| Born | Richard John Wershe Jr.[1] July 18, 1969 (age 51) |
|---|---|
| Status | released on July 20, 2020 |
| Known for | F.B.I. informant at age 14. Spending 27 years in prison for a drug offence committed when he was 17. |
| Criminal charge(s) | Possession of cocaine in excess of eight kgRacketeering (Conspiracy to Commit) |
| Criminal penalty | 27 years imprisonment 5 years imprisonment consecutive. |
The movie White Boy Rick hits theatres this week and Gangster Report is the place to get the skinny on what’s real and what’s fictionalized for the big screen. Starring newcomer Richie Merritt and Oscar-winner Matthew McConaughey, the film tells the incredible true story of Richard (White Boy Rick) Wershe, Jr., the longest-serving non-violent juvenile. After Richard Wershe Jr. Is paroled prison in Michigan he'll immediately be transferred to prison in Florida, where he's expected to spend the next 3 years and 8 months.
Richard Wershe Jr. (born July 18, 1969),[2]White Boy Rick, became a Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.)informant when he was 14 to 16 years old. When he was 15 Wershe told the FBI that a major drug dealer had spoken of paying a bribe to Detroit detective inspector and subsequent city council president and mayoral candidate Gil Hill in order to quash the investigation into a 13 year old boy's murder. At the age of 17 Wershe was arrested for possession of 8 kg of cocaine, and with no intervention from the FBI and U.S. Attorney to tell of him being an FBI informant at 14, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. In 2017 justice campaigners publicized Wershe's case and he was paroled, but directly to a prison in Florida to serve another five years for an auto theft conviction from 2008. Campaigners for Wershe have suggested to reporters that the length of his incarceration may have been connected to him having provided the FBI with information leading to the arrest of family members and associates of former Detroit mayor Coleman A. Young, as well as the allegation about Young's political ally Hill. In 2016 a notorious former Detroit hitman alleged Gil Hill had once tried to commission the murder of Wershe.[3][4][5][6]
Life[edit]
Wershe and his Working class family lived in a neighborhood on the east side of Detroit about seven miles from downtown. They lived there during a period in the late 1980s and early 1990s when Detroit and many other major American cities were gaining widespread reputations for crime and violence, largely due to an influx of cocaine and the emergence of the crack cocaine epidemic.[7] Wershe's father was also an FBI informant and first reported to the police and the federal agency alongside him before going solo.[7]
The name 'White Boy Rick' was not a street name that Wershe used himself, nor was it one he was ever called by those with whom he associated. The name was instead given to him by reporters who covered his case.[7] When Wershe was 16 the FBI, having secured 20 convictions through his infiltration of a violent drug gang, ceased to employ him as an informant. In 1987, at 17 years of age, Wershe was arrested for possessing cocaine in excess of eight kilograms (17.6 pounds).[8]
He was sentenced to life in prison in Michigan under the state's 650-Lifer Law, a drug statute that penalized those found in possession of more than 650 grams (22.92 oz) of cocaine or heroin with life imprisonment without parole. The law was overturned but he was rejected as a menace to society by the Michigan Parole Board in 2003, despite (or perhaps because of) having assisted the FBI in the 1990s with a sting unsuccessfully targeting Gil Hill and drawing in the relatives of influential city politicians. Publicity about the case in 2017, when by which time he had spent nearly three decades behind bars in Michigan as a nonviolent drug offender whose offense was committed when he was 17, led to him being paroled, but directly to US Marshals who took him to begin serving five years in Florida State Prison on a 2008 car theft ring conviction (crime committed behind bars).[9][10][1][11] In 2019, his application was denied by the Florida clemency board.[12]
On July 20, 2020, Wershe was released from custody in Florida, having completed his sentence with credits for good behavior.[13]
Film[edit]
White Boy Rick, a film based on his life, was released on September 14, 2018.[3][14] The documentary chronicling the case of Richard Wershe Jr., White Boy, won the 2017 FREEP Film Festival Audience Choice Award. It was released in 2017 and began airing on the Starz network in 2019.
References[edit]
- ^ ab'Inmate Population Information Detail'. Florida Department of Corrections. Retrieved 12 June 2018.
