# White Boy Rick

An episode of [Stuff You Should Know](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/278981407), 16 Jul 2026, 49 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/a91018a4-ea4f-4130-bf55-ae270180c327/9ef17770-9f66-44c2-8058-b4890105b60d/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=44710ecc-10bb-48d1-93c7-ae270180c33e

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 for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
[0:11] Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
[0:13] Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, And this is stuff you
[0:15] Speaker 2: should know. Our ongoing fascination with Detroit edition.
[0:22] Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, this is very Detroit. I was gonna
[0:25] Speaker 1: say ad Jason, but it's like, firmly in Detroit's not
[0:27] Speaker 1: even a Jason centered even because we're talking about white
[0:31] Speaker 1: boy Rick who if you have not seen the movie
[0:36] Speaker 1: starring Oh god, what's the guy's.
[0:38] Speaker 2: Name who played him, Matthew McConaughey.
[0:40] Speaker 1: No, he played the dad. Oh, Matthew McConaughey makes a
[0:43] Speaker 1: little more sense older than we are.
[0:45] Speaker 2: I know. I was like, did they dress him up
[0:47] Speaker 2: like a teenager?
[0:47] Speaker 1: Yeah? How do you play a fourteen year old? I
[0:50] Speaker 1: can't remember the kid's name, but I have not seen
[0:51] Speaker 1: that movie. There's also a bunch of documentaries, but in
[0:54] Speaker 1: particular one that's pretty good about this kid in the eighties,
[0:59] Speaker 1: Rick worsh who was an FBI informant at the age
[1:03] Speaker 1: of fourteen in secret.
[1:06] Speaker 2: Yes, and this is completely one hundred percent true, Like
[1:10] Speaker 2: this has been vetted, thoroughly researched, and his claims, although
[1:14] Speaker 2: they seem like, Okay, this is just some guy talking,
[1:18] Speaker 2: you know who's in prison, just keeping himself from getting bored. Nope.
[1:22] Speaker 2: Like basically everything he's ever said about his time as
[1:25] Speaker 2: an FBI informant and a teenage drug runner has been confirmed.
[1:32] Speaker 2: So this is an amazing true story. And it's also
[1:35] Speaker 2: a sad true story in a lot of ways too,
[1:36] Speaker 2: because this guy lost a significant portion of his life
[1:40] Speaker 2: to really stupid drug laws at the height of the
[1:43] Speaker 2: War on drugs, when everybody was so gung ho about
[1:47] Speaker 2: just lock them up, lock the drug dealers up, and
[1:49] Speaker 2: go ahead and lock up the drug users while you
[1:51] Speaker 2: do it too, and it was it was a bad
[1:54] Speaker 2: time to be caught with kilos of coke. I can
[1:56] Speaker 2: tell you that.
[1:57] Speaker 1: Yeah, after he had been almost induced into this lifestyle
[2:02] Speaker 1: by the FBI as an informant, and then when that
[2:05] Speaker 1: was as you'll see, when that was taken away. I
[2:08] Speaker 1: think it's hard for a kid to give up that
[2:10] Speaker 1: lifestyle because that's his life at that point. Yeah, and
[2:13] Speaker 1: then you know, turned on him and there was cover
[2:16] Speaker 1: ups and Detroit, Detroit, and.
[2:19] Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think to describe how the FBI induced
[2:22] Speaker 2: him to do it. You can kind of say that
[2:25] Speaker 2: they put a bunch of cash in his hand, Yeah,
[2:27] Speaker 2: popped his collar, turned him around by the shoulders, and
[2:30] Speaker 2: shoved him out onto the street. That's basically how they
[2:32] Speaker 2: induced him to essentially become a member of the East
[2:37] Speaker 2: Detroit drug scene, like drug supply scene. He was rolling
[2:42] Speaker 2: with like as big as you get essentially at the time. Time.
[2:45] Speaker 1: All right, so let's go back, I guess to his
[2:48] Speaker 1: birth in nineteen sixty nine. He's close a couple of
[2:51] Speaker 1: years older than me, And like you said, this was
[2:53] Speaker 1: the East side of Detroit when he was six. This
[2:56] Speaker 1: is Rick Wirsch Junior. His parents separated, his mom moved
[3:00] Speaker 1: out to the burbs, and then generally he and his
[3:03] Speaker 1: sister Don lived with their dad, Matthew McConaughey, Richard Wirsch Senior.
[3:09] Speaker 1: And it was a time where the auto industry was
[3:12] Speaker 1: disappearing in Detroit. You know, the kind of familiar story
[3:16] Speaker 1: of Detroit is that it fell into sort of violence
[3:19] Speaker 1: and drugs and crack came along, and white flight happened
[3:23] Speaker 1: in a big, big way. So Rick and Don and
[3:26] Speaker 1: their father were a bit of an anomaly as a
[3:28] Speaker 1: white family that kind of stayed where they were on
[3:31] Speaker 1: the Detroit's East Side at the time.
[3:33] Speaker 2: Yeah, And one reason why is because this was their neighborhood.
[3:36] Speaker 2: White boy. Rick's grandparents lived directly across the street from him,
[3:40] Speaker 2: so like these were his dad's parents. It was like
[3:42] Speaker 2: a family community. There were other people who were sticking around,
[3:46] Speaker 2: but yeah, they were. They were definitely outnumbered by the
[3:50] Speaker 2: people who were moving to town to essentially take over Detroit.
[3:53] Speaker 2: And there was a market just right for being taken over,
[3:57] Speaker 2: and it was there was this one group called the
[3:59] Speaker 2: Chamber Brothers. They moved from Arkansas and became some of
[4:01] Speaker 2: the biggest dealers in town, so much so that at
[4:04] Speaker 2: one point they controlled a formerly opulent apartment building. It
[4:09] Speaker 2: was their stronghold headquarters that they sold crack out of,
[4:14] Speaker 2: manufacturer crack out of. It was a big, big operation
[4:18] Speaker 2: and it was just right there in the middle of Detroit.
[4:21] Speaker 2: Because this is one of the most lawless times in
[4:23] Speaker 2: the history of that city, entire history. Not only was
[4:27] Speaker 2: it the drug people, the cops were about as dirty
[4:30] Speaker 2: as they come at the time too.
[4:33] Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So Rick's dad was a kind of
[4:37] Speaker 1: a schemer, had you know, various get rich or make
[4:40] Speaker 1: a little bit of money quick scams going on here
[4:42] Speaker 1: and there. He worked as a manager of a gun
[4:44] Speaker 1: store as well and bought and sold guns out of
[4:48] Speaker 1: his house, including like taking a son to gun shows
[4:51] Speaker 1: when he was just a kid. But the result of
[4:54] Speaker 1: that was is that his dad knew and was, you know,
[4:59] Speaker 1: had FBI guys like as his customers. He had agents
[5:02] Speaker 1: that he was friendly with because they would buy guns
[5:04] Speaker 1: from him, and so he ended up like this was
[5:07] Speaker 1: sort of the entree into what would end up being
[5:11] Speaker 1: his son's work with the fbis that he just knew
[5:13] Speaker 1: these guys as customers.
[5:14] Speaker 2: Yeah, And one thing I saw in there was an
[5:18] Speaker 2: Atavist article that was really really good, but they basically
[5:22] Speaker 2: said that Richard Worsch Senior he was a hustler and
[5:26] Speaker 2: he had a fascination with money. That was his big
[5:29] Speaker 2: focus in life was to make money, and his son
[5:31] Speaker 2: Rick definitely adopted that from him, Like he definitely got
[5:35] Speaker 2: that from his dad. So he didn't have a lot
[5:38] Speaker 2: of options to make money at the time, aside from
[5:41] Speaker 2: the drug trade. But he didn't really get into that
[5:44] Speaker 2: at least not at first. But he was still doing
[5:47] Speaker 2: things like breaking into houses and making money that way.
[5:51] Speaker 2: So I mean, like he was definitely a street smart kid,
[5:54] Speaker 2: but he just wasn't involved in drug trafficking yet at
[5:57] Speaker 2: the time.
