The Ballad of L. W. Wright

Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.

Yo, Elizabeth Dutton, zaren, I got a question for you. Do you have a second, Yeah, okay, so we'll take a second. Do you know what's ridiculous?

Yes?

Okay, then you just answer. I guess.

Well, messages and emails I get a lot. Yeah, you know, I've been starting to get those emails again, like, oh, congratulations, your kids should probably go to our college.

Oh the other Elizabeth, Yeah.

But I don't think it's it's I know it's not her.

Yeah, I know, but well the third Elizabeth Dutton.

I meant, like a dozen now emails from these like sort of third tier colleges.

If I had a kid, they would not be going, I'm rooting for your fake kid, thank you.

So anyway, emails, messages I get a lot, The show gets a lot. The ones that the show gets are sent to me.

I'm sure the people when they see that I have not answered an email, they're like, this is ridiculous.

Probably our show email rarely gets visible.

I meant all my emails, yox.

Just AnyWho, We've been getting a lot of these messages.

A particular one, Oh no, oh god, I thought that we were done with the emails that that was it.

They got ridiculous.

Now do you like cheese its?

Let's just say I do. Move on, okay? Is that it?

I and you own Converse All Star high Tops.

Right, I too, and that's where I keep my cheeses.

How do you well? Oh, so you have these? There's apparently getting me.

I was just joking.

Clear Converse high top sneakers.

Clear with Converse High Top cheese.

It's poured inside like a little pocket like those kangaroo shoes you can.

I'm so confused.

So the shoe was clear, but the cheese it's were going to be on the outside. Does it look like you see my foot and some cheese?

It's yeah, you see your sock because you know, let's not go barefoot in this job. And then but you there's like a window of pocket and that's where the cheese its are and anyone can see your cheese. It's the cheese its are out for the world to see.

So I'm flexing my cheese.

It's basically so this was on Instagram and it was a post that was done not only by the guy who created them, but cheese it's but they're not for sale, is.

This even real? Is this like an Ai thing?

No, it's this guy case In Sullivan.

If you're curious Instagram at is thank you case God. Okay, And he makes all these he says concept designed by me and my spare time for fun. And then the smiley face with the stars in its size. Uh huh. Anyway, he does this with a lot of tennis shoes, a lot of sneakers. He's got Tostitos ones, Tobo Chico oreos, you know the what have yours. But if you go to the cheese It shop, they have shoes, but they're slides, okay, and they have a cheese It cozy oversized retro hoodie for seventy dollars.

Now you said hoodie, right, and maybe you also said slide. So did the slides have a pocket?

For two different things?

I got that part, so I figured the hoodie has a pocket. But dude, the stud slide oddly.

Enough, there's no front pocket on the hoodie.

Wait, wait, you're getting everything. Where am I going to.

Keep my cheese its? They have a Hawaiian shirt.

You just keep them in the hood like I got a hood full.

Of space in your space.

Your story.

So Case and Sullivan has everyone thinking that cheese Its is selling these shoes, but it's just a little special project of his.

Oh case, god end, Well, if you got a second now that you've had your cheese It, yes, just to clear your palate, I got a story for you.

It's totally ridiculous, I hope.

So.

Yeah.

So there was once an amateur stock driver, you know, like a race car driver. He conned everyone he had to to enter the Winston five hundred at the Talladega Speedway, which, mind you, is the longest closed course track in professional motorsports.

Oh yeah, this is ridiculous crime a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers.

Heis and cons it's all weighs ninety nine percent motor free and ridiculous. Elizabeth, Elizabeth, I know how you love to drive fast. I say that teasingly. So I figure you'll love this story because it's all about speed and driving things you love, like you know, racetracks in.

The South, so all my favorites.

Quick question for you, which major American sport began as an organized crime?

Answer?

Nastall, I don't have a pickle. What maybe, but NASCAR definitely is the only major American sport based on crime.

I talked about this in the show before.

Yes, yeah, no, I use the rum runner.

I remember the woman behind the wheels of Lights out souped up thirty two forward flat head v.

Eight talking about her with the product shop. No.

Now, you may already know this, but Nascar, as I said, started out as a way for run runners to see who was fastest. They would take those souped up cars and they became the stock cars of NASCAR. So basically, for a rum runner, as you've you know, I think you know this, but we'll just pretend you don't.

Okay, okay, you take a.

Stock car right off the showroom floor, right you say the aforementioned thirty two forward flathead V eight, I preferred favorite of the rum runners in the know. And next you modified the engine, you soup it up and then you rip out the seats and the floorboards any excess weight you can. You load up a suspension with new springs for all the extra weight of the booze you

It's a great life, yep.

And Willie Carter Sharp was probably I was impressed because I had not really a good you know, you hear about her, but like the speed you describe, Yeah, and these cars like these, these are not cars with power brakes, these are not cars of power steering.

These are cars it's like just basically like.

Really lean into the turn, you know. Yeah, anyway, so you know, also you're doing this you're killing your headlights. You're doing this in the dark on a dirt road. Right, Well, great fun was had by all, then all of a sudden nineteen thirty three prohibition INDs.

