White Boy Rick

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. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:35Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:45Josh Clark?

  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.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. This is very Detroit. I was gonna say adjacent, but it's like firmly in Detroit. It's not even adjacent.

• 2:03Josh Clark?

  Centered even.

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Uh, because we're talking about white boy Rick, who, if you have not seen the movie,

• 2:11Speaker 02

  starring, oh God, what's the guy's name who played him?

• 2:13Josh Clark?

  Matthew McConaughey?

• 2:14Speaker 02

  No, he played the dad. Matthew McConaughey is like-

• 2:17Josh Clark?

  That makes a little more sense.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  Older than we are.

• 2:19Josh Clark?

  I know. I was like, did they dress him up like a teenager?

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. How do you play a 14-year-old? Uh, I 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 eighties, Rick Wersh, who was an FBI informant at the age of 14.

• 2:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  In secret.

• 2:40Josh Clark?

  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, um, has been, 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 him up, lock the drug dealers up,

• 3:24Josh Clark?

  and go ahead and lock up the drug users while you do it, too. Um, and it was, uh, it was a bad time to be caught with kilos of coke, I can tell you that.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, after he had been, um, 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, uh, I think it's hard for a kid to give up that lifestyle, because that's his life at that point.

• 3:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  Uh, and then, you know, turned on him, and there was cover-ups, and it was Detroit, Detroitin.

• 3:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So I think to describe how the FBI induced him to do it, you can kind of say that, uh, they put a bunch of cash in his hand.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:02Josh Clark?

  Popped his collar, turned him around by the shoulders, and shoved him out onto the street. That's basically how they induced him to essentially become a member of the, uh, East Detroit drug scene, like drug supply scene. He was rolling with like, as big as you get, essentially, at the time.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  All right, so let's go back, I guess, to his birth in 1969. He's close 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 in 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 plight happened in a big, big way. So Rick and Dawn and their father were a bit of an anomaly as a white family that

• 5:04Speaker 02

  kind of stayed where they were on the Detroit's east side at the time.

• 5:07Josh Clark?

  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, 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. It was their stronghold headquarters that they sold crack out of, manufactured crack out of.

• 5:50Josh Clark?

  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.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. So Rick's dad was a kind of a schemer, had, you know, 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 like taking his son to gun shows when he was just a kid. But the result of that was Is that his dad knew and was, you know, had FBI guys like 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 um his son's work with the FBI is that he just knew these guys as customers.

• 6:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And one thing I saw um in a, there was an Atavist article um that was really, really good. But they basically said that um that Richard Wersh senior, 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, um at least not at first. But he was still doing things like breaking into houses um and making money that way. So I mean, like, he, he was definitely a, a street smart kid, but he just wasn't involved in, in drug trafficking at the time.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, his sister Dawn um 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 uh white boy Rick under their wing. Um, I, 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, um, 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. Um, and so that's what Terrence Bell, he was kind of the first guy to do that. Taught him how to rob houses, uh, taught him how to bust cars. There was this one story where uh someone stole their family car and they went after them.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  And Rick, at 14, like, used his sister's 22 that she kept in her purse to shoot at these guys. Uh, didn't hit anybody, but it was, you know, he was like in the mix at this point.

• 8:24Josh Clark?

  For sure. I can tell you that at 14, I had not ever shot at anybody.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  Uh, 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.

• 8:42Josh Clark?

  Right. You never turned it on the guy?

• 8:45Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 8:45Josh Clark?

  Okay. Yeah, same here.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:47Josh Clark?

  Um, so let's see, spring of 1984, uh, Rick Jr.'s 14 at the time. And, um, the FBI, I guess, who were friends with, uh, Senior, Richard Senior, were like, you know, this guy is living in East Detroit. East Detroit is a hotbed of this new crack epidemic. Let's go see if this guy can give us some info because we're friendly with them. So they showed up at the Wersh house, uh, in East Detroit and sat down with, uh, Wersh 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 Wersh, um, was like, I, I don't know who those people are. I'm sorry, I can't help you.

• 9:33Josh Clark?

