DETROIT – A former Detroit hitman is calling for Rick Wershe Jr. to be released from prison.
Thirty years ago Nate Craft was hired to kill the teenage drug dealer, known as "White Boy Rick."
Wershe has been locked up for 30 years for two nonviolent crimes.
The retired hitman lives in Detroit.
"Most of ya'll may know me as Nate 'Boon' Craft, the Grim Reaper. I was hired to kill Wershe Jr., better known as White Boy Rick.," Craft said.
Craft has admitted to killing over 30 people, some friends, some enemies but most strangers to him.
"It was business. You have to understand. These people was into illegal things anyway. I don't feel bad doing something to somebody that is in that lifestyle," Craft said.
In the 1980s if you had the money and wanted someone dead, he would do it.
"Somebody pay me to hit you, I'm gonna hit you. Don't get it wrong. I believe in money. Friendship, no, I don't have friends."
Craft said several people wanted Wershe dead. Drug dealers and dirty cops who thought he was a snitch. Craft came for Wershe at a stoplight in Detroit.
"We had the music up pretty loud. God willing I saw the slide door on the van opening. I told my buddy, I said, 'Pull off.' He didn't hear me. I reached my leg over the thing and I pushed on the gas. We went through the red light and that's when the shots rang out," Wershe said about the incident.
"Of course, we hit the car. Hitting the car ain't the whole routine. You must get the person that we going at. Don't kill a car. Kill that person in the car. That's who we came to kill. The white boy jumped down up in there. I could've sworn that it went across his back, when the gun finally jammed," Craft said.
Wershe got away, but Craft came at him again at the courthouse when Wershe was on trial for drug possession.
"I'll get on top of one of these buildings, and when he comes out of there, I'm gonna take off his head," Craft said.
Both Craft and Wershe ended up at the same federal prison. They stayed to themselves, both cooperating with the FBI.
"There's someone or something that's keeping me in prison and it's not the crime that I committed. Why has everybody else been released?" Wershe said.
Wershe is scheduled to be released in December 2020.