In short
The Detroit case of Richard “White Boy Rick” Wersh Jr., who became an FBI informant at age 14 during the 1980s crack era, later turned into a major cocaine dealer, was convicted under Michigan’s “650-lifer” law, and spent decades in prison despite cooperating with federal investigations.
Guest backgrounds
This episode is hosted by Josh, Chuck, and Jerry (Stuff You Should Know). No external guests are interviewed in the provided transcript.
Key claims
The FBI recruited Wersh off the books and paid him about $30,000 over two years; his informant tips helped lead to major raids (including one yielding about $200,000 in cash and cocaine). Detroit officials and police corruption allegedly protected the Curry drug network (connected to Mayor Coleman Young via Kathy Bolson). After Wersh was dropped, he allegedly escalated to wholesale cocaine dealing. He was sentenced to life without parole at 17 for 650+ grams of cocaine, and later helped bring down 11 crooked cops in “Operation Backbone,” but still faced repeated parole denials.
Notable examples
Curry twins (Johnny “Little Man” and Leo “Big Man”); Gil Hill (Detroit homicide commander); the drive-by killing of 13-year-old Damian Lucas; Wersh’s arrests in 1987 (8 keys found under a neighbor’s porch; later 5 kilos and guns); Operation Backbone’s undercover setup; parole denials; release in 2017 and later Florida re-incarceration.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe True Story of White Boy Rick
1:00 to 1:14
Discussion about Rick Wersh's life as a teenage FBI informant.
“Zach, nice vacation spot, but without T-Mobile 5G home internet, it's scary here.”
The True Story of White Boy Rick
2:05 to 3:20
Discussion about Rick Wersh's life as a teenage FBI informant.
“who if you have not seen the movie starring, oh God, what's the guy's name?”
Rick's Early Life and Environment
3:20 to 4:25
Exploration of Rick's upbringing and the socio-economic climate of Detroit.
“When everybody was so gung ho about just lock them up, lock the drug dealers up and go ahead and lock up the drug users while you do it, too.”
The Drug Scene in Detroit
4:25 to 5:38
Insight into the drug operations and criminal elements in Detroit during the 80s.
“And like you said, this was the east side of Detroit.”
Rick's Family Dynamics
5:38 to 6:50
Discussion on Rick's family and his father's influence on his life choices.
“It was their stronghold headquarters that they sold crack out of, manufactured crack out of.”
Rick's Initial Interactions with the FBI
6:50 to 8:00
How Rick became involved with the FBI after identifying local criminals.
“But they basically said that that Richard Wersh Sr., he was a hustler and he had a fascination with money.”
Becoming an Informant
8:00 to 9:50
Rick's decision to become a federal informant at age 14.
“And so that's what Terrence Bell, he was kind of the first guy to do that.”
Friendships in the Drug World
9:50 to 14:00
Rick's relationships with drug dealers and the dynamics of his new life.
“They were interested in the Curry twins.”
White Boy Rick: The Informant
14:00 to 17:44
Learn about how a 14-year-old became an informant for the FBI.
“And he actually became an off the books informant for the FBI in 1984, age 14.”
Life of Luxury: Rick's New Reality
17:48 to 23:00
Explore how Rick's life changed after becoming an informant and the money he made.
“just in case someone tries the door, just in case I need to wake up fast.”
Show all 18 chapters
Consequences and the Turning Point
23:00 to 28:00
Discuss the consequences of Rick's informant activities and the cover-up of a crime.
“Yeah, I mean, I think what the takeaway is is that ultimately his dad said, all right, all right, all right.”
The Rise of White Boy Rick
28:00 to 35:34
Learn about White Boy Rick's transition from informant to prominent drug dealer.
“So he got into the real drug trade after the FBI dropped him.”
The Rise of White Boy Rick
35:38 to 36:25
Learn about White Boy Rick's transition from informant to prominent drug dealer.
“just in case someone tries the door, just in case I need to wake up fast.”
The Fall and Sentencing of White Boy Rick
36:40 to 42:03
Explore the legal troubles and harsh sentencing faced by White Boy Rick.
“if nate booncraft can't kill him we're just going to do it the old-fashioned way and arrest him and just lock them up.”
The Sentencing of White Boy Rick
42:03 to 46:34
Learn about the harsh sentencing and the early years of White Boy Rick's life in prison.
“If you were convicted of that, you went to prison for life.”
Operation Backbone and Its Fallout
46:34 to 47:49
Explore Operation Backbone and the impact it had on law enforcement and organized crime in Detroit.
“It was good enough for us to reward you.”
Struggles for Parole and Legal Battles
47:49 to 51:35
Discover the challenges White Boy Rick faced in securing parole and the legal battles that ensued.
“And everyone else that had been impacted by that law ended up free within six years.”
Life After Prison and Continued Struggles
51:35 to 53:10
Find out what happened to White Boy Rick after his release and the ongoing issues he faced.
“And you would think that would be the end of the story, Chuck, but it was not, was it?”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Ice Cube's Big 3 basketball is heating up. Before the World Cup final, tune in to Big 3 this Sunday. Reigning MVP Michael Beasley and the defending champion Miami 305 play a must-win game against the undefeated Dallas Power, led by Coach Nancy Lieberman. Then Dwight Howard and the L.A. Riot, coming fresh off a win, look to knock off the undefeated Chicago Triplets, led by Coach Dr. J. The game played the way you love. Watch live Sunday on CBS at 2 p.m. Eastern, 11 a.m. Pacific, and catch replays Monday on BET. Presented by iHeart. Apple Vacations, where your story starts.
