The sisters nodded OK. They had already heard this part of Joe’s spiel when he had recruited them.
“We’ll be using I-10 this time, during rush hour. Some parts are five lanes across, and we want to make sure the truck gets hemmed in and has nowhere to go when we stage this accident.”
“This time we’ll be using two cars. I’ll be driving the lead car. You two gals with the kids will be in the second car.” He rarely participated in the fake crash incidences themselves, but he didn’t trust anyone else to drive the lead car, and to do what had to be done. He also did not want to have another person involved who could cause trouble for Joe – blackmail came to mind.
“Any questions?”
The mother raised her hand.
“Yes?” Joe said.
“Why is it different this time?”
“Trucking lawyers are getting better at proving their clients’ drivers were not driving unsafely. More drivers are using dashcams. We’ve had settlement claims denied. So, this time we want to set it up to make it look like there is no doubt it had to be the truck driver’s fault.”
The sisters looked at each other and nodded. Joe was satisfied it made sense to them.
“We’ll do it in the afternoon, going westbound. Two reasons. One is we’ll catch heavy commuter traffic with folks coming off of work heading to the suburbs west of the city. The other reason is it will be going directly into the setting sun, which will be right in our trucker’s eyes.”
Joe’s plan was to use a “burner” car – literally, a car that would be taken out into the desert right after Joe had used it to cause the accident, doused liberally with gasoline and set afire.
The car would not be involved in the actual accident, just used to help the accident happen. But someone might have a dashcam or be on their phone and catch the part his car will be playing in staging the crash. That’s why its license plate would be stolen from a car parked at a strip mall on the other side of town. Joe knew most people wouldn’t notice a missing license plate for quite a while, sometimes even days, and he only needed it a few hours.
The mother would use her own car, but that detail was irrelevant. Any car would do, as it was going to be totaled anyway. Best case would be the car catching on fire and being fully engulfed in flame, incinerating it and everyone on board. Joe had a plan to make that happen.
All Joe needed was a few minutes in the mother’s car before leaving for the staged accident so he could disable the seat belt mechanisms that secured the sisters’ seat belts and the kids’ car seats. A piece of stiff tape across the indent for the latch mechanisms preventing them from clicking solidly but that would allow them to hold enough to not be noticed would do the trick. Under the extra strain of a crash, the seat belts would easily fail. Joe planned to be helpful to the sisters by placing the kids himself in their seats.
“OK. If you all agree. Let’s get in our cars and do a dry run. No accident this time, but we need to practice to get it right when the time comes.”
Joe and the women with their children were in their separate cars driving the short distance to the I-10 Freeway. He had them on his phone’s speakerphone setting, and had told them to do the same. He was using a burner phone that would be destroyed in the fire he would set to burn up his car in the desert. A forensic examination of the women’s phones after the crash, if their phones survived the crash intact, would reveal only phone calls to an out-of-service phone number that would not lead back to Joe.
He had already told them the general plan. Truckers, especially in heavy traffic, leave a large following distance gap between their trucks and the cars ahead of them in their lane.
Joe said he would drive alongside the truck on the left side, and the gals would drive alongside the truck on its right side. He would pull ahead and veer into the truck’s lane, closing the gap. At the same time, the mother driving the other car would hear Joe on her phone saying it was time to make her move, and she would pull ahead, change lanes into the truck’s lane and jam her car between Joe’s car and the truck, severely reducing the truck’s following distance.
The mother would apply her brakes, slowing just enough that the trucker would have no choice but to crunch her rear fender. Joe would drive on, the mother and trucker would pull over, insurance would be exchanged, etc.
The law would see it as the trucker at fault for following too closely. No way the truck driver could get out of that one. Slam dunk. Easy peasy.
That was the official version Joe had explained for the benefit of the mother and sister to get their cooperation.
The unofficial version, the real version, involved Joe being much more aggressive as the lead vehicle and causing what he hoped would be the fatal accident that would be his and the attorney’s ticket to a mega-million settlement or nuclear verdict jury award.
If it played out the way Joe had planned, the headlines would read, “Mother, sister and two children die in fiery I-10 crash. Trucker faces manslaughter charges.”
“We’ve got a likely truck here now,” Joe said. They were cruising westbound on the 10. Traffic was heavy. Joe had spotted a truck driving along safely in the middle lane keeping a good following distance from the car in front of him.
“OK. Let’s practice,” he said over the phone. “Remember, do
