'White Boy Rick' seeks parole - Ex-drug dealer says he's learned a lesson and is remorseful

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1 'White Boy Rick' seeks parole - Ex-drug dealer says he's learned a lesson and is remorseful Detroit News, The (MI) - Tuesday, March 25, 2003 Author: The Detroit News ; Norman Sinclair DETROIT -- At age 33, Richard Wershe Jr. believes he has outgrown the life he led as a precocious teen-age drug dealer on the city's east side whose baby face and pageboy haircut made him an underworld cult and media star known as "White Boy Rick." After 15 years in prison, Wershe says he has learned from his mistakes, is remorseful about the past and believes he deserves parole from a life sentence for possession of cocaine. As a teen, he drove a white Jeep, wore English-cut suits and dated the late Mayor Coleman A. Young's favorite niece, a woman five years his senior. Now, in sworn affidavits, he says he simply wants to go home and be a father to his three children, one of whom was born after he went to prison in Wershe 's parole hearing on Thursday, however, could put the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office on a collision course with FBI agents involved with Wershe 's case. The prosecutor's office opposes letting Wershe out of prison because of his history of dealing drugs. The federal agents argue that Wershe performed invaluable service to the government as a cooperating witness, and they believe 15 years in prison is enough punishment for his crime. Wershe 's teen years were a colorful but dangerous time in Detroit. Drug dealers with nicknames like "Rocking Reggie" and "Boogaloo" swaggered around town in luxury cars. Some like "Maserati Rick" Carter and Demetrius Holloway were shot and killed in audacious incidents. Carter was shot dead in 1988 in a Detroit hospital bed where he was recovering from wounds in an earlier attempt on his life. He was buried in a casket sporting a Mercedes grille, ornament, wheels and tires. Holloway, 29, had $14,000 in cash in his pockets when he was shot dead one afternoon in 1990 in the fitting room in a high-fashion downtown men's store. The hit man whistled the tune of "Zippity-Do-Da," as he squeezed off a round into the back of Holloway's head then calmly walked out of the store. Wershe nearly joined those role models in death, when, at age 14, he was shot in the stomach by a friend playing with a handgun.

2 The late 1980s was also a time of drug corruption in the Police Department. Former Chief William L. Hart was convicted of stealing some $2 million from a fund to pay narcotics informants. He was caught when some of the money tumbled out of the ceiling of his kitchen. A second chance Retired FBI agent Greg Schwarz, a 30-year veteran now living in Virginia, and Special Agent Herman Groman Jr., who was Wershe 's contact with the bureau, argue Wershe deserves a second chance at life. Both men are paying their way to Detroit to testify on Wershe 's behalf. "I back him because I have stayed in touch with him over the years. I have a pretty good feel for where this young man is coming from," Schwarz said. "He is truly remorseful for his actions, he cares about his family, and has convinced me he can be a contributing member of our society. "If our system is truly dedicated to fairness, someone like Wershe should be able to make a mistake, pay dearly and learn from it and be a better person for it. If the system doesn't allow that, then there is something wrong with the system," he said. Groman, who is now assigned to the FBI's office in Las Vegas, wrote a four-page letter to the chairman of the parole board explaining in detail Wershe 's role in helping the FBI in major cases. Wershe is credited with helping the government break up several of the city's most brutal drug gangs, including 30 members of a group who called themselves "Best Friends," whom agents say killed more than 80 people. The agent said Wershe was also the key to one of the FBI's most significant local police drug corruption cases in which nearly a dozen police officers, including three on then-detroit Police Chief William Hart's staff, were convicted in Groman said Wershe 's cooperation continued in prison. He was instrumental in preventing a homicide in a murder-for-hire plot, and in 1995 provided information about another plot by one organized crime group planning the murder of another nationally known crime figure, he said. Because of that cooperation, Wershe has earned rare status as an inmate. He is serving his state prison time in the federal witness protection program, housed in an undisclosed federal institution. Prosecutors not swayed Wershe 's role with the federal government does not sway the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office. Assistant Prosecutor Karen Woodside, in charge of parole matters for the prosecutor's office, said Wershe, as a major drug dealer, was responsible for selling poison that caused "deaths of numerous children in Metro Detroit."

