Several
past Informant America blog posts have suggested the case that sent Richard J.
Wershe, Jr. to prison for life was questionable at best. He was arrested and
charged with possession with intent to deliver over 650 grams of cocaine. The
police case had gaping holes in it which were helped by Wershe’s own defense
team, two lawyers loyal to Detroit Mayor Coleman Young and believed to be
intent on ensuring Wershe went to prison for a long, long time. It is
enlightening—and disturbing—to take a hard look at the evidence—or lack of
it—behind Rick Wershe’s life prison term.
PART ONE
May 22, 1987 was a Friday. The top story in that morning’s
paper reported massive weapons searches by the Detroit Police in Detroit’s
public schools may be illegal. Even the chief of operations for the Wayne
County Prosecutor’s Office questioned the legality of the heavy-handed police
tactic.
I Knew
You Were Waiting for Me by Detroit’s own Aretha Franklin was one
of the top tunes on the radio. As it turns out, the police were waiting for
Richard Wershe, Jr.
Wershe had been recruited at age 14 by the FBI to become a
paid informant against the Curry Brothers, a drug gang connected by marriage to
Coleman Young, Detroit’s all-powerful mayor. Wershe dropped out of school to
play junior G-man full time. Not only did Wershe inform on the Curry gang, he
told the FBI about corrupt Detroit cops, too. Wershe’s undercover work was for
a federal and local drug task force. There were Detroit cops assigned to the
task force. It is reasonable to believe word got back to the Detroit Police
narcotics section that Wershe was telling on cops on the take.
When a federal drug task force got what it needed from
Wershe’s dangerous undercover work they kicked him to the curb to fend for
himself. The teen informant turned to the only trade he knew; the one law
enforcement taught him. He decided to become a cocaine wholesaler. In the
spring of 1987 Rick Wershe, Jr. was on the police radar as a rising newcomer in
Detroit’s drug underworld. By then the teenager’s social network mostly revolved
around ruthless men in Detroit’s black drug trade, men for whom murder was just
a cost of doing business. Wershe had no family support network to speak of. As
he told the Michigan Parole Board in 2003: “I
really didn’t have any parental supervision at the time. I was basically
raising myself and I went down some wrong paths.” Richard J. Wershe, Jr.
was 17 on that fateful night in May, 1987.
The weather was nice. It had been in the mid-80s during the
day. As night fell the skies were mostly cloudy, as usual for Detroit.
About 8:00 p.m. that Friday night, Rick Wershe was a
passenger in a car driven by his pal, Roy Grissom. They pulled up to Wershe’s
family home on Hampshire on Detroit’s east side.
A Detroit police patrol car
was waiting for them. The police put on their lights and made a traffic stop. One
of the cops was Rodney Grandison, an officer Wershe knew well. Wershe says he
and Officer Grandison smoked pot together from time to time.
The flashing police lights quickly attracted neighborhood
attention. As the police approached the car, Wershe tried to stash a shopping
bag of cash under the front seat. The officers saw him do it and they tried to
grab the bag of cash. But somehow Wershe’s sister Dawn, who, along with Richard
Wershe, Sr., had run out of the house to see the commotion, managed to get the
cash first. She ran back in the Wershe family home with the cash bag.
Other police cars waiting nearby quickly swarmed onto the
narrow residential street, clogging it along with numerous residents who had
come outside to see what was happening. The commotion and confusion escalated.
In the chaos Rick Wershe slipped away—empty handed. None of the police officers
stopped him.
Months later at his trial, Wershe remembers the police
testified that a crowd quickly materialized and in the re-telling they said
people were circling the block in Jeeps firing pistols in the air. Why, I
asked, with so many police at the scene didn’t any of them arrest the people
shooting guns? “It (the trial testimony) sounded like a movie, dude,” Wershe
told me as he tried to describe the farcical nature of his jury trial. He also
notes any streetwise young man knew not to carry a weapon in a Jeep because most
police officers equated a Jeep in the ghetto with a drug dealer so traffic
stops of Jeeps were commonplace.
What happened next depends on who is doing the talking—or testifying.
A young woman who was Rick Wershe’s age named
Patricia Story lived one block over on Camden. At Wershe’s preliminary exam she
testified she saw him walking between the houses between Hampshire and Camden
carrying a box. She testified she was sitting on the front porch and Wershe
approached her.
A: “He
asked me could he take the box and put it in the backyard.”
Q: “And
what do you say to that?
A: “I
told him no.”
Q: “All
right. And when you tell him no, does he say anything else to you?”
A: “Well,
he asked me again and I told him no.”
Q: “Is
there any conversation about money?”
A: “Yeah.”
Q: “Tell
me how that happened.”
A: “Well,
after I told him no, he offered me $500. And I told him no again.”
Ms.