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1:06Chuck Bryant:Zach, nice vacation spot, but without T-Mobile 5G home internet, it's scary here. Don't open it. Relax. I ordered T-Mobile 5G home internet with same-day delivery powered by DoorDash. Nothing to be afraid of. We're saved. Get T-Mobile 5G home internet delivered the same day. Powered by DoorDash. Just$35 a month with auto pay and a voice line. Plus taxes and fees. Same day delivery for most internet eligible customers. See if it's an option during checkout. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
1:45Chuck Bryant:Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff You Should Know. our ongoing fascination with Detroit edition. Yeah, that's right. This is very Detroit. I was going to say adjacent, but it's like firmly in Detroit. It's not even adjacent. Centered even. Because we're talking about white boy Rick, who if you have not seen the movie starring, oh God, what's the guy's name? Who played him? Matthew McConaughey? No, he played the dad. Matthew McConaughey is older than we are. I know. I was like, did they dress him up like a teenager? Yeah. How do you play a 14-year-old?
2:24I can't remember the kid's name, but I have not seen that movie. There's also a bunch of documentaries, but in particular one that's pretty good about this kid in the 80s, Rick Wersch, who was an FBI informant at the age of 14 in secret.
2:41Chuck Bryant:Yes. And this is completely 100 % true. Like, this has been vetted, thoroughly researched, and his claims, although they seem like, okay, this is just some guy talking, you know, who's in prison, just keeping himself from getting bored. Nope. Like, basically everything he's ever said about his time as an FBI informant and a teenage drug runner has been confirmed. So, this is an amazing true story. And it's also a sad true story in a lot of ways, too, because this guy lost a significant portion of his life to really stupid drug laws at the height of the war on drugs. When everybody was so gung ho about just lock them up, lock the drug dealers up and go ahead and lock up the drug users while you do it, too.
3:27Chuck Bryant:And it was it was a bad time to be caught with kilos of coke. I can tell you that. Yeah, after he had been almost induced into this lifestyle by the FBI as an informant. And then when that was, as you'll see, when that was taken away, I think it's hard for a kid to give up that lifestyle because that's his life at that point. Yeah. And then, you know, turned on him and there was cover ups and it was Detroit, Detroit. Yeah. So I think to describe how the FBI induced him to do it, you can kind of say that they put a bunch of cash in his hand. Yeah. Popped his collar, turned around by the shoulders and shoved him out on the street.
4:06Chuck Bryant:That's basically how they induced him to essentially become a member of the East Detroit drug scene, like drug supply scene. He was rolling with like as big as you get, essentially, at the time. All right. So let's go back, I guess, to his birth in 1969. He's a couple of years older than me. And like you said, this was the east side of Detroit. When he was six, this is Rick Wersh Jr. His parents separated. His mom moved out to the Burbs. And then generally, he and his sister Dawn lived with their dad, Matthew McConaughey, Richard Wersh Sr. And it was a time where the auto industry was disappearing.
4:48and Detroit, you know, the kind of familiar story of Detroit is that it fell into sort of violence and drugs and crack came along and white flight happened in a big, big way. So Rick and Don and their father were a bit of an anomaly as a white family that kind of stayed where they were on the Detroit's east side at the time.
5:08Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and one reason why is because this was their neighborhood. White boy Rick's grandparents lived directly across the street from him. So like these were his dad's parents. It was like a family community. There were other people who were sticking around. But yeah, they were definitely outnumbered by the people who were moving to town to essentially take over Detroit. And there was a market just ripe for being taken over. And it was. There was this one group called the Chamber Brothers. They moved from Arkansas and became some of the biggest dealers in town. So much so that at one point, they controlled a formerly opulent apartment building.
5:43Chuck Bryant:It was their stronghold headquarters that they sold crack out of, manufactured crack out of. It was a big, big operation. And it was just right there in the middle of Detroit because this is one of the most lawless times in the history of that city, entire history. Not only was it the drug people, the cops were about as dirty as they come at the time, too. Yeah, for sure. So Rick's dad was kind of a schemer, had various get rich or make a little bit of money, quick scams going on here and there. He worked as a manager of a gun store as well and bought and sold guns out of his house, including taking his son to gun shows when he was just a kid.
6:28But the result of that was that his dad knew and had FBI guys as his customers. He had agents that he was friendly with because they would buy guns from him. And so he ended up like this was sort of the the entree into what would end up being his son's work with the FBI is that he just knew these guys as customers.
6:49Chuck Bryant:Yeah. And one thing I saw in there was an Atavist article that was really, really good. But they basically said that that Richard Wersh Sr., he was a hustler and he had a fascination with money. That was his big focus in life was to make money. And his son, Rick, definitely adopted that from him. Like he definitely got that from his dad. So he didn't have a lot of options to make money at the time aside from the drug trade. But he didn't really get into that, at least not at first. But he was still doing things like breaking into houses and making money that way. So, I mean, like he was definitely a street smart kid, but he just wasn't involved in drug trafficking at the time.
7:33Yeah. His sister Dawn took up a crack habit and started dating a guy named Terrence Bell and Terrence took. And as you'll see, a lot of people took white boy Rick under their wing. I think he was, you know, I've seen interviews. He seems like he was a pretty affable, likable guy because it seems like he made friends everywhere he went and like had these sort of older, you know, these are rough guys, obviously, but older guys taking him under the wing and sort of saying like, hey, here's how you rob a house. Here's how you do this. And so that's what Terrence Bell, he was kind of the first guy to do that.
8:04Taught him how to rob houses. Taught him how to bust cars. There was this one story where someone stole their family car and they went after them. And Rick at 14, like, used his sister's 22 that she kept in her purse to shoot at these guys. Didn't hit anybody, but it was, you know, he was like in the mix at this point.
