, calm down. And then I noticed that he had a gun and I was like, okay, you know, this is serious. You need to go put that away. And so he left the room and he goes, okay, I put it away. It's back in the cabinet. And I was like, okay, cause what was I supposed to do? You know, like prove it. Well, he could have, we were on FaceTime. There's no way.

So then he sat back down and I thought I calmed him back down, but there was just this like look in his eyes and there's no way to explain it unless you've seen that look. It was just kind of like this point of no return.

I had never seen that look on anybody's face before. His whole persona just kind of clicked and it was different. And it happened so quickly too. It wasn't like a gradual lead up to this point of no return. It was just like he sat down and he was fine and then click, whole new person.

He just kind of sat there and you could just see this look on his face. And I knew that he was like not going to come back. But I still tried as much as I could. And he moved the phone to where it was sitting on the countertop to where I couldn't see it, where I was looking at his ceiling and I heard a gunshot.

My heart just broke in half. I hope that I never experience that feeling ever again because it was just like, oh my God, what just happened? As soon as I heard the gunshot, I just felt something inside of me that was so sickening. There's no way to explain it. I had anger and

I had confusion. I felt almost sick. I was scared. I was obviously upset. I was crying. There's no way to describe that feeling. It's just like this point of realization, like almost like your biggest fear in that moment had come true.

So he picked up the phone and I saw his face, but it was just for a split second. And the look on his face was just so, he looked so scared. But he had already made his decision and he knew he had already made his decision and that he couldn't go back. So I'm sitting there saying like, talk to me, end the phone call, call 911. And he dropped the phone. And at this time he was sitting.

He dropped the phone and his arm was hanging over the side of the chair, like the arm of the chair. And his phone was facing up so I could see like his arm hanging off of this chair. It feels like forever after that gunshot. I think that it was about 20 seconds max. But everything went so fast. But thinking about it now, it was all so slow. Hearing the gunshot gave me no hope.

But then seeing his face in that split second gave me hope because I was like, maybe he like shot his shoulder. But then whenever the phone dropped on the ground, I kind of went back to that there's no hope feeling. And even while the phone was on the ground, I was like screaming at him through the phone, hoping that he could hear me, even though he was gone.

And so I hang up and I call 911 and I'm crying my eyes out. And so the 911 operator is like, ma'am, ma'am, you need to calm down. And so I calm myself down just enough to say, I think my friend just shot himself. And she says, okay, where is your friend? And I said, he's in a different county.

So she transferred me to that county. So I got another dispatcher. So I told her what happened. I didn't know his address. I didn't know a license plate because he didn't have a car.

I knew he lived in a trailer home in a small town outside of an even smaller town. So I gave them as much information as I could. I gave her his phone number and he had turned his location off on Snapchat. So that like whenever I noticed that, that really hurt because that shows like it wasn't just a rash decision that he made. He had like planned on it.

I don't think that he planned on me being on the phone with him. I think he planned on doing it and I was just being persistent and didn't let him go. I woke up my dad and I told him what happened. He stayed up with me for about an hour and then some way, shape or form, I fell back asleep. I don't know how I managed to get myself calmed down enough to go back to sleep.

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After I woke my dad up and told him what happened, that was after I had already called the cops. I sat on the couch and I was shaking more than I had ever shook in my entire life. The winters where I'm at can get pretty brutal. And I don't think I've even shook that much whenever I'm outside in three feet of snow.

It's just that feeling, and I couldn't control it. It was just like endless shaking. It was this anticipation of waiting for the police to call me back, waiting to see if my biggest fear in that moment had just happened or if there was still hope and he was...

in the hospital, or if he was still breathing, or on life support, or something, just still here for another minute. My dad fell asleep in the chair, and then, like I said, I had fallen asleep on the couch, and then I woke up to another phone call, and it was the police. They were like, is this so-and-so? And I was like, yes, and they said, we went to his house, but it was too late.

You did as much as you could. This was not your fault. And they gave me the whole spiel, the same spiel that I've heard 10,000 times from everybody that I've told this story to. And they said, I'm sorry, but he's gone. Part of me kind of already knew that. But another part of me was like, no, he missed. He shot his shoulder. Part of me was just hoping that he was still there and that he was just in the hospital.