- ^'BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION'. Michigan Department of Corrections. Retrieved June 12, 2018.
- ^ abKroll, Justin (March 3, 2017). 'Newcomer Richie Merritt Lands Title Role in 'White Boy Rick' Opposite Matthew McConaughey'. Variety.
- ^Steve Garagiola, ClickOnDetroitPublished: July 20, 2020, After 32 years behind bars, ‘White Boy Rick’ Wershe Jr. to be released Monday. retrieved 20/7/20
- ^Gangster Report, ONE-TIME DETROIT ‘SUPER COP’ GIL HILL DIES OF LUNG DISEASE, FAMED CRIME FIGHTER NEVER SHOOK MURDER COVER-UP CLAIMS retrieved 20/7/20
- ^Deadline Detroit, September 07, 2016, Allan Lengel Past Detroit Hit Man Claims Gil Hill Wanted Him To Kill Richard Wershe Jr retrieved 20/7/20
- ^ abcDaalder, Marc (September 5, 2018). 'Who is White Boy Rick? 7 facts about the 14-year-old FBI informant'. Detroit Free Press. Retrieved 2019-05-12.
- ^Hughes, Evan (June 27, 2017). 'White Boy Rick's Parole Hearing and Drug War Lessons Unlearned'. The New Yorker.
- ^Tenreyro, Tatiana (September 14, 2018). 'Here's Where White Boy Rick Is Now, Years After His FBI Involvement'. Bustle. Retrieved 2019-05-12.
- ^Dietz, Kevin; Bartkowiak, Dave Jr; Hutchinson, Derick (July 15, 2017). ''White Boy' Rick Wershe is granted parole in Michigan after nearly 30 years in prison'. ClickOnDetroit.
- ^Bartkowiak Jr, Dave; Dietz, Kevin (September 20, 2017). ''White Boy' Rick Wershe is now housed at Florida state prison'. WDIV-TV. Retrieved August 27, 2018.
- ^Hicks, Mark; Rahal, Sarah (April 11, 2019). ''White Boy Rick' denied early release in Florida'. Detroit News. Retrieved 2019-05-12.
- ^Brand-Williams, Oralandar, Rick Wershe Jr. released from prison after more than 30 years, The Detroit News (July 20, 2020). Retrieved July 27, 2020.
- ^Alexander, Bryan (June 4, 2018). 'See Matthew McConaughey fail tragically as a dad in exclusive 'White Boy Rick' trailer'. USA TODAY. Retrieved 2018-06-12.
External links[edit]
Richard Wershe Jr., 'White Boy Rick,' was 14-years-old when the FBI enlisted him as an informant.
Richard Wershe Jr. was arrested in his home in 1988 with 17 pounds of cocaine. He was 17-years-old. Reporters and the police broadcast the young, baby-face all over the news with headlines that called him the leader of a drug cartel. Wershe, the police claimed, was a dangerous cocaine godfather known to his underlings as “White Boy Rick”.
Convicted murderers came and went while Wershe was behind bars for possession. “I told on the wrong people,” Wershe confessed.
That’s because White Boy Rick wasn’t a drug lord — he was an FBI informant. At the age of 14, the FBI taught Wershe how to deal drugs and planted him inside one of the city’s most dangerous gangs.
But when Wershe uncovered a police corruption problem that ended with the mayor of Detroit, the men who trained him cut him loose. Then they had him thrown in prison for life.
Richard Wershe Jr. Becomes An Informant
Click On Detroit/WDIV/YouTubeRick Wershe Jr. in prison.
“I was brought into this life by law enforcement,” Richard Wershe Jr. reported to Vice, “I was taught it, they left me alone, and a year later I’m busted and put in jail for life.”
The law enforcement to which he’s referring are the FBI agents who came to his door for his father in 1984.
White Boy Rick’s father, Richard Wershe Sr., wasn’t a man who lived entirely within the law. He raised his son and daughter alone in a Detroit slum overrun with crack addicts and gangsters. He made his living running scams and selling guns out of his own home.