  But Rick Jr. piped up and he's like, oh, well, uh, this guy is, um, Johnny Curry or that guy's Big Man Curry, um, and just started pointing people out. And the FBI suddenly was like, well, how much does this kid know? Let's find out what he can tell us. And that's kind of where the whole thing kicked off.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. They were interested in the Curry twins. Um, Johnny was Little Man, and I think you mentioned Big Man. That was Leo, the two brothers. Uh, even though they were twins, I guess one might've been a little bigger than the other. I'm not sure.

• 10:03Josh Clark?

  I guess. I couldn't make heads or tails of that either.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, but they were the main drug, uh, guys on the east side of Detroit at the time. And they were also interested, the FBI, uh, in the Curry gang because, um, Johnny Curry, who was, uh, Little Man, was married to Kathy Volson, now Kathy Volson Curry, or then, who happened to be the niece of the mayor of Detroit at the time, Coleman Young. And so, um, you know, we have a situation building here where there's clear kind of, uh, 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.

• 10:49Josh Clark?

  Sure, exactly. They wanted to take down the crooked cops, right? So that, 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 the other kind of tethers started to to 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. Uh, one of the guys who was a major player in this, his name was Gil Hill.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:27Josh Clark?

  He was the homicide commander, the guy in charge of all homicides in Detroit. 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 of murders in Detroit, considering also that its population had plummeted too, right?

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:46Josh Clark?

  This guy's in charge of all of those. His name's Gil Hill. And he also popped up elsewhere too, right?

• 11:52Speaker 02

  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 the Inspector Todd. Uh, he was the one that was always yelling at Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop. And, uh, you might think, oh, that's pretty cool. And it is pretty cool. But Gil Hill was not a a good dude, uh, as we'll see. He took payoffs and tried to put hits out on this kid and, um, yeah, so he was, he was in on the on the bad stuff.

• 12:23Josh Clark?

  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. Um, 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.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:47Josh Clark?

  So, um, at the time, this kid, he's just Richard Wersh 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, okay, son, we'll have a seat and show these guys what you want or what you know. And so being 14, Rick said that he was, he was like, wow, these really important authority figures are paying attention to me.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:17Josh Clark?

  Uh, let's see what I can do. And he just started pointing people out and the FBI said, we're gonna do something a little unorthodox. I'm sure that's how they put it and made scare quotes and rolled their eyes at the, at the time.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  They said, wacky.

• 13:31Josh Clark?

  Right, exactly. I've just got the wackiest idea.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:34Josh Clark?

  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, he was, was like, well, I don't know, son, it's up to you. 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, aged 14.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was a CI. Uh, he was not legally allowed to do something like that, obviously. So the FBI, uh, like you said, he kept it off the books. He was never listed as the informant, um, but they had to have something listed. Uh, so they said, well, can we use you, dad? Uh, can we use your name and have everything kind of flow through you? And he said, sure, that sounds good to me. Um, so Richard Senior was approved in June 1984, uh, technically as the informant, but it was really his son. And pretty soon, you know, cause I said Rick was a likable kid and would, you know, made friends easily. He made friends with a guy named, uh, Rudell Curry, who was the little brother of the twins, Johnny and

• 14:48Speaker 02

  Leo. Um, little Boo was 23 years old and they, they became buddies. Like he was a 23 year old with a, with a 14 year old friend who like, you know, it was kind of like, hey, Spike, hey, Spike, like one of those deals. Uh, he had this kid following him around and like they loved cars and they loved motorcycles and they loved kind of that lifestyle. And so before you know it, they were fast friends and Boo invited Rick to hang out. Hang out with him, like ride around in the, in the car, go to the roller rink. And apparently the Johnny, the, one of the twins is a guy who came up with the name White Boy Rick.

• 15:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah. One of the things that I gathered about a 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.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:36Josh Clark?

  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, to give to the FBI. That's why he showed up. And he, like you said, he was so affable and could hang that, um, they, they opened him. They opened their organization up to him and he would be in some really high level meetings. Like he knew a lot of stuff, uh, that he, he kind of gathered over the next three, four years.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  For sure. Uh, maybe that's a good time to take a break. What a setup.

