"White Boy Rick" Wershe [To be Released July 20]

[JVB]

The city of Detroit locked Rick away for life for a few kilos when those scumbags at the top [[Coleman's family, his chief of security, Ken Weiner, Sgt Harris, and coutless other corrupt cops were getting paid to protect hundred pound shipments of cocaine into Detroit. Those same corrupt mofos lied about Rick to protect their asses. Rick went to prison in 1988. Chief Hart, etc and etc finally got busted in 1991 with help from Rick from prison.

Kenneth Weiner <----wow I was surprised to see his name. I've got a pretty cool Weiner story.

My dad and his brothers use to have a precious metals refinery in Detroit [[and later, in Royal Oak). Their main customers were jewelry stores but they would also occasionally melt down gold for pawn shops - no doubt stolen jewelry that the shops knew they couldn't sell. One of their biggest accounts though was with Kenneth Weiner who they knew to be acting on behalf of Coleman Young.

He used to bring them gold Krugerrands to melt - apparently Coleman Young had a large investment in the illegal South African coins and he began trying to "liquidate" his investments as the Feds started to sniff around. The word was, Coleman was laundering some of his drug money by having Weiner fly out to Europe where Krugerrands were legal to buy, and bring them back to the US to be stashed for later. I guess the heat got to be too much and so my dads business was tasked with melting them for gold content.

They'd melted down plenty of shady gold before, but at some point they must have realized that there was a big difference between a stolen necklace that someone pawned and South African Krugerrands that the Feds were on the trail of, so they severed ties. I remember them being a little nervous for awhile about the possible repercussions of that decision but in the end nothing happened.

I think the biggest problem with Rick is he knew enough to hang the Mayor but played coy until the Mayor died. At that point he was useless to the Feds so he's been left to rot ever since. He should be let out though because he was convicted under the 650 Lifer Law, which was repealed. Most of the guys doing life for the same crime got out when it was repealed - he shouldn't be treated any worse than the other POS dope dealers that got out after 20-25 years for even more weight than he was caught with.

[Django]

Wow, good story JVB. I didn't know he was so deep in it, or up in it as it may be. Somebody must still need him to stay locked up.
Another sad story from the war on drugs.

[JVB]

Wow, good story JVB. I didn't know he was so deep in it, or up in it as it may be. Somebody must still need him to stay locked up.
Another sad story from the war on drugs.

Let me clarify, when I say Coleman was laundering some of his drug money, I don't mean for White Boy Rick - I mean the Mayor had his own dirty money to launder. Rick was just one of several drug dealers in Detroit that had ties to the Mayor and some of his people in the DPD.

The Mayor and his people were getting kickbacks from most of the higher level drug dealing that was going on in the city, and it was that money that was being laundered. Kenneth Weiner was the Mayor's "Launderer in Chief", and he set up several shell companies and front businesses on behalf of the Mayor which were used to clean a lot of the dirty money coming in.

Don't get me wrong, Rick was close to the Mayor's niece obviously, but I seriously doubt he ever had any direct dealings with the Mayor. Rick was just another mid-level drug dealer, who happened to be white and have a catchy nickname. But everybody in the game knew they had to "render unto Caesar" if they wanted to stay in business. That's just how crime operated in the city under Coleman Young.

[stromberg2]

Wow, that's just stunning....not really!

Stromberg2

[Django]

Gotcha JVB.

Ive told this story before but ill do it again.

It was about 1980 and we had two new families move into our suburban neighborhood of Brighton. They bought houses right next to each other. They were both Detroit Police but had retired in their 40s, one under some strange circumstances involving a stabbing at Autorama at Cobo [[the cop had a mint Trans Am he would put in the show). The other was a drug cop and his son was in my 5th grade class, Ill call him Scott. I remember one day in class while the crack epidemic was taking over the heroin trade in Detroit we were talking about how bad drugs are for you. Scott piped up that his dad was a narcotics officer with the DPD and that his father had a kilo of heroin in his closet and he had seen it. The houses they bought were pretty damn nice for what a cop would be underpaid for. They say everybody has their price, especially when your risking your ass in a city, for a city that was going down the drain. The temptation is just too much sometimes. The markup of drug prices is often 1000% from the jungle to the streets and yes I said one thousand percent not one hundred.