Yep.

Now you got all these rum runners with a skill set, but no way to get paid for it.

So what do they do? Well, Elizabeth, I'll tell you don't even worry. They do what they do best.

They keep driving fast for money, except for now they do it on dirt flat tracks all around the South, and nude and nude before paying audiences with their like you know, pet pig. So in nineteen thirty six, Tone of Florida held a race, the first professional organized stock car race. Right, the audience loved it, but the guy didn't make any money. The promoter sotally, oh yeah, it

Right.

By nineteen forty seven, Boom NASCAR is founded. Next year, nineteen forty eight, in February, Batance again back down in Daytona, Florida, NASCAR holds its first professional race. Now do you know who the winning driver was?

Barney Oldfield.

Good guess, Red Byron.

I only know Barney Oldfield because I did actually get a speeding ticket.

Once'ntil I called you, my grandmother was.

All, look at you, Barney Oldfield like weepings ashamed Barney.

That's the only way I know that name.

Well.

Red Byron was a former real life Moonshiner who notably was driving a Ford. A lot of Fords in this for you. And this means, by the way, the very first NASCAR race was one by a criminal.

So boom right here it is.

Now this brings us to my dude, NASCAR's mysterious legend w Right. Larry Woody, a Tennessee sports writer. He once said, I quote, if he could have driven as fast as he talked, L W. Wright would be a NASCAR champion. Now yeah, now L. W. Wright is the gnome do race for the amateur driver. It's not his real name. The professional con man who woke up one day and he decided, you know, I think I'm going to go race the best drivers in the world at the biggest, longest,

It's the longest track, I mean who cares the closet. But I mean they're going around and around and around.

Yeah, for five hundred miles. Sure, so it's a lot of miles.

They don't have to do as many turns if the track's longer.

No, that's true. The turn it's just a bunch of left turns. Yeah.

Well they don't have to use their blinkers.

No, they definitely save it on the turn.

They don't need. Yeah, the blinker fluid.

A lot of blinker fluid saved in NASCAR. They don't even think they have blinker fluid sponsors.

They do, do they? Okay, American blinker fluid Jimmy All yeah, yeah, I.

Know you're you're probably I know I'm right, man. I don't even know how I forgot that.

Yeah, I'm full of correct facts.

So how does my dude l W. Writ con is way onto the track? Well, the year Elizabeth is nineteen eighty two. I want you to frame your mind. You're in the Reagan's America. The month is April. Larry Wright. He contacts the local paper, the Nashville newspaper, the Tennessee, and he offers a newspaper a news item. You know, anybody could do this in newspaper it publishes it and I quote. Nashville driver L. W. Wright yesterday announced he will be attempting to qualify for next week's Winston five

Wow.

Yeah, so as simple as that story was, fantastic story. Yeah, do you think it's true? No, No, it was not true at all. Country music legends backing at amateur race car driver no one's heard of. People are like, oh, I'm gonna print that.

But you know, I don't think Hank done it that way.

You're spot on. So turns out, uh, LW.

Wright, He he did get onto the track of Talladega that day, and how he did it and who he was remained a mystery for forty years, okay forty years, no one knew who this guy he.

Got on the track did his car, He got in the car.

No, he didn't like run like he was racing a horse.

Just like I thought. Was he like glad handing?

Like walking around one going to get my carts around the corner?

Nineteen eighty one Monte Carlo and he took it out.

That's such a great in my mind, I see like current Nascar, and then I see him Monte Carlo like not tricked out.

A dust you boys.

So on the fortieth anniversary, journalists Rick Houston and Steve Wade from Scene Vault podcast, they broke the story that they had found L. W.

Wright.

Nascar goes nuts right all the bad like are you kidding me? The legend was finally ready to let his story be known. He was ready to kill the mystery. It took Rick Houston hundreds of exchange messages to earn this dude's trust and the trust of his family, but eventually he is able to speak with L. W.

Wright.

So turns out, in nineteen eighty two, L. W. Wright was working as a bus repair garage he just north of Nashville in a town called Hendersonville, Tennessee. Now Nashville is known as Music City, the country music capital of the world, which also meant big country stars of that era brought their tour buses over to Hendersonville to get

Now.

Quote George Jones and Merle Haggard was there to do a duet on a new album that evening.

They told me to come over. Wanted to talk to me. That was the three of them there. Mer All was called me Hoss because I was a big old boy. He said, haas, will hear you want a race? I said, well, we're trying.

He said, why don't you let us make a little bit of money help you get there. We're not gonna stand a lot of sponsorship, but we're gonna give you money to race with.

Right that's his story.

So these guys are just hanging out like tuning it up smart and whatever, and they're like, you know, get the bus mechanicsous come over here, get over here.

You tell me a story. The other day, we gotta get him. And I love he says, hass because it's wayling. Jennings is known for calling people haas and not but whatever, you know, So he's got this country boy's dream. Whalen Jennings telling you need to go drive as fast as you can right now. Anyway, our amateur race driver L. W. Wright says Merle Haggard ponies up three grand. The other guys, George Jones, Whale and Jennings are like, oh, I gotta get.

