Rick Wershe Jr., formerly known as “White Boy Rick,” rose to fame in the 1980s as a drug dealer in Detroit, Michigan, who was able to befriend high-ranking members of drug clans when he was only a teenager. But White Boy, a 2017 documentary that shot to the Netflix Top 10 this week, tells a very different story about Wershe Jr.’s life on the streets of Detroit — and the conviction that made him the longest-serving Michigan inmate who was convicted as a juvenile of a non-violent crime.
But before we go any further, you’re probably wondering — since the making of White Boy, did Wershe Jr. ever get out of prison?
The answer is yes. As The Detroit News reported, he was released last year after serving more than 30 years of his life sentence. His release came two years after the feature film White Boy Rick, which starred Richie Merritt as Rick Wershe Jr. and Matthew McConnaughey as his father, Rick Wershe Sr. It was directed by Yann Demange.
In 2017, Wershe told the Detroit News that his hopes for post-prison life were to write screenplays and enjoy the family that he’s missed out on for the past three decades — at the age of 51, he is a father of three and a grandfather of six.
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“The older you get, you have a different outlook on life and different things are important to you,” Wershe told the Detroit News. “Now what’s important to me is going out and doing something to be proud of and make the people that stood up for me make them proud and not let them down.”
Wershe Jr. also echoed what White Boy underscored to a fine point — he was never a “drug kingpin,” despite what media reports said at the time of his arrest and trial. He said it’s true that he dealt drugs, but on a much smaller scale.
“I’ve lost a lot of my life to things that aren’t true,” Wershe said in the 2017 interview. “I was never the drug dealer … who was this huge kingpin. That couldn’t be more wrong. I sold drugs for 11 months.”
The documentary also diverges shockingly from the urban legend of “White Boy Rick” — a nickname Wershe Jr. would like to move on from. His forays into the drug trade actually came as a result of working as an informant for the FBI, as his father had done, since he was 14 years old, according to the doc. His ability to befriend members of the Curry gang and the Best Friends gang astounded law enforcement, who routinely used him to gather information for drug raids.
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Not a drug kingpin..... was arrested with 9000GM of coke and 30G. LOL.
Reverse Racism at it's very best.
Finally he will see lifhtat the end of tunnel
Having to serve 30 yrs in prison for a non violent drug crime is ridiculous. Rapists, pedophiles, those with violent crimes have not even served that long. Why did this happen? Who had what against him? I hope he has a blessed life with his family