# THE CURRY TWINS: POWER, PRIVILEGE, AND THE DETROIT DRUG EMPIRE

## The Rise of Detroit's Most Notorious Kingpins

The story of Johnny and Leonard Curry is one of the most compelling narratives in American organized crime history—a tale of two brothers who would rise from humble beginnings to command one of the most sophisticated drug operations the Midwest had ever witnessed. Yet unlike many crime stories rooted in fantasy or exaggeration, the Curry brothers' empire was disturbingly real, meticulously organized, and ultimately destined to crumble under the weight of federal scrutiny and internal betrayal.

On the surface, Detroit in the late 1970s appeared to many outsiders as a city in decline. The automotive industry that once defined American prosperity had faltered. Unemployment ravaged communities. Yet within this economic devastation, a parallel economy flourished—one built on narcotics, ambition, and the ruthless pursuit of wealth. It was into this world that the Curry twins were born in 1959, in the predominantly African-American neighborhoods of Detroit's east side, just seven miles from downtown. Their childhood home was neither impoverished nor affluent—it was firmly middle-class, a neighborhood where families worked legitimate jobs, where stability was possible though not guaranteed. This would prove significant. Unlike many criminals whose desperation drove them to illegal enterprise, the Curry brothers possessed something more dangerous: a vision. They saw the drug trade not as a means of survival, but as an opportunity for empire-building.

The twins could not have been more different in temperament, yet their contrast would become the foundation of their success. Johnny Curry emerged as the calculated leader—quiet, measured, strategic. His brother Leonard, known throughout Detroit as "Leo," possessed an entirely different energy. Leo was the flash, the extrovert, the one who enjoyed the visibility and the lifestyle their empire afforded. Their younger brother, Rudell—nicknamed "Boo"—would complete the family dynamic, earning respect as "Little Man" while Johnny held the mantle of "Big Man." This fraternal hierarchy would define their organization for the better part of a decade.

## The Architecture of Empire

The Curry brothers' entry into the drug trade began modestly enough. In the late 1970s, they commenced their criminal education with marijuana sales, the traditional entry point for ambitious dealers everywhere. The seed capital for their initial operation reportedly came from their father, Samuel "Sammy Mac" Curry, who provided the financial foundation for his sons' entrepreneurial venture. But the Curry brothers possessed ambition that transcended simple marijuana distribution. By 1978, they had already begun their metamorphosis into something far more consequential.

The transition from marijuana to heroin marked a significant escalation. But it was the embrace of cocaine—particularly crack cocaine—that would define their true dominance. During the 1980s, when crack flooded American cities and fundamentally transformed the drug landscape, the Curry brothers were positioned at the epicenter of Detroit's epidemic. Their operation achieved a level of sophistication that impressed even federal law enforcement. They established a network of twenty-four distinct "dope houses" across the east side, each functioning as a retail point of a meticulously organized distribution system. To customers, these houses offered a comprehensive menu: marijuana for those seeking the traditional high, heroin for the desperate and addicted, powdered cocaine for the wealthy and discerning, and crack cocaine for the masses—a democratic drug available to anyone with enough loose change in their pocket.

The organizational structure of the Curry operation reflected Johnny's strategic mind. The brothers had identified what they correctly understood to be the critical vulnerability in most drug enterprises: cash management. Money, once earned, became a liability. It had to be collected, transported, stored, and laundered. The Curry brothers addressed this problem with characteristic efficiency. They established a headquarters of sorts at an auto garage located at 10901 East Warren Avenue in Detroit—S Marathon Station Auto Garage. This was no ordinary repair shop. It functioned as the financial nerve center of their enterprise, a place where cash could be stored securely and accounted for with precision. One of the brothers would regularly visit the garage, making collections and ensuring that the steady river of money flowed properly through their organization. This attention to detail, this understanding that logistics and organization separated successful criminal enterprises from failed ones, exemplified Johnny Curry's approach to the drug business.

## The Suppliers and the Lifestyle

No drug empire exists in isolation. The Curry brothers required suppliers, and they had cultivated crucial relationships with key figures who could provide them with the cocaine their east side market seemed to consume without limit. One critical supplier was Sam "Doc" Curry, a relative who maintained his own significant connections. But even more important was Art Derek, a figure whose name became synonymous with high-level Detroit drug smuggling during the 1980s. Derek operated on a scale that seemed almost impossible—he owned a fleet of four airplanes, including two that he had reportedly purchased from the Rolling Stones. These aircraft were not decorative. Derek used them to transport cocaine directly from Miami to Detroit, eliminating middlemen and maximizing profits. At the height of his operations, Derek's daily take was estimated at $100,000—an incomprehensible sum to ordinary Americans, yet merely the day's earnings for a single player in Detroit's drug trade.

