♪ ♪ ♪ light it! [ cheers and applause ]

♪ this is "nightline." >> stephanie: tonight, massachusetts murder mystery. the woman charged with murdering her boss and police officer boyfriend. >> i did not kill john o'keefe. i've never harmed a hair on john o'keefe's head. >> stephanie: her case grabbing headlines with her defense alleging another officer may have been involved, which investigators deny. >> you're alleging that law enforcement officials in the state committed murder and that they're covering it up. why would they want to be involved in this conspiracy? >> stephanie: what she has to say. plus, maui in crisis. the chaos and desperation on the island. >> i have nothing left. i've just been calling on the phone every day. >> stephanie: the crippling housing shortage. >> the slogan i keep hearing repeated here is, not another

katrina. >> stephanie: president biden and the first lady getting a firsthand look at the devastation as some children return to school. passport snack? the adorable golden retriever and a possible honeymoon disaster. try killing bugs the worry-free way. not the other way. zevo traps use light to attract and trap flying insects with no odor and no mess. they work continuously, so you don't have to. zevo. people-friendly. bug-deadly. do you struggle with occasional nerve aches in your hands or feet? try nervive nerve relief from the world's number one nerve care company. nervive contains ala to relieve nerve aches, and b-complex vitamins to fortify healthy nerves. try nervive. and, try nervive pain relieving roll-on.

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good evening and thank you for joining us. i'm rhiannon ally. we begin with a murder mystery, a woman charged with killing her police officer boyfriend. karen reid says she didn't do it. if she isn't responsible, who is? the shocking claims by her defense team and why prosecutors call the allegations a fanciful conspiracy. here's abc's matt gutman. >> reporter: outside this courthouse in canton, massachusetts, supporters swarmed around karen reid, charges with murder from the january 2022 death of her boyfriend, boston police officer john o'keefe. reid has strenuously denied the allegations. >> i did not kill john o'keefe. i've never harmed a hair on john o'keefe's head. >> reporter: her defense, bare-knuckled and bold, is making national headlines. her lawyers alleging in court documents a fellow police

officer was involved in o'keefe's death and colluded with other people in a cover-up. you're alleging that law enforcement officials in the state committed murder and that they're covering it up. why would they want to be involved in this? >> because he's dead. i think things went too far. it was late. there was alcohol involved. but they're all family. and there's many of them involved. >> reporter: after posting bail, reid has spent much of the past 18 months in and out of court, awaiting a trial date. >> me and my family and my attorneys and my team have marshaled every resource to get to the truth. it just feels like no one else wants it. >> reporter: prosecutors allege reid hit o'keefe with her car after getting into an argument earlier in the day, leaving him to die in the middle of a snowstorm in january 2022. but reid says she had no reason to harm her boyfriend. >> i would call him the patron saint of canton. he was just very selfless, frugal. and i think you'd be hard

pressed to find anyone that didn't care for john. >> reporter: the couple first dated in their 20s and reconnected more than a decade later in the middle of the pandemic. how did you meet up again? >> he had reached out to me on facebook. he said, hey, blast from the past, how's things? and when i saw his picture, his profile picture was with several young children. then it triggered my memory that his sister and his sister's husband had passed away. he told me, yeah, i have the kids now. i admired that. i thought that was amazing. >> reporter: soon, reid says she became part of the family, often sleeping over at o'keefe's house and helping take care of the kids. >> he would go to work, and i would stay with his niece and nephew. all of the breaks that the kids had, we did something. >> reporter: but their relationship also had its struggles. reid says o'keefe had been relying more on her to take care of the kids and that he criticized some of the decisions she made with them. >> we had had an argument on new year's eve.

he became incoherently drunk. and i ended up ringing in the new year with his niece and nephew. john didn't come back to our room until after 3:00 a.m. so that was rough. i felt very much taken advantage of. he apologized profusely for what happened on new year's eve. he said, if you can't get over it, you need to spend some time on your own, i can't keep apologizing, i don't want to keep rehashing this. >> reporter: a few weeks later they were invited to meet up with friends at the waterfall bar. they ran into brian albert, a fellow boston police officer who reid says o'keefe looked up to. albert had led the city's gang unit before commanding the fugitive apprehension team. it was the elite squad responsible for taking down some of the city's most dangerous criminals and featured in the 2013 tnt show "boston's finest." >> one minute we're walking around, everything's 79. one minute, it's not fine. >> both times i met brian albert, he seemed like the type

of person you'd be surprised he's out socially because he doesn't seem he wants to be there. >> reporter: at the bar, reid sesss is there was an invitation to continue hanging out at albert's home. >> i said, can we make sure we're welcome here? nobody extended the invite to me, i didn't hear the invite extended to you sxwlr they drive to the albert house. what happens next is disputed. >> so i pull up the foot of the driveway, it's snowing. john has no coat on. it's windy. so i drop him off, he goes up the driveway and approaches the side door. as i see him approach the door, i look down at my phone. >> reporter: reid says after about ten minutes of waiting in her car, she became irritated that o'keefe still hadn't gotten in touch with her and she drove back to his home where she continued calling him before she says she fell asleep around 1:30 in the morning. she then says she woke up before 5:00 a.m.,et home. she then started canvassing the neighborhood. >> just going to drive around in the two square miles that we spent the preceding night.