My three grand.

I don't know how they'll have three grand on him, if it's that night, or if they go to the bank and say, LW.

You come by it later.

Anyway, in those days, it was required to have three grand.

In your pocket.

You know, if you're going to a guitar pick and you want to bring three grand exactly.

So according to they.

Said, Hus, they'll take care of your tires and mobtail bill, won't it. I had a lot of friends that got into music, and I didn't use any of them other than what they wanted to do.

So he's always saying that it's.

Their idea made me do it.

Yeah, they basically twisted my rubber arm. So if you ask lw Right that what he did with the Country Music's Legends money, he said he sold a bulldozer and then he paired that money with the country stars money, and he purchased himself that nineteen eighty one Chevy money.

Carlo, Wait, two questions, One, why didn't you just race the bulldozer? He was such a good mechanic. Two, why did he own a bulldozer?

He didn't have a big enough ratchet.

And the second one is he used that to pay for the donkey he wanted to eventually get because his kids love that. So he's like, Okay, I'll use the bulldozer to pay for the donkey. I cant for it now.

I think he stole the bulldozer.

No, I don't know.

Why he just had a bulldozer. He's like, I don't know why did I buy this? I was drunk and I bought the.

Bulldozer, so an impulse purchased.

He was at to check how he was like, candy bar bulldozer, I have bulldozer. IM ain't that hungry. So keep in mind he did just buy any nineteen eighty one Chevy Monte Carlo. He bought a race car from Cuckoo Marlin in his future Daytona five hundred winning son Sterling Marlin. Cuckoo Cuckoo, Cuckoo Marlin and Sterling Marlin.

Yeah, uh huh cuckoo.

Whi's a NASCAR You got to get used to this name. That is not what his mama named him. She did not name him cuckoo. Yeah. So, as L. W.

Wright recalled it, I said, I'll buy it if you'll only paint the car black and put number thirty four on it. So he's now telling them they take this all red car painted black, put thirty four in and I'm taking it. Now he's got his race car. Things are proceeding well for old LW. But LW had another issue that was going to probably darken some skies for him. This troubled. This cloud hovering above him was the FBI. Oh yeah, so he was a coal miner at the time.

I didn't go.

And get it, but it was brought to me. They did that so the insurance would pay them. But I'm the bad guy.

It's always someone else exactly.

He's a victim of circumstances. Really, So this money was allegedly LW. Wright's motivation to make the money as a race car driver. His answer is, I got this problem with the FBI. I should probably go under Talladega to make the thousand dollars I need. So he's gonna pay back that grand, So he put it.

He spent the grand on the bulldozer exactly.

All these impulse purchases. This is not his only impulse purchase. You know, that's what I'm sane.

So anyway, Yes, he put it quote, that was my goal to make it right. I knew I could do it. I knew I could run fast enough, qualify and all that stuff. But it didn't work out that way.

He wanted to make it right. Yeah, with thew.

The FBI investigation, the tanging over him, it became a bit of a distraction for LW. Let me put it this way. He says, it was hard because you got to focus on every face in the crowd. You don't know who's gonna walk up on you at any minute. You wouldn't know how to handle that. Plus the stress on you that you gotta do good. You gotta qualify, You gotta get out there and run this race. You gotta finish in the top fifteen.

Can't hit the FBI hanging over here. You got a race to win. It's like an Elvis Presley movie. You gotta win this race. Elvit. I gotta win this race. And the FBI is here, Elvis, FBI is here.

Anyway, A lot of pressure got this first time car driver and now throw in he's a con artist who shouldn't be there, adding the FBI agents who her it e'tone about to grab him. There's a lot of pressure for old hell wie he is, but he talks his way onto the track at Talidaga. Now, as I said earlier, it's the biggest, longest track, the fastest track in the world,

Ain't no way? He said, Well, what do you mean? I said, you think about.

Holding that pedal flat on the floor all the way around this track? That straightaway is almost a mile long. How much can that car game before you go into that urn? So cold, dark fear rolled through lw Right. So what does our com man racer do, Elizabeth.

Well, he's just a little old lump of coal, and that that pressure's gonna turn him into a diamond.

Oh, I love it, because he just needed the Lord to help him. That's the extra pressure he needs.

Wait, the Lord helped him.

He asked God for help.

I got off by myself that day, and I said, Lord, I'm down here, but I'm gonna need some help.

God's like, okay, I've got a really long list of tickets that people have put in for help.

But you, LW.

When I get done with Ethiopia, I'll be right there. LW.

We got the starvation going on, but I swear you're next in line. There's just millions of them. It's only one of you. It's a number things, LW. So anyway, I was reading that quote and I was like, my brother in Christ, this is what we in the story. Bill is just called a gross understatement. I'm gonna need some help. You're gonna need a lot of help.

You're gonna need like six.