The FBI, though, wasn’t there to send him to prison. They wanted information. They came with an envelope full of pictures and hoped that Richard Wershe Sr. would recognize the faces. Richard Wershe Sr. didn’t have any answers but his 14-year-old son, Richard Wershe Jr., knew every name.
The 14-year-old wasn’t a drug dealer or a gangster. Though he wasn’t an angel — he already started looting people’s homes for cash — Wershe Jr. had never touched cocaine in his life. He was just aware of what went on around him in his community, a streetwise kid, and the FBI was willing to pay to find out just how much he was aware of.
Wershe Jr.’s father saw this as an opportunity to keep food on their table. As Richard Wershe Sr. put it:
“I took the money. I wasn’t doing all that well at the time. And I thought it was the right thing – keep some drug dealers off the street and get paid for it.”
And to the 14-year-old Richard Wershe Jr., it was an adventure:
“What kid doesn’t want to be an undercover cop when he’s 14, 15 years old?”
That’s how Richard Wershe Jr. became the FBI’s youngest informant.
White Boy Rick Is Born
Click On Detroit/WDIV/YouTubeRick Wershe Jr. in court, shortly after his arrest.
Richard Wershe Jr. was good at what he did. He went above and beyond what the FBI asked him to do.
He took up with the Curry Gang, the foremost drug slingers in Detroit at the time, and made friends with dangerous criminals so that he could get better information.
The FBI, in turn, began to train the young Wershe Jr. on how to be a gangster. They taught him how to pedal drugs on the street. They even gave him money specifically to buy cocaine so that the FBI could use it as evidence.
To put a 14-year-old boy’s life at risk wasn’t exactly FBI protocol but “White Boy Rick” – as Wershe then began to call himself – was too useful to let go. According to FBI Agent John Anthony, at that time, White Boy Rick was the single most productive informant the FBI had in Detroit.
The FBI covered their tracks. On paper, they recorded White Boy Rick’s tips under his father’s name.
A 15-Year-Old Exposes Widespread Police Corruption
Wikimedia CommonsColeman Young, the Detroit mayor who was allegedly involved in the police corruption scandal exposed by Rick Wershe Jr.
White Boy Rick, though, was a little bit too good. Pretty soon he uncovered a conspiracy that ran through the whole city.
Rick began to see the corruption when a 13-year-old boy was shot by the Curry Gang and the Detroit police did nothing about it. Their chief of homicide, Inspector Gilbert Hill, deliberately diverted the investigation away from the gang leader, Johnny Curry.
White Boy Rick knew this was because Johnny Curry was connected to Detroit Mayor Coleman Young; in fact, the king of Detroit crime, Johnny Curry, dated the mayor’s niece Cathy Volsan. In Mayor Young’s city, to get Curry into trouble was dangerous for himself and bad for his business. Curry, Rick found out, had slipped Inspector Hill a $10,000 bribe.
BoogeyMan Ben/YouTubeInspector Gil Hill was a minor celebrity. This picture of him is a still from his role in the movie Beverly Hills Cop.
His information helped uncover one of the biggest corruption cases in police history. More than a dozen police officers were implicated.
Inspector Hill and Mayor Young, though, would walk away free. According to one anonymous FBI agent, the agency was ordered to let the mayor go. The order came down the pipe that the nation didn’t want to deal with another news story about a corrupt mayor: “Washington didn’t want another Marion Barry,” a government official who had recently been caught dealing crack.
The Hit On White Boy Rick
Al Profit/YouTubeNate Boone Craft, the convicted hitman who claims he was hired to kill Rick Wershe Jr.
The case had grown exponentially. The FBI was now involved in mayoral corruption. But they worried that if they took action on their findings, the agency would get wind of their all-too-young informant.
So the FBI left Richard Wershe Jr. to fend for himself. He was forced to find a way to navigate the streets and make ends meet without the FBI’s protection, which wasn’t easy. Though Rick didn’t know it, there was a price on his head.
Nate Boone Craft, a hitman with thirty confirmed murders under his belt, claims that Inspector Gil Hill offered him a small fortune to kill the teenaged boy who knew too much. Craft, years later, told reporters:
“I was told to kill White Boy Rick. He said, ‘125,000, I’ll make sure you get it as long as that boy is dead.’ His keyword, ‘Dead.’ … This came from Gil Hill’s mouth to me.”