[5:58] Speaker 1: Yeah, his sister on took up a crack habit and
[6:02] Speaker 1: started dating a guy named Terrence Bell, and Terrence took
[6:05] Speaker 1: and as you'll see, a lot of people took white
[6:07] Speaker 1: boy Rick under their wing. I think he was you know,
[6:09] Speaker 1: I've seen interviews. He seems like he was a pretty affable,
[6:12] Speaker 1: likable guy because it seems like he made friends everywhere
[6:15] Speaker 1: he went and like had these sort of older you know,
[6:18] Speaker 1: these are rough guys obviously, but older guys taking him
[6:20] Speaker 1: under the wing and sort of saying like, hey, here's
[6:22] Speaker 1: how you rob a house, here's how you do this.
[6:25] Speaker 1: And so that's what Terrence Bell, he was kind of
[6:28] Speaker 1: the first guy to do that. Taught him how to
[6:30] Speaker 1: rob houses, taught him how to bust cars. There was
[6:34] Speaker 1: this one story where someone stole their family car and
[6:37] Speaker 1: they went after them, and Rick at fourteen, like used
[6:42] Speaker 1: his sisters twenty two that she kept under purse to
[6:44] Speaker 1: shoot at these guys. Didn't hit anybody, but it was
[6:47] Speaker 1: you know, he was like in the mix at this
[6:49] Speaker 1: point for sure.
[6:51] Speaker 2: I can tell you that at fourteen, I had not
[6:53] Speaker 2: ever shot at anybody.
[6:56] Speaker 1: I had not I had shot a gun because we
[6:58] Speaker 1: had a friend who was a cop who had a
[7:01] Speaker 1: cabin in the mountains, and so he would take us
[7:03] Speaker 1: up there to like shoot target practice occasionally. But that's
[7:06] Speaker 1: that was my only gun play.
[7:07] Speaker 2: As a child, right, you never turned it on the guy?
[7:10] Speaker 1: No?
[7:10] Speaker 2: No, no, okay, yeah same here. Yeah. So let's see
[7:14] Speaker 2: spring of nineteen eighty four, Rick Junior is fourteen at
[7:19] Speaker 2: the time, and the FBI, I guess who were friends
[7:24] Speaker 2: with senior Richard Senior, were like, you know, this guy
[7:27] Speaker 2: is living in East Detroit. East Detroit is a hopbed
[7:30] Speaker 2: of this new crack epidemic. Let's go see if this
[7:33] Speaker 2: guy can give us some info because we're friendly with them.
[7:36] Speaker 2: So they showed up at the Worsh house in East
[7:39] Speaker 2: Detroit and sat down with Worsh Senior Richard Senior, and
[7:43] Speaker 2: basically said, we just want any information you can have.
[7:47] Speaker 2: We have a bunch of pictures here. Can you id
[7:49] Speaker 2: any of these people that we've been following but don't
[7:51] Speaker 2: know who they are? And Richard Worsh was like, I
[7:55] Speaker 2: don't know who those people are. I'm sorry, I can't
[7:58] Speaker 2: help you, but Rick Jr. Piped up and he's like, oh, well,
[8:01] Speaker 2: this guy is Johnny Curry or that guy's big Man Curry,
[8:05] Speaker 2: and just started pointing people out. And the FBI suddenly
[8:09] Speaker 2: was like, well, how much does this kid know. Let's
[8:11] Speaker 2: find out what he can tell us. And that's kind
[8:14] Speaker 2: of where the whole thing kicked off.
[8:15] Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, they were interested in the Curry twins.
[8:20] Speaker 1: Johnny was little Man and I think you mentioned big Man.
[8:22] Speaker 1: That was Leo. The two brothers, even though they were twins,
[8:26] Speaker 1: I guess one might have been a little bigger than
[8:27] Speaker 1: the other. I'm not sure.
[8:28] Speaker 2: I guess I couldn't make heads or tails of that either.
[8:31] Speaker 1: Yeah, but they were the main drug guys on the
[8:35] Speaker 1: East side of Detroit at the time, and they were
[8:37] Speaker 1: also interested the FBI in the Curry gang because Johnny Curry,
[8:43] Speaker 1: who was little Man, was married to Kathy Volsen now
[8:48] Speaker 1: Kathy Vulson Curry or then who happened to be the
[8:51] Speaker 1: niece of the mayor of Detroit at the time, Coleman Young.
[8:54] Speaker 1: And so you know, we have a situation building here
[8:59] Speaker 1: where there there's clear kind of cover ups and corruption
[9:03] Speaker 1: already happening because the niece of the mayor is dating
[9:07] Speaker 1: like a known drug guy, and the Feds are like,
[9:10] Speaker 1: you know, we don't have any allegiance to these guys,
[9:13] Speaker 1: so we want to bust them.
[9:14] Speaker 2: Sure exactly. They wanted to take down the crooked cops. Right,
[9:18] Speaker 2: So that connection between city Hall and the police Department
[9:23] Speaker 2: and the East Detroit drug trade all ran right directly
[9:27] Speaker 2: through Kathy Bohlsen, Right, she was the thing that connected him.
[9:31] Speaker 2: But after that, you know, that initial connection, the other
[9:35] Speaker 2: kind of tethers started to form between those two groups,
[9:39] Speaker 2: and before you know it, I mean, city Hall was
[9:42] Speaker 2: in the police department. We're in bed with the drug
[9:45] Speaker 2: trade in Detroit. Pretty quickly. One of the guys who
[9:49] Speaker 2: was a major player in this, his name was Gil Hilly.
[9:52] Speaker 2: He was the homicide commander, the guy in charge of
[9:55] Speaker 2: all homicides in Detroit. And this was a time when
[9:58] Speaker 2: Detroit had something like seven hundred homicides a year. Now
[10:01] Speaker 2: it's like one sixty five. Like that is a mind
[10:04] Speaker 2: boggling number of murders in Detroit, considering also that its
[10:09] Speaker 2: population had plummeted too. Right, Yeah, this guy's in charge
[10:13] Speaker 2: of all of those. His name's Gil Hill, and he
[10:15] Speaker 2: also popped up elsewhere too.
[10:17] Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I mean strange but true. He was. If
[10:21] Speaker 1: you've ever seen Eddie Murphy's great, great film Beverly Hills
[10:25] Speaker 1: Cop from nineteen eighty four, he was the inspector Todd.
[10:30] Speaker 1: He was the one that was always yelling at Eddie
[10:31] Speaker 1: Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop. And you might think, oh,
[10:35] Speaker 1: that's pretty cool, and it is pretty cool. But Gil
[10:38] Speaker 1: Hill was not a good dude. As we'll see. He
[10:41] Speaker 1: took payoffs and tried to put hits out on this kid.
[10:44] Speaker 1: And yeah, so he was on the bad.
[10:48] Speaker 2: Stuff big time, big time. And he also seems to
[10:51] Speaker 2: have been inoperative for the mayor from what I can tell,
[10:54] Speaker 2: although I believe the mayor nothing ever stuck with him.
[10:57] Speaker 2: I don't even think he was ever indicted. He seems
[11:01] Speaker 2: to have been well aware of all this, especially because
[11:04] Speaker 2: the person who the cops in city Hall and the
[11:07] Speaker 2: criminals connected through was his niece, who apparently he raised
[11:11] Speaker 2: like a daughter.
[11:11] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[11:13] Speaker 2: So at the time, this kid, he's just Richard worsh Junior, Ricky.
[11:18] Speaker 2: I think everybody called him. He's fourteen, and the FBI
[11:21] Speaker 2: is sitting in his living room and they're starting to
[11:24] Speaker 2: show him pictures now, not his dad. His Dad's just
[11:26] Speaker 2: kind of like, okay, so we'll have a seat and
[11:29] Speaker 2: show these guys what you want or what you know.
[11:32] Speaker 2: And so, being fourteen, Rick said that he was. He
[11:38] Speaker 2: was like, wow, these really important authority figures are paying
[11:42] Speaker 2: attention to be. Let's see what I can do. And
[11:44] Speaker 2: he just started pointing people out and the FBI said,
[11:49] Speaker 2: we're going to do something a little unorthodox. I'm sure
[11:52] Speaker 2: that's how they put it, and made scare quotes and
[11:54] Speaker 2: rolled their eyes at the time the right exactly, I've
[11:58] Speaker 2: just got the wackiest idea. But what if you, fourteen
[12:02] Speaker 2: year old Rick became a federal informant for us the FBI?