• 16:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think so.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  Especially if you've never heard about this story. Like, can you imagine hearing this for the first time?

• 16:24Josh Clark?

  I know. I envy those people.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  All right. So we'll be right back after this and talk about where it's headed next.

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• 20:10Speaker 02

  All 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, um, kind of lower level crimes. I wouldn't say petty crimes, probably above that level. But nothing huge. Uh, but over a couple of years, um, like they are feeding him money. Like you said in act one, uh, like I think they said over the first couple of years, they paid him about $30,000 off the books. Um, to, you know, to use to buy cocaine sometimes and to, uh, you know, to make sure he could kind of live that lifestyle. So before you know it, little 14 year old white boy Rick is got a fur coat and a, and a Rolex and he's, he's,

• 20:55Speaker 02

  he has cars even though he's 14 years old and can't legally drive.

• 20:59Josh Clark?

  But he still drove them. He had a white Jeep and, um, the snowman was, um, stenciled on the back.

• 21:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's still into cars.

• 21:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. He has a thing for cars, it turns out. But yeah, he made like 30 grand over the next two years, which is almost a hundred grand in today's dollars. Do you remember how much money you made between the ages of 14 and 16?

• 21:22Speaker 02

  Uh, I made 325 an hour as a busboy.

• 21:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  That was minimum wage.

• 21:28Josh Clark?

  I estimated.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  Probably 40 bucks a week or something.

• 21:31Josh Clark?

  Okay. So I estimated I maybe made something like the neighborhood of $2,000 over those, those years.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 21:39Josh Clark?

  This is like.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  So you were hustling too?

• 21:41Josh Clark?

  No, I mean, I just had jobs here or there. And I think if you put it all together, it would probably equal that over two years.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, probably so.

• 21:49Josh Clark?

  A thousand dollars a year?

• 21:49Speaker 02

  I mean, I think both of us liked having our own money as kids.

• 21:52Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  So we didn't like, my parents didn't give me money. I don't think your parents probably gave you money either, right?

• 21:58Josh Clark?

  Uh, I had something of an allowance, but it dwindled though, as I got older, like by the time I was 30, it was almost nothing.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, but like I wanted to buy, I wanted to go to concerts for seven bucks and I wanted to buy records and, uh, you wanted to buy cigarettes?

• 22:12Josh Clark?

  I wanted to buy cigarettes. I wanted to buy Slim Jims and Twix and, uh, Kingsbury non-alcoholic beer.

• 22:18Speaker 02

  It's very empowering to, uh, make money as a kid, you know, I, I think that's not completely gone away, but I don't think teenagers have jobs these days like we did back then.

• 22:28Josh Clark?

  No, but you just said a mouthful Chuck, just having whatever money you make, what'd you say 40 bucks a week?

• 22:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, probably something like that, you know, when I was early on.

• 22:38Josh Clark?

  Right, okay, and you were empowered by that, by walking, by getting that paycheck cash in it. I got 40 bucks, I'm 15 years old. Imagine having 10,000 bucks at the end of a week.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  I would have had a Rolex.

• 22:50Josh Clark?

  And you're 15 years old, yeah.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  And a snowman Jeep.

• 22:53Josh Clark?

  That's how, 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, 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

• 23:36Josh Clark?

  like emboldened and powerful and strong from all that money he had at that really tender age.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  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.

• 23:50Josh Clark?

  No.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  Cause he's a child.

• 23:51Josh Clark?

  Exactly, and his dad wasn't saying that either. 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, he 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.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think the, what the takeaway is, is that ultimately his dad said, alright, alright, alright.

• 24:27Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  I'm really curious to see this movie now. I wonder how McConaughey plays this dude.

• 24:32Josh Clark?

  I'm sure exactly like you just said.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  Cause he does not scream East Side Detroit.

• 24:36Josh Clark?

  No, he really doesn't.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  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, 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 him in the backseat of the car and he didn't know like, are they taking me to the hospital or again, and take me out and dump me in the woods? Like 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.

