The Car-Crash Conspiracy

With the publication of London Falling, his new book, Patrick Radden Keefe has been absolutely everywhere lately, including New York‘s “Grub Street Diet” and our very own Longreads Questionnaire. And yet he’s still found time to deliver a new stunner. From New Orleans, Keefe delves deep into a complex network of personal-injury lawyers and “slammers” who worked together to stage accidents with tractor-trailers for lucrative insurance payouts. A dazzlingly intricate, quintessentially local scheme, with a rich cast of characters. In short: It’s a Patrick Radden Keefe story.

In April, 2018, Kennedy was at a Church’s Texas Chicken on Chef Menteur when she was approached by a private investigator. Kennedy, who was in her late fifties, had cropped hair and a rueful smile. Her life had not been easy. She had struggled with addiction for decades and been imprisoned numerous times for shoplifting. In 2014, her daughter was fatally shot outside her home. Kennedy, for all her struggles, had a salty irrepressibility. It wasn’t just Turner staging accidents, she informed the private investigator; lots of people in New Orleans East were doing it. Some even argued that it was “legal,” she explained, because they were getting paid by lawyers. “It’s three generations of them doing it!” she exclaimed. People she knew were buying new cars, new furniture. Kennedy herself was financially “desperate,” she confessed, because of her addiction. She seemed envious of the money that people like Turner were making. But she would never participate in a slammer accident, she said. “Don’t seem right to me,” she declared. Besides, Kennedy added, with her luck she’d probably die in the crash.