[Drexciya68]

Not to threadjack, but you're a fan of Drexciya eh?

I sure am. R.I.P. James..

[Drexciya68]

A story about Rick in today's Oakland Press -> http://www.theoaklandpress.com/artic...mode=fullstory

[Drexciya68]

Also a new website -> http://freerickwershe.com/Home_Page.html

[Bad Brains]

They should free Rick, and imprison those who used the teenager as an informant.
Why is he in prison longer than those he helped put in prison that were far bigger "traffickers" than he was?

The war on drugs is a joke.

[Drexciya68]

They should free Rick, and imprison those who used the teenager as an informant.
Why is he in prison longer than those he helped put in prison that were far bigger "traffickers" than he was?

The war on drugs is a joke.

Exactly, Bad Brains [[great band by the way).. A lot of people have been trying to save their own asses over the years. Though a lot more of the truth is known now than back when they railroaded him in the 1980s. He's helped put more crooked and corrupt city officials/cops [[including the Chief) than anyone else I can come up with. He's saved lives with the info he has provided. They [[those at the top in Detroit) tired to murder Rick on more than one occasion before he was sent away for life. Even one of those hit men who was responsible for numerous murderers along with drug dealing has been released after he snitched others out. Nate "Boone" Craft.. a hired killer is out walking the streets while a kid who was used by the FEDs is serving a life sentence? As I mentioned already Ex top cop William Rice is not charged with drug dealing and other serious crimes and he had the nerve to speak against Rick's release at one of his parole hearings years ago?? The FEDs have been after Rice for decades so why was he allowed to lie at Rick's hearing?

https://www.facebook.com/freewhiteboyrickwershe

[Drexciya68]

An update on one of the crooked and corrupt cops who have lied about Rick for years. Decades ago Rick exposed Bill Rice's role in a murder cover up involving relatives of then Mayor Coleman Young to the FEDs. Rice has went out of his way to provide false info and flat out lies in an attempt to keep Rick Wershe locked up and quiet. Rice deserves no less than LIFE for the lives he's ruined. http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/story/21...ted-of-perjury

[CountrySquire]

Does anyone know the address of the house Rick lived in at 11 and Evergreen? I lived in that area in the late 70s, curious if it was nearby my house.

[Drexciya68]

Does anyone know the address of the house Rick lived in at 11 and Evergreen? I lived in that area in the late 70s, curious if it was nearby my house.

I will get the exact address from Rick in a couple days when he calls. It was one of the houses in the turnaround on Berkshire.

Btw - A new article about Rick from the Oakland Press http://www.theoaklandpress.com/artic...mode=fullstory

[Drexciya68]

Btw - Rick didn't live out there til the later 1980s. He grew up on the east side in the Harper/Dickerson area.

[DaveyM]

This Sunday, February 1st, Channel 4 News in Detroit will begin airing a series of investigative reports on Rick Wershe's case. The first part will air at 11pm after the Superbowl.
Part 1 - Will be Sunday night at 11pm
Part 2 - Wednesday night at 11 pm
Parts 3, 4, 5 - to be determined
http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/l...-rick/31012636

[DaveyM]

"The Trials of White Boy Rick: A Detroit crime legend, the FBI, and the ugliness of the war on drugs.By Evan Hughes