[12:07] Speaker 2: What do you think would you like to do that?
[12:09] Speaker 2: And Rick's dad, being the amazing father figure that he was,
[12:15] Speaker 2: was like, well, I don't no, son, it's up to you.
[12:17] Speaker 2: You're fourteen. Do you want to be a federal informant
[12:20] Speaker 2: and put your life on the line every time you
[12:22] Speaker 2: walk outside of the house? And Rick Junior said, yes,
[12:26] Speaker 2: yes I do. And he actually became an off the
[12:29] Speaker 2: books informant for the FBI in nineteen eighty four, age fourteen.
[12:33] Speaker 1: Yeah, he was a CI he was not legally allowed
[12:36] Speaker 1: to do something like that obviously, so the FBI, like
[12:40] Speaker 1: you said, he kept it off the books. He was
[12:41] Speaker 1: never listed as the informant, but they had to have
[12:44] Speaker 1: something listed. So they said, well, can we use you dad,
[12:50] Speaker 1: Can we use your name and have everything kind of
[12:52] Speaker 1: flow through you? And he said, sure, that sounds good
[12:54] Speaker 1: to me. So Richard Senior was approved in June nineteen
[12:58] Speaker 1: eighty four. Technic is the informant, but it was really
[13:01] Speaker 1: his son. And pretty soon, you know, because I said,
[13:04] Speaker 1: Rick was a likable kid and you know, made friends easily.
[13:07] Speaker 1: He made friends with a guy named Rudell Curry, who
[13:11] Speaker 1: was the little brother of the twins Johnny and Leo.
[13:15] Speaker 1: Little Boo was twenty three years old, and they they
[13:18] Speaker 1: became buddies. Like he was a twenty three year old
[13:20] Speaker 1: with a with a fourteen year old friend who like,
[13:23] Speaker 1: you know, it was kind of like hey Spike, Hey Spike,
[13:25] Speaker 1: like one of those deals. He had this kid following
[13:28] Speaker 1: around and like they love cars and they love motorcycles
[13:32] Speaker 1: and they loved kind of that lifestyle. And so before
[13:35] Speaker 1: you know it, they were fast friends. And bo invited
[13:37] Speaker 1: Rick to hang out hang out with him, like right
[13:41] Speaker 1: around in the in the car go to the roller rink,
[13:44] Speaker 1: and apparently the Johnny, one of the twins, is a
[13:47] Speaker 1: guy who came up with the name white Boy Rick. Yeah.
[13:49] Speaker 2: One of the things that I gathered about a White
[13:52] Speaker 2: Boy Rick was that even at fourteen, fifteen sixteen, he
[13:55] Speaker 2: could hang with older people and ultimately eventually betray he
[14:00] Speaker 2: did kind of like an equal Yeah. I mean, which again,
[14:03] Speaker 2: like just stop and think that, Like that's just crazy
[14:07] Speaker 2: in and of itself, let alone the fact that this
[14:09] Speaker 2: kid is actually a federal informant, right, that was his role.
[14:13] Speaker 2: That was his purpose for making friends with Bu Curry
[14:16] Speaker 2: and hanging out with the Curry gang was to get
[14:19] Speaker 2: information to give to the FBI. That's why he showed up.
[14:22] Speaker 2: And he, like you said, he was so affable and
[14:25] Speaker 2: could hang that they opened him. They opened their organization
[14:29] Speaker 2: up to him, and he would be in some really
[14:32] Speaker 2: high level meetings. Like he knew a lot of stuff
[14:36] Speaker 2: that he kind of gathered over the next three four years.
[14:40] Speaker 1: For sure. Uh, maybe that's a good time to take
[14:43] Speaker 1: a break. What a setup, Yeah, I think so, especially
[14:45] Speaker 1: if you never heard about the story, Like can you
[14:47] Speaker 1: imagine hearing this for the first time.
[14:49] Speaker 2: I know, I envy those people.
[14:52] Speaker 1: All right, So we'll be right back after this and
[14:54] Speaker 1: talk about where it's headed next stop. All right, So
[15:22] Speaker 1: little white boy Rick is hanging out with his his
[15:25] Speaker 1: older friends. They're doing bad stuff, and he's, you know,
[15:28] Speaker 1: he's speeding information to the FBI that they're using like
[15:31] Speaker 1: kind of on a smaller scale, some kind of kind
[15:34] Speaker 1: of lower level crimes. I wouldn't say petty crimes. Probably
[15:36] Speaker 1: above that level, but nothing huge. But over a couple
[15:40] Speaker 1: of years, like they are feeding him money, like you
[15:44] Speaker 1: said in Act one, Like I think they said, over
[15:47] Speaker 1: the first couple of years, they paid him about thirty
[15:49] Speaker 1: thousand dollars off the books to you know, to use
[15:53] Speaker 1: to buy cocaine sometimes and to you know, to make
[15:57] Speaker 1: sure he could kind of live that lifestyle. So before
[15:59] Speaker 1: you know it, little fourteen year old white boy Rick
[16:02] Speaker 1: is got a fur coat and a Rolex and he's
[16:06] Speaker 1: he has cars even though he's fourteen years old and
[16:08] Speaker 1: can't legally drive, but.
[16:10] Speaker 2: He still drove him. He had a white Jeep and
[16:12] Speaker 2: the snowman was stintled on the back.
[16:16] Speaker 1: Yeah he's still into cars.
[16:18] Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, he has a thing for cars.
[16:21] Speaker 2: It turns out, but yeah, he made like thirty grand
[16:24] Speaker 2: over the next two years, which is almost one hundred
[16:27] Speaker 2: grand in today's dollars. Do you remember how much money
[16:31] Speaker 2: you made between the ages of fourteen and sixteen?
[16:34] Speaker 1: I made three twenty five an hour as a bus boy. Yeah,
[16:37] Speaker 1: that was minimum wage. I probably forty bucks a week
[16:41] Speaker 1: or something.
[16:42] Speaker 2: Okay, so I estimated I maybe made something like the
[16:45] Speaker 2: neighborhood of two thousand dollars over those those years.
[16:49] Speaker 1: Oh okay, this is like you were hustling too.
[16:52] Speaker 2: No, I mean I just had jobs here there, and
[16:55] Speaker 2: I think if you put it all together, it probably
[16:57] Speaker 2: be pulled that over two years.
[16:59] Speaker 1: Yeah, so a thousand. I think both of us liked
[17:01] Speaker 1: having our own money as kids, for sure, so we
[17:05] Speaker 1: didn't like my parents didn't give me money. I don't
[17:07] Speaker 1: think your parents probably gave you money the right.
[17:09] Speaker 2: I had something of an allowed, but it dwindled as
[17:12] Speaker 2: I got older, Like by the time I was thirty,
[17:14] Speaker 2: it was almost nothing.
[17:16] Speaker 1: Yeah, but like I wanted to buy I wanted to
[17:18] Speaker 1: go to concerts for seven bucks, and I wanted to
[17:20] Speaker 1: buy records, and you wanted to buy cigarettes.
[17:23] Speaker 2: I wanted to buy cigarettes. I wanted to buy slim
[17:25] Speaker 2: gyms and twigs and Kingsbury non alcoholic pier.
[17:29] Speaker 1: It's very empowering to make money as a kid. You know,
[17:33] Speaker 1: I think that's not completely gone away. But I don't
[17:36] Speaker 1: think teenagers have jobs these days like we did back then.
[17:39] Speaker 2: No, but you just said a mouthful chuck just having
[17:44] Speaker 2: whatever money you make. Would you say forty bucks a week?
[17:47] Speaker 1: Yeah, probably something like that, you know when I was
[17:49] Speaker 1: early on.
[17:49] Speaker 2: Right, okay, and you were empowered by that by walking
[17:52] Speaker 2: by getting that paycheck cash in it. I got forty bucks.