Gods worth of help to get any chance to win in this race, even gods like Paul. You're asking for a lot here. So okay, let's take a little break and then we'll after these messages. I'll tell you we'll get into Talladega that very fateful day.

Nice.

All right, Elizabeth, we're back and we're all about to be in Talladega.

Yeah, we are now, Elizabeth, Charlie, it.

Is it true that Talladega Knights is your favorite Will Ferrell movie.

Yes it is.

I remembered you saying that.

True.

I thought I remember that.

It's like that, or let's say that an old school school.

Oh yeah, there's no racing in old school. So let's talk about Talladega Knights.

I love that movie. I own it on Blu Ray. You're laughing, I'm serious.

You are.

Do you have a Blu ray player somewhere? Do you remember the scene when he did he needed to master his fear and then he's like he's like, he's like, you know, teacher for teaching him how to drive.

Dad.

Yeah, Ricky Bobby is sitting there and his dad's like, Okay, you need a cougar in your car. He gets in and there's a cougar in his market and he has to drive with the cougar.

Yes, first time I saw that, lost it, lost it. It's like there's some stuff my dad would, Boy, you need a cougar in the car. Yeah, you're right, there is a cougar in the car.

Anyway, So imagine if Will Ferrell wasn't in a movie, right and no, imagine Will Farrell was really racing against the real life NASCAR drivers, Like I know the dude's a dope drummer, but I don't care how dope a drummer is.

He couldn't handle that speed. We're talking two hundred miles in a drummer.

Are you confusing him with Chad Smith?

No, he's a drummer, girl, drummer.

I've seen him.

He's really good, is he? Chad Smith says he's I don't drum know. I believe the Chili Peppers Elizabeth will Ferrell, Yes, one of them.

I think they take tours. He's like, I need to get out for a little sabbatical. Chad, you do some comedy which explained some of the movie choices.

Yeah.

Oh so anyway, so the as I was saying two hundred miles an hours basically, how fast these guys are going?

Really fast? Yes?

Really really, that's like five eighty Oakland speeds exactly.

We know these speeds. You've seen them on the freeway zipping by. Okay, So race weekend comes.

L W.

Wright is officially now listed as one of the drivers. He's in all this stuff. You look in the paper it says, oh yeah, Dale Earnhardt, LW. Wright, What the who's this? L? W Right, public relations director for the track, Tom Roberts, he would say, quote after the fact, NASCAR.

Was fooled like everybody else.

Normally new drivers are checked out before they were giving a license, but this wasn't a normal case. This guy dropped names and places and just simply talked his way in.

He had a press release with them. Yeah, like the old boy.

Meanwhile, there's l w Right. That dude's having a crisis of confidence at this point. And I quote from l W I was real nervous. I was there with the biggest names in racing and me and nobody from back in the hills of Virginia, but no background like that. I knew I didn't have the ability they had because they'd done it for years.

The little rebel whoop at the end.

Something that's authenticity, Elizabeth, That's what that is. So now he's at talent dig L W. Wright has to pass for a professional race car driver. Cuckoo Marlin and son Sterling Martin. They've sold a stock.

Car to L.

W Right, so he's got an official car. He looks like he belongs there.

Now did he check it.

Out as a mechanic to make sure? Because if I'm a NASCAR driver and some upstart, says, can I.

Buy y'all's car? I go, yeah, sure, take.

This one, like my busted up one, the janky one I got like, hey, that's what you do that?

Yeah, hey, take this car.

I got this limit of the car over quickly in tune.

Don't even look at it. It's perfect.

Just don't yeah, don't kick those tires. Oh you know, come on, and then it's just race back on the starting line. Don't start it here put.

You'll never mess with Cuckoo.

So my man to Sterling Marlin. His father with Cuckoo was racing. So he's busy. He can't like be bothered with this. But Sterling is a young man. He's like, you know, like twenty one, twenty two or whatever. I think he's twenty five.

He twenty eight thirty, doesn't it's.

Very handsome, twenty seven, so surly marn.

He told ESPN back in twenty nineteen in a story about this before the mystery had been revealed.

Quote, now I'd never heard of this guy, right, but that.

But you sold him a car, sir.

Oh, it gets better than that, because he's like lw is lying to his face. Remember in his press release, he said he had forty five, and he told Sterling forty three whatever. He's like somewhere in the forties, and it's all telling him he's flat track races in Virginia. So this guy's a racers. Dad's a racer. Grip rates. He's like, oh, yeah, do you know this guy? He's like, oh, I don't know him. He don't know this guy.

I don't know him.

He starts listen down. He doesn't know any of the names of any of the current flat track drive. Doesn't bother him, startling like that's kind of weird. So somehow this works.

To his benefit. Sterling's like, you know what, I bet this guy needs help.

This is my dad's busy, he decides, and I quote, so I decided I'm gonna go down there with him kind of be like his crew chief, just to keep an eye on him.

You know.

As soon as we got there, it all got even fishier. He decides, this guy is weird and crazy. I think he's lying to me. I should get closer and spend more of my time.