Late on the morning of May 21, 1991, a small turboprop airplane descended into Detroit City Airport. Outside the perimeter fence of the small airfield on the city’s east side stood an auto repair shop, some forlorn houses, a shady motel.
The plane taxied to a remote corner of the tarmac, and a Lincoln Town Car pulled up nearby. Three men stepped down from the plane. Another man got out of the car to meet them. They shook hands, then got to work lugging a series of black duffel bags from the plane to the trunk of the Town Car. The bags contained 100 kilos of white powder.
The man in the Lincoln was named Jimmy Harris. He was a sergeant in the Detroit Police Department. And he was heading up a group of police who had agreed to provide an escort for a shipment of cocaine. As an extra precaution, he had given a secure police radio to his business partners in the plane so they could follow the movements of any cops who weren’t in on the deal—who were, in other words, clean.
The Lincoln pulled out of the airport and headed southwest beyond the city to the suburbs. Several police vehicles, including marked cruisers, followed close behind and saw to it that the cargo safely reached its buyers. Later that day Harris arrived at a hotel room in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn to meet with the drug trafficker who had hired him. He had Harris’ payment ready: $50,000 in cash for the cops’ services.
Unbeknownst to Harris, however, a special agent of the FBI, Herman Groman, was listening to the conversation on his headphones from the adjacent room. He had been working with a team of about 100 people to prepare this sting down to the last detail: the plane full of FBI agents disguised as drug smugglers. The buyers—also FBI—waiting to receive the goods. The cocaine in the duffel bags—a kilo of the real stuff on top, in case a wary cop asked for a taste, and 99 more of flour. Hidden cameras and microphones had recorded everything that transpired on the tarmac. A surveillance aircraft had even tailed Harris’ car. Now a special camera with microwave technology was pressed against the wall, and it showed Groman’s team a moving image of what was happening in the next room in real time.
Over a period of months, Harris and his associates had taken payoffs to supply police protection for five deliveries of suitcases filled with $1 million in drug money to be laundered in Detroit—in reality, cut-up paper with a few layers of genuine bills on top. And now he was completing the deal on the second of two large shipments of purported cocaine. Harris knew the man who was paying him off as Mike Diaz, a heavy hitter from the Caribbean, but he too, of course, was actually an FBI agent, real name Mike Castro.
After he gave Harris the money, Castro convinced him to stay for a celebratory drink and excused himself to get some ice from the machine in the hall. A minute later there was a knock at the door. Harris opened it and was greeted by a SWAT team.
The sting, which the FBI had dubbed Operation Backbone, netted 11 police officers and several civilians. It was probably the most extensive probe of police corruption ever undertaken in Michigan, Groman says, and the bust made national news.
It was clear to everyone that the FBI must have had help. Someone credible had to have convinced Harris and his partners that they could trust “Mike Diaz,” a stranger looking to enlist them in a major illegal plot. Federal agents rely heavily on informants and criminals who decide to cooperate, particularly when the suspects being targeted are savvy people who understand how investigations work—such as big-city cops. The name of the man who set Operation Backbone in motion was a serious surprise in Detroit. And his saga, which has never fully been told before, shines a light on what happens to informants after their identity has been revealed—especially when they’ve implicated powerful officials.
That man was Richard Wershe Jr., a legendary criminal figure in Detroit and an enduring symbol of the height of the cocaine era. Before he was imprisoned in 1988, two years before Operation Backbone began, Wershe drove a white Jeep with the words THE SNOWMAN emblazoned on the rear, though he had no driver’s license. He wore tracksuits and chains, mink coats, a belt made of gold, a Rolex encircled with diamonds. But the source of his novelty was simpler, and it was immediately apparent in the mugshot taken after the arrest that ended his career: The person in the picture was barely capable of growing a mustache, with baby fat still filling out his cheeks. He was 17 years old. And he was white. According to an east side kingpin I spoke to, Wershe “was the only white boy that ever sold dope in the neighborhood at that time.” To this day, most of Detroit knows Wershe only by his nickname: They call him White Boy Rick. In “Back From the Dead,” Detroit native son Kid Rock rapped, “One bad bitch, I smoke hash from a stick/ Got more cash than fuckin’ White Boy Rick.”
I first learned of Wershe’s story last year and quickly became fascinated. I spoke to a number of police officers and federal agents who had figured in the case in one way or another. With some surprise, I discovered that while most of them remembered the story in detail, few of them had any idea what had happened to Wershe since the Reagan administration. It was as if the legend of White Boy Rick had swallowed the real person at its center.