>> reporter: after 20 minutes of unsuccessful searching, she called john's friend, kerry roberts, and jr. mccabe, brian albert's sister-in-law, who was also at his house the night before. the three women together now headed to albert's home. how soon was it when you pulled in there that you saw john's body? >> immediately. and what struck me when i saw him was, his mouth was open a little bit, and his eyes were shut, and he had spots of blood in different areas on his face. >> reporter: o'keefe was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead. he died from blunt force trauma and hypothermia. and it wasn't long before reid became the number one suspect. authorities say they had noticed a cracked taillight after they seized her car. >> i had told both jen and kerry that i cracked my taillight. i said, i just hit my car on top of everything, but i didn't look at the damage. and both women said, it's cracked, it's cracked, calm

down, you cracked your taillight. you're okay, let's go look for john. >> reporter: but according to police statements, jennifer mccabe told authorities while they were looking for o'keefe, reid stated, could i have hit him, did i hit him? when o'keefe's body was discovered, first responders who arrived on the scene say they overheard reid make other statements. a firefighter said that you said, i hit him, i hit him, i hit him. >> i said, i hit him? it was preceded by "did" and proceeded by a question mark. what i thought could have happened was that, did i incapacitate him? unwittingly, somehow? then in his drunkenness passed out? >> when you walked out of the bar, how many drinks had you had? >> i had had probably about -- four. >> the commonwealth says that you had nine drinks that night. that's what the prosecution says. >> i don't believe they're saying i wasn't in my right mind. >> they're saying you were

intoxicated. is it possible that you might have hit him unwittingly in your admittedly very large suv? >> no, not possible. >> reporter: three days after, investigators arrested reid for manslaughter. she was eventually indicted on second-degree murder. investigators reported they found fragments of broken glass on the rear bumper on reid's vehicle and that a broken cocktail glass was found by what appeared to be patches of blood near o'keefe's body. >> the victim, mr. o'keefe, is last observed on surveillance video with a cocktail glass in his right hand. same arm that's injured, same type of glass that is then recovered from the bumper of the defendant's car. >> reporter: in court documents, the prosecution also claims that reid's blood alcohol level it would have been between .13 and .29%, above the legal limit of .08. in addition, they say pieces of reid's taillight were found on the scene the day o'keefe's body

was discovered. more fragments of that tail light were found the following week, according to canton police reports, after the snowmelted, which revealed more at the scene. reid's attorney, alan jackson, has a different theory about how those fragments of taillight got there. >> those pieces of taillight were placed there after the fact. >> evidence was planted? >> pieces of taillight were planted after the fact. >> what does the defense believe happened to john after karen dropped him off? >> i think he walked into the house. i think he was confronted, likely brought down to the basement. i think that confrontation got physical and he was beaten. he was beaten to a point of unconsciousness. >> reporter: jackson argues the autopsy photos of o'keefe support his theory and not the prosecution's claim. >> looks like he's been in on fistfight and beaten. he's got defensive wound bruises on the backs of his hand. he's got this massive laceration on the back of his head. a big, giant gash, 2 1/2 inches, exactly lateral going from left to right.

two black eyes. a cut over his right eye, a cut over his nose. this was a cover-up, that john was murdered inside that house, his body was placed outside. >> reporter: in a statement to abc news the prosecution says there was no conspiracy or cover-up, such claims have been systematically refuted by evidence submitted to norfolk superior court. the prosecution also said that according to o'keefe's cell phone gps records and 11 witness statements, o'keefe never entered albert's home and that a medical examiner found no signs of mr. o'keefe being involved in any type of physical altercation or fight. >> there's no evidence that mr. o'keefe was beaten and left for dead. there was no evidence of any defensive wounds. >> reporter: abc news reached out to attorneys for brian albert and jennifer mccabe but did not hear back by the time of this broadcast. in a previous statement to the "boston herald," mccabe's attorney said scenario is baseless. reid is scheduled to appear next in court again in september.