[17:55] Speaker 2: I'm fifteen years old. Imagine having ten thousand bucks at
[17:59] Speaker 2: the end of a week and you're fifteen years old. Yeah,
[18:03] Speaker 2: but that's how off the rails this kid's life suddenly
[18:08] Speaker 2: got because the FBI had pushed him into this life
[18:11] Speaker 2: and said, go go you know, you have some money,
[18:13] Speaker 2: go buy a mink coke, Go buy a Rolex. And
[18:16] Speaker 2: this kid could do it. And I mean just the
[18:18] Speaker 2: fact that he is still alive, wasn't killed back then,
[18:23] Speaker 2: and didn't manage to kill anybody or anything like that.
[18:26] Speaker 2: Like he kept it together enough that like it actually
[18:32] Speaker 2: turned out about as good as it could. Although we'll
[18:36] Speaker 2: see that it turned out really rotten. But I don't know,
[18:39] Speaker 2: I'm not quite sure how to put what I'm saying.
[18:40] Speaker 2: It just seems like this could have gone so wrong
[18:45] Speaker 2: so many different ways, just from feeling like emboldened and
[18:49] Speaker 2: powerful and strong from all that money he had at
[18:51] Speaker 2: that really tender age.
[18:53] Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And there was no one as far
[18:56] Speaker 1: as I could tell in the FBI that was like, hey,
[18:58] Speaker 1: maybe we maybe shouldn't let this kid do this. No,
[19:01] Speaker 1: because he's a.
[19:02] Speaker 2: Child, exactly, And his dad wasn't saying that either.
[19:05] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[19:05] Speaker 2: So I want to say the impression I have of
[19:08] Speaker 2: his dad is that he was not a bad guy,
[19:10] Speaker 2: and he does seem to regret a lot of the
[19:13] Speaker 2: decisions he didn't make back at this time. So I
[19:18] Speaker 2: don't think he was like just a bad dude who
[19:20] Speaker 2: didn't carry seems like he was pretty involved in his
[19:22] Speaker 2: son's life. The problem was his son's life included, you know,
[19:26] Speaker 2: driving a jeep that said the Snowman on back and
[19:29] Speaker 2: selling cocaine for the FBI.
[19:32] Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I think what the takeaway is is
[19:35] Speaker 1: that ultimately his dad said, I'll right, all right.
[19:37] Speaker 2: All right, that's right.
[19:40] Speaker 1: I'm really curious to see this movie now. I wonder
[19:41] Speaker 1: how mcconaughete plays this.
[19:43] Speaker 2: Dude, I'm sure exactly like you just.
[19:44] Speaker 1: Said, because he does not scream eastside Detroit.
[19:48] Speaker 2: No, he really does.
[19:49] Speaker 1: All right. So you said something about him avoiding getting killed,
[19:53] Speaker 1: which is fairly remarkable. But he did get shot at
[19:57] Speaker 1: least once. In November of eighty four, he was shot
[19:58] Speaker 1: in the stomach by a gang member who said it
[20:01] Speaker 1: was an accident, but Rick was like initially was like, hey,
[20:05] Speaker 1: they found out who I am. That's why I got shot.
[20:08] Speaker 1: The girlfriend of the guy who shot him called nine
[20:11] Speaker 1: one one, and before the ambulance could get there, there
[20:14] Speaker 1: were some other gang members who showed up put in
[20:17] Speaker 1: the backseat of the car, and he didn't know, like,
[20:19] Speaker 1: are they taking me to the hospital or again it
[20:22] Speaker 1: take me out and dump me in the woods, Like
[20:24] Speaker 1: what's going on? And perhaps so had it not been
[20:27] Speaker 1: for that ambulance showing up and blocking the driveway and
[20:30] Speaker 1: saying like give that kid to us, now.
[20:32] Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess that had a really like a big
[20:37] Speaker 2: chilling effect that he was ready to quit. And the
[20:38] Speaker 2: FBI showed up at his hospital room and said just
[20:42] Speaker 2: keep going. They would have killed you if they actually
[20:44] Speaker 2: did know right. They wouldn't have let you go in
[20:47] Speaker 2: an ambulance. You would be dead already, so just keep going.
[20:51] Speaker 2: And I guess he was like, I don't know, and
[20:53] Speaker 2: they're like, got ten grand right here, and he's like,
[20:55] Speaker 2: all right, you guys, you know me so well. And
[20:58] Speaker 2: he got back to it.
[21:00] Speaker 1: Yeah. And not only that, they said you can actually
[21:02] Speaker 1: use this Rick right, like you got street cred now
[21:05] Speaker 1: and not many people, especially your age, have been shot
[21:08] Speaker 1: and lived to tell about it. So like you're kind
[21:10] Speaker 1: of a cool kid now in that and that gang.
[21:12] Speaker 1: And he kind of was that. I mean it worked
[21:14] Speaker 1: out that way. Yeah. I think in February of eighty five,
[21:18] Speaker 1: after he had been doing this a little while, is
[21:19] Speaker 1: when they got their first like really big raid almost
[21:23] Speaker 1: at Sting, but he had, you know, Rick gave him
[21:26] Speaker 1: information that led to about two hundred grand in cash
[21:29] Speaker 1: when they raided a house, some video equipment, obviously a
[21:33] Speaker 1: lot of cocaine and guns, like all the things you
[21:36] Speaker 1: would expect to find.
[21:36] Speaker 2: I saw they just had two punch bowls full of
[21:39] Speaker 2: cocaine just sitting out on the table.
[21:41] Speaker 1: Nice punch bowls are big.
[21:43] Speaker 2: That kind of house, that's a lot of cocaine it
[21:45] Speaker 2: really is. Yeah. There was an FBI agent named John
[21:49] Speaker 2: Anthony who said that that Rick was the most productive
[21:54] Speaker 2: informant the agency had in Detroit at the time, the
[21:56] Speaker 2: whole city, not just teach Detroit. This is a fifteen
[21:59] Speaker 2: year old kid. I mean, that's a huge bus to
[22:01] Speaker 2: get two hundred grand and nineteen eighty five dollars and
[22:04] Speaker 2: punch bowls of cocaine. So he becomes such an amazing
[22:08] Speaker 2: asset chuck that at one point the Curry Gang bunch
[22:13] Speaker 2: of other big drug dealers from Detroit were going to
[22:16] Speaker 2: see the Marvin Hagler Tommy Hearns fight because Hearns was
[22:20] Speaker 2: the pride of Detroit and this is a title middleweight fight,
[22:24] Speaker 2: I believe in nineteen eighty five, the hit man, right,
[22:28] Speaker 2: So all these Detroit drug dealers were going to watch
[22:30] Speaker 2: the match, and they invited white boy Rick, and the
[22:36] Speaker 2: FBI got him like a high quality fake ID and
[22:42] Speaker 2: paid to send him to Vegas, paid for his plane ticket,
[22:45] Speaker 2: paint for his hotel, gave him some walking around money,
[22:48] Speaker 2: and said, go, fifteen year old, go to Las Vegas
[22:52] Speaker 2: with a group of high level drug dealers and just
[22:55] Speaker 2: find out what you can. And he did.
[22:59] Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's kids in Vegas at the Tommy Hearns fight. Yeah. Yeah,
[23:05] Speaker 1: I mean the story just gets crazier. After he gets
[23:08] Speaker 1: back from Vegas, part of the Curry gang engaged in
[23:12] Speaker 1: a dry by shooting. It accidentally killed a thirteen year
[23:16] Speaker 1: old boy named Damian Lucas, and the cops basically made
[23:21] Speaker 1: this investigation go away. And Rick was like it was
[23:25] Speaker 1: starting to kind of dawn on him because of this
[23:28] Speaker 1: personal tie that the Currys had with the mayor that like,
[23:31] Speaker 1: wait a minute, like this is now getting covered up
[23:34] Speaker 1: on a large scale because they've killed this kid, this
[23:36] Speaker 1: thirteen year old a couple of years younger than me,
[23:39] Speaker 1: and Johnny Curry gave Beverly Hills cop a guy ten
[23:44] Speaker 1: grand as a bribe to cover it up. And Rick
[23:46] Speaker 1: found out about this.
