April 29th, 1985, 9:47 p.m. A terrified child’s voice cuts through the Detroit night. Could you send the police to 1996 Marlo? Somebody just shot at my house, please. 11year-old Frankie Lucas is screaming into the phone. Shots came through the walls. His 13-year-old brother, Damian, is lying on the floor, unresponsive.
“He won’t wake up,” Frankie tells his uncle later, voice cracking. “He won’t wake up no more.” Damen Lucas died at the scene. An innocent kid caught in crossfire meant for someone else. An attack targeting the wrong victim. The Detroit police moved fast. They arrested someone, closed the case, but they arrested the wrong man.
The FBI knew it. They had wire taps, phone records, evidence pointing straight to the Curry Brothers, one of Detroit’s most powerful drug organizations. And they had an informant, a 14-year-old kid who’d been in the car when the orders came down, who’d heard everything. That informant’s name was Richard Wory Jr.
, White Boy Rick. He was the youngest FBI informant in American history. A child paid to infiltrate gangsters and killers. He helped bring down drug empires, exposed corrupt cops, uncovered the biggest police scandal Detroit had ever seen. And for that, they gave him life in prison.
32 years behind bars for a crime he committed at 17. While the Kingpins he helped convict walked free in 12. This is the story of how America weaponized a child, then made him pay for their sins. Rewind 1984. Before the murder, before the corruption, before everything fell apart, Richard Worersy Jr. is 14 years old, 8th grade, walking home from school on Detroit’s east side.
An FBI agent approaches him after school about becoming an informant. Rick felt pressured to cooperate. The feds had already talked to his father, a street hustler who ran a gun shop. The old man couldn’t identify the faces in their photos. Drug dealers, gangsters. But Rick, he knew every name, every corner, every crew.
So they recruited him. 14 years old, the youngest FBI informant in American history. His target, the Curry brothers. Johnny and Leo Curry ran one of Detroit’s most powerful drug organizations. The FBI estimated they moved 150 to $200 million worth of cocaine and heroin through the city. But the Curries had something most drug dealers didn’t. Protection.
Johnny Curry was married to Kathy Volsan, the beloved niece of Detroit’s mayor, Coleman Young. The marriage was kept secret at first. The family panicked when they found out they knew what it meant. Kathy gave Johnny access, direct lines to the mayor’s office, confidential police files on his own drug operation, and a connection to Gil Hill, the head of Detroit’s homicide department.
Gil Hill, remember that name? Rick played his role perfectly. He befriended Johnny’s younger brother first, earned their trust, started hanging around. Pretty soon, he’s in the inner circle. The FBI loved it. Rick’s information led to 20 convictions, wiretaps, arrests, busts.
But then came April 29th, 1985, the Damen Lucas murder. Leon Lucas, Damen’s uncle, was a smalltime dealer who’d crossed the Curries over boxing tickets to the Marvin Haggler Tommy Hearns fight in Vegas. Promised them seats, never delivered. The Curries wanted payback, so they sent shooters to Leyon’s house on Marlo Street.
Drive-by shooting. Gunfire struck the residents. 13-year-old Damian was struck. Detroit homicide moved fast, but they didn’t go after the Curries. They arrested Lakers Davis instead. Wrong man, wrong motive. Didn’t matter. Rick knew the truth. He’d been in the car with Johnny Curry when Johnny called Gil Hill on speaker phone.
Curry was worried. Worried about the heat from the Lucas killing. Rick heard Hill’s response. I’ll take care of it. And he did. Years later, Johnny Curry admitted to FBI agents that he paid Gil Hill $10,000 cash delivered to Hill’s fifth floor office in the homicide section. The deal, keep the investigation away from the Curry organization.
Hill denied everything. The FBI couldn’t prove it. Lakers Davis was released 9 months later when prosecutors had no case. Damen Lucas’s murder still unsolved, but Rick had already paid a price. November 1984, before the Lucas murder, someone shot Rick at close range. He suffered life-threatening internal injuries.