8:24Chuck Bryant:For sure. I can tell you that at 14, I had not ever shot at anybody. I had not. I had shot a gun because we had a friend who was a cop who had a cabin in the mountains. And so he would take us up there to, like, shoot target practice occasionally. But that's that was my only gunplay as a child. Right. You never turned it on the guy. No, no, no. OK. Yeah. Same here. Yeah. So let's see. Spring of 1984. Rick Jr. is 14 at the time. And the FBI, I guess, who were friends with Senior, Richard Senior, were like, you know, this guy is living in East Detroit. East Detroit is a hotbed of this new crack epidemic.
9:06Chuck Bryant:Let's go see if this guy can give us some info because we're friendly with him. So they showed up at the Wurst house in East Detroit and sat down with Wurst Senior, Richard Senior, and basically said, we just want any information you can have. We have a bunch of pictures here. Can you ID any of these people that we've been following but don't know who they are? And Richard Warsh was like, I don't know who those people are. I'm sorry. I can't help you. But Rick Jr. piped up and he's like, oh, well, this guy is Johnny Curry or that guy's Big Man Curry and just started pointing people out. And the FBI suddenly was like, well, how much does this kid know?
9:45Chuck Bryant:Let's find out what he can tell us. And that's kind of where the whole thing kicked off. Yeah, for sure. They were interested in the Curry twins. Johnny was little man, and I think you mentioned big man. That was Leo, the two brothers. Even though they were twins, I guess one might have been a little bigger than the other. I'm not sure. I guess. I couldn't make heads or tails of that either. Yeah, but they were the main drug guys on the east side of Detroit at the time. And they were also interested, the FBI and the Curry gang, because Johnny Curry, who was a little man, was married to Kathy Bolson, now Kathy Bolson Curry, or then, who happened to be the niece of the mayor of Detroit at the time, Coleman Young.
10:29And so, you know, we have a situation building here where there's clear kind of cover-ups and corruption already happening because the niece of the mayor is dating like a known drug guy. And the feds are like, you know, we don't have any allegiance to these guys, so we want to bust them.
10:49Chuck Bryant:Sure, exactly. They wanted to take down the crooked cops, right? So that connection between City Hall and the police department and the East Detroit drug trade all ran right directly through Kathy Volson, right? She was the thing that connected them. But after that, you know, that initial connection, the other kind of tethers started to form between those two groups. And before you know it, I mean, City Hall was in the police department were in bed with the drug trade in Detroit pretty quickly. One of the guys who was a major player in this, his name was Gil Hill. Yeah. He was the homicide commander, the guy in charge of all homicides in Detroit.
11:31Chuck Bryant:And this was a time when Detroit had something like 700 homicides a year. Now it's like 165. Like that is a mind boggling number of murders in Detroit, considering also that its population had plummeted, too. Right. This guy's in charge of all of those. His name's Gil Hill. And he also popped up elsewhere, too. Right. Yeah. I mean, strange but true. He was, if you've ever seen Eddie Murphy's great, great film, Beverly Hills Cop from 1984, he was the inspector Todd. He was the one that was always yelling at Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop. And you might think, oh, that's pretty cool. And it is pretty cool.
12:12But Gil Hill was not a good dude, as we'll see. He took payoffs and tried to put hits out on this kid. And, yeah, so he was in on the bad stuff.
12:23Chuck Bryant:Big time. Big time. And he also seems to have been inoperative for the mayor, from what I can tell. Although I believe the mayor, nothing ever stuck with him. I don't even think he was ever indicted. He seems to have been well aware of all this, especially because the person who the cops in City Hall and the criminals connected through was his niece, who apparently he raised like a daughter. So at the time, this kid, he's just Richard Worsh Jr. Ricky, I think everybody called him. He's 14. And the FBI is sitting in his living room and they're starting to show him pictures now. Not his dad. His dad's just kind of like, OK, son, we'll have a seat and show these guys what you want or what you know.
13:07Chuck Bryant:And so being 14, Rick said that he was he was like, wow, these really important authority figures are paying attention to me. Let's see what I can do. And he just started pointing people out. and the FBI said, we're going to do something a little unorthodox. I'm sure that's how they put it and made scare quotes and rolled their eyes at the time. I think they said wacky. Right, exactly. I've just got the wackiest idea. Yeah. But what if you, 14-year-old Rick, became a federal informant for us, the FBI? What do you think? Would you like to do that? And Rick's dad, being the amazing father figure that he was, was like, I don't know, son, It's up to you.
13:52Chuck Bryant:You're 14. Do you want to be a federal informant and put your life on the line every time you walk outside of the house? And Rick Jr. said, yes, yes, I do. And he actually became an off the books informant for the FBI in 1984, age 14. Yeah, he was a CI. He was not legally allowed to do something like that, obviously. So the FBI, like you said, he kept it off the books. He was never listed as the informant, but they had to have something listed. So they said, well, can we use you, Dad? Can we use your name and have everything kind of flow through you? And he said, sure, that sounds good to me. So Richard Sr.
14:31was approved in June 1984, technically as the informant, but it was really his son. and pretty soon, you know, because I said Rick was a likable kid and, you know, made friends easily, he made friends with a guy named Rudell Curry who was the little brother of the twins, Johnny and Leo. Little Boo was 23 years old and they became buddies. Like he was a 23-year-old with a 14-year-old friend who like, you know, it was kind of like, hey, Spike, hey, Spike, like one of those deals. He had this kid following him around and like they love cars and they love motorcycles and they love kind of that lifestyle.
15:09And so before you know it, they were fast friends and Boo invited Rick to hang out, hang out with them like ride around in the car, go to the roller rink. And apparently the Johnny, one of the twins, is a guy who came up with the name White Boy Rick.