3 "It is our position that he is precisely the person that the statute was written for," Woodside said. She said Wershe has already been given consideration for helping the government because he is serving his time in a federal rather than state prison. "Mr. Wershe was involved in a lot of other matters that never resulted in prosecution because he got a life sentence," Woodside said. "But there were numerous other incidents involving large amounts of cocaine, there were intimations that he was involved in murders and rapes." Schwarz accused Woodside of a leading a campaign against Wershe. Last week, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey G. Collins rescinded a letter in support of Wershe his office sent to the parole board last year. "Before you go to the newspapers and assassinate someone's character, you should have more information than intimations," Schwarz said. "If the prosecutor has knowledge that Wershe was involved in murder or rape, why haven't they charged him?" Question of evidence Patrick McQueeney, a St. Clair Shores lawyer who represents Wershe, denied that his client was ever involved in murder or rape. "There is no evidence we've seen to support those allegations," McQueeney said. "I don't know where her information is coming from, but there is evidence, however, that the cops in his case were willing to lie to get Rick Wershe." In a 1995 book about the rise and fall of a Detroit drug family, Texas author William Adler quoted the lead officer in Wershe 's case admitting to using false information to get warrants. Another officer said he was an avowed racist. A third gave perjured testimony against Wershe, according to an FBI wiretap recording. A key witness who police testified had disappeared because he feared for his life later told McQueeney in a 59-page statement that he simply was never called to testify and his earlier testimony used against Wershe was coerced by police. When Wershe was sentenced in 1988, Michigan law dictated he would spend the rest of his life in prison with no chance for parole. That law has since been rescinded and allows the prisoners to be paroled. Wayne County Circuit Judge Thomas E. Jackson, who sentenced Wershe in 1988, declined to comment on the question of parole. However, under a state law dealing with cooperation by criminal defendants, Jackson last year issued "a finding of cooperation" making Wershe eligible for parole three years early.

4 Convicted are free Ironically, some of the most notorious drug dealers and killers Wershe helped convict are now free on parole or after serving their sentences. Gang leader Johnny Curry, now 44, his two brothers and several other of his east-side henchmen are now free. So are Edwin Scheer and Pedro Mantillo, the Miami dealers who supplied drugs to Wershe. Even Frank Lee Usher -- known as Big Frank Nitty when he was convicted of murder in one of the city's most bizarre crimes, the triple beheading murders of two men and a woman in 1979, and who was implicated in federal court testimony in 11 other murders -- is out of prison. Usher, now 61, served eight years in state prison on the murder conviction before a judge reversed the verdict against him. He was then put into the federal prison system to serve a 13- year sentence for running a drug enterprise and a five-year sentence for weapons violations in two unrelated cases. Charles Wilkes, a member of the Best Friends gang who was linked to 11 murders, will be eligible for release next year. Attracting attention In a letter to the parole board, Wershe 's mother, Darlene Carr, said that she and her husband, Richard Wershe Sr., were embroiled in a bitter divorce during the time their son was running with drug dealers and paid no attention to him or his older sister, Dawn, who became addicted to drugs. Wershe Sr., a licensed gun dealer and electronics store owner, also had running feuds with Detroit police in the 1980s. He was convicted in 1988 of possessing illegal gun silencers and served more than seven years in prison. Dawn Wershe, married with four children and sober for more than 10 years, said her brother dotes on his three children, keeping in touch with them by telephone. Wershe 's case has attracted the attention of local recording star Robert Ritchie, better known as Kid Rock. Ritchie, who sees in Wershe what could have been his own fate as a youngster, wrote a letter of support to the parole board and has talked to Woodside about the case. Ritchie's production manager says he is willing to give Wershe a job if he is released. But Woodside, the assistant Wayne County prosecutor, said it's unlikely he will be paroled.

5 "The decision is the discretion of the parole board, and I don't believe they will let him out," she said. Caption: Wershe in 2003 Wershe in 1987 Edition: One Dot Section: Metro Page: 01B Index Terms: PRISON ; PARDONS ; AND ; PAROLES ; DRUG ; TRAFFIC Dateline: DETROIT Record Number: det Copyright (c) The Detroit News. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Gannett Co., Inc. by NewsBank, inc.