• 25:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah. He, um, 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.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:34Josh Clark?

  Um, they, they wouldn't have let you go in an ambulance. You, you would be dead already. So just keep going. And I guess he was like, I don't know. And they're like, you got 10 grand right here? And he's like, all right, you guys, you know me so well. And he got back to it.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. And not only that, they said, you can actually use this, Rick.

• 25:52Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  Like you got street cred now and not many people, especially your age have been shot and lived to tell about it. So like, you're kind of a cool kid now in that, in that gang. And he kind of was, but I mean, it worked out that way.

• 26:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  I think in February of 85, after he'd been doing this a little while is when they got their first like really big raid almost at Sting, but um, he had, you know, Rick gave him information that led to uh, about 200 grand in cash when they raided a house, uh, some video equipment, um, obviously a lot of cocaine and guns, like all the things you would expect to find.

• 26:25Josh Clark?

  I saw they just had two punch bowls full of cocaine just sitting out on the table.

• 26:30Speaker 02

  Nice. Punch bowls are big.

• 26:31Josh Clark?

  That kind of house.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  That's a lot of cocaine.

• 26:34Josh Clark?

  It really is. Um, yeah, there was an FBI agent named John Anthony, who um, said that, 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 grand in 1985 dollars 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 um, Marvin Hagler, Tommy Hearns fight. Cause Hearns was the pride of Detroit. And this is a title, middle, middleweight fight, I believe in 1985.

• 27:15Josh Clark?

  The Hitman, right. Uh, so all these Detroit drug dealers were going to watch the match. And they invited white boy Rick. And the, the FBI got him like a, 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.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, this kid's in Vegas at the Tommy Hearns fight.

• 27:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 27:52Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, it, 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. Uh, 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 Currys had with the mayor. That like, wait a minute, like this is now getting covered up on a large scale. Cause they've killed this kid, this 13 year old, a couple of years younger than me. And Johnny Curry gave Beverly Hills cop, a guy, 10 grand, uh, as a bribe to cover it up. And Rick found out about this.

• 28:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he was riding around in a car with Johnny Curry, who had the, who had Gil Hill, Commander Gil Hill on, um,

• 28:45Josh Clark?

  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 Damien Lucas.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. So the FBI, you know, things are getting pretty hairy. They cut ties with him just before he turned 16. Richard Senior 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. If this gets out that we've done this, it's not going to look great for us as speds. And this is when, you know, I kind of remarked earlier about how, well, now this kid is in this lifestyle.

• 29:29Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  And he's having 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. So he got into the real drug trade after the FBI dropped him.

• 29:48Josh Clark?

  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 you 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.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, 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.

• 30:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  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. 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.

• 31:18Josh Clark?

  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, like he became a wholesale coke dealer.

• 32:02Josh Clark?

  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.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  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, they were, they were starting to make arrests, I think in 87. They indicted the, 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, we're like, we need to keep it this way. Uh, and I think that's when, uh, we found out about, um, Gil Hill, Beverly Hills Cop Gil Hill,

• 33:16Speaker 02

  um, trying to get, uh, this guy, um, Nate Boone Kraft to assassinate little white boy Rick. I think he offered him 125 grand and he tried to kill him a couple of times.

• 33:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Uh, 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.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  And the guy from Beverly Hills Cop was the one making the call.

• 33:40Josh Clark?

  Right. Yeah. It's like, who would ever believe this, right?

• 33:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:45Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, um, Nate Boone Kraft later admitted to trying on two different, um, occasions to, to carry out that hit.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  So Rick is, uh, 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 fill the void, the drug void that, that was left by them. And he starts dating Kathy Volson. Uh, she was 24, he was 17. Uh, he was making about 30 grand a month and has three kids at this point.

• 34:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Um, I don't know if they were all with her. I don't think they were.

• 34:23Josh Clark?

  But, um, I think his first born Keisha was, um, and the fact that Kathy Volson started dating him, you said that, you know, he was a legit drug dealer, as legit as a drug dealer can be. She 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 going to start dating you now, white boy Rick. And she, she essentially like, just put that seal of approval on him that, that just kind of really gave him a certain luster in that area.