15:23Chuck Bryant:Yeah. One of the things that I gathered about White Boy Rick was that even at 14, 15, 16, he could hang with older people and ultimately eventually be treated kind of like an equal. Yeah. I mean, which again, like just stop and think about that. Like it's just crazy in and of itself, let alone the fact that this kid is actually a federal informant, right? That was his role. That was his purpose for making friends with Boo Curry and hanging out with the Curry gang was to get information to give to the FBI. That's why he showed up. And like you said, he was so affable. and could hang that they opened their organization up to him.
16:05Chuck Bryant:And he would be in some really high-level meetings. Like, he knew a lot of stuff that he kind of gathered over the next three, four years. For sure. Maybe that's a good time to take a break. What a setup. Yeah, I think so. Especially if you've never heard about the story. Like, can you imagine hearing this for the first time? I know. I envy those people. All right. So we'll be right back after this and talk about where it's headed next.
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18:50All right. So little white boy Rick is hanging out with his his older friends. They're doing bad stuff. And he's, you know, he's feeding information to the FBI that they're using, like kind of on a smaller scale, some kind of kind of lower level crimes. I wouldn't say petty crimes, probably above that level, but nothing huge. But over a couple of years, like they are feeding him money, like you said, in Act One. Like I think they said over the first couple of years, they paid him about$30 ,000 off the books to, you know, to use to buy cocaine sometimes and to, you know, to make sure he could kind of live that lifestyle.
19:27So before you know it, little 14-year-old white boy Rick has got a fur coat and a Rolex. And he has cars, even though he's 14 years old and can't legally drive.
19:38Chuck Bryant:But he still drove them. He had a white Jeep, and the snowman was stenciled on the back. Yeah, he's still into cars. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, he has a thing for cars, it turns out. But yeah, he made like$30 ,000 over the next two years, which is almost$100 ,000 in today's dollars. Do you remember how much money you made between the ages of 14 and 16? I made$3.25 an hour as a busboy. Yeah. That was minimum wage. So probably$40 a week or something. Okay. So I estimated I maybe made something like the neighborhood of$2 ,000 over those years. Oh, okay. This is like... So you were hustling too? No, I mean, I just had jobs here or there.
20:23Chuck Bryant:And I think if you put it all together, it would probably equal that over two years. Yeah, probably so. $1 ,000 a year? I mean, I think both of us liked having our own money as kids. For sure. So we didn't, like, my parents didn't give me money. I don't think your parents probably gave you money either, right? I had something of an allowance, but it dwindled as I got older. Like, by the time I was 30, it was almost nothing. Yeah, but, like, I wanted to buy, I wanted to go to concerts for$7, and I wanted to buy records, and you wanted to buy cigarettes? I wanted to buy cigarettes. I wanted to buy Slim Jims and Twix and Kingsbury non-alcoholic beer.
20:57It's very empowering to make money as a kid. You know, I think that's not completely gone away, but I don't think teenagers have jobs these days like we did back then.
21:08Chuck Bryant:No, but you just said a mouthful, Chuck. Just having whatever money you make, what did you say, 40 bucks a week? Yeah, probably something like that, you know, when I was early on. Right, okay, and you were empowered by that, by walking by getting that paycheck, cashing it. I got 40 bucks, I'm 15 years old. Imagine having$10 ,000 at the end of a week. I would have had a Rolex. And you're 15 years old. Yeah. And a snowman Jeep. That's how off the rails this kid's life suddenly got. Because the FBI had pushed him into this life and said, go, go. You know, here's some money. Go buy a mink coat. Go buy a Rolex.
21:44Chuck Bryant:And this kid could do it. And, I mean, just the fact that he is still alive, wasn't killed back then, and didn't manage to kill anybody or anything like that. Like, he kept it together enough that, like, it actually turned out about as good as it could, although we'll see that it turned out really rotten. But I don't know. I'm not quite sure how to put what I'm saying. It just seems like this could have gone so wrong so many different ways just from feeling, like, emboldened and powerful and strong from all that money he had at that really tender age. Yeah, for sure. And there was no one, as far as I could tell, in the FBI that was like, hey, maybe we maybe shouldn't let this kid do this.
22:30No. Because he's a child.
Read the full transcript
22:31Chuck Bryant:Exactly. And his dad wasn't saying that either. Yeah. So I want to say the impression I have of his dad is that he was not a bad guy. And he does seem to regret a lot of the decisions he didn't make back at this time. So I don't think he was like just a bad dude who didn't care. seems like he was pretty involved in his son's life. The problem was his son's life included, you know, driving a Jeep that said the snowman on back and selling cocaine for the FBI. Yeah, I mean, I think what the takeaway is is that ultimately his dad said, all right, all right, all right. That's right. I'm really curious to see this movie now.
23:10I wonder how McConaughey plays this dude.
23:11Chuck Bryant:I'm sure exactly like you just said. Because he does not scream Eastside Detroit. No, he really doesn't. All right. So you said something about him avoiding getting killed, which is fairly remarkable. But he did get shot at least once in November of 84. He was shot in the stomach by a Curry gang member who said it was an accident. But Rick was like initially was like, hey, they found out who I am. That's why I got shot. The girlfriend of the guy who shot him called 911. And before the ambulance could get there, there were some other gang members who showed up, put in the backseat of the car and he didn't know, like, are they taking me to the hospital or going to take me out and dump me in the woods?
23:52Like, what's going on? And perhaps so had it not been for that ambulance showing up and blocking the driveway and saying, like, give that kid to us now.
24:01Chuck Bryant:Yeah, he I guess that had a really like a big chilling effect. He was ready to quit. And the FBI showed up at his hospital room and said, just keep going. They would have killed you if they actually did know. So they wouldn't have let you go in an ambulance. You would be dead already. So just keep going. And I guess he was like, I don't know. And they're like, got 10 grand right here. And he's like, all right, you guys, you know me so well. And he got back to it. Yeah. And not only that, they said, you can actually use this, Rick. Right. Like, you got street cred now. And not many people, especially your age, have been shot and lived to tell about it.