Rick had already taken a bullet to the stomach from another Curry Gang member. The man who shot him had claimed it was an accident but Rick had his suspicions that there were people out to get him. He needed protection, and he needed money.
White Boy Rick only knew one way to do it. He did what the FBI taught him to do.
He sold cocaine.
A 16-Year-Old Drug Lord
Click On Detroit/WDIV/YouTubeRick Wershe Jr. in prison.
In Detroit in the ’80s, everyone knew when White Boy Rick was around. He might have been a pimple-faced teenager who struggled to pull off a mustache but he came out in style.
Rick went out in mink coats wrapped up with a belt made of solid gold and a diamond-encrusted Rolex on his wrist. He’d roll up in a white jeep he was too young to legally drive, with “The Snowman” emblazoned on the back.
Johnny Curry was history. Rick’s information had gotten the drug lord locked up behind bars and White Boy Rick began to take his place. He’d even taken his girlfriend, Cathy Volsan, the mayor’s niece.
Every drug dealer was impressed. One gang lord, B.J. Chambers, praised White Boy Rick’s climb up to the top:
“He rose all the way through the ranks. He did it just as big as me, the Curry brothers, Maserati Rick — whoever you want to name.”
The FBI had nobody to blame for this new drug lord but themselves. Agent Gregg Schwarz would later admit:
“We brought him into the drug world. And what happened? He became a drug dealer. And we’re surprised by that?”
A 17-Year-Old Criminal
White Boy Rick was still a few days shy of his 18th birthday when the Detroit police broke down his front door. They caught him with 17 pounds of cocaine. The police took White Boy Rick right to the media.
The baby-faced little white boy, the news said, wasn’t just a drug dealer. He was a kingpin. They put up pictures of a criminal hierarchy, and each one showed 17-year-old White Boy Rick at the top of the ladder with every dangerous, hardened criminal in the city listed as his underling.
It was a bit of stretch. White Boy Rick was certainly involved in drugs, and he definitely moved cocaine. But the news made him bigger than he was because the police were out for blood.
During his trial the judge had no sympathy. White Boy Rick was “worse than a mass murderer”.
Richard Wershe Sr. tried to get the FBI to help his son but they refused to say a word. Richard Wershe Jr. was sent to prison for life at 18-years-old.
A 48-Year-Old Up For Parole
Click On Detroit/WDIVRichard Wersher Jr. during his parole hearing.
It took 30 years for Richard Wershe Jr. to win his freedom. While the people he’d exposed were sent free, Wershe stayed behind bars and spent the bulk of his life in a jail cell.
It was journalism that saved him. In 2014, freelance writer Evan Hughes read Wershe’s outlandish claims about a conspiracy that had put him behind bars and started to look into whether they were true. When he followed up with the FBI, Hughes found out that Wershe was telling the truth.
Pandemonium followed. Hollywood went to work making a film version of White Boy Rick’s life, while an HBO documentary crew moved into the prison to film a tell-all about his story.
For the first time in 30 years, White Boy Rick’s name was back in the headlines – but this time, the real story was printed underneath.
White Boy Rick’s new fame changed his life. On July 14, 2017, just a few days shy of his 48th birthday, he was finally granted parole.
“I’ve lost 30 years of my life,” Wershe said during the parole meeting. “All I can give you is my word. I’ll never commit another crime.”
Rick Wershe Jr Daughter Keisha Morris Photos
It won’t be easy. Even now, the only trade Wershe knows is crime. From the moment he started high school, he was pulled away from a normal life and dragged into a life on the streets.
Rick Wershe Jr Daughter Keisha Morris Photos And Names
But Richard Wershe Jr. is ready to try. “All I can do is try to be the best man I can from this day forward,” Wershe says. “I can’t look back.”
Rick Wershe Jr Daughter Keisha Morris
Next, find out about the unjust convictions of Richard Glossip and of Lawrence McKinney, who was given $75 to make up for 31 years of wrongful imprisonment.