[23:47] Speaker 2: Yeah, he was riding around in the car with Johnny Curry,
[23:50] Speaker 2: who had the who had Gil Hill Commander Gil Hill
[23:54] Speaker 2: on oh what is it called when you have it
[23:57] Speaker 2: on speaker? He had him on speaker and they were
[23:59] Speaker 2: talking about covering it up for the Curry gang, and
[24:03] Speaker 2: he did like that was a that was a big,
[24:06] Speaker 2: big turning point in this whole story. The murder of
[24:09] Speaker 2: Damian Lucas.
[24:11] Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So that FBI, you know, things are
[24:14] Speaker 1: getting pretty hairy. They cut ties with him just before
[24:17] Speaker 1: he turned sixteen. Richard Senior was now off the books
[24:21] Speaker 1: as the I guess fake in formant in June of
[24:24] Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six, and you know, it seems pretty clear
[24:27] Speaker 1: that they're probably worried, like, hey, this has gone far enough.
[24:30] Speaker 1: If this gets out that we've done this, it's not
[24:32] Speaker 1: gonna look great for us as speds. And this is when,
[24:36] Speaker 1: you know, I kind of remarked earlier about how well,
[24:39] Speaker 1: now this kid is in this lifestyle right and he's
[24:42] Speaker 1: having the cord pulled on him, like the rug pulled
[24:44] Speaker 1: out from under him. And so Rick, you know, does
[24:47] Speaker 1: what a kid that age and that you know, not
[24:50] Speaker 1: quite yet fully formed brain would do, which is, hey,
[24:53] Speaker 1: I'm going to keep doing this stuff. So he got
[24:56] Speaker 1: into the real drug trade after the FBI dropped him.
[24:59] Speaker 2: Yeah, that is It's disputed whether that happened after or
[25:04] Speaker 2: before they dropped him, so like during as he was
[25:07] Speaker 2: an FBI and foreman, and it seems like it's probably
[25:10] Speaker 2: there's a really good chance that it actually had happened,
[25:13] Speaker 2: and that one of the reasons the FBI dropped him
[25:15] Speaker 2: was because his actual drug career was taking off quite nicely,
[25:20] Speaker 2: and they were like, we just this kid's getting too hot.
[25:22] Speaker 2: Rather than being like we're gonna bring you in from
[25:24] Speaker 2: the cold, kid, like we're gonna move you somewhere, because
[25:28] Speaker 2: we we did this to you, we need to give
[25:30] Speaker 2: you set you up with a normal life. They just
[25:32] Speaker 2: walked away, like dusting their hands off and left him
[25:35] Speaker 2: to this life and East Detroit as a what he
[25:38] Speaker 2: eventually became a very prominent drug dealer.
[25:41] Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, all the connections he had made
[25:43] Speaker 1: were valuable connections, as you know, his his I don't
[25:47] Speaker 1: won't to say legit, but I guess he was a
[25:48] Speaker 1: legit drug dealer. Yeah. One of the guys, the main
[25:52] Speaker 1: guys who kind of got him involved, was a friend
[25:54] Speaker 1: he made through those connections with the Curries was a
[25:57] Speaker 1: wholesale cocaine guy named Art Derek. He was a suburban
[26:02] Speaker 1: dude who was operating some drug planes that were coming
[26:06] Speaker 1: up into Miami, and Rick became friends with him and
[26:09] Speaker 1: his son, and he, you know, the kid sixteen years
[26:13] Speaker 1: old that at this point starts buying as much as
[26:16] Speaker 1: like fifty kilos at a time. As a cocaine wholesaler
[26:20] Speaker 1: himself is what they call a weight man. Like he's
[26:22] Speaker 1: not he's not operating a ring of like dealers or
[26:25] Speaker 1: anything like that, but he's bringing in the large amounts
[26:28] Speaker 1: and selling that stuff.
[26:29] Speaker 2: Right, which he just by that, by virtue of that,
[26:33] Speaker 2: he automatically made less money. I saw FBI agent estimate
[26:36] Speaker 2: he was probably making five thousand dollars off a key,
[26:40] Speaker 2: but he was selling tons and tons of keys, so
[26:42] Speaker 2: he was making like really significant money. But you could
[26:45] Speaker 2: also take a single key and turned it into a
[26:48] Speaker 2: million dollars, broken down into like and converted into five
[26:52] Speaker 2: dollars hits of crack if you were willing to do
[26:54] Speaker 2: all that. That's what the chamber Brothers did. Those guys
[26:57] Speaker 2: who took over the apartment building. They made an estimated
[27:00] Speaker 2: fifty five million dollars a year doing that. But I mean,
[27:04] Speaker 2: like wipe boy. Rick was later implicated as being one
[27:07] Speaker 2: of the people who supplied the chamber Brothers with their cocaine,
[27:11] Speaker 2: like he became a wholesale coke dealer. That's not necessarily true,
[27:15] Speaker 2: but he definitely did supply plenty of people with their
[27:18] Speaker 2: cocaine as a wholesale coke dealer. And one of the
[27:21] Speaker 2: things that he didn't do this to me really stands out.
[27:24] Speaker 2: He hung with the Curries, but he never became a
[27:26] Speaker 2: Curry soldier. He never became a Curry drug dealer. He
[27:30] Speaker 2: had his own operation essentially going on where he sold
[27:33] Speaker 2: keys to other people, and he was just basically an
[27:37] Speaker 2: associate of the Curries, which I thought was super cool,
[27:40] Speaker 2: like he just kept his own identity rather than just
[27:44] Speaker 2: being absorbed into the Curry gang.
[27:46] Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, he ended up getting some of the Curry
[27:49] Speaker 1: brothers in trouble just from all the information they had
[27:52] Speaker 1: fed you know, the FBI. Over the years, they were
[27:56] Speaker 1: starting to make arrest I think in eighty seven they
[27:59] Speaker 1: indicted the at least the twins and some other people
[28:02] Speaker 1: in their organization and they pleaded guilty at the time
[28:06] Speaker 1: to drugs and racketeering. Obviously, they kept it quiet about
[28:11] Speaker 1: the city government at that point. They were still like
[28:13] Speaker 1: not selling out, like the mayor and the corrupt cops,
[28:17] Speaker 1: and the city was like great, We're like we need
[28:19] Speaker 1: to keep it this way. And I think that's when
[28:23] Speaker 1: we found out about Gil Hill, Beverly Hills cop Gil
[28:26] Speaker 1: Hill trying to get this guy, Nate boone Craft to
[28:32] Speaker 1: assassinate little white boy Rick. I think he offered him
[28:34] Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty five grand and he tried to
[28:36] Speaker 1: kill him a couple of times.
[28:38] Speaker 2: Yeah, you know that you've arrived. If you're sixteen years
[28:42] Speaker 2: old and you're not going to be murdered, you're going
[28:44] Speaker 2: to be assassinated. That means you know a lot.
[28:48] Speaker 1: And the guy from Beverly Hills cop was the one
[28:51] Speaker 1: making the call.
[28:51] Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, It's like, who would ever believe this? Right?
[28:55] Speaker 1: Yeah?
[28:56] Speaker 2: So yeah, Nate Boonecraft later admitted to trying on two
[28:59] Speaker 2: different occasions to carry out that hit.
[29:04] Speaker 1: So Rick is trying to capitalize on, you know, the
[29:08] Speaker 1: curries now suddenly being not completely out of the picture,
[29:11] Speaker 1: but at least some of the main guys being rounded
[29:13] Speaker 1: up and kind of feel devoid the drug void that
[29:16] Speaker 1: that was left by them. And he starts dating Kathy Volson.
[29:21] Speaker 1: She was twenty four, he was seventeen. He was making
[29:24] Speaker 1: about thirty grand a month and has three kids at
[29:28] Speaker 1: this point.
[29:29] Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know if they were all with her.
[29:32] Speaker 2: I don't think they were, but I think his firstborn,
[29:36] Speaker 2: Keisha was And the fact that Kathy Volson started dating him.