24:37So, like, you're kind of a cool kid now in that gang. And he kind of was. I mean, it worked out that way. Yeah. I think in February of 85, after he'd been doing this a little while, is when they got their first really big raid, almost at Sting. But he gave them information that led to about$200 ,000 in cash when they raided a house, some video equipment, obviously a lot of cocaine and guns, like all the things you would expect to find.
25:05Chuck Bryant:I saw they just had two punch bowls full of cocaine just sitting out on the table. Nice. Punch bowls are big. That kind of house. That's a lot of cocaine. It really is. Yeah, there was an FBI agent named John Anthony who said that Rick was the most productive informant the agency had in Detroit at the time. The whole city, not just East Detroit. This is a 15-year-old kid. I mean, that's a huge bust to get$200 ,000 in$1985 and punch bowls of cocaine. So he becomes such an amazing asset, Chuck, that at one point the Curry gang, a bunch of other big drug dealers from Detroit, were going to see the Marvin Hagler, Tommy Hearns fight because Hearns was the pride of Detroit.
25:50Chuck Bryant:And this is a title middleweight fight, I believe, in 1985. The Hitman, right. So all these Detroit drug dealers were going to watch the match. And they invited White Boy Rick. and the FBI got him like a high quality fake ID and paid to send him to Vegas, paid for his plane ticket, paid for his hotel, gave him some walking around money and said, go, 15-year-old, go to Las Vegas with a group of high-level drug dealers and just find out what you can. And he did. Yeah. Yeah, it's kids in Vegas at the Tommy Hearns fight. Yeah. uh yeah i mean the story just gets crazier um after he gets back from vegas uh part of the curry gang uh engaged in a drive-by shooting um uh it accidentally killed a 13 year old boy named damian lucas and the cops basically made this investigation go away and rick was like i it was starting to kind of dawn on him uh because of this personal tie that the curries had with the mayor that like, wait a minute, like this is now getting covered up on a large scale because they've killed this kid, this 13 year old, a couple of years younger than me.
27:08And Johnny Curry gave Beverly Hills Cop a guy, 10 grand as a bribe to cover it up. And Rick found out about this.
27:16Chuck Bryant:Yeah, he was riding around in a car with Johnny Curry, who had the, who had Gil Hill, Commander Gil Hill on, oh, what is it called when you have it on Speaker? He had him on speaker and they were talking about covering it up for the Curry gang. And he did like that was a that was a big, big turning point in this whole story. The murder of Damian Lucas. Yeah, for sure. So the FBI, you know, things are getting pretty hairy. They cut ties with him just before he turned 16. Richard Sr. was now off the books as the, I guess, fake informant in June of 1986. and you know it seems pretty clear that they're probably worried like hey this has gone far enough uh if this gets out that we've done this it's not going to look great for us as feds and this is when you know i kind of remarked earlier about how well now this kid is in this lifestyle right uh and he's having the the cord pulled on him like the rug pulled out from under him and so rick you know does what a kid that age and that you know not quite yet fully formed brain would do, which is, hey, I'm going to keep doing this stuff.
28:23So he got into the real drug trade after the FBI dropped him.
28:28Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that is, it's disputed whether that happened after or before they dropped him. So like during, as he was an FBI informant. And it seems like it's probably, there's a really good chance that it actually had happened. And that one of the reasons the FBI dropped him was because his actual drug career was taking off quite nicely. And they were Like we just this kid's getting too hot rather than being like, we're going to bring in from the cold kid. Like we're going to move you somewhere because we we did this to you. We need to give you set you up with a normal life. They just walked away like dusting their hands off and left him to this life in East Detroit as a what he eventually became a very prominent drug dealer.
29:09Yeah. And, you know, all the connections he made were valuable connections as, you know, his his I don't want to say legit, but I guess he was a legit drug dealer.
29:18Chuck Bryant:Yeah. One of the guys, the main guys who kind of got him involved was a friend he made through those connections with the Currys, was a wholesale cocaine guy named Art Derrick. He was a suburban dude who was operating some drug planes that were coming up into Miami. And Rick became friends with him and his son. and he, you know, the kid 16 years old at this point starts buying as much as like 50 kilos at a time as a cocaine wholesaler himself is what they call a weight man. Like he's not operating a ring of like dealers or anything like that, but he's bringing in the large amounts and selling that stuff.
29:58Chuck Bryant:Right, which he, just by that, by virtue of that, he automatically made less money. I saw FBI agent estimate he was probably making$5 ,000 off a key. But he was selling tons and tons of keys, so he was making, like, really significant money. But you could also take a single key and turn it into a million dollars, broken down into, like, and converted into$5 hits of crack, if you were willing to do all that. That's what the Chamber Brothers did, those guys who took over the apartment building. They made an estimated$55 million a year doing that. But I mean, like White Boy Rick was later implicated as being one of the people who supplied the Chamber Brothers with their cocaine.
30:39Chuck Bryant:Like he became a wholesale Coke dealer. That's not necessarily true, but he definitely did supply plenty of people with their cocaine as a wholesale Coke dealer. And one of the things that he didn't do, this to me really stands out. He hung with the Currys, but he never became a Curry soldier. He never became a Curry drug dealer. He had his own operation essentially going on where he sold keys to other people. And he was just basically an associate of the Currys, which I thought was super cool. Like he just kept his own identity rather than just being absorbed into the Curry gang. Yeah, well, he ended up getting some of the Curry brothers in trouble just from all the information they had fed, you know, the FBI over the years.