On this what like a pro bono crew chief.

Yes, he's not getting paid.

Yeah, so he's doing like he just get this guy, by the way, I mean, you got l W walking around in this garage and he's doing like what you would do, Elizabeth. He's like, I have that ratchet, you know, we see this other ratchet over here. I need the Everyone's like, who the hell is this dude?

I need I need the old twisting.

Thing rod, the hard twisty.

And so even though he's made it this far on a ruise and a lie, LW he just can't stop himself. He keeps talking to other folks in the garage in the infield of the track, and he's made it. He's inside Talladagan. He's about to blow it because the more he talks, everybody knows this guy is a liar and his ignorance is leaking out of him. He's like you like a flatulent old uncle. And he's sitting there like after like he's had a big meal and he's sitting there taking a nap in the room.

He doesn't know how much he stinks. Now that's l W. Right. So word starts to spread around the track.

People are like, who's this new? No name Newcome you hear about him? Like, oh yeah, he tell you Whyalon Jennings is a sponsor. You know, they're all like talking, They've read the press releases.

Everyone. He's the talk of the girlage.

He said Whalen was going to be that.

Merle Haggard's gonna be there, and Merle Haggard did not show up, and shepherds the other country start. He's like, I don't know this guy. He releases a press release saying like he's a liar. Yeah people, So people are asking about that. I saw the shepherd called you a liar. You said he's one of your sponsors. And another guy is coming at him, like, how can it be possible that not a single one of the NASCAR drivers ever heard of you? So he's like, oh, you know how

Oh yeah.

According to Jim Hunter, the Talladega Speedway president can't down to the fact that Alabama is a right to work state.

He claimed that he was.

Quote handcuffed by what NASCAR and Talladega Speedway could do. Once questions were raised about this new driver, so Jim Hunter put it Besides, the damn guy did qualify for the race, so you know you can almost hear the like the echo of a good old boy chuckle. He just got it. Anyway, the way it works since LW. Paid is one hundred and fifteen dollars entrance fee and his NASCAR competition license fee and the Talladega Speedway on hundred dollars race fee, he's now an official interest.

That's all it takes. And what like a Malibu Grand Prix.

Yeah, he's like a Grandnex.

Here's nothing they can do about it now because once again right to work state Alabama laws were like, you gotta let this race.

Doesn't that mean they can just fire you whenever they want?

Yeah, that too. It's about it's a whole like, we don't have union, so the workers make their own contracts right, right.

Exactly, So it's usually not good and in this case it was not good for the owners. But anyway, it cuts both exactly. It's a very sharp knife. It's a Ginzu blade on both sides. The day before the race, the drivers are taking practice laps, right, so L. W. Wright goes to take his qualifying laps. Before he gets

LW.

Wright says, with zero hesitation, I appreciate that, mister Allison, but I come down here for one reason, to make the field. So impressed, Bobby als replys, well, you're cocky enough, ain't you.

Wow? Elizabeth, can you guess who comes up to him next? No, it's your boy? Throw up three for Dale Dale, Yes, legend Dale.

See rest with the angels. Dale.

So Dale Earnheart senor known to be a hard ass, but he's somehow cool with LW. Wright.

He even gives him some Dale Earnhardt tested advice for winning a race. He comes up there and says, look here, when you get out there, you can get on the back of someone that's been here before and follow them, stay with them, and then make your move.

Why is everyone helping him?

I don't know.

I thought this was a competitive sport.

I think they just want to see what he'll do. It's entertainment. They're like, just put the kid out there.

It's much more of a community than I realized. It's just it's all trying to uplift each other exactly.

It's men helping men, bro being there for in the middle of it. They say, we need therapy.

No, we didn't count.

We have more times to back each other up on our crazy s iday. So now we have Dale Iron hurt. And he gives them all this good advice. And he wanted to let this good old boy know that the seven time NASCAR champion he's got his back.

Chucks him on the shoulder, said you get out there now.

So he goes out to do his practice laps and he's never seen the track before. He's never been on the track, he's never driven his car. He's on talented exactly once again. World's longest track, faster than Indianapolis five hundred right track is just for some specs, Elizabeth. The track is two point six six miles long. It is a trioval, which is not standard. Usually a triable means you have three turns at one end, two turns at the other end. He has five turns.

So it's sort of from above, looks what triangul.

Yeah, yeah, well yeah, pentagonal or something.

It has like a giant octagon.

Yeah, it looks like a rhombus. So you get it.

One, two, three, Okay, I'm counting.

Five, yeah, three and then two. Yeah, there it is.

That's some crazy business.

So there we are five turns deep. So the north south turned, they're banked. The two turn end right is banked at thirty three degrees. Oh yeah, the inner trioval is banked at eighteen degrees. Now, thirty three degrees. That's a super very steep angle. Right, eighteen degrees is a steep angle if you're on it. So these guys are like driving on a hypot news of a triangle. Basically at two hundred miles an hour.

You're loving this all the mass I do.

They're coming into turn three Wilde Elizabeth.