In fact, Wershe was more or less where people had last seen him in the late 1980s: sitting in a prison cell in Michigan. This made Wershe not only a local icon but also an anomaly, and something of a mystery, in the world of criminal justice. In May 1987, when he was 17, Wershe was charged with possession with intent to deliver 8 kilos of cocaine, which police had found stashed near his house following a traffic stop. He was convicted and sentenced under one of the harshest drug statutes ever conceived in the United States, Michigan’s so-called 650 Lifer law, a 1978 act that mandated an automatic prison term of life without parole for the possession of 650 grams or more of cocaine. [[The average time served for murder in state prisons in the 1980s was less than 10 years.) The governor who signed it into law has called it the worst mistake of his career, and the statute has since been rolled back, opening the door for a wave of convicts to be released. Wershe is the only person sentenced under the old law who is still in prison for a crime committed as a juvenile.
The question was why. After all, Wershe had by all accounts been essential to the success of Operation Backbone. At Groman’s request, he had introduced Castro to an ex-girlfriend of his, Cathy Volsan, portraying him as a big-time dealer. Volsan was well-connected with Detroit police in suspicious ways—she bit the hook, and the sting was underway. Wershe not only kept the phony story going with Volsan but continued to vouch for Castro to others involved in the protection scheme. “The undercover agent’s very life,” Groman later testified, “at times rested solely in the hands of Mr. Wershe.” Mike Castro told me, “Without him, the case wouldn’t have happened.”
And yet, for all the help he provided, Rick Wershe is still behind bars, while offenders convicted of more serious crimes have long since been freed. Was he there in spite of the assistance he had given to federal agents—or because of it?
From the beginning, Wershe was one of the most confounding figures in the history of Detroit crime. Starting at age 14, he somehow managed to ingratiate himself into the entourage of Johnny “Little Man” Curry, one of the most prominent drug lords in his neighborhood on Detroit’s collapsing east side. At 17, he bypassed Curry—who was now in jail—and began importing cocaine from major Miami suppliers himself. He also took up with Curry’s wife. Nobody quite knew how he had managed to pull all this off—and then after his arrest, the story got even stranger.
Just after Wershe’s trial, his father, Rick Wershe Sr., agreed to several interviews with reporters. To each one, he told a story that sounded unbelievable. Both he and his son, he said, had worked as informants for the FBI for years, since long before Rick Jr. landed in legal trouble.
“They used me,” he said, “and they used my son.” The Wershes had put themselves at great risk, he claimed, to help authorities gather important evidence of drug dealing on the east side. “And now they turn around and fuck us over,” he told Detroit Monthly.
It was a baffling assertion, coming at a strange time. If it were true that White Boy Rick had been working with the FBI all along, why hadn’t his lawyers mentioned it in the trial? Rick Sr. was not the most credible figure—he was facing his own criminal charges, for possessing illegal silencers found in a raid and for threatening an officer outside the courtroom during his son’s trial. The FBI told reporters that, per agency policy, they would neither confirm nor deny any relationship with the Wershes. An assistant U.S. attorney said he very much doubted the father’s claim. “I would have been told,” he said, speaking to the Detroit News. Even Wershe’s lawyer threw water on the story. “No way” was Wershe helping the feds, he told Detroit Monthly. “Maybe his dad, OK. But not the son.”
But Wershe himself has continued to insist over the years that he was a valuable teenage informant who fed the authorities intelligence on high-profile criminals. He claimed that one of the FBI agents who had handled him as an informant was a man named James Dixon. When a reporter asked Dixon about this notion not long after the trial, he refused to comment on the subject, though he did say that any suggestion that the law had betrayed Wershe was “ridiculous.” Dixon resigned the same year and never said another word publicly about the case.
Today, Dixon lives in a Detroit suburb and fishes in tournaments. When I called him recently, he spoke tentatively at first and asked repeatedly about me and what I was writing. He seemed more at ease after I told him that I had spoken with several colleagues of his from the time. We began by discussing a major east side drug gang that Wershe claimed to have helped bring down beginning at age 14. Dixon mentioned in passing “an informant” he had worked with, without giving a name.
“Was that informant Richard Wershe?” I asked.
There was a long pause. “Yes,” Dixon said.
Over the past year of speaking to Wershe and to federal investigators, police, defense attorneys, and prosecutors, former Detroit kingpins, and others—and reading a cache of FBI documents—I have been surprised to discover just how much of what Wershe has claimed about his case is true. Before he was old enough to drive, Wershe was instrumental in bringing down some of Detroit’s most notorious drug figures.
But ratting on cocaine dealers was one thing, and implicating public officials quite another. Decades later, Wershe is left wondering if he should never have spoken out." - http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...nt.single.html