31:24They were starting to make arrests, I think, in 87. They indicted at least the twins and some other people in their organization. And they pleaded guilty at the time to drugs and racketeering, obviously. They kept it quiet about the city government at that point. They were still, like, not selling out, like, the mayor and the corrupt cops. And the city was like, great, like, we need to keep it this way. And I think that's when we found out about Gil Hill, Beverly Hills Cop Gil Hill, trying to get this guy, Nate Boonecraft, to assassinate little white boy Rick. I think he offered him$125 ,000, and he tried to kill him a couple of times.
32:07Chuck Bryant:Yeah. You know that you've arrived if you're 16 years old and you're not going to be murdered. You're going to be assassinated. That means you know a lot. And the guy from Beverly Hills Cop was the one making the call. Yeah. It's like, who would ever believe this, right? Yeah. So, yeah, Nate Boonecraft later admitted to trying on two different occasions to carry out that hit. So Rick is trying to capitalize on, you know, the Currys now suddenly being not completely out of the picture, but at least some of the main guys being rounded up and kind of filled the void, the drug void that was left by them.
32:46And he starts dating Kathy Bolson. She was 24. He was 17. He was making about 30 grand a month and has three kids at this point.
32:57Chuck Bryant:Yeah. I don't know if they were all with her. I don't think they were. But I think his firstborn, Keisha, was. And the fact that Kathy Bolson started dating him, you said that, you know, he was a legit drug dealer, as legit as a drug dealer can be. helped legitimize him. Like, she is a, and she was, especially at this time, a big, big deal in East Detroit. And all of a sudden, like, this essentially, like, East Detroit royalty, like, criminal royalty comes down and is like, I'm gonna start dating you now, white boy Rick. And she essentially, like, just put that seal of approval on him that just kind of really gave him a certain luster in that area.
33:41Yeah, and And presumably did not get arrested herself for, you know, having sex with an underage kid.
33:48Chuck Bryant:No, no. I think they had other things in mind. But even still, she would not have gotten arrested because she had Detroit PD keeping tabs on her as protection because the mayor had ordered the DPD to constantly surveil her to make sure she was OK. Not to catch her with anything. In fact, to look the other way on it. So she could essentially do anything she wanted to, and it would have been fine for her. For sure. All right. Well, let's take our second break, and we'll finish up with the saga of White Boy Rick right after this. Thank you.
34:48Then Dwight Howard and the L.A. Riot, coming fresh off a win, look to knock off the undefeated Chicago Triplets, led by Coach Dr. J. The game played the way you love. Watch live Sunday on CBS at 2 p.m. Eastern, 11 a.m. Pacific, and catch replays Monday on BET. Presented by iHeart. Apple Vacations, where your story starts. The July Savings Event from Apple Vacations is here. Book by July 23rd and save up to$400 off your flight and hotel package to Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, Hawaii, or Europe. From all-inclusive escapes to bucket list adventures, Apple Vacations makes it easy to create memories with the people who matter most.
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36:39Chuck Bryant:okay chuck so the party ends on may 22nd 1987 the detroit police decide that rick needs to go down if nate booncraft can't kill him we're just going to do it the old-fashioned way and arrest him and just lock them up. And they found 30 grand in cash in his car. They also found eight keys of cocaine that was stashed under a neighbor's porch that Rick said, yeah, that's mine. He was 17, so he's still a juvenile, and he got arrested with eight keys and 30 grand in cash. He made bail, and then a few months later in October, he was arrested again, this time with five kilos of cocaine and guns, drug paraphernalia, the whole thing.
37:25Chuck Bryant:Even worse, some of this stuff was found in his dad's house and his grandparents' house, which means they could have gone to prison, lost their houses. Like they really had them. If they didn't have them in May, they really had them in October, right? And so around about this time, the name White Boy Rick becomes much more widely known, not just in East Detroit, but in Detroit as a whole, and then very quickly across the nation because it was such a crazy novelty that there was this 17-year-old white kid who was essentially the only white kid in East Detroit's drug trade and seemed to be pretty powerful.
38:03Chuck Bryant:And in fact, the media, in particular Chris Hansen,
38:09Chuck Bryant:really, what's the word I'm looking for? I don't know. Broadulently inflated the importance of white boy Rick, like right out of the gate just because it was so novel. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's the media and that's what the media does. So they, yeah, it was very sensationalized. You know, this stuff obviously happened, but it's like, hey, let's run, you know, another sort of injustice basically was like, hey, let's run with this story because this is a kid and it'll, you know, there weren't clicks at the time, but like it'll get views or whatever on our station and in our newspaper. So it was a big sort of sensational trial when he finally was brought forward the following January.
38:52And at the beginning, the feds met with Rick and his dad and his mom are like, hey, if you want to testify and turn state's evidence against this everybody, basically, you can do that. And we're going to, you know, we can help you out. And he was like, dude, I would get killed so fast your head would spin. So no thank you.
39:13Chuck Bryant:Right. Yeah. So he passed on that. He was like, I'm going to I'm going to see what I can do with the jury. He actually felt pretty good about his chances because they hadn't found the eight keys on him. They found it under a neighbor's porch. Like there were all sorts of extenuating circumstances. The problem was he had the full force and weight of Detroit City Hall and the Detroit Police Department against him. In every back channel you can imagine in the city at that time, they were working to get him convicted as badly as he could be convicted. The media wasn't helping. Somebody, I think Chris Hansen again, he started in Detroit.
39:49Chuck Bryant:He would go on to be the to catch a predator guy. They showed an org chart which showed all of the city's biggest drug dealers. And guess who was at the very top? The kingpin they portrayed as the guy who supplied all of the big drug dealers in Detroit. Why? No other than White Boy Rick. Because remember, they were trying to really kind of make this even more sensational than it already was. So they just said, well, this guy's actually the guy. Can you believe that? And that did not help his chances either because he started to be seen as if there's a crack epidemic in Detroit, this guy is ground zero for the problem.