So the entire track forty eight feet wide, which is basically about the third of a football field, the width of a football field from the sideline to sideline. Oh it is, yeah, but the fortye it's about the Yeah. So to keep the tracks, keep all these cars in the track, there's a retaining wall, and the retaining wall is about about four feet high most of the time, like uh, like on the track and then seven feet

And also keeping the ants is wearing an altimeter, by the.

Way, of course, like little romans.

So the taker guys.

The infield of the track at Talladega, that's the grass inside the track, right, that could comfortably sit thirty one rose ball stadiums.

Wait, stop it, that's how big this place is. It's huge.

Thirty one thirty.

One rose ball stadiums. It's huge. That's why I always stopped to see it. It's a cathedral.

Having problems getting my head around there.

I know thirty one rose balls inside the inside the track. The track is bigger, bigger driving around. Yes, so this is bigger than the United States interamateur race car driver L W. Wright, who now has to drive around the United States Elizabeth l W.

What are you going to say? So in his first few.

Practice laps, he not going fast enough, and I quote, I was comfortable in the car.

The only thing was I wasn't getting the most out of the car. Me.

I wasn't getting the most out of it. I thought the car would do more than what I was making it do because I hadn't run it before.

So, to be fair, he hadn't driven it before he got on the track.

So the first wait, he didn't even like adjust the seats.

Around the car. The guy's like, my race car.

No, No, the rear view he did it like on the track, He's like, I should set my mirrors and now.

Okay, the angle of the steering wheel.

To be fair, his first lap went better than you might expect. Yeah, but then on his second lapp he crashed into a wall, which is about what you'd expect. Yeah, so even though he slammed into a wall at one hundred and ninety miles an hour, he was still all in.

So LW.

Wright said, uh no, cirt never crossed my mind. I was in the hospital. First thing out of my mouth. I asked a buddy of mine with me. I said, how bad? It's a car tore up? He said, I think we can put it back together. I said, let's hurry, get her out there and get going. He will not back down.

Wait what he wanted to be in the same race.

Yeah, he's going to be.

He's in the hospital.

No, no, So they took him at there's a he was taken away in.

An ambu like a fields he was, Yeah, he's not taking away an ambulance like to a hospital. He's just taken by an ambulance to like the.

Field hospital because there's a.

Thirty one rose poles to cross. So they get him to the infield track hospital and he's bandages up. This won't slow him down, you know, because you know his crash doesn't matter to him. He's he's gone fast enough to qualify for Talladega. He went one hundred and eighty seven point three seven nine miles per hour for an average lap speed. So boom he gets in and surprisingly not the slowest time. Oh that guy thirty six in a field of forty NASCAR drivers.

Those four guys exactly. Now when you say it's thirty one rolls rose bowls?

Is that?

Like?

What if?

Are they stacked vertically?

Why would they be stacked?

Because I can't still can't believe it's that thick.

Yeah, put on the ground, just like I got what vertically?

I know, you make a tower of rose bowls.

That's the only way this makes sense. No, how big is this huge?

Yes?

Now also you get that's why you can go two hundred miles. Remember you stand down the straightaway. It's this is interesting.

One lap around this thing and they're done.

Basically it's a five hundred mile last So this first, this, this is the first time. This year nineteen eighty two was the first time that a driver crosses two hundred miles in any track. And they do it on this track because you need the length to get up to the speed. So they break a record this year. He's out there miles an hour to get They eventually get speed governors.

They realize this is too faster. These guys be driving right they Oh yeah, it doesn't matter.

Aerodynamic is just runs to take those governors off.

Dude, l W does real well.

The fastest guy they who says the record Benny Parson, he did two hundred two point one seven miles.

LW.

Wright he did a speed that was one eighty seven win three. That's thirteen miles slower.

It's really fat.

Thirteen miles slower than the record setting speed. Our amateur is killing it right.

Wow.

The fastest I've ever driven is one hundred and fifty five miles an hour. Oh, I was clenching like when I was doing that, and it was on a straight country road. I didn't have to worry about anything. I knew what I was doing. I could see forever.

What kind of car was it?

It was the old Mercedes Sedan. Those things good, they will they I didn't think it get that fast. It kept going and kept going and kept going.

One one time when I was driving, it was like on the five, that was the fastest.

You were like fifty six. I mean it all the way.

So you're on the five. What else going doing like fifty six story.

Yeah, So after w crashes into the wall and his impromptu crew chief Stirling Marlin has to like, like you know, basically bolster his confidence, right, he also has an issue. His car is wrecked, and now he's got to go around to other drivers and try to like get parts from them. So he gets a door and a fender and a quarter panel from one racer, and then he goes over to Richard Petty and he gets a windshield

Parts of extra. Did they invoice him later?

I don't care, don't care? Oh good old boy.

So finally day of the race comes l W Right out of the field hospital in his car.

Cars slap back together after crack up.

It's like a civil war.

No one can stop him.

Now, so put him under ether exactly.

He's kind of goofy and weird. We're gonna need to get you.

You got to amputat.