[29:42] Speaker 2: You said that, you know, he was a legit drug dealers,
[29:44] Speaker 2: as legit as a drug dealer can be. She helped
[29:47] Speaker 2: legitimize him like she is a and she was, especially
[29:51] Speaker 2: at this time, a big, big deal in East Detroit,
[29:54] Speaker 2: and all of a sudden like this essentially like East
[29:57] Speaker 2: Detroit royalty, like criminal royalty. He comes down, is like,
[30:01] Speaker 2: I'm gonna start dating you now, white boy Rick, and
[30:04] Speaker 2: she she essentially like just put that seal of approval
[30:08] Speaker 2: on him that that just kind of really gave him
[30:10] Speaker 2: a certain luster in that area.
[30:12] Speaker 1: Yeah, and presumably did not get arrested herself for you know,
[30:18] Speaker 1: having sex with an underage kid.
[30:19] Speaker 2: No, no, I think they had other things in mind.
[30:22] Speaker 2: But even still, she she would not have gotten arrested
[30:26] Speaker 2: because she had Detroit p D keeping tabs on her
[30:28] Speaker 2: as protection, because the mayor had ordered the DPD to
[30:32] Speaker 2: constantly surveil her to make sure she was okay, not
[30:35] Speaker 2: to catch her with anything, in fact, to look the
[30:38] Speaker 2: other way on it. So she can essentially do anything
[30:41] Speaker 2: she wanted to, and it would have been fine.
[30:43] Speaker 1: For her for sure. All Right, Well, let's take our
[30:46] Speaker 1: second break and we'll finish up with the saga of
[30:49] Speaker 1: White Boy Rick.
[30:49] Speaker 2: Right after this, yes, okay, chuck, So the party ends.
[31:20] Speaker 2: On May twenty second, nineteen eighty seven, the Detroit police
[31:24] Speaker 2: decide that Rick needs to go down. If Nate Boonecraft
[31:28] Speaker 2: can't kill him, we're just gonna do it the old
[31:30] Speaker 2: fashioned way and arrest him and just block him up.
[31:33] Speaker 2: And they found thirty grand in cash in his car.
[31:39] Speaker 2: They also found eight keys of cocaine that was stashed
[31:43] Speaker 2: under a neighbor's porch that Rick said, yeah, that's mine. Yeah,
[31:46] Speaker 2: he was seventeen, so he's still a juvenile. And he
[31:49] Speaker 2: got arrested with eight keys and thirty grand in cash.
[31:53] Speaker 2: He made bail, and then a few months later, in October,
[31:56] Speaker 2: he was arrested again, this time with five kilos of
[31:59] Speaker 2: cocaine and guns, drug paraphernalia, the whole thing even worse.
[32:03] Speaker 2: Some of this stuff was found in his dad's house
[32:06] Speaker 2: and his grandparents' house, which means they could have gone
[32:08] Speaker 2: to prison, lost their houses like they really had them.
[32:12] Speaker 2: If they didn't have him in May, they really had
[32:14] Speaker 2: him in October, right, And so around about this time,
[32:18] Speaker 2: the name white Boy Rick becomes much more widely known,
[32:22] Speaker 2: not just in East Detroit, but in Detroit as a whole,
[32:25] Speaker 2: and then very quickly across the nation because it was
[32:28] Speaker 2: such a crazy novelty. Yeah, that there was this seventeen
[32:32] Speaker 2: year old white kid who was essentially the only white
[32:36] Speaker 2: kid in East Detroit's drug trade and seemed to be
[32:40] Speaker 2: pretty powerful. And in fact, the media, in particular Chris
[32:43] Speaker 2: Hansen really what's the word I'm looking for, I don't know,
[32:51] Speaker 2: fraudulently inflated the importance of white boy Rick, like right
[32:55] Speaker 2: out of the gate, just because it was so novel.
[32:58] Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you know, the it's the media, and
[33:00] Speaker 1: that's what the media does, so they, Yeah, it was
[33:04] Speaker 1: very sensationalized. You know, this stuff obviously happened, but it's like, hey,
[33:08] Speaker 1: let's run, you know, another sort of injustice basically was like, hey,
[33:12] Speaker 1: let's run with his story because this is a kid
[33:14] Speaker 1: and it'll you know, there weren't clicks at the time,
[33:17] Speaker 1: but like it'll get views or whatever on our on
[33:20] Speaker 1: our station and in our newspaper. So it was a
[33:24] Speaker 1: big sort of sensational trial. When he finally was brought
[33:27] Speaker 1: forward the following January, and at the beginning the Feds
[33:32] Speaker 1: met with Rick and his dad and his mom are like, Hey,
[33:37] Speaker 1: if you want to testify and turn state's evidence against
[33:40] Speaker 1: this everybody, basically, you can do that and we're gonna,
[33:44] Speaker 1: you know, we can help you out. And he was like, dude,
[33:47] Speaker 1: I would get killed so fast, your head would spend
[33:50] Speaker 1: so no, thank.
[33:51] Speaker 2: You, right, yeah, So he passed on that. He was like,
[33:54] Speaker 2: I'm gonna I'm gonna see what I can do with
[33:56] Speaker 2: the jury. He actually felt pretty good about his chances
[34:00] Speaker 2: because they hadn't found the eight keys on him. They
[34:02] Speaker 2: found it under a neighbor's porch. Like there were all
[34:04] Speaker 2: sorts of extenuating circumstances. The problem was he had the
[34:08] Speaker 2: full force and weight of Detroit City Hall and the
[34:11] Speaker 2: Detroit Police Department against him. In every back channel you
[34:14] Speaker 2: can imagine in the city at that time. They were
[34:17] Speaker 2: working to get him convicted as badly as he could
[34:20] Speaker 2: be convicted. The media wasn't helping somebody. I think Chris
[34:25] Speaker 2: Hansen again, he started in Detroit. He would go on
[34:28] Speaker 2: to be the to Catch a predator guy. They showed
[34:32] Speaker 2: an org chart which showed all of the city's biggest
[34:35] Speaker 2: drug dealers, and guess who was at the very top.
[34:39] Speaker 2: The kingpin they portrayed as the guy who supplied all
[34:43] Speaker 2: of the big drug dealers in Detroit. Why no other
[34:46] Speaker 2: than white boy Rick, Because remember they were trying to
[34:49] Speaker 2: really kind of make this even more sensational than it
[34:52] Speaker 2: already was, so they just said, well, this guy's actually
[34:56] Speaker 2: the guy. Can you believe that? And that did not
[35:00] Speaker 2: help his chances either, because he started to be seen
[35:02] Speaker 2: as if there's a crack epidemic in Detroit, this guy
[35:06] Speaker 2: is ground zero for the problem.
[35:09] Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. They did not disclose in the trial
[35:13] Speaker 1: at any point that he was a federal informant that
[35:15] Speaker 1: he was a CI. He said later, like, you know,
[35:19] Speaker 1: Rix talked a lot about this over the years, but
[35:22] Speaker 1: he later claimed that he was that the lawyers that
[35:25] Speaker 1: they assigned him the public defenders were connected to the mayor,
[35:29] Speaker 1: who obviously was kind of trying to make all this
[35:31] Speaker 1: go away and cover up for everything on his family side,
[35:34] Speaker 1: and was like, hey, lock this kid away basically, and
[35:37] Speaker 1: make sure these lawyers make sure that happen one of
[35:41] Speaker 1: those And you know that hasn't been proven, but this
[35:43] Speaker 1: is what Rick said, makes a lot of sense. And
[35:45] Speaker 1: one of those lawyers that was on his quote unquote
[35:48] Speaker 1: team went on to fight his parole in two thousand
[35:53] Speaker 1: and three. So that kind of says it all.
[35:55] Speaker 2: It really does. Yeah, that's not good defense right there.
[36:00] Speaker 2: The judge who convicted him said that he was worse
[36:03] Speaker 2: than a mass murderer during his sentencing, I believe, And
[36:08] Speaker 2: even if the judge hadn't wanted to do this, she
[36:10] Speaker 2: had no choice. He was given life in prison without
[36:15] Speaker 2: parole at age seventeen. And the reason why the judge
[36:19] Speaker 2: had no choice is because about ten years earlier, Michigan
[36:24] Speaker 2: had passed a law called the six fifty Lifer Law,
[36:28] Speaker 2: where if you were caught with six hundred and fifty
[36:30] Speaker 2: grams or more of cocaine, which is about one and
[36:34] Speaker 2: a half pounds or a little under half of a kilo,
[36:37] Speaker 2: you got a life sentence without parole, no questions asked.