40:31Yeah, for sure. They did not disclose in the trial at any point that he was a federal informant, that he was a CI. guy. He said later, like, you know, Rick's talked a lot about this over the years, but he later claimed that he was, that the lawyers that they assigned him, the public defenders, were connected to the mayor, who obviously was kind of trying to make all this go away and cover up for everything on his family side, and was like, hey, lock this kid away, basically, and make sure these lawyers make sure that happen. One of those, you know, that hasn't been proven, But this is what Rick said.
41:06Makes a lot of sense. And one of those lawyers that was on his quote unquote team went on to fight his parole in 2003. So that kind of says it all. It really does.
41:18Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that's not good defense right there. The judge who convicted him said that he was worse than a mass murderer during his sentencing, I believe. And even if the judge hadn't wanted to do this, she had no choice. He was given life in prison without parole at age 17. And the reason why the judge had no choice is because about 10 years earlier, Michigan had passed a law called the 650 Lifer Law, where if you were caught with 650 grams or more of cocaine, which is about one and a half pounds or a little under half of a kilo, you got a life sentence without parole. No questions asked. If you were convicted of that, you went to prison for life.
42:08Chuck Bryant:And this kid was 17 and got that sentence and was told that he was worse than a mass murderer. So things were not looking very good for him when he was sentenced after he was convicted. Yeah, for sure. It was a period in our country where mandatory minimums were kind of popping up all over the place. For what it's worth, the governor who signed that one said it was the greatest mistake of his career. probably didn't make Rick feel much better. But after the trial, Matthew McConaughey is giving interviews, and he's basically saying, like, hey, we were federal informants. My son at 14 was a federal informant.
42:47But at this point, like, this wasn't disclosed in the trial or anything, so everyone thinks it's just this dad kind of ranting this crazy talk. No one's taking him seriously. They didn't have any kind of credibility. And in 1991, in prison, Rick starts working for the feds again from prison in an operation called Operation Backbone.
43:09Chuck Bryant:Right. One of the FBI agents who had worked with him before, I think he was the first one who turned Rick into an informant at age 14. His name was Greg Schwartz. He came to him years later for this Operation Backbone and said, we've been listening in to the Currys for years now. And we're it's quite clear that they are in bed with the Detroit Police Department and City Hall. And it's time for us to take them down. We need your help. So he and Kathy Volson were they'd broken up, but they remained friendly and she would visit him in prison pretty regularly. So because she was the thing that everything centered on, he basically used her to infect the drug and City Hall connection with a DEA agent, I'm sorry, FBI agent who went undercover and carried out like this highly successful operation backbone.
44:08Yeah, it was a big, they got 11 cops. Other people obviously were arrested, but they got, you know, 11 crooked cops out of that. One of them was, or I mean, several of them were like kind of in the Mayor Young's inner circle. I think his favorite bodyguard was implicated. His brother-in-law, who was Kathy Bolson's father, was implicated. And she was even implicated at first and initially charged, but the charges on her were dropped.
44:37Chuck Bryant:Yeah, for sure. One of the things I saw, Chuck, that one of the cops, the Detroit cops did, was asked to do as part of this sting, was to carry an assault rifle around airport security so that it could be taken aboard a plane to be used in a hit in Chicago. And he did it. Like, that's how dirty the cops were. And the FBI was the one they were the ones setting him up because this undercover agent has totally infiltrated this group because white boy Rick vouched for him over and over again and introduced him to Kathy Wilson Curry, who kind of tacitly vouched for him, too. It was about as great of an operation as you could hope for if you're an FBI person.
45:19Chuck Bryant:The mayor almost came very he came very close to going down to he didn't. And yet, despite all this cooperation, despite all the stuff he had done for the FBI up to this point, he could not get paroled to save his life. No, I think, you know, you said it went about as well as it could. I think it quite didn't because, or didn't quite, because they would have loved to have gotten the mayor and they would have loved to have gotten the higher-ups in the police department. They ended up getting, you know, rank-and-file cops. They didn't get Gil Hill. They had a literally, like Rick testified, like, hey, I heard a phone call where that guy from Beverly Hills Cop agreed to cover up that kid's killing from the drive-by shooting, and he was never charged.
46:07So, you know, they didn't get the big fish, but they certainly got enough people. I think this was not too long after the Mary and Barry scandal, smoking crack as a mayor, like a high-profile mayor, and I think there was a lot of just like, hey, we don't need another scandal of another high-profile mayor in this country, like, doing the wrong thing.
46:28Chuck Bryant:Right. Right. So Greg Schwartz, actually, he showed up. He said, OK, you helped us out. It was good enough for us to reward you. So we're going to move you to a medium security prison in Florida. And we're going to basically put you under witness protection under an assumed name. And while he was there in Florida, this was, I think, up to the 2000s. So he was in Florida for a while. He was just doing his thing. And remember, we talked about how much he loved cars. Well, he was caught running or at least participating in a car theft ring, a stolen car ring from prison. He was helping coordinate the whole thing.
47:08Chuck Bryant:And that's tough to do and not get caught because eventually your conversation is going to be overheard or listened to and you're going to get in trouble. And that's exactly what happened. They got him on racketeering charges in 2005. Yeah, so that lands him back in Michigan in prison. And this whole time, white boy Rick is in prison for, you know, decades at this point. And everyone else that he was, had been, you know, associating with was getting out. Johnny Curry got out in 99. That hit man that tried to kill him twice and admitted to murdering 30 people did 17 years and then cooperated with the cops.