• 35:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, and presumably did not get arrested herself for, you know, having sex with an underage kid.

• 35:08Josh Clark?

  No, no, I think they had other things in mind, but even still, she, 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 okay. 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.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  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.

• 35:57Josh Clark?

  If you own a home, you already know stuff breaks. It's not if, it's when. And somehow it's always like the AC in July or the fridge right after you go to the grocery store. That's why you always hear people say they don't make appliances like they used to because it's kind of true.

• 36:13Speaker 02

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• 36:25Josh Clark?

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• 36:39Speaker 02

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• 37:07Josh Clark?

  We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, trek your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong?

• 37:24Speaker 02

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• 37:43Josh Clark?

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• 38:02Josh Clark?

  You know, eating is a huge part of our lives. It fuels us, it brings us together, and it's one of life's great pleasures. But once a meal's over, we don't think much about what happens next unless something starts to feel off. Because what we eat and how our bodies respond to it is complicated.

• 38:18Speaker 02

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• 38:46Josh Clark?

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• 39:17Josh Clark?

  Okay Chuck, so the party ends on May 22nd, 1987. The Detroit police decide that Rick needs to go down. If Nate Boomcraft can't kill him, we're just gonna do it the old fashioned way and arrest him and just lock him 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."

• 39:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:46Josh Clark?

  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. 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

• 40:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:30Josh Clark?

  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 and in fact, the media, in particular Chris Hansen, really... What's the word I'm looking for?

• 40:50Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 40:50Josh Clark?

  fraudulently inflated the importance of White Boy Rick like right out of the gate, just because it was so novel.

• 40:57Speaker 02

  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. It 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. And 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,

• 41:42Speaker 02

  you can do that and we're gonna, 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.

• 41:50Josh Clark?

  Right. Yeah. So he passed on that. He was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna 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.

• 42:27Josh Clark?

  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, 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.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. They did not disclose in the trial at any point that he was a federal informant, that he was a CI. 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's side. And it was like, hey, lock this kid away, basically, and make sure these lawyers make sure that happened. One of those, and you know, that hasn't been proven, but this is what Rick said, makes a lot of sense. And one of those lawyers that was on his quote unquote team, went on to fight his parole in 2003.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  So that kind of says it all.

• 43:54Josh Clark?

  It really does. Yeah, that's not, 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, gee, 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

• 44:33Josh Clark?

  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. 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.

• 44:58Speaker 02

  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, you know, basically saying like, hey, we were federal informants. My son, at 14, was a federal informant. But 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,

• 45:43Speaker 02

  in an operation called Operation Backbone.

• 45:46Josh Clark?

  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

• 46:31Josh Clark?

  the, um, the drug and City Hall connection with a DEA agent, or I'm sorry, FBI agent, who went undercover and carried out like this highly successful operation backbone.

• 46:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a big, uh, they got 11 cops. Um, other people obviously were arrested, but they got, you know, 11 crooked cops out of that. Um, one of them was, uh, or I mean, several of them were like kind of in the Mayor Young's inner circle. I think his favorite bodyguard, um, was implicated. His brother-in-law, um, who was Kathy Volson's father, uh, was implicated. And she was even implicated at first and initially charged, but the charges on her were dropped.

• 47:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. Um, one of the things I saw Chuck, that one of the cops, the Detroit cops, um, did, was asked to do as part of this sting, um, 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 them 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 Volson 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.

• 47:57Josh Clark?

  The mayor almost came very, he came very close to going down too. He didn't. Um, and yet despite all this cooperation, despite all the stuff he had done for the FBI, um, up to this point, he could not get paroled to save his life.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  No, I think, you know, you said it was about, it went about as well as it could. I think it quite didn't because, or didn't quite, because they, 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.

• 48:36Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  Where Beverly, that guy from Beverly Hills Cop agreed to cover up that kid's killing from the drive-by shooting. And he was never charged. So, you know, they didn't, they didn't get the big fish, but they certainly got enough people. I think this was not too long after the Marion Barry scandal, smoking crack as a, 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.

