Listen Now— Over My Dead Body: Operation Sideswipe

A Hollywood stuntwoman turned personal injury attorney. A handsome disbarred lawyer with a dark past. And an elaborate scheme that leads to murder. Vanessa Motta gives up a career of fake car crashes for real ones. But her law career in New Orleans gets off to a rocky start — until she meets Sean Alfortish, a charming man who offers her the perfect space for her law office. Vanessa and Sean fall hard for each other, and as a former lawyer himself, Sean becomes her mentor. So, what if he's done some prison time for fraud? When Sean introduces Vanessa to one of the city's most prolific case runners, Cornelius Garrison, the money starts rolling in. Cornelius brings her a steady stream of accident victims looking to sue. There's just one problem: the accidents aren't real. And once the secret gets out, someone will have to pay. Reported and hosted by Mitch Moxley, Over My Dead Body: Operation Sideswipe is a six-part series about greed, betrayal, and who gets thrown under the bus when everything is on the line. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible App or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. Listen now: HERE https://link.pscrb.fm/6438e/fdaudibleronovermydeadbody-79230 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hey 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. But 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.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  Same stretch of highway, same suspicious details. And behind many of the cases, one personal injury lawyer. A Hollywood stunt woman turned attorney named Vanessa Motta. 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? It 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 Side Swipe. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:24Speaker 00

  Inside the cab of his 18-wheeler, Jamie Maurice listened to the radio through a single earbud.

• 1:30Speaker 01

  It was a light rock station, probably something like Journey or something.

• 1:36Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  They really don't have any good rock and roll in New Orleans.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  It was a beautiful day in 2017. A 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.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  I was probably only going about 40 miles an hour, 30 miles an hour. It's pretty slow going up that hill.

• 2:30Speaker 00

  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.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  You really pay a lot of attention to traffic.

• 2:43Speaker 00

  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. All clear. Jamie merged into the next lane.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  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.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  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.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  I 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.

• 3:42Speaker 00

  The entire side of the pickup truck had been scraped up and dented in. Jamie noticed a commotion inside the car.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Just looked like a tall, skinny, black guy, but he was crawling over people, trying to get out.

• 3:57Speaker 00

  Right then, another car pulled up beside the pickup, stopping in the middle of the freeway.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  He got out, jumped in another vehicle, and took off. I figured he had drugs or something, he just didn't want to get caught.

• 4:10Speaker 00

  The four remaining passengers all seemed unscathed.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  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 to my truck. I can't believe you did this."

• 4:32Speaker 00

  Something felt off about the whole thing. For a guy whose truck just got wrecked, the man seemed kind of nonchalant about it.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  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.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  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.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  They gave me a ticket for changing lanes, improper lane change.

• 5:07Speaker 00

  Jamie knew better than to argue on the spot. He sucked it up, took the ticket, and got back in his rig. As he finished his shift and drove home to Long Beach, Jamie ran through the accident in his mind.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  And it just, it just didn't seem like a regular accident. It seemed like they planned it.

• 5:30Speaker 00

  Jamie didn't know it then, but he was on to something. Because Jamie wasn't the first truck driver to experience a side swipe accident on this particular stretch of the I-10. Accidents just like this were happening all the time. And 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.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  She fights for what you deserve. She knows all about pain. And how to make them pay. Stunt woman turned bad attorney.

• 6:26Speaker 00

  Vanessa Motta had pulled some big stunts in her day. But none of them were as big as the ones she pulled on truckers like Jamie. That was a clip from Over My Dead Body: Operation Side Swipe. 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.