47:49that mandatory minimum that sent him the 650 lifer that was overturned by the Michigan Supreme Court in 1998. And everyone else that had been impacted by that law ended up free within six years. But Rick stayed in prison. He just kept getting denied parole. I think the first one was in 2003. He asked, like, you know, some of the feds that he was working with to help him out and they wouldn't do it. one of the guys that he had worked with, a guy named Herman Groman, basically was like, all right, I'll tell them about Operation Backbone and he helped us out with that, but not the stuff from when you were 14.
48:25Chuck Bryant:Yeah. The problem is, is like none of that was ever going to help because white boy Rick had broken a really big rule by ratting out on cops. He was smart enough to not rat out his drug dealer friends, but he definitely ratted out on the cops. and the cops went to great lengths to make sure he stayed in prison to make an example out of him and to punish him too. And so in a really unusual move, a bunch of Detroit police officers went to his 2003 parole hearing and basically just lied, lied, lied about what a horrible criminal he was, like what a terrible effect he had on Detroit and how he really needed to stay in prison.
49:04Chuck Bryant:and he got denied, got denied again in 2008, and he got denied again in 2012, too. Yeah, that Greg Schwartz, the Fed, this time actually wrote a letter saying like, hey, he did a lot of stuff with us, actually. It wasn't just Operation Backbone. That Damian Lucas murder, he tried to help us out with that, that 13-year-old kid who got killed. and he said, you know, we never disclosed this stuff because he was a kid and we would have been exposed and embarrassed that the federal government was working with a kid in this capacity. They rejected that one too, even though he finally had someone willing to vouch for him.
49:44And until 2013, there wasn't a lot of, I mean, aside from just, you know, the earlier time when he actually got sent to prison, it had really quieted down about, you know, white boy Rick. Like no one kind of knew who he was. And then in 2013, that there was a guy named Seth Ferrante who was an incarcerated journalist. He wrote a column at The Fix that reported a lot of this stuff. And then that was picked up by Evan Hughes, who wrote that Atavis article in 2015 that you were talking about that we read. And that was like, that was it. All of a sudden it was fully out there. Like he didn't even get to go to his dad's funeral.
50:22His dad died while he was in prison. And he has like six grandchildren at this point in his in his 40s, which is remarkable. And he's like not met these kids at this point.
50:33Chuck Bryant:No. So one thing that makes it like really kind of gets across how how just under the thumb of of the Detroit Police Department, this kid was still decades on a judge. Judge Dana Hathaway, I think she was the original judge in his trial. She threw out the life sentence as a judge, right? This wasn't something she did in her leisure time. Like she officially threw out his life sentence and prosecutors appealed and won. So he had his life sentence like was upheld. What, 30 years later. And Hathaway even went on the record saying that this whole thing was very fishy. Finally, two years later, he's granted parole.
51:19Chuck Bryant:This is 13 years after the last person who was given a life sentence under that Michigan 650 lifer law had already been let out. He was the only one. And his incarceration continued for 13 more years. He got out in 2017, age 47. And you would think that would be the end of the story, Chuck, but it was not, was it? No. No, he gets that parole and probably or at least maybe had something to do with those movies that we were talking about. The documentary in the Matthew McConaughey movie, because certainly high profile enough to like bring his name back into the forefront. And then people start asking questions and stuff like that.
51:59But he had to stay or I guess got resentenced from the prison sentence in Florida for that stolen car stuff. So he's back in jail in Florida. He was, you know, bouncing back and forth. Finally released from there in July of 2020. I think he was 51 at the time and was like, I need some money. I need some restitution. He sued the feds, of course, and he didn't get anything.
52:23Chuck Bryant:No, the judge said the statute of limitations had run out in 2006. And he's like, well, I couldn't really say anything while I was in jail because I would have gotten beaten up on a daily basis by the guards. and they said, sorry, pal, like none of your very legitimate suits against the federal government are going to be able to be tried. So apparently he's working on his own documentary project about his life too with hip-hop director Hype Williams. Yeah, I worked with Hype back in the day. Oh, yeah, is he related to Freedom Williams? I have no idea, but Hype was one of the biggest names in the game back then.
53:01Oh, yeah. And I'll tell you off mic. Okay. Some other stuff.
53:05Chuck Bryant:I can't wait to hear this. Okay. Well, since I want to hurry up and end this episode because I want to hear what Chuck has to say about Hype Williams, I think it's time for Listener Mail.
53:18Instead of Listener Mail, we're going to give issue one last, well, not one last, but another reminder about our voyage, our Stuff It Sea voyage aboard the Valiant Lady of Virgin Cruises, which will take place October 2nd through 7th. Where are we going? We're going from New York City to Bermuda and we're going to be doing our live show and we're going to be with our buddies from Stuff They Don't Want You to Know and Stuff Mom Never Told You and we're going to be doing like other events on board.
53:46Chuck Bryant:It's going to be a lot of fun. Yeah. You can go to virginvoyages.com slash stuff at sea and start booking passage today. That's what they call it on the high seas, booking passage and come float around with us for five days. It'll be fun. That's right. Can't wait. Can't wait. And we also can't wait to hear from you via email, which you can send to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
54:57We'll be right back. by iHeart.
54:59Chuck Bryant:Apple Vacations, where your story starts. The July Savings Event from Apple Vacations is here. Book by July 23rd and save up to$400 off your flight and hotel package to Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, Hawaii, or Europe. From all-inclusive escapes to bucket list adventures, Apple Vacations makes it easy to create memories with the people who matter most. Start today at AppleVacations.com or contact your trusted travel advisor. Apple Vacations, where your story starts.
55:53Chuck Bryant:laughs, and danger. Don't miss the new series, Ride or Die, now streaming only on Prime Video. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.
From the publisher
Would you believe that Detroit’s crack epidemic in the mid-80s was overseen by one 16 year-old white kid who supplied all the coke? No? Well, that’s not quite true, so okay. The actual story is even more nutso than that.
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