Two clients of a television stuntwoman-turned-attorney helped orchestrate the shooting death of another of the lawyer’s clients who was cooperating with a federal investigation into their purported roles in an insurance fraud scheme involving more than 100 staged truck accidents, prosecutors allege in a newly obtained indictment.
Ryan “Red” Harris, 35, and Jovanna Gardner, 39, face charges of witness tampering through murder in the 2020 slaying of Cornelius Garrison in New Orleans, according to federal court filings unsealed on Monday but arbitrarily withheld from public release by officials until Tuesday.
The pair could be given the death penalty if ultimately convicted as charged in Garrison’s murder.
The charges against Harris and Gardner, who are also accused of conspiring to retaliate against a witness through murder, begin providing a measure of closure to what had been one of the most prominent, unresolved killings in one of the US south’s most famous cities.
At the center of the case is a sprawling federal law enforcement inquiry into more than 100 staged truck accidents that fraudulently netted a network of scamsters millions of dollars, as CBS affiliate WWL Louisiana reported.
The 54-year-old Garrison, as part of that investigation, had been accused of causing more than 50 of the crashes in question in exchange for $150,000. And he was cooperating with authorities as they were ultimately targeting attorneys and doctors who they say scored millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains through meritless lawsuits and unnecessary surgeries.
But days before Garrison was scheduled to enter a plea to the charges against him, he was fatally shot, execution-style, inside an apartment in New Orleans’ Gentilly neighborhood. Authorities did not immediately identify any suspects in Garrison’s murder, which was widely regarded as a major blow to the staged accidents investigation whose code name was “Operation Sideswipe”.
As WWL noted, Operation Sideswipe led to charges against 52 people, including 44 who pleaded guilty. Only one was an attorney, Danny Keating, who pleaded guilty in exchange for his cooperation.
A lawyer who conspicuously has managed to elude charges is one who represented Garrison. Vanessa Motta, who touts her previous work as an on-screen stuntwoman in local television commercials billing her as “a badass attorney”. She helped secure a $650,000 settlement in an accident that Garrison staged and for which he was paid a share of the money.
Court records associated with Garrison’s murder case have never named Motta or her fiance at the time of the killing, Sean Alfortish, a disbarred attorney who spent time in federal prison for rigging an election for the presidency of a non-profit association for horseracing professional and track workers.
But, using strategic descriptions, they made clear that Alfortish was suspected of paying Garrison to stage the accidents and referring the resulting legal work to Motta.
The indictment against Harris and Gardner once again returned Motta and Alfortish to the orbit of Garrison’s murder, though they are not charged or named in the relevant documents.
Prosecutors allege that Harris and Gardner aided Garrison in pulling off several of the fake traffic accidents attributed to him beginning in about 2015. And both were clients of Motta before Operation Sideswipe kicked into high gear.
As the investigation evolved, prosecutors allege in the indictment that Harris and Gardner subsequently “did knowingly and intentionally … conspire … to kill Cornelius Garrison” in order to “prevent communications by [him] to a law enforcement officer or judge of the United States”.
They then purportedly had a hand in carrying out the killing on 22 September 2020, though the indictment stops short of saying whether they personally fired the fatal bullets that cut down Garrison.
Harris and Gardner are also charged with mail and wire fraud in connection with their alleged roles in the staged truck accident scam. Both were held without bond pending the outcome of the case after their arrests and initial court appearances on Monday.
Attempts to contact attorneys for Harris and Gardner were not immediately successful. Motta and Alfortish could not immediately be reached either.