He survived by luck. The FBI came to visit him in the hospital, not to comfort him, to convince him to lie, call it an accident, keep working. So he did. Then at 16, they cut him loose. 20 convictions secured, case closed. The FBI was done with Rick Wory. But Rick, he had no skills except the ones they taught him.
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How to deal drugs, how to survive in a world that didn’t want him. 16 years old, no FBI protection, no handlers, no backup plan, just a kid who knew how to move product because that’s what the government taught him. Rick told a reporter years later, “I was brought into this life by law enforcement.
I was taught it. They left me alone. And a year later, I’m busted and put in jail for life. But for now, he’s just trying to survive.” 1986, Detroit’s in the middle of the crack epidemic. The cities burning, factories closed, jobs gone. The auto industry that built this place dead. What’s left is the illegal economy, the streets.
Rick starts small, dealing small amounts, makes connections. The same dealers he’d been informing on, now they’re his suppliers, his partners, his crew. He became increasingly involved. Pretty soon, Rick’s rolling through the east side in a white jeep with the snowman painted on the back.
He’s too young to legally drive, but nobody’s checking IDs. He’s wearing mink coats, solid gold belt buckles, a diamond encrusted Rolex on his wrist. The whole city notices. BJ Chambers, a serious player in Detroit’s drug game, said it best. He rose all the way through the ranks. He did it just as big as me.
The Curry brothers, Maserati Rick. Rick even started dating Kathy Volan, the mayor’s niece, Johnny Curry’s wife. While Johnny was locked up, Rick took his girl, took his street credit, took his place. That’s when the media gave him the name White Boy Rick. Rick never called himself that. His crew didn’t either.
It was the reporters, the headlines, the legend they were building. Because here’s the thing about Detroit in the 80s. Everyone loved a good villain. And a white kid running with black gangsters, selling drugs in mink coats, dating the mayor’s niece, that’s a headline. That’s a story.
That’s a boogeyman the city could sell. The truth, Rick wasn’t the kingpin they made him out to be. Years later, Johnny Curry set the record straight. If I was a 10, Wory was maybe a two. The media pumped up his role, made it bigger than it was. They needed a face for the crack epidemic, for the war on drugs, for mandatory sentencing.
And Rick, he fit. Most of those luxury items borrowed the cars, props, the lifestyle, smoke and mirrors. But the myth was already written. White Boy Rick, the teenage drug lord, the youngest kingpin in Detroit. The feds had taught him the game. The streets had raised him. And now the media was turning him into something he never was.
Because the truth didn’t matter. What mattered was the story. And Rick’s story, it was just getting started. May 22nd, 1987. Rick’s driving to his grandmother’s house. He’s 17, just a few days shy of 18. Red and blue lights flash in the rear view. Detroit police pull him over. When they search the car, they find 8 kg of cocaine, 17 12 lb.
Street value, hundreds of thousands. They also find $30,000 in cash. The police don’t just arrest him. They parade him in front of cameras. Call him a kingpin, a drug lord, the biggest dealer in the city. They create charts showing Rick at the top of a criminal empire. Every dangerous name in Detroit listed as his underling. It’s a stretch, a big one.
But it’s an election year. The war on drugs is hot and they need a win. Rick’s father begs the FBI to help. Reminds them his son was their informant, risked his life, got shot, helped them take down the Curries. The FBI says nothing, not a word. Rick goes to trial alone. 1988 courtroom, Wayne County Circuit Court.
Richard Worersy Junior stands before the judge. He’s 17 years old, barely. The charge, possession with intent to distribute 8 kg of cocaine. Michigan has a law. The 650 lifer law passed in 1973. Simple rule. Get caught with more than 650 grams of cocaine or heroin. Mandatory life sentence. No parole. No exceptions. Rick had 8,000 g.
The judge looks down at him, a kid in an oversized suit, and says something that’ll haunt Rick for decades. You are worse than a mass murderer. Life in prison, no possibility of parole. 17 years old. Rick’s father begs the FBI to step in, testify, tell the court his son was an informant, that he’d risked his life, got shot, helped to take down the Curries, expose corrupt cops. The FBI stays silent.