Story testified Wershe proceeded to her back yard, anyway. She went in the
house for a few minutes and didn’t see what he did with the box. She said the next
time she saw Wershe he was across the street walking with a police officer
between the houses toward his home on Hampshire. He didn’t have the box.
Patricia
Story’s testimony sounds straightforward enough but there’s more to know about her.
More on that later.
Story’s
next door neighbor, David Golly, testified he was sitting on his front porch,
next door to the Story home at the same time that Patricia Story was sitting on
her porch.
Golly
testified under questioning by the case prosecutor that Rick Wershe walked to
his porch from the Story front porch after he spoke briefly with Patricia Story.
Q: “Has
he got anything in his hands?”
A: “No.”
Q: “When
he comes up to your porch, when he comes toward your porch, does he say
anything to you?
A: “Yeah.
He says just watch the backyard.”
Notice
Golly contradicts his next door neighbor. Patricia Story testified Wershe had a
box in his hands. Golly testified he didn’t. The only thing they agree on is
Wershe’s apparent interest in the back yard. There’s more to know about Golly,
too. More on that later.
Golly
testified he went to the Story back yard with Patricia Story’s father. Together
they started looking for a box. Golly says he found it beneath a porch. He told
the court Mr. Story panicked and ran back in his house.
Golly
says his uncle, known as Moosey Norris, was visiting with him at the time and
Uncle Moosey picked up the box and brought it in the Story house at Mr. Story’s
invitation. (The man known as Moosey later told a lawyer his real name was
Walter Franklin. Whatever his name, Rick Wershe says he was eventually murdered
after Rick had gone to prison.) The box was placed in a bedroom, Golly
testified. Under cross-examination by defense attorney Bill Bufalino (now
deceased) Golly was unequivocal about the box:
Q: “After you saw the box under the porch, did
you see anybody open that box?
A: “No.”
Q: “When the box got put in the bedroom was it
still sealed?”
A: “Yes.”
Q: “Did you ever see the box opened?”
A: “No.”
Q: “So it was closed tight?”
A: “Yes.”
Q: “You don’t know what was in it?”
A: "No."
A: "No."
Hmm.
The box is sealed shut, according to Golly’s sworn testimony. Several hours
later the police show up at the Story house after a telephoned “anonymous tip.”
A police officer takes the box. That officer was the third and final witness at
Wershe’s preliminary exam; Detroit Police Officer Greg Woods, a member of the
self-styled No Crack Crew of local and federal narcs. The No Crack Crew had
been after Rick Wershe for several months.
Woods
testified he arrived at the Story house about 10:00 p.m. that night. He said as
he arrived the owner of the house was coming out of the house and toward the
police officers with a box in his hands. Under prosecution examination Woods
says he took possession of the box from Mr. Story.
Q:
“When you take possession of the box, do you eventually open it or are
you present when it is eventually opened?
A: “It
was partially opened at the time, yes. I finally did open the top, yes.”
Q: “When
you first see Mr. Story coming out of the house with that box opened—
A: “Partially
opened, yes.”
Q: “—had
there been policemen inside the house before you saw the box come out?”
A: “No.”
Q: “Are
you present when the box is completely opened?”
A: “Yes.
Officer Woods testified when he opened the box he saw what
he knew to be wrapped kilos of cocaine. He said there were eight kilos in the
box.
At the end of Rick Wershe’s preliminary exam on charges of
possession with intent to distribute over 650 grams of cocaine, we are left
with the following facts and questions:
- Rick Wershe and a pal are stopped by the police on a pretext traffic stop.
- Wershe had a shopping bag of cash but no drugs. His sister grabs the bag before the police can and she runs into her house with the cash.
- A crowd spills into the street along with dozens of cops.
- Rick Wershe walks away empty-handed.
- A teenage neighbor claims she saw Wershe walking between houses toward her house carrying a large box.
- The neighbor claims Wershe asked her to put the box behind her house. She said no.
- A second neighbor, who lives next door to the teen witness said he saw Wershe at the same time as the teen, but he testified Wershe wasn’t carrying a box.
- After Wershe leaves with the police the neighbors search the back yard for a box and they find one. The box is taken in to the teen girl’s house. A neighbor/witness said the box was taped shut.
- About two hours later, acting on a mysterious anonymous phone tip, the police arrive and take the box. The officer who took possession of the box says it was partially open when he took control of the box.
There are questions which remain unresolved to this day.
- If Wershe didn’t have box with him when the police made the traffic stop, where did it come from?
- Who opened the box?
- Was anything removed from the box?
- Did Wershe have a box or not?
This installment of Informant America has just scratched the surface. The mysteries and conflicts surrounding the evidence and testimony used
to send Rick Wershe, Jr. to prison for life go even deeper and raise more
disturbing questions. More on that next week.
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