• 49:06Josh Clark?

  Right. So Greg Schwartz, actually, he, he showed up. He said, okay, you helped us out. It was, 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. And that's tough to do and not get caught.

• 49:50Josh Clark?

  Because eventually your conversation's 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.

• 50:00Speaker 02

  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.

• 50:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 50:08Speaker 02

  And everyone else that he was, had been, you know, associating with was getting out. Johnny Curry got out in 99. That hitman that tried to kill him twice and admitted to murdering 30 people, did 17 years and then cooperated with the cops. That 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.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  One of the guys that he had worked with, a guy named Herman Gromen, 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."

• 51:02Josh Clark?

  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.

• 51:41Josh Clark?

  And he got denied, got denied again in 2008, and he got denied again in 2012 too.

• 51:49Speaker 02

  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. And 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,

• 52:33Speaker 02

  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 Ferranti, 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 Atavist article in 2015 that you were talking about, that we read.

• 52:51Josh Clark?

  Great.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  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. His 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.

• 53:10Josh Clark?

  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, 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.

• 53:53Josh Clark?

  Finally, two years later, he's granted parole. 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, his incarceration continued for 13 more years. He got out in 2017, aged 47, and you would think that would be the end of the story, Chuck, but it was not, was it?

• 54:17Speaker 02

  Uh, no, uh, he gets that parole and, um, probably, or at least maybe had something to do with those movies that we were talking about, uh, the documentary and the Matthew McConaughey movie, um, cause certainly high profile enough to like bring his name back into the forefront and then people start asking questions and stuff like that in the feds.

• 54:37Josh Clark?

  Right, right.

• 54:38Speaker 02

  Um, but he had to stay, or I guess got re-sentenced, um, 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, uh, 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. And he sued the feds, uh, of course, and then he didn't get anything.

• 55:00Josh Clark?

  No, the, 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, your very legitimate suits against the federal government are going to be able to be tried. So.

• 55:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:21Josh Clark?

  Um, apparently he's working on his own documentary project about his life too, with the hip hop director, Hype Williams.

• 55:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I worked with Hype, uh, back in the day.

• 55:31Josh Clark?

  Oh yeah. Is he, uh, related to Freedom Williams?

• 55:33Speaker 02

  Uh, I have no idea, but Hype was one of the biggest names in the game back then.

• 55:38Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  And I'll tell you off mic.

• 55:40Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 55:41Speaker 02

  Some other stuff.

• 55:42Josh Clark?

  I can't wait to hear this. Uh, 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.

• 55:52Speaker 02

  Uh, instead of listener mail, we're going to give issue one last, well, not one last, but another reminder about our voyage, our stuff at sea voyage aboard, aboard the valiant lady of Virgin Cruises, uh, which will take place October 2nd through 7th.

• 56:09Josh Clark?

  Where are we going?

• 56:10Speaker 02

  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, uh, stuff, uh, 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. It's gonna be a lot of fun.

• 56:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah. You can go to virginvoyages.com/stuffatsea 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.

• 56:37Speaker 02

  That's right. Can't wait.

• 56:39Josh Clark?

  Can't wait. And we also can't wait to hear from you via email, which you can send to [email protected].

• 56:50Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, MyHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 57:06Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota Fordibility, and it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places. Introducing Voices of VivGart. VivGart is also known as its generic name, Fgart Tigamod Alpha F Cab, and this new show features firsthand stories from people living with a rare disease. Hosted by Andrew Stratton,

• 57:49Josh Clark?

  these perspectives highlight that life is more than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Living with a rare disease can be challenging, but it does not define the Voices of VivGart. In these episodes, they share their stories, from diagnosis to working with their care team on their treatment plan. Listen to Voices of VivGart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One Bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also tell you about how Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends. It's pretty much all he talks about, in a good way.

• 58:30Josh Clark?

  What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com/BankGuy. Capital One, N A, Member FDIC.

• 58:38Speaker 03

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.