The money, once accumulated, demanded to be spent. The Curry brothers understood this implicitly. A criminal enterprise's success could be measured not merely in currency earned, but in the visible transformation of the criminal's life. They needed to display their power, to announce to the world through material accumulation that they had arrived, that they were untouchable, that the normal rules of society did not apply to them.

The most iconic symbol of the Curry twins' success became their matching Ford Broncos, luxuriously appointed with Eddie Bauer leather interiors in a burgundy color that complemented each other perfectly. These vehicles were not merely transportation; they were rolling declarations of the brothers' status. Their younger brother Rudell drove a similar Bronco in blue—a visual representation of family unity and shared success. Johnny himself, never one to be entirely outshone, also drove a customized Burlina that spoke to his more refined tastes. When the Curry organization gathered at Belle Isle Park on the Detroit River on sunny days, they presented a tableau of organized power—well-dressed men emerging from luxury vehicles, their presence alone causing other park-goers to take notice. These gatherings were not simply social occasions. They were carefully choreographed displays of dominance, visual representations of the Curry organization's control over Detroit's east side.

## The Social Scene and Political Connections

Yet the Curry brothers understood that true power required penetration into legitimate society. They became fixtures of Detroit's nightlife, transforming entertainment venues into extensions of their criminal empire. Royal Skateland became one of their favorite haunts, where late-night parties thrown by the Curry organization drew crowds eager to witness the spectacle of organized crime's nouveaux riches. For a more refined atmosphere, the brothers frequented the Lady Night Club. And when Leo sought a wilder, more primal experience, he gravitated toward Stokes, a establishment that featured strippers and topless waitresses—the kind of venue where criminal power and sexual transgression merged into a potent tableau.

But the most significant development in Johnny Curry's life transcended mere nightclub dominance. He became romantically involved with, and subsequently married, Kathy Germaine Voulson—a woman whose family connections would transform his position within Detroit's power structure. Kathy was the niece of Coleman A. Young, who had recently become Detroit's first African-American mayor, a political figure of immense influence and historical significance. This relationship was extraordinarily consequential. For a young man like Johnny Curry, to marry into the family of the city's most powerful political figure granted him an access to legitimacy that few criminals ever obtained.

The Voulson family itself carried significant underworld credentials. Kathy's father, Willie Clyde Voulson Jr., had spent years constructing his own criminal empire. He had begun in illegal gambling before transitioning into heroin and then cocaine, building the Voulson name into a fixture of Detroit's criminal underworld during the 1970s and 1980s. Before her involvement with Johnny Curry, Kathy had been romantically linked to Vinnie "The Microwave" Johnson, a Detroit Pistons star whose own fame and visibility added another layer of complexity to her position at the intersection of sports, crime, and politics.

When Kathy became pregnant with Johnny's child, the Curry organization arranged a baby shower held at the Manoogian Mansion—the official residence of Mayor Coleman A. Young himself. The symbolism could scarcely have been more explicit. Here was the city's political elite, the legitimate power structure, celebrating the imminent birth of a child to a man who would soon be under federal indictment for drug trafficking. The baby shower represented, in crystalline form, the unholy fusion of Detroit's political and criminal worlds, with Johnny Curry positioned at the junction point where both systems intersected.

## The Federal Noose Tightens

By 1984, the Curry Brothers' dominance had attracted exactly the kind of attention they could not afford. Federal authorities, in coordination with Detroit Police, launched a comprehensive investigation into their operations. The FBI took the investigation seriously enough to engage in traditionally controversial tactics: agents covertly broke into Johnny Curry's residence to plant sophisticated listening devices. These were not the actions of law enforcement pursuing a minor operation. The scale of the investigation, the resources devoted to it, the willingness to engage in legally questionable tactics—all of this indicated that federal authorities understood the Curry organization to represent a significant challenge to their authority.

During this period of mounting federal pressure, a crucial connection formed. Rudell "Boo" Curry developed a close bond with a local teenager from their east side neighborhood named Richard Wershe Jr.—known throughout Detroit street circles as "White Boy Rick." The friendship would prove consequential. Rick, who was only fourteen years old, began spending significant time with Rudell, cruising the streets in his blue Ford Bronco, attending the legendary parties at Royal Skateland, and gradually becoming integrated into the Curry organization's social circle. That a fourteen-year-old boy would be welcomed into such circles was not unusual in Detroit's criminal underworld; street life did not recognize traditional age restrictions for those with the right connections.

What the Curry brothers did not realize, what no one in their organization could have anticipated, was that this teenage boy would become the instrument through which their empire would collapse. White Boy Rick Wershe represented a vulnerability the Curry brothers had not foreseen—a youthful, ambitious, connected insider who would eventually betray them to federal authorities, setting in motion events that would destroy the most significant drug operation Detroit had witnessed in a generation.

The Curry twin's story stands as a cautionary tale not merely about the ephemeral nature of criminal success, but about the dangerous intersection of legitimate and illegitimate power, about the ways in which family connections and social position can accelerate a criminal's rise—and ultimately, their fall.