Trust No One

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Some evil thing happened here.

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

Three people die in a quiet suburb, in the same house, years apart.

Derika Moses (0:09)

It's not a coincidence.

SPEAKER_1 (0:10)

This wasn't ghosts and goblins, okay?

SPEAKER_4 (0:12)

These were murders.

SPEAKER_2 (0:14)

From Sony Music Entertainment, this is what happened to the Harrison's. Start listening today, wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribers to The Binge can listen to all episodes, all at once, ad-free.

Ben Adair (0:31)

Listen to every episode of Doctor Billion's ad-free right now, when you subscribe to The Binge. You'll hear the entire series before anyone else get exclusive bonus episodes and unlock more than 60 other true crime podcasts. Just head to The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and tap subscribe, or visit getthebinge.com to listen wherever you are.

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SPEAKER_1 (1:07)

So when you had the surgery, you were just shy of your 32nd birthday? Yes.

Ben Adair (1:13)

This is a woman named Derika Moses. She's testifying in court.

Derika Moses (1:18)

I was working at Pepsi Bottle Company, and I would stop the store shelves. I'd bring in pallets to the store to stop.

Ben Adair (1:25)

Derika is telling the courtroom a story. It's a story about how she got injured on the job, and according to her and her lawyers, unwittingly became the victim of a bad doctor. What she didn't know then, what she only found out about much later, is that she wasn't the only victim. She was one of thousands.

In high school and college, Derika had been an athlete. She went to the University of Utah on a softball scholarship, full ride. After, she started working for Pepsi.

Derika Moses (1:57)

Each pallet would be 1200 pounds, and he'd use a manual pallet jack, and then he'd move it over to...

Ben Adair (2:03)

One day, right before one of the biggest soda weekends in the country, Labor Day weekend, she was moving a mountain of cans and bottles from the truck to the store, and she felt a little...

Derika Moses (2:14)

I just heard and felt a pop in my back.

Ben Adair (2:18)

Pop. Happened to me once. I wasn't even lifting anything, just bent over, twisted, changing the headlight on my wife's car. Suddenly, I was laid out for weeks.

I got better, eventually. Derika did not, and because she was injured on the job, Derika saw a doctor through her employer's workers' compensation insurance. This is the parallel medical insurance program that companies pay for so that people injured on the job get care fast and free.

Derika found a doctor from workers' comp. She went to see him, and he said her back injury was very serious, and that she needed surgery. But...

Derika Moses (3:02)

He told me that I would get between 90 and 95 percent better, and that's what gave me the hope to have the surgery done.

Ben Adair (3:10)

Her doctor also testified at this trial, and he denied telling Derika this. But this is an important moment for Derika. This is the moment she put her trust in this doctor. Given the story I'm about to tell you, it's worth probing this a little bit.

Why do we trust doctors? We know they've been to school for a very long time to do the things they do. We know about the Hippocratic Oath, which has actually changed a lot over time, the ethical framework is real. Physicians are supposed to prioritize the patient and patient care over all other concerns. We know that lots of people go to doctors. Probably a lot of people had been to this doctor, standing right in front of Derika. And if something was wrong with this guy, wouldn't something have happened? Was his license revoked or something?

This bond of trust can be seen another way. To the bad actor, it's a moment of opportunity. An opportunity for more than you and I can imagine.

Derika was hopeful going in. It was her first surgery ever and a serious one. She would get 23 pieces of hardware implanted in her back, screws and rods to stabilize her spine. She went through with it and it seemed good.

Derika Moses (4:33)

For the first couple of months, I thought I was getting better. I thought the pain had increased and all, but I realized it was the drugs that was on at the moment.

Ben Adair (4:43)

The more time went on, the more pain she was in.

Derika Moses (4:46)

I realized the pain hadn't gone anywhere. It just got worse.

Ben Adair (4:49)

Eventually, Derika realized the surgery had failed. She was 37 years old. Once, she was athletic. Now, she struggled to get out of bed in the morning. Her mother moved in to help her with basic day-to-day tasks. She went back to her same doctor and he found that some of the hardware around her spine had failed, broken loose, and she needed a new surgery to remove all the hardware he had put in.