That's just what we do here. Son put some cocaine in him because he got ghosts in his blood shows up, so L W. Pulls his car out on the track. He's out there on the grid, lines up next to the stock car legends at the starting line. Quote that's when it really said in I thought, well, I finally got here. It doesn't matter what happens today. I'm here, and that's what I was shooting tours. But I wanted to run good. You know, that's like the good old boy model. I want to run no good. How do

Not so hot?

Yeah, well, rather than me asked you that question, We're gonna take a little break and then I'll be back to show you the race. Nice okay, Elizabeth Okay. Talladega Speedway. Our man LW. Wright is on the grid at the starting line with all the legends. Hundreds of thousands of people are watching him. I don't know if that's true, but at least at home. Millions of people watch on TV.

So covered and bandage.

Now do you think he's gonna do well? No, he did thirty six in the time to you know, the qualifying time. So right, I'll just I'll tell you this, right, But.

How long did he go before he crashed? Yeah?

Not well, well it was rather than us voting about it. Why don't you just close your eyes and picture May second, nineteen eighty two, the Winston five hundred at Talladega. You are an ant. You've crawled across the sun warm track. It's as stock cars line up for the race. You climb up onto one of the cars.

You're bored. Whatever the race car of LW. Wright.

He's in Row eighteen, number thirty six, in a field of forty cars. This means nothing to you. You're an ant engine start. The cars rumble and shake, eager to race. The drivers grip their steering wheels, ready to make hate to the other drivers.

LW.

Wright just hope he doesn't die or kill someone else by a mistake. And you wonder what the hell is all this noise? You came to this track someone's RV. You don't know anything about NASCAR. This is your first NASCAR race too, So you can practically hear what LW. Wright is thinking in the car because you're sitting there on the glass of the windshield.

He's in there, and we all lined up.

Everybody was antsy, and boom, the green flag is waved. The cars all roared to life. They're off wi seeing that flag drop. The front runners took off the middle of the field. Itn't and I was waiting, come on, come on, come on.

He sees the turn. Come he floors it.

The wheel squealed car races storage us. Elizabeth and Aunt on the windshield of this race car are now stuck. The wind presses you down to the glass. You're just staring at this guy and he's staring.

Down their track.

The cars get to going fast sixty miles an hour within seconds, then one hundred, one hundred and ten, one twenty one, thirty, one, forty one fifty. You're up to one hundred and ninety miles an hour. None of this means anything to you, but you're going super fast.

My little ant limbs are flying.

The world is blurring fast. Your antenna you lose one WoT well the leg gohost. This crazy bastard is in this race. LW.

Wright would later tell a journalists and I quote, as soon as I cleared the flag stand, I remember dropping the outside lane and going to the front about ten cars.

I remember that. I guess it was all adrenaline in.

No sense, but I went to the front and hurry, and I thought, this is where I'm gonna stay. So after lap one you can tell this maniac is in it to win it. Lap two doesn't go as well, though, because you're still pressed to the glass of the windshield. The wind is intense, the speed insane. You wonder how long you can hold on your little ant body quivering. Couple drivers retake their spots ahead. Lw falls back into the pack. Lap three, one of the front runners, Darryl

So is the intimidator Dale Earnhardt, but he has yet to make his move.

You are desperately hoping this all in soon, but there are still four hundred and ninety two miles to go in this race. Lap four, a young driver David Simcoe, spins out at one hundred and ninety miles an hour and slams into the wall.

You're a gas How does one.

Get off a race car going one hundred ninety miles an hour? Your little antenn I are wondering, but evan no chance to answer because the speed Lap four is going and Dale W. Wright, He's footstays smashed down on that accelerator. Yet some part of him, the part that keeps them alive, it won't let him drive as fast as the other drivers. They do things he would never do, never think to do, and if he did thing to do them, he still couldn't do what they do. Meanwhile,

He makes his move Dale three for Dale.

Dale has pushed his way up to from the twentieth starting position up to the fourth spot at the head of the pack. L. W. Wright is now in the last place, falling behind very fast. You're like, thank God, thank the Aunt God's now at this point. Dale Earnhardt, Jeff Bodine are coming into the trioval too wide. It's lap eleven. L W Wright gets lapp by the lead cars.

That's bad.

That's very bad. That's dangerous. With all the other cars roaring past him a two hundred miles an.

Hour, he's going so slow that he gets last lap.

They're racing past him. He's doing like one seventy one sixty. I don't know, LW Wright, and you are now a speed hater. You're gonna be lucky if one of the cars isn't slam into you. NASCAR officials are waving the black flag. That means you've been ejected from the race. On the TV coverage that you can't hear this, but the commentators finish this point, everything's okay, she's earned heart faint a little really racy now, followed.

By the other commentator racy.

The car that was given the black flag a lap ago was LW. Wright from Nashville, Tennessee and the Music City Racing Chevy.

LW.

Wright, by the way, has come way too far to listen to some black flag wave and official He refuses to pull into pit row. Next time you and he passed the starting finish line, you've still clutching onto the windshield.