[DaveyM]

“For anyone who lived in Detroit in the ’80s, the drug dealer known as White Boy Rick remains legend. But the true story of Rick’s epic rise and fall, as exhaustively reported by Evan Hughes, reads like a lost Elmore Leonard story. Essential, infuriating, wildly entertaining. Free Richard Wershe now!”
- Mark Binelli, Rolling Stone staff writer and author of Detroit City Is the Place to Be: The Afterlife of an American Metropolis"
The Trials of White Boy Rick - https://atavist.com/stories/the-tria...hite-boy-rick/

[DetroitBoy]

This is real nice. Dredge up the memories of this low point in Detroit's history by giving airtime to a convicted criminal. Young people need to hear this kind of story because they have enough positive role models already right?

Typical trash from the buffoon doing this interview. Let's hope CNN picks up the story so it can be broadcasted worldwide with the tagline "Detroit on the upswing but can it ever free itself from its long history as a drug trade economy? ". The people in this area are their own worst enemy.

[DaveyM]

Actually Rick's case has as much to do with police corruption in Detroit as it does a juvenile caught with drugs nearly 30 years ago. The last thing Rick Wershe wants to see is for any young kid to go down the wrong path he did. He doesn't glorify selling drugs or the lifestyle he led for a few short years as a teenager. "Convicted drug trafficker Richard "White Boy Rick" Wershe Jr., who is trying to get paroled after more than 26 years behind bars, says he welcomes a movie about his life if it's gets out the truth.
"Listen, if it will get the truth out there, I'll love it," he told Deadline Detroit during a phone interview from prison on Wednesday afternoon.
His comments came just days after it was reported on Friday that Universal Studios has secured the rights to a true-crime story about Wershe to produce a movie. "Oblivion" director Joseph Kosinski would direct.
The rights are for an article written by journalist Evan Hughes, "The Trials of White Boy Rick."
Wershe, 45, who is currently being housed in the Oaks Correctional Facility in Manistee in Northern Michigan, said he hasn't yet been approached about helping the folks with a movie. He says he's willing to help.
"But if they want to glorify this white kid in the ghetto who sold all these drugs, then I don't want anything to do with it."
He said the real story is that a task force comprised of the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and Detroit Police, lured him into the Detroit drug trade as a young teenager in the 1980s so they could use him as an informant. Then the task force walked away when it was done with him. He was eventually busted at age 17 and sentenced to life without parole. He was later re-sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, but has been denied parole.
He says the story comes down this:
"Law enforcement got me involved in drugs, they left me involved in drugs when I stopped working for them. I was blinded by the money and the women and the lifestyle in general. I was kid. I was impressionable."
Wershe currently has a case in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids where he's trying to get the court to push for a fair parole hearing before the state, something he feels he hasn't gotten." - http://deadlinedetroit.com/articles/...l#.VM5cRmYo7cc

[Meddle]

“For anyone who lived in Detroit in the ’80s, the drug dealer known as White Boy Rick remains legend.

Hardly. Mitch Ryder, Bob Seeger, Jimi Hendrix and many civic leaders are legends, not a common street punk.

[DaveyM]

Hardly. Mitch Ryder, Bob Seeger, Jimi Hendrix and many civic leaders are legends, not a common street punk.