I shook for a long time again after I got the second phone call. And then again, I somehow went back to sleep. I woke up around 8.30 that same morning and I just kind of sat on the couch all day long. And I had a blanket wrapped around me and I don't think I ate anything all day. I just sat there and I cried and I shook and

And I felt like I was almost starving, but I couldn't eat. Just like that feeling in your stomach, like constant butterflies, like nervous butterflies. And it was just, I wasn't, it wasn't like depressed. It was just this trauma of what had just happened in my brain trying to figure out what to do next.

That day, I sat in the same spot on the couch all day long. And then my dad basically forced me to go talk to my youth minister. So I talked to him and then they gave me the same spiel saying, oh, it's not your fault. Oh, he was already going to do this and yada, yada, yada.

So then I went home and I sat in the same spot again. I knew that I could get up and walk around if I wanted to, but I just didn't have the willpower to. And the shaking stopped and then I went from my dad's house to my mom's that night. My mom and my stepdad already knew what happened, but my stepsisters and my stepbrother did not. So I had to sit there and tell them what happened.

So they were just kind of sitting there staring at me just like, "Okay, what do we do now?" And then my stepdad said, "Now would be a good time to hug her." And that kind of made me laugh a little. I knew that I had people in my corner. I slept in my stepsister's room with her because I was scared to be alone. And then I woke up and went to school on Monday.

My mom didn't want me to go to school, but I didn't want to sit around at home moping all day long. So I thought it would be best if I tried to get back in the normal as quick as I could. Only a few of my closest friends knew what had happened. I literally looked like a hobo and I didn't care.

And the counselors at school knew because my mom had called and they emailed all my teachers about it. So I just kind of like sat in the corner in my little ball of myself. And so because I'm such an outgoing person, everybody knew that something was wrong. Like something was like extremely wrong because I talked to maybe three people that day.

During history, I had this like breakdown and I went to the counselor's office and I sat in there for like 20 minutes and then that's it. And I was fine or as fine as I could be up until show choir. Our theme was it was like an anti-bullying campaign.

Because the year before, we had a girl who committed suicide in our show choir. So there was a song called Till It Happens To You. And it goes like, till it happens to you, you don't know how it feels. That really hit me hard because I was like, this happened a little over 24 hours ago.

And so we got halfway through the song and we got to like the big powerful moment and I lost it. And I ran out of the room and I ran all the way down to the counselor's office and I sat in there for like two hours. And then we had lunch and I finished the day and I had track practice and then I went home. In that time, he had been in my life every day and then all of a sudden he's just gone.

And so it was just this realization of this is how fast people can leave. This is how fast people get taken away, get called home or make that decision. And it was just really heartbreaking for me to actually realize that he's not coming back. That was the last conversation that I was going to have with him, that anyone was going to have with him for that matter.

I have gone through so many emotions towards him. I was angry at him. I was not happy for him, but almost like, okay, you know, that's what you wanted to do. That's the decision you made. That's not on me. That's on you. I didn't have guilt over it's my fault per se. I felt not guilt over

but just like almost remorse for not hanging up and calling the police. I don't know why I didn't hang up and call like the suicide hotline, but if I would have hung up and called the police or called the suicide hotline, I feel like he would have done it whenever I wasn't on the phone.

I feel like, I mean, we can't say that because that's not what happened. And there's so many what ifs that you could have said, you know, but what happened happened. And you can sit here and talk about things that you should have done with your life for the rest of your life until you die. Or you can sit here and say, this is what happened. This is how I'm going to live with it.

The weeks following the incident, I didn't have any dreams, which was really weird for me because I was really scared that I would have a dream about the phone call. And I have never had a dream where it's replaying what happened. I've had a dream where he was in it.

But he was alive and well, but nothing correlating to the choice he made and what I watched. In the few months after it happened, it was really hard for me to understand how this could be useful in my life or how it could possibly be used to help someone else. You can host the best backyard barbecue.

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People would text me or Snapchat me and they're like, "What's going on with you? You're not acting like yourself." And their first response was like, "Did somebody hurt you? Did somebody do something to you?" And I'm like, "No."

But yeah, I started withdrawing myself from a lot of people. I wasn't as like big as a big personality as I usually am. And so people got concerned. And then somebody went to the counselor's office and they were like, oh, I'm worried that I'm going to make the same decision because I was being so withdrawn from people.

I got called in there and I'm like, "What's up?" And they were like, "Are you having suicidal thoughts?" And I'm like, "No." You know, like, what is this about? But I'm glad that they checked up on me and cared enough to say something about it.