Not a single agent speaks up. Detroit police, same story. The department Rick worked for as a 14-year-old mole, they act like they never knew him. Rick goes to prison alone, forgotten, erased. But here’s where it gets interesting. That same year, 1987, the FBI finally takes down the Curry brothers.
Federal indictment, running a criminal enterprise, conspiracy to distribute cocaine and heroin. The FBI’s own estimate, the Curries moved 150 to $200 million worth of drugs through Detroit. Johnny Curry, the man Rick helped convict, gets 20 years. Mandatory minimum. He serves 12. Some reports say 14. March 1999, Johnny Curry walks out of federal prison. A free man.
Rick still locked up. Today, Johnny’s 62 years old, living comfortably, got a son, grandkids, retirement money. He’s even spoken publicly about Rick. No hard feelings. He says somebody was going to do it. If it wasn’t me, somebody was going to do it. So, at the time, it was money. Johnny admits it freely.
He was a drug dealer, made millions, got caught, did his time, moved on. But here’s what really stings. Years later, Johnny told reporters the truth about White Boy Rick. If I was a 10, she was maybe a two. They pumped up his role, made him sound like a kingpin. He wasn’t. The media had built Rick into a monster, the youngest drug lord in America, a menace, a threat to society.
But the real kingpin, the guy who actually ran a$und00 million drug empire, he got 12 years. Rick got life. Every other dealer Rick helped the FBI convict. out by the late 90s. Sentences served, debts paid. But not Rick. Because Rick didn’t just help take down drug dealers. He’d uncovered something worse.
He’d heard Gil Hill, head of Detroit homicide, promised to protect the Curries. He told the FBI about the $10,000 bribe. He’d exposed the Damen Lucas coverup. And in Detroit, you don’t cross powerful people and walk away clean. The 650 lifer law was supposed to stop drug kingpans, take the worst offenders off the streets forever.
But it didn’t catch kingpans. It caught a 17-year-old kid who knew too much. A kid the FBI had used then abandoned. A kid who was about to spend the next three decades learning exactly how much the system hated him. Because Rick’s sentence wasn’t about drugs. It was about silence. And in 1988, they imprisoned him to keep it.
1990, Rick’s been locked up for 2 years. Life sentence, no parole. Most inmates in his position would fade into the system. Forgotten. But the FBI, they’re not done with Rick Wory yet. September 1990, Operation Backbone begins. It’s an undercover sting targeting corrupt cops in Detroit.
The FBI wants to catch officers willing to protect drug shipments for cash. And they need someone on the inside to make it work. So they go back to Rick. He’s sitting in a cell serving life. They offer him nothing. No reduced sentence, no deal, just a promise that maybe, maybe it’ll help him down the line. Rick agrees.
An undercover FBI agent poses as a Miami drug trafficker, starts approaching Detroit cops, offering bribes, protection money, the whole setup. The operation works. More than a dozen police officers get caught. Implicated, arrested. It’s the largest police corruption case in Detroit history. FBI agent Herman Groman, the same agent who’d been investigating Gil Hill over the Damen Lucas coverup, runs point on the whole thing.
He transferred from the drug squad to public corruption, specifically to go after dirty cops like Hill. And Rick, he helps make it happen. His reward, zero. Not a single day off his sentence. Former FBI agent Greg Schwarz said it best years later. Worshy should have been thanked by the Michigan parole board and released from prison.
But that’s not how this story goes. Because while Rick’s rotting in prison helping the feds, there’s a rumor circulating in Detroit’s underworld. A hit, a contract, $125,000. The target, White Boy Rick. The source of this rumor, Nate Boon Craft, a convicted hitman who admitted to 30 homicides, a killer who later cooperated with authorities to get out of prison himself.
In 2016, Craft goes on record in a documentary, says Gil Hill, the same cop who took the Curry bribe, who covered up Damen Lucas’s murder, approached him with an offer. Craft’s exact words. This came from Gil Hills mouth to me. We got to make sure it don’t get back to no one. And I said, “You know me, none of my operations lead back to anyone.