Rick admits that he, at times, acted like a "punk" as a teenager. Just as many young teenagers do. But regardless of that, the media helped create the myth of "White Boy Rick" and many from the Detroit area who were around in the 1980s are still familiar with that nickname. Good or bad, I bet most have heard of "WBR" more than they have Mitch Ryder. It's that false image that is part of the reason why he's been locked up this long. That and Rick's involvement in exposing the crime of lowdown crooked cops like Gil Hill and others.

[DaveyM]

"Criminal defense attorney Steve Fishman wrote this column in response to a column by Deadline Detroit's Allan Lengel, who insisted that the Michigan Parole Board is committing a crime by keeping Richard "White Boy Rick" Wershe Jr. behind bars for 26 years. Wershe was convicted of cocaine trafficking as a teenager and was sentenced to life without parole under a law that mandated the unparolable sentence if caught with more than 650 grams of cocaine. The law was later changed and he was re-sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.
Fishman authored a letter to the administration of Gov. Jennifer Granholm on behalf of a group of people pushing for clemency for Wershe. Wershe was never a client, and Fishman did not know him while he was on the streets. Fishman said it was just the right thing to do to advocate for his release.

By Steve Fishman
To my knowledge, Rick Wershe is the only person in Michigan still serving a life sentence for possession of over 650 grams. Everyone else, including at least one of my clients who was also a teenager at the time of the crime, has received parole since the drug statute changed.
Those of us who are old enough can recall the media hoopla when a 17-year old white kid with the media-friendly nickname "White Boy Rick" was alleged to be the capo di tutti capi of all the drug lords in Detroit in the mid-to late 80s.
As a lawyer who represented many of the guys who were in fact the top dogs in the drug business in those days, the notion that a 17-year old kid - black, white, or purple - could have been the boss of those grown men is so ridiculous as to deserve no further comment. And to suggest, as the Parole Board spokesman did in the article, that Rick Wershe's situation is comparable to other lifers - most of them serving sentences for violent crimes - is an insult to our collective intelligence.
Given the number of people supporting parole for Rick Wershe, including police officers, federal agents, prosecutors, and lawyers, the only possible explanation for his continued incarceration is a lack of guts on the part of the Parole Board.
It is long past time for the Board to recognize, as so many people involved in law enforcement already have, that the time has come to grant him a parole." - http://www.deadlinedetroit.com/artic...k#.VJNVpWYo7IU

[DaveyM]

Meddle? I'm guessing you have never met Rick and what you think you know about him is what you have seen from the media [[much of it wild exaggerations and lies) over the years? People should take that into consideration when viewing your comments. "Aguirre feels that Wershe has suffered for his fame. “Other colleagues on the board—and I have great respect for all of them—all remember him as White Boy Rick. He has that image that was placed upon him.” It’s a theory that suggests a strange inversion of the typical effect of race: Wershe’s celebrity had been a function of his novelty as a teenage white kid who had somehow skipped across Detroit’s racial boundary and insinuated himself into the ranks of drug barons who were overwhelmingly black. And this very celebrity earned him a longer term behind bars than nearly all the others eventually served. I was somewhat taken aback when B.J. Chambers offered unprompted his view of Wershe’s case: “I think—just my opinion—I think Rick is caught up in reverse racism.” Wershe, he went on, “was the only white boy that ever sold dope in the neighborhood at that time.” Steve Fishman, the defense attorney to ’80s Detroit kingpins, says, “If White Boy Rick had been anything other than white, nobody would ever have heard of him.”" - An excerpt from 'The Trials of White Boy Rick' [[Atavist) by Evan Hughes.

[DaveyM]

This is a letter to the MI parole board from a former Detroit cop. One who is not afraid to tell the truth.

[DaveyM]

If Rick's case was just about him being some sort of common "street punk" I doubt that Channel 4 News would now be doing a 5 part series on him nor would there be a Hollywood movie in the works. Hopefully this added attention results in Rick being released as soon as possible. No teenager drug dealer deserves to spend his whole adult life behind bars for mistakes they made as a juvenile. FYI-

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Page 1 [[of 4) of a letter to the Mi Parole board from a 35 year Veteran of the FBI: