There are new developments in Rick Wershe, Jr.’s struggle to be free for the first time in his adult life. He’s been in prison since he was a teenager. He spent 29 years locked up for his non-violent Michigan drug conviction and finally got paroled last summer. Admitted hit men have served less time. He was immediately taken to Florida to serve a sentence in a separate car fraud/theft case. That’s where he is now. There’s a chance he may be totally free soon.
The Rick Wershe Story Revisited
If you are a newcomer to my blogs, welcome. I’ve been blogging at Informant America since March of 2015 about the amazing and complicated story of Richard J. Wershe, Jr., known seemingly forever in the media as White Boy Rick. I am resuming my blogs here at vincewade.net after a hiatus of several months.
Rick Wershe grew up in a dysfunctional divorced family in a racially mixed neighborhood on Detroit’s northeast side. Parental supervision was missing in action in Rick’s home, so he roamed the streets—a lot. He came to know all the wrong people, including the Curry Brothers—Johnny, Leo and Rudell—an increasingly successful drug gang with political connections. The gang leader, Johnny Curry, was married to the niece of Detroit’s powerful mayor, the late Coleman Young.
As Rick entered his teens, crack cocaine was sweeping the nation as the illegal substance of choice among hardcore drug users. There was public pressure in Detroit, as in many other cities, for law enforcement to Do Something. The FBI began investigating the Curry gang, not only for drug trafficking, but because of the family ties to Detroit’s mayor.
In June of 1984, FBI agents approached Rick Wershe and his father, Richard J. Wershe, Sr., to become paid informants in the War on Drugs. The elder Wershe had asked the FBI to help him find his daughter Dawn, Rick’s sister, who had vanished with a small-time criminal. Richard Wershe, Sr. was worried that his daughter was in danger because he suspected she was on another drug binge. Dawn Wershe has fought drug addiction all her life.
As explained in my new book Prisoner of War: The Story of White Boy Rick and the War on Drugs (on sale June 25th through Amazon and by order at bookstores), the FBI knew through street intelligence work that young Rick Wershe was known to hang around the Curry home.
Two agents approached the Wershes—senior and junior—with a proposition. They would try to find Dawn Wershe if the father and son would help gather intelligence on the Curry Brothers. They showed Richard Wershe, Sr. some surveillance photos. He couldn’t identify anyone. He suggested his son might know them. The agents knew the answer. Young Richard Wershe came to the table and identified each of the individuals in the surveillance photos by their street names.
I asked Rick Wershe when the agents recruited him versus his father. “At the same meeting,” he said. It was evident to the FBI from the get-go that the kid was the one with the information, the connections. Thus, at the age of 14, Richard J. Wershe, Jr. became a soldier in the War on Drugs, in military terms, an intelligence operative working behind enemy lines.
Things went well for a while, but the informant train ran off the tracks when Rick told the FBI about the Curry gang killing of a 13-yr. old Detroit boy named Damion Lucas. The killers were being shielded by top-level corruption in the Detroit Police Department. It was understood the mayor’s niece must be shielded from being called as a witness at all costs. An innocent man was charged with the killing.
A Soldier Left on the Battlefield
Things started to go awry. Charges were eventually dropped against the man falsely accused in the Damion Lucas killing, but the FBI dropped Rick as an informant, suddenly and totally. Young Rick Wershe turned to the only trade he knew, the one law enforcement taught him. He tried to become a cocaine wholesaler, got busted and was sentenced to life in prison.
Several years later, while in prison, he tried to help the FBI again; this time in a sting operation against crooked cops. The FBI almost caught the late Gilbert Hill, a highly popular city councilman and former head of Detroit Police Homicide. Johnny Curry told the FBI he bribed Hill to divert the homicide case away from the Curry gang. The killing of 13-year old Damion Lucas remains unsolved. Hill learned White Boy Rick had been informing on him since the killing of the little boy. The powers-that-be in Detroit seemed determined to keep Rick Wershe, Jr. in prison until he died, because he told on the wrong people. He became a political prisoner in the War on Drugs. A Prisoner of War.
For some years, Rick Wershe, Jr. was in prison in the federal Witness Security program. While serving time in Florida, Wershe got caught up in a used car sales scheme that turned out to be a front for a stolen car group. The ring was busted and Wershe was sentenced to five years to run consecutive to his life prison term in Michigan. That’s where he is now.
Next week a committee of the Florida Commission on Offender Review will consider Rick Wershe’s Request for Commutation supported by a written Statement of Merit plus in-person testimony from two retired FBI agents who worked with him in the 1980s. The Request for Commutation and the Statement of Merit were prepared by Ralph Musilli, Wershe’s longtime Michigan appeals attorney. But there are thousands of such requests from inmates, so Wershe somehow has to stand out. He may be in luck.
The fact that two former federal agents are flying to Tallahassee, Florida to argue for a prison sentence commutation for a long-ago FBI informant is remarkable.
Former agent Herman Groman was Rick’s Wershe’s FBI “handler” for years. He didn’t recruit Rick Wershe but he supervised his informant activity involving several cases. Gregg Schwarz had less case interaction with Wershe but he feels strongly that the federal government didn’t do right by their informant. Schwarz has been in weekly contact with Rick Wershe for years, taking the role of surrogate father on many occasions.
Even with the unusual involvement of the ex-FBI agents, the pursuit of a commutation for Rick Wershe, Jr. is an uphill struggle. Florida is a tough-on-crime state run by Republicans who campaign on being tough on crime. Commutations and clemency are hard to come by.
Politics Plays a Part
But Wershe may have a little political help. Some Wershe friends in Michigan reportedly paid a hefty sum to former Florida Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottcamp to help Rick win a commutation. Kottcamp is a Republican in a state where the GOP dominates. He’s a lobbyist from the party in power who knows the people in power in Florida state government.
Wershe has an excellent prison behavior record and is in minimum custody status at the Putnam Correctional Institution in East Palatka, a community of around 1,600 people, about 60 miles south of Jacksonville.
If the committee is sufficiently impressed they will suggest that Rick Wershe’s Request for Commutation be considered by the four-member Commission on Offender Review at their next meeting in June. The Commission is totally political. It consists of Florida Governor Rick Scott, State Attorney General Pam Bondi, Commissioner of Agriculture Adam Putnam and the State Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Putnam.
If the Commission looks favorably on Rick Wershe’s request, he could be a free man sometime this summer. If not, he faces about 26 more months behind bars.
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