[36:42] Speaker 2: If you were convicted of that, you went to prison
[36:44] Speaker 2: for life. And this kid was seventeen and got that
[36:49] Speaker 2: sentence and was told that he was worse than a
[36:51] Speaker 2: mass murderer. So things were not looking very good for
[36:55] Speaker 2: him when he was sentenced. After he was convicted, Yeah,
[36:59] Speaker 2: for sure.
[37:00] Speaker 1: It was a period in a country where mandatory minimums
[37:02] Speaker 1: were kind of popping up all over the place for
[37:05] Speaker 1: what it's worth The governor who signed that one said
[37:07] Speaker 1: it was the greatest mistake of his career. Probably didn't
[37:10] Speaker 1: make Rick feel much better. But after the trial, Matthew
[37:15] Speaker 1: McConaughey is giving interviews and he's basically saying, like, hey,
[37:20] Speaker 1: we were federal informants. My son at fourteen was a
[37:23] Speaker 1: federal informant. But at this point, like this wasn't disclosed
[37:27] Speaker 1: in the trial or anything, so everyone thinks it's just
[37:29] Speaker 1: this dad kind of ranting this crazy talk. No one's
[37:33] Speaker 1: taking him seriously. They didn't have any kind of credibility.
[37:36] Speaker 1: And in nineteen ninety one, in prison, Rick starts working
[37:42] Speaker 1: for the FEDS again from prison in an operation called
[37:45] Speaker 1: Operation Backbone.
[37:47] Speaker 2: Right. One of the FBI agents who had worked with
[37:50] Speaker 2: him before, I think he was the first one who
[37:53] Speaker 2: turned Rick into an informant at age fourteen's name is
[37:55] Speaker 2: Greg Schwartz. He came to him years later for this
[37:58] Speaker 2: Operation Backbone and said, we've been listening in to the
[38:03] Speaker 2: Curries for years now, and we are it's quite clear
[38:07] Speaker 2: that they are in bed with the Detroit Police Department
[38:09] Speaker 2: and City Hall and it's time for us to take
[38:12] Speaker 2: them down. We need your help. So he and Kathy
[38:16] Speaker 2: Vohlsen were they'd broken up, but they remained friendly and
[38:20] Speaker 2: she would visit him in prison pretty regularly. So because
[38:23] Speaker 2: she was the thing that everything centered on, he basically
[38:28] Speaker 2: used her to infect the drug and city hall connection
[38:36] Speaker 2: with a DEA agent I'm sorry, FBI agent who went
[38:40] Speaker 2: under cover and carried out like this highly successful operation Backbone.
[38:46] Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a big They got eleven cops. Other
[38:50] Speaker 1: people obviously were arrested, but they got, you know, eleven
[38:52] Speaker 1: crooked cops out of that. One of them was, I mean,
[38:57] Speaker 1: several of them were like kind of in the Mayor
[38:59] Speaker 1: Young's inner circle. I think his favorite bodyguard was implicated.
[39:04] Speaker 1: His brother in law, who was Kathy Bolson's father, was implicated,
[39:10] Speaker 1: and she was he been implicated at first and initially charged,
[39:13] Speaker 1: but the charges on her were dropped.
[39:15] Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. One of the things I saw, Chuck,
[39:18] Speaker 2: that one of the cops the Detroit cops did, was
[39:23] Speaker 2: asked to do as part of this sting, was to
[39:26] Speaker 2: carry an assault rifle around airport security so that it
[39:30] Speaker 2: could be taken aboard a plane to be used in
[39:32] Speaker 2: a hit in Chicago. And he did it. Like that's
[39:35] Speaker 2: how dirty the cops were and the FBI was the one.
[39:38] Speaker 2: They were the ones setting him up because this undercover
[39:40] Speaker 2: agent has totally infiltrated this group. Because white Boy Rick
[39:45] Speaker 2: vouched for him over and over again and introduced him
[39:48] Speaker 2: to Kathy Wolson Curry, who kind of tacitly vouched for
[39:52] Speaker 2: him too. It was about as great of an operation
[39:54] Speaker 2: as you could hope for if you're an FBI person.
[39:58] Speaker 2: The mayor almost came very he came very close to
[40:00] Speaker 2: going down to he didn't. And yet despite all this cooperation,
[40:05] Speaker 2: despite all the stuff he had done for the FBI
[40:08] Speaker 2: up to this point, he could not get paroled to
[40:11] Speaker 2: save his life.
[40:14] Speaker 1: No, I think you know you said it was about
[40:16] Speaker 1: it went about as well as it could. I think
[40:17] Speaker 1: it quite didn't because or didn't quite because they they
[40:21] Speaker 1: would have loved to have gotten the mayor, and they
[40:23] Speaker 1: would have loved to have gotten the higher ups in
[40:26] Speaker 1: the police department. They ended up getting, you know, rank
[40:29] Speaker 1: and file cops. They didn't get Gil Hill. They had
[40:32] Speaker 1: a literally like Rick testified, like, hey, I heard a
[40:36] Speaker 1: phone call where Beverly that guy from Beverly Hills cop
[40:40] Speaker 1: agreed to cover up that kid's killing from the drive
[40:43] Speaker 1: by shooting and he was never charged, so you know,
[40:46] Speaker 1: they they didn't get the big fish, but they certainly
[40:49] Speaker 1: got enough people. I think this was not too long
[40:52] Speaker 1: after the Mary and Barry scandal smoking crack as a mayor,
[40:57] Speaker 1: like a high profile mayor, and I think there was
[40:59] Speaker 1: a lot of just like, hey, we don't need another
[41:01] Speaker 1: scandal of another high profile mayor in this country, like
[41:05] Speaker 1: doing the wrong thing, right.
[41:08] Speaker 2: So Greg Schwartz actually he showed up. He said, Okay,
[41:13] Speaker 2: you helped us out. It was good enough for us
[41:15] Speaker 2: to reward you. So we're going to move you to
[41:17] Speaker 2: a medium security prison in Florida, and we're going to
[41:21] Speaker 2: basically put you under witness protection under an assumed name.
[41:24] Speaker 2: And while he was there in Florida, this was I
[41:28] Speaker 2: think up to the two thousands, so he was in
[41:30] Speaker 2: Florida for a while. He was just doing his thing.
[41:34] Speaker 2: And remember we talked about how much he loved cars. Well,
[41:37] Speaker 2: he was caught running or at least participating in a
[41:41] Speaker 2: car theft ring, a stolen car ring. From prison, he
[41:44] Speaker 2: was helping coordinate the whole thing. And that's tough to
[41:48] Speaker 2: do and not get caught because eventually your conversation is
[41:53] Speaker 2: going to be overheard. Or listened to, and you're going
[41:55] Speaker 2: to get in trouble, and that's exactly what happened. They
[41:57] Speaker 2: got him on racketeering charges in two thousand and five.
[42:00] Speaker 1: Yeah, so that lands him back in Michigan in prison,
[42:03] Speaker 1: and this whole time, White boy Rick is in prison
[42:06] Speaker 1: for you know, decades. At this point, h and everyone
[42:10] Speaker 1: else that he was had been you know, associating with,
[42:13] Speaker 1: was getting out. Johnny Curry got out ninety nine, that
[42:17] Speaker 1: hitman that tried to kill him twice and admitted to
[42:20] Speaker 1: murdering thirty people, did seventeen years and then cooperated with
[42:25] Speaker 1: the cops. That mandatory minimum that sent him the six
[42:29] Speaker 1: fifty lifer that was overturned by the Michigan Supreme Court
[42:32] Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety eight, and everyone else that had been
[42:37] Speaker 1: impacted by that law ended up free within six years.
[42:39] Speaker 1: But Rick stayed in prison. He just kept getting denied parole.
[42:43] Speaker 1: I think the first one was in two thousand and three.
[42:47] Speaker 1: He asked, like, you know, some of the Feds that
[42:49] Speaker 1: he was working with to help him out, and they
[42:50] Speaker 1: wouldn't do it. One of the guys that he had
[42:54] Speaker 1: worked with, a guy named Herman Groman, basically was like,
[42:58] Speaker 1: all right, I'll tell him about Operation back Bone, and
[43:00] Speaker 1: he helped us out with that, but not the stuff
[43:02] Speaker 1: from when you were fourteen.