One thing about my friends that really bugs me is that they say, "Oh, I'm gonna shoot myself, you know, I have a math test next hour. Oh, KMS. Oh, whatever, you know, shoot me." And I'm like, "That's not funny, you guys. Like, this actually happens. Like, this is a real issue. People are actually taking their own lives." And they're like, "Well, we're not making fun of, like, people that have done it. We're just saying." I'm like, "I know, but you just saying isn't funny."

And then they're like, oh, quit being such like a stuck up and, you know, like just chill out. No harm, no foul. But that's just something that bugs me a little bit. This happened on January 27th in 2019. And so my 2019 got off to a rough start. But the summer of 2019 started.

really helped me realize what's going on. What's the next step? What can I do to make this a positive instead of have it on my shoulders and weigh me down? So now it's September and I feel like I am the best person that I can be right now. Everybody always focuses on the bad times and everyone goes, "Oh, my life sucks. Oh this, oh that."

But then once you get past that quote-unquote sucky part, okay, this happened, what kind of person is it going to make me? Is it going to make me worse or is it going to make me a better person? Is it going to turn me this way or that way? And I let it turn me a good way after it had kind of already turned me a bad way. So it comes in waves.

Some of the waves that hit me can be really sad. I wouldn't say depressing because I'm not depressed and I feel like people throw that word around a lot, but usually around anywhere from the 25th to like the 30th of a month, which is around the time that it happened because it happened January 27th.

I will get this like wave of emotion. Because it's always on the back burner of my mind. It's always going to be there. But it comes to the front and it's like, hey. Which is kind of weird, but it's crazy to think that your brain works that way. I don't shake anymore.

I if I think about it too much, I'll cry. But it's I feel like I've turned it into so much of a positive that it takes a lot for me to really get like super upset about it.

because I've somehow flipped the mindset of it, but I still get upset about it. I still cry. I'm a human being. But whenever it happens, it doesn't happen for weeks on end like it used to. It happens for maybe an hour, two at max, and then I go on with my day. Before this happened my freshman year,

I hadn't quite matured yet. So, and I feel like I've matured a lot in the eighth months after this happening because so much has happened. It's not as hard for me to talk about now as it was four or five months ago. Obviously, it really hurt.

And so then I like kind of dug deeper like into myself and I figured out what I want, who I am, like what's good for me, what's bad for me, like all that stuff. And I'm still figuring it out. Everybody's still figuring it out. I don't think you ever come to that point in your life where you're not figuring it out. But now it's just a part of my story.

This happening has been a blessing and a curse in some ways. You just have to figure it out and weave it into your story, make it a part of who you are, and use it for your personal good because otherwise it's just going to weigh you down the rest of your life. This experience really showed me that the world isn't all butterflies and rainbows and I already knew that.

But nothing Jurassic had really happened to make me actually realize this. I feel like everybody goes through a big moment in their life, like this one. And it takes a big Jurassic change for somebody to realize who they are or what happens next. I feel like being a 15-year-old, I shouldn't have to...

have this experience and have this like almost maturity about life being only 15 but everything happens for a reason and that's another cliche thing but it's true

honestly am very happy and like blessed because I see everything like differently than I did before because like I said I was just kind of going through life and walking through it didn't really think much about it and now I like take a piece of each experience like with me

A lot of people are like, if something like that happened to me, I wish I could be like you and turn that into what you're doing. And I'm like, well, I hope that nothing like this ever happens to you. I hope that nobody else has to go through what I went through to finally realize, you know, what is going on. But I feel like some people that I go to school with, their little puzzle that they're creating of themselves is still black and white.

and mine has bursts of color because I just kind of see everything differently. Like, whenever we were on the plane going to Alpine, my cousin looks out the window and says, that's a lot of brown, because we were flying over Oklahoma and Texas. And I said, yeah, but it gives you a new perspective. We're not even that high up in the air, and everybody looks like ants. We're just...

people on this earth and if we don't make a difference then what's the point you know so that's why i'm here i want to make a difference this is actually happening is brought to you by me whit misseldine if you love what we do you can join the community on our official instagram page at actually happening you can also rate and review the show on itunes which helps tremendously to boost visibility to a larger community of listeners thank you for listening until next time stay tuned

If you like This Is Actually Happening, you can listen to every episode ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. She struck him with her motor vehicle. She had been under the influence and then she left him there.

In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask.

Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia. Or a corrupt police cover-up. If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover-up to prevent one of their own from going down. Everyone had an opinion.

And after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision. To end in a mistrial, it's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.