>> our thanks to matt. up next, maui crisis. the growing need and desperation for housing after hisric wildfires. my active psoriatic arthritis can make me feel like i'm losing my rhythm. with skyrizi to treat my skin and joints, i'm getting into my groove. ♪(uplifting music)♪ along with significantly clearer skin... skyrizi helps me move with less joint pain, stiffness, swelling, and fatigue. and is just 4 doses a year, after 2 starter doses. skyrizi attaches to and reduces a source of excess inflammation that can lead to skin and joint symptoms. with skyrizi 90% clearer skin and less joint pain are possible. serious allergic reactions and an increased risk of infections or a lower ability to fight them may occur. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms, had a vaccine, or plan to. thanks to skyrizi, there's nothing like clearer skin and better movement...

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tonight, president biden and first lady jill biden touring the fire-ravaged island of maui and meeting with survivors and first responders. the disaster making the affordable housing crisis even worse. and why some people are comparing the crisis to hurricane katrina. >> the country grieves with you,

stands with you, and will do everything possible to help you recover, rebuild, and respect culture and traditions when the rebuilding takes place. >> reporter: president biden visiting ground zero of the maui wildfires that decimated the town of lahaina. >> what's the boss' name? i said, how you doing, pal? >> reporter: the president and the first lady meeting with first responders and survivors as search and rescue efforts continue. biden once again taking on the role of comforter in chief. >> so i know the feeling that is in many of the people in this town, this community that hollow feeling you have in your chest like you're being sucked into a black hole, wondering, will i ever, ever get by this? it's one thing to know, it's quite another thing to have to wait, to wonder whether your family member is going to be okay. >> reporter: at least 115 lives have been lost to the fire.

officials say 850 people are still unaccounted for. new harrowing footage showing what firefighters were up against as they raced to battle the flames ripping through lahaina. >> our visibility is really not good right now. >> reporter: this fire truck driving through the inferno, surrounded by blinding smoke. >> yeah, all units, all units, we've got to get out of this fire. >> reporter: fierce winds whipping the flames through town. the fire chief telling us his crews did not back down, but their hoses ran dry. >> they need water. that resource is so precious to us. when they were running out, they were so disheartened. >> reporter: now nearly two weeks after the massive wildfires raf wildfire s ravaged maui, the island grabbing with how to remold a housing market already in short supply. >> before the fire, housing in hawaii was very unaffordable in terms of rents and sale prices.

now with thousands more housing units destroyed, there's going to be a real supply constraint. >> reporter: sterling says lots of affordable housing will be needed to be built quickly for residents who lost their homes, as well as workers copp coming in to rebuild. federally more than $8.6 million have been distributed, over $6 million going to rental assistance. >> the slogan i keep hearing is "not another katrina." we don't want to have people in trailers for years following this disaster. >> reporter: he says some residents are also worried about outsiders buying up the land. >> i think there's widespread concern that predatory investors will come in and pressure locals, native hawaiians, to sell their land when they're in this situation of desperation. and after a period of years, maybe redeveloped into a luxury

resort. and that is a fear that is palpable, is real. >> reporter: rebuilding is one of many concerns residents are still dealing with on the ground. >> we had no warning. we had nowhere to go, no warning at all. you know, it was just complete chaos in the streets. >> reporter: 32-year-old idris is a green cardholder from france. everything he owned burned, including the identification he needs for his naturalization process. >> i have nothing left. i just have been calling on the phone every day, you know. it's just so hard. it's a long process. >> reporter: still, he's counting his blessings after escaping the fire by boat, rescued by the coast guard. >> we had the ocean, you know. just pounding at us. pulling us in. we had hot debris falling on us. >> reporter: he's now in a hotel sharing a room with someone he just met. that kind of resilience on

display here at maui prep. >> i'm so glad you're okay. >> i'm okay. >> reporter: it's the only school open in west maui. celebrating the first day of school and welcoming over 100 students displaced or impacted by the fire. >> these children really deserve a chance to stay in west maui. they want to be here, they want to stay in lahaina. this is their home, and we want to help as many kids as possible. >> from stories of grief, we've seen so many stories of hope and heroism, of the aloha spirit. to the people of hawaii, we're with you for as long as it takes, i promise you. >> we'll have much more on the president's visit coming up tomorrow on "gma." coming up next, passport snack? an adorable golden retriever may have ruined a boston couple's destination wedding reception. type 2 diabetes? discover the ozempic® tri-zone.

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here's abc's trevor ault. >> reporter: a dog this cute would never cause an international fiasco, right? well, that's exactly what this pup did when it ate its owner's passport days before his wedding in italy. >> chicky is a really well-trained dog. come! sit! >> i looked at chicky's bed. and it's like, oh, my passport does not belong there. >> reporter: they planned to get married at city hall this thursday and then fly off to italy the following morning for the reception with 100 friends and family. >> she kind of knew what she did. all of a sudden she got really cuddly. you know. head on the lap kind of thing. >> reporter: so that's when they got to work contacts the offices of massachusetts congressman steve lynch and senator ed markey. >> they said that they're going to be in contact again with the