I was told to eliminate white boy Rick.” He said, “125,000. I’ll make sure you get it if the target is eliminated.” The contract was on Rick’s life. Hill passed away in 2016. can’t defend himself now, but the allegation hangs there. Heavy, ugly. True or not, it tells you everything about how far Rick’s information had reached and how dangerous it made him.
1998, Michigan overturns the 650 LIFER law, the same law that put Rick away for life. Inmates serving life under that law. Most of them get released. Rick stays locked up. March 2003, Rick finally gets a parole hearing. 15 years into his sentence, the law that convicted him doesn’t even exist anymore.
The Michigan parole board looks at his record, looks at his cooperation, looks at everything he’s done, and they call him a menace to society. Parole denied. Meanwhile, Gil Hills career is thriving. He retired from the Detroit Police Department in 1989. Rank of Commander, then he runs for Detroit City Council, wins, becomes council president in 1997.
2001, Hill runs for mayor. He’s the favorite, the hometown hero, the cop from Beverly Hills Cop, the guy everyone knows. He loses towame kilpatrick 46% to 54. And privately, Hill blames Rick Wory. blames the Damian Lucas scandal, blames the corruption whispers that never quite went away.
Hill keeps his power, though, stays influential in Detroit politics until his death in 2016. Wayne County prosecutor Kim Worthy fights Rick’s release for years. Insists he’s too dangerous, too much of a threat. Critics say she’s doing it for Hill, protecting political allies. Worthy denies it.
says her friendship with Hill was strictly a friendship that she admired greatly his work as head of homicide, but she keeps fighting Rick’s parole year after year. Rick’s father passed away in 2014. Rick can’t attend the funeral. His son grows up without him. Six grandchildren are born. Rick’s never met them.
At a press conference in 2021, Rick says it plainly, “My father’s not here. A lot of my family members aren’t here. I didn’t get to see my kids grow up. I saw the world evolve, but I didn’t get to play any part of it. It’s almost like being dead.” By the time Rick finally gets out, he’ll hold a record nobody wants. Longest prison term for a nonviolent offender in Michigan history.
32 years for a crime he committed at 17, longer than the kingpins, longer than the corrupt cops, longer than anyone. Because Rick wasn’t just a drug dealer, he was a witness. And in Detroit, witnesses don’t walk free. 2017, after 29 years behind bars, Rick Wory finally gets the call. parole. Granted, the Michigan parole board, the same board that called him a menace in 2003, finally agrees to let him go.
Rick’s 48 years old now. He went in at 17, missed everything. His son’s childhood, his father’s funeral, 30 years of life erased. But now he’s going home. Except he’s not. The day Rick walks out of that Michigan prison, US marshals are waiting at the door. They slap cuffs on him, put him in a van, drive him straight to Florida.
Turns out Rick’s got another sentence to serve. Five more years for a car theft ring he was involved in back in 2008. Here’s the twist. Rick committed that crime while he was in federal prison, part of the witness protection program, helping the government again. And now they’re making him serve time for it.
After 29 years in Michigan, Rick gets transferred to Florida State Prison to do another five. So close. So close to freedom. And they snatch it away. But while Rick’s stuck in Florida, something else is happening. His story is going mainstream. March 31st, 2017, a documentary called White Boy premieres at the Freep Film Festival in Detroit.
It wins the Audience Choice Award. People finally start paying attention. The documentary lays it all out. The FBI recruitment, the corruption, the Damen Lucas coverup, Gil Hill, the life sentence, everything. Stars picks it up in 2019. Netflix grabs it in 2021. Suddenly, Rick’s not just a convict anymore.
He’s a symbol, a cautionary tale about how the system chews people up and spits them out. September 2018, Hollywood releases its own version. White Boy Rick. Matthew McConna plays Rick’s father. The reviews are mixed. Some people say it doesn’t go far enough. Doesn’t show the full extent of what the FBI did.
Doesn’t capture how badly Rick got screwed. But it doesn’t matter. The story is out there now. People know his name. Meanwhile, back in Detroit, Gil Hill passed away. February 29th, 2016. Pneumonia, 84 years old, dies at Sinai Grace Hospital. He never faced charges, never answered for the bribe, never explained the Damian Lucas coverup.
