Listen Now— Over My Dead Body: Operation Sideswipe

0:00Hey, listeners. Have you ever had something happen to you that just didn't feel right? That's exactly what happened to trucker Jamie Maurice on a sunny afternoon in New Orleans. He merged onto the I-10, checked his mirrors, all clear, and then, out of nowhere, a pickup truck slammed into the side of his 18-wheeler. Multiple passengers inside. One guy jumped out and fled in another car. And the driver of the pickup? He barely flinched. Jamie got the ticket.

0:31But something about the whole thing felt staged. And he was right. Because Jamie wasn't the only trucker this happened to. The same kind of accident kept happening. Same stretch of highway. Same suspicious details. And behind many of the cases, one personal injury lawyer. A Hollywood stuntwoman turned attorney named Vanessa Moda. She'd done stunts on movies like Friday the 13th and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. But the biggest stunt she ever pulled?

1:02It wasn't on a movie set. This is a story about fake car crashes with real consequences. And a scheme that led to betrayal, exploitation, and murder. I'm about to play a clip from Over My Dead Body, Operation Sideswipe. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

1:24Inside the cab of his 18-wheeler, Jamie Maurice listened to the radio through a single earbud. It was a light rock station. Probably something like Journey or something. Jamie was a trucker from Long Beach, Mississippi. Shaggy gray hair, tattooed arms. He was a hard rock kind of guy. But during his 14-hour shifts on the road, he settled for the light stuff. They really don't have any good rock and roll in New Orleans. It was a beautiful day in 2017.

1:55A sunny November afternoon in New Orleans. Traffic was light. Jamie was on his way back after hauling 80,000 pounds of materials used to make plastics to the port of New Orleans. He made his way up the on-ramp to Business 90 leading to the I-10 freeway. The same route he took about three times a day on his shift. It's a steep ramp, so he pressed down on the gas, trying to get as much speed as he could. It's probably only going about 40 miles an hour, 30 miles an hour.

2:26It's pretty slow going up that hill. When Jamie reached the top of the ramp, the city skyline and gleaming gold Superdome came into view. But Jamie didn't have his eyes on any of that. You really pay a lot of attention to the traffic. Because this on-ramp put him immediately into an exit-only lane. So Jamie had to merge quickly. He flipped on his signal, checked the mirrors, and looked to his left.

2:56All clear.

2:58Jamie merged into the next lane. And when I got halfway in the lane, I felt the truck hit something. I look in my side-view mirror, and there was a truck with its front tire rubbing up against the trailer, kind of bouncing. Jamie was startled. He could have sworn the lane was completely empty as he merged. The four-door pickup truck came out of nowhere. He pulled over to the shoulder. The pickup followed.

3:30I got out, and I went to the back to make sure everybody was all right. You could see where the tire of the trailer went down the side, basically all on the right-hand side of the truck. The entire side of the pickup truck had been scraped up and dented in. Jamie noticed a commotion inside the car. He just looked like a tall, skinny black guy. He was crawling over people, trying to get out. Right then, another car pulled up beside the pickup, stopping in the middle of the freeway.

4:03He got out, jumped in another vehicle, and took off. I figured he had drugs or something. He just didn't want to get caught. The four remaining passengers all seemed unscathed. Nobody really limped or fell to the ground or anything. It didn't seem like there was any kind of major injury or anything. The guy whose truck it was, he just kind of looked like, look what you did in my truck, I can't believe you did this. Something felt off about the whole thing.

4:35For a guy whose truck just got wrecked, the man seemed kind of nonchalant about it. It didn't look sincere, like how upset you would get if somebody hit your car. I'd get pretty upset, but he looked like he was faking it. When a cop showed up, Jamie tried to tell him that the truck had hit him, not the other way around. But the officer didn't seem too interested in Jamie's version of events. They gave me a ticket for changing lanes, improper lane change.

5:07Jamie knew better than to argue on the spot. He sucked it up, took the ticket, and got back in his rig.

5:16As he finished his shift and drove home to Long Beach, Jamie ran through the accident in his mind. And it just didn't seem like a regular accident. It seemed like they planned it. Jamie didn't know it then, but he was on to something. Because Jamie wasn't the first truck driver to experience a sideswipe accident on this particular stretch of the I-10. Accidents just like this were happening all the time.

5:47And there was a pattern. Multiple passengers in the vehicle. A mysterious man fleeing the scene. And all of it linked to a particular personal injury lawyer. Who had a very notable presence in the New Orleans legal world. She fights for what you deserve. She knows all about pain. And how to make them pay.

6:18Stuntwoman turned bad attorney. Vanessa Moda had pulled some big stunts in her day. But none of them were as big as the ones she pulled on truckers like Jamie.

6:38That was a clip from Over My Dead Body. Operation Sideswipe. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.