Rick Wershe helps secure release of Michigan woman who spent nearly 19 years in prison
By Amy Lange
Published January 27, 2022 6:08PM
Woman free after 18+ years in prison for boyfriend's drugs
Tracy Cowan was sentenced to up to 40 years in prison after police found drugs that belonged to her drug dealer boyfriend.
PITTSFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. (FOX 2) - A Michigan woman whose been in prison since 2003 on non-violent drug offenses is free after her sentence was commuted.
Tracy Cowan, 60, was sentenced to up to 40 years in prison after cocaine, marijuana, and guns that were part of her boyfriend's drug dealing operation were found in her home.
"God, my angels, my family, I thank everybody," Cowan said as she was released from the Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Pittsfield Township.
Rick Wershe, who spent decades in prison on drug charges, worked with lawmakers to secure her release.
"She was a non-violent drug offender. She's been in here almost 19 years, so we came to get her with her daughters and her family, so it's pretty exciting," Wershe said. "I was given a second chance, so I want to help them get a second chance."
Now that she's free, Cowan and Wershe are going to work together to give back to the community.
"Over incarceration, over punishment, that's what we're going to work on together – people that shouldn't be incarcerated for as long as they are," Wershe said.
Cowan reunited with her children Thursday. Her sentence came after their father, notorious drug lord Richard "Maserati Rick" Carter was murdered by a rival gang in 1988.
"It's been long and it's been hurtful, but we learned some things, and we're just ready," her daughter Rachel Carter said.
Rick Wershe helps secure release of Michigan woman who spent nearly 19 years in prison.
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Michigan Inmate Who 'White Boy Rick' Advocated For Is Going Free
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December 22, 2021, 12:08 PM WXYZ's Simon Shaykhet. "Someone involved in a nonviolent crime, a woman that never committed an act of violence in her life to spend decades in prison, away from her children. I just have a problem with that."
In 2003, an Oakland County judge sentenced Cowan to 16 to 40 years on cocaine charges, with additional time for marijuana trafficking and firearms.
Yancey tells Deadline Detroit that Cowan got in trouble for dating a drug dealer who stored illegal narcotics where she lived on Appoline Street in Northwest Detroit. There's no evidence she was trafficking or knew about the drugs, the lawmaker says. The boyfriend, Rory Jones, a member of the Puritan Avenue Boys Crew, was charged with drug trafficking and served about 12 years.
When women date drug dealers, Yancey says, it's not "unusual to turn the other eye; one for lifestyle, two for safety."
Cowan was an ideal inmate who mentored and tutored younger prisoners, worked as a library clerk and helped do legal research, Yancey said. She has taken University of Michigan courses.
"She's had an exemplary record," Yancey said of Cowan's time in prison. "I'm very grateful the governor commuted the sentence."
Richard ("Maserati Rick") Carter and Tracy Cowan (Photo: The Gangster Report)
Before dating the man who she got in trouble with, Cowan had a relationship and two children with Richard (Maserati Rick) Carter, one of Detroit's infamous drug traffickers. He was shot in 1988 in front of his car wash on Seven Mile and Mansfield by a rival dealer. While in the hospital, he was fatally shot by a hitman dressed in doctor’s scrubs.
Wershe, who served about 32 years in prison for drug trafficking and other offenses, was on the streets at the same time as Maserati Rick and they knew each other.
Cowan, who is a grandmother and about to be a great-grandmother told Shaykhet by phone from the Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Ypsilanti:
“My heart won’t stop beating fast. Just thinking about what I’ve been waiting for, for a long time.”
Michigan Inmate Who 'White Boy Rick' Advocated for Is Going Free
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