At his funeral, they call him one of Detroit’s favorite sons. Newspapers write glowing obituaries about his police career, his role in Beverly Hills Cop, his time on city council, the corruption barely mentioned. 2019, Detroit unveils a portrait of Gil Hill at the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center. It’s tradition.
Every former city council president gets one. Hills hanging on the wall, honored, celebrated. Rick still in prison, but not for much longer. July 20th, 2020. A halfway house in Florida. Rick Wory walks out the front door. No cuffs, no marshalss, no more sales. He’s 51 years old. 2 days past his birthday.
It’s been 32 years since his arrest. 32 years since he was a kid driving to his grandmother’s house. The world he’s walking into, it’s nothing like the one he left. smartphones, social media, streaming services, electric cars, a global pandemic shutting everything down. His father’s gone, his childhood friends, most of them dead or locked up.
But Rick, he’s finally free. Journalist Scott Bernstein puts it best. Sadly, the wheels of justice can often move slowly. It took 32 years, but the light at the end of that tunnel is now this white hot spotlight that has finally sprung him from his chains. Johnny Curry, the kingpin Rick helped convict.
Served 12 years, been out since 99, living comfortably, grandkids, retirement. Rick 32 years, lost everything. But he’s out now and he’s got questions. questions the system doesn’t want to answer. July 2021, one year after his release, Rick Wory files a lawsuit, $100 million in damages, defendants, the city of Detroit, former Detroit police officers, two former FBI agents, an assistant attorney from the Justice Department.
His attorney statement is clear. There is no other case like plaintiffs in United States history where a 14-year-old is used by federal and state law enforcement. Never has a child confidential informant been so abused. Then there’s the civil rights angle, three-year statute of limitations.
Rick’s last grievance, 2003, the parole hearing, meaning he should have filed by 2006. He filed in 2021, 15 years too late. The government argues the plaintiff did not have a reasonable fear of retaliation that lasted for three decades. Rick’s lawyers fire back. He was locked up.
The same cops and agents he testified against still had power over him. Filing a lawsuit could have destroyed his parole chances. September 18th, 2023. Judge FK Bam dismisses both lawsuits. her ruling. Rick has not met his burden to show that he acted as diligently as reasonably could be expected. Translation: Should have spoken up sooner.
Rick appeals 2024. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, oral arguments, July 18th. Judge David McKe challenges Rick’s attorney. You can’t just name a whole group and say, “Well, the defendants, government attorney John Adams calls the retaliation claims frivolous.” As of now, the appeals still pending, but the message is clear.
The system protects itself. At a press conference in 2021, Rick said it plainly, “My father’s not here. I didn’t get to see my kids grow up. I saw the world evolve, but I didn’t get to play any part of it. It’s almost like being dead. He pauses, adds, I have grandkids that I’ve never met to this day.
Today, Rick runs a cannabis business. The eighth by white boy Rick. Supplies 180 stores. Net worth about 500,000. He’s married now, Michelle McDonald. Got a son named Richard Williams. He speaks at criminal justice reform events, tells his story, warns people about what the system can do. Johnny Curry, still supportive, showed up to Rick’s documentary premiere, the Hollywood film screening, says he’s got no hard feelings.
Even Nate Booncraft, the hitman who claimed Gil Hill wanted Rick dead, spoke up for his release. Former FBI agent Greg Schwarz said what everyone knows. Worshy should have been thanked by the Michigan parole board and released from prison. Documentary producer Sha Wretch put it bluntly.
This is all punishment for cooperating with the FBI and taking down police and politicians here in Detroit. Detroit attorney Steven Mousili called it what it is, a disaster. The government at all levels should have been ashamed of itself, but no one’s been held accountable. Gil Hill passed away, honored as a hero.
Portrait on the wall. The FBI stayed silent. Detroit hid behind bankruptcy. Damen Lucas’s murder still unsolved. Richard Worersy Jr. served 32 years for a crime he committed at 17. The youngest FBI informant in American history. A child weaponized by the government, then erased.
He didn’t just lose his freedom. He lost his father, his son’s childhood, his life, and the system that destroyed him. It walks away clean every