[43:03] Speaker 2: Yeah, the problem is like none of that was ever
[43:06] Speaker 2: going to help because white boy Rick had broken a
[43:10] Speaker 2: really big rule by ratting out on cops. He was
[43:13] Speaker 2: smart enough to not read out his drug dealer friends,
[43:15] Speaker 2: but he definitely read it out on the cops, and
[43:18] Speaker 2: the cops went to great links to make sure he
[43:21] Speaker 2: stayed in prison, to make an example out of him,
[43:24] Speaker 2: and to punish him too. And so, in a really
[43:26] Speaker 2: unusual move, a bunch of Detroit police officers went to
[43:30] Speaker 2: his two thousand and three parole hearing and basically just lied,
[43:34] Speaker 2: lied about what a horrible criminally was, like what a
[43:37] Speaker 2: terrible effect he had on Detroit, and how he really
[43:40] Speaker 2: needed to stay in prison, and he got denied, got
[43:44] Speaker 2: denied again in two thousand and eight, and he got
[43:47] Speaker 2: denied again in twenty twelve too.
[43:50] Speaker 1: Yeah, that Greg Schwartz, the FED this time, actually wrote
[43:54] Speaker 1: a letter saying like, hey, he did a lot of
[43:58] Speaker 1: stuff with us. Actually it wasn't just Operation Backbone, that
[44:02] Speaker 1: Damian Lucas murder. He tried to help us out with that.
[44:05] Speaker 1: That thirteen year old kid who got killed. And he said,
[44:08] Speaker 1: you know, we never disclosed this stuff because he was
[44:12] Speaker 1: a kid, and we would have been exposed and embarrassed
[44:14] Speaker 1: at the federal government was working with a kid in
[44:16] Speaker 1: this capacity. They rejected that one too, even though we
[44:19] Speaker 1: finally had someone willing to vouch for him. And until
[44:23] Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, there wasn't a lot of I mean, aside
[44:27] Speaker 1: from just you know, the earlier time when he actually
[44:30] Speaker 1: got sent to prison, it had really quieted down about
[44:33] Speaker 1: you know, white boy Rick, like no one kind of
[44:35] Speaker 1: knew who he was. And then in twenty thirteen that
[44:38] Speaker 1: there was a guy named Seth Ferranti who was an
[44:40] Speaker 1: incarcerated journalist. He wrote a column at The Fix that
[44:44] Speaker 1: reported a lot of this stuff, and then that was
[44:45] Speaker 1: picked up by Evan Hughes who wrote that Adams article
[44:50] Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen that you were talking about that we
[44:52] Speaker 1: read and that was like that was it, all of
[44:55] Speaker 1: a sudden, it was fully out there. Like he didn't
[44:58] Speaker 1: even get k Goto's dad's funeral. His dad died while
[45:00] Speaker 1: he was in prison. And he has like six grandchildren
[45:04] Speaker 1: at this point in his forties, which is remarkable, and
[45:08] Speaker 1: he's like not met these kids at this point.
[45:11] Speaker 2: No, so one thing that makes it like really kind
[45:14] Speaker 2: of gets across. How how just under the thumb of
[45:19] Speaker 2: the Detroit Police Department, this kid was still decades on.
[45:25] Speaker 2: A judge, Judge Dana Hathaway, I think she was the
[45:28] Speaker 2: original judge in his in his trial, she threw out
[45:33] Speaker 2: the life sentence as a judge, right, this wasn't something
[45:36] Speaker 2: she did in her leisure time. Like, she officially threw
[45:38] Speaker 2: out his life sentence, and prosecutors appealed and won. So
[45:42] Speaker 2: he had his life sentence like was upheld what thirty
[45:48] Speaker 2: years later and Hathaway even went on the record saying
[45:52] Speaker 2: that this whole thing was very fishy. Finally, two years later,
[45:55] Speaker 2: he's granted parole. This is thirteen years after the last
[45:59] Speaker 2: person who was given a life sentence under that Michigan
[46:03] Speaker 2: six point fifty life for law had already been led out.
[46:05] Speaker 2: He was the only one, and his incarceration continued for
[46:08] Speaker 2: thirteen more years. He got out in twenty seventeen, age
[46:12] Speaker 2: forty seven. And you would think that would be the
[46:14] Speaker 2: end of the story, Chuck, But it was not.
[46:16] Speaker 1: Wasn't. No, he gets that parole and probably or at
[46:23] Speaker 1: least maybe had something to do with those movies that
[46:25] Speaker 1: we were talking about the documentary in the Matthew McConaughey movie,
[46:30] Speaker 1: because certainly high profile enough to like bring his name
[46:33] Speaker 1: back into the forefront and then people start asking questions
[46:36] Speaker 1: and stuff like that at FED but he had to
[46:39] Speaker 1: stay or I guess, got recentence from the prison sentence
[46:44] Speaker 1: in Florida for that stolen car stuff. So he's back
[46:47] Speaker 1: in jail in Florida. He was, you know, bouncing back
[46:49] Speaker 1: and forth. Finally released from there in July twenty twenty.
[46:53] Speaker 1: I think he was fifty one at the time, and
[46:55] Speaker 1: was like, I need some money, I need some restitution,
[46:57] Speaker 1: and he sued the Feds of he didn't get anything.
[47:01] Speaker 2: No, the judge said the statute of limitations had run
[47:04] Speaker 2: out in two thousand and six, and he's like, well,
[47:06] Speaker 2: I couldn't really say anything while I was in jail
[47:08] Speaker 2: because I would have gotten beaten up on a daily
[47:10] Speaker 2: basis by the guards. And they said, sorry, Paal, like
[47:13] Speaker 2: none of your your very legitimate suits against the federal
[47:17] Speaker 2: government are going to be able to be tried. So yeah.
[47:21] Speaker 2: Apparently he's working on his own documentary project about his
[47:24] Speaker 2: life too. With the hip hop director Hype Williams.
[47:28] Speaker 1: Yeah, I worked with Hype back in the day.
[47:31] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, is he related to Freedom Williams?
[47:36] Speaker 1: I have no idea Bute was one of the biggest
[47:38] Speaker 1: names in the game back then. Oh yeah, I'll tell
[47:40] Speaker 1: you off, Mike.
[47:41] Speaker 2: Okay, I can't I can't wait to hear this. Okay, Well,
[47:46] Speaker 2: since I want to hurry up and end this episode
[47:48] Speaker 2: because I want to hear what Chuck has to say
[47:50] Speaker 2: about Hype Williams, I think it's time for listener mail.
[47:56] Speaker 1: Instead of listener mail, we're going to give issue one last,
[47:59] Speaker 1: well not one last, but another reminder about our voyage,
[48:02] Speaker 1: our Stuff at Sea voyage aboard the Valiant Lady of
[48:04] Speaker 1: Virgin Cruises, which will take place October second through seventh.
[48:10] Speaker 2: Where are we going.
[48:11] Speaker 1: We're going from New York City to Bermuda, and we're
[48:14] Speaker 1: gonna be doing our live show and we're gonna be
[48:15] Speaker 1: with our buddies from stuff they don't want you to
[48:19] Speaker 1: know and stuff Mom never told you, and we're gonna
[48:22] Speaker 1: be doing like other events on board. It's gonna be
[48:24] Speaker 1: a lot of fun.
[48:24] Speaker 2: Yeah, you can go to Virgin Voyages dot com slash
[48:28] Speaker 2: Stuff at Sea and start booking passage today. That's what
[48:31] Speaker 2: they call it on the high seats Booking passage and
[48:34] Speaker 2: come float around with us for five days. It'll be fun,
[48:38] Speaker 2: that's right.
[48:38] Speaker 1: Can't wait, can't.
[48:40] Speaker 2: Wait, and we also can't wait to hear from you
[48:42] Speaker 2: via email, which you can send to Stuff podcast at
[48:46] Speaker 2: iHeartRadio dot com.
[48:50] Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
[48:53] Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
[48:58] Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite show

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