The announcers are awed by LW. Wright.

So LW Wright again given the black flag as he passes by us, and Right has been ordered to the pit area. LW Wright won't not stop racing now, you stop thanking the new aunt gods. They have failed you so clearly NASCAR is gonna have to send like a cop car onto the track to get this guy off. They don't know what they're gonna do. So you give You've given up on your aunt gods. You are now just praying that the black flag something throws it, Something

Is now officially over.

Rip me yep car wrecked Lwright. He drives back to the garage with what's left of his car. Once there, he pulls himself from the wrecked race car. You crawled down off the windshield.

Oh, I made it.

You're free, Elizabeth. He made it. Whoo, Genie, you're free. Lw Right.

He didn't win the race, No, didn't even really, he didn't even finish it. But he'd done it, Elizabeth. He'd done it.

He done did it.

He raced at the best in the world and he didn't kill anyone himself included. That's good, right, And since one driver crashed before him, he didn't even finish last what So he got thirty nine, which means he won fifteen forty five dollars what which means he got the thousand dollars you needed to get himset out of trouble with the FBI.

Oh.

Yes, As for the winner, that was Daryl Waltrip in case you were wondering. Yeah, he won the eighty two when Talladega wins. Anyway, so the race is still going right, and he's now in the garage and people have been talking about the black flag. He very embarrassed. He just wants all this to go away. So what does he do? Well, he vanishes after the race, is just.

Like a puff of smoke and he turns into bats.

He does his best impression of disco. He's just I'm out right, he's he disappears from the scene. Gone right, He's gone. Before the race is over, he leaves his car in the garage. He cuts out like he had a bill to pay and he was not going to pay that bill. He dines and dashes the Talladega right so in his wake. By the way, as the days come, you know, after the race, days pass, and the checks that he'd been writing to keep his con going, they all start bouncing.

It's like a kid's super Bowl.

Like they're not going like big bounces, right, so everybody, and I'm talking like the bounced checks aren't just for the race.

He he bounces his rent check for his apartment.

He was gone, gone working leading up to this, he was doing the old.

I think he was doing bus repair works. I don't know what he was doing. I mean, I think he had five jobs.

You know, I don't want to know what he was doing.

So the cops get called on him. NASCAR is she's a warrant for lw Right. I don't think that's what all the new story. The issue a warn I'm a can NASCAR.

Issue in in the court of Nascar.

It like SEC rules.

They went to the NASCAR judge and then the NASCAR DA was like, hey, this is the evidence we have.

Throw the NASCAR book out him, Like, let's do it. Yeah.

So one Nashville businessman who'd given him about thirty grand apparently then just sponsorship fees. And so I don't know how this works out, but he goes and hires a private detective to get his money back. No luck, No one ever sees lw. Wright ever again. For forty years.

Boom disappeared, just completely, he disappears.

Yeah.

So then this dude Rick Houston I told you about, and Steve Wade who had the Scene Vault podcast or they still do. They break this story last year on the fortieth anniversary. Turns out ldw Right did not exactly go off the grid. He didn't even quit racing. Days later, he went to Nashville and he tried to race again that race. Elizabeth was the Grand National nineteen eighty two Cracker Barrel Old Country Store for twenty Winston Cup.

Yeah it was Cracker Barrel four twenty.

Do you remember that that lovely weekend we spent at the Cracker Barrel for one cut back in ninety eight.

That was awesome.

That Elsell never mind.

Saw I take that back.

Cracker barrel exactly of town.

So he qualified for the Talladega five hundred. He could not qualify for the cracker barrel for twenty cup. It was too hard for him. So now he's running out of money fast. So what does he do now? He quits racing. Now he's like, I can't do it. Also because remember he's still on the run from the FBI. Yeah yeah, so, and I quote, I didn't panic, but I felt like, well, it's time to back up and have another plan. That's why I said it's time to pack up my family and just quit.

I'm done.

They were shocked because they didn't know a tenth of what was going on with me and all this. They was honest and it was everything they were. They didn't understand why I had to be pressured to move. I didn't tell them until after the fact. I said, it's in your best interest just not to ask no question. Let's just do this. And that's what I did. Right, Dad of the.

Year being pursued by the NASCAR police exactly.

This dude has a wife and four kids. He's not to nero and heat. He's got a wife and four kids.

He's got a at Talladego in this.

No, No, they don't really need he was a race car driver.

Oh my god.

I mean they know that there was a race car that Dad had like in the driveway at one point, but they don't think.

Maybe that was his buddy. He has all sorts of.

Weird doing that.

Well.

I like to imagine this son was like, let me get this rad Daddy, you failed to win two NASCAR races. You entered to pay off your debt, some robbery at your day job, and that's why the FBI is after you. And that's why I can't go to the prom with Becky Lamb. That ain't fair, Daddy, That's what I picked.

It's lucky that Daddy doesn't wind up buried under the track at Charlotte Motor Speed.

Then he has this great like sad Ricky Bobby bowment. He goes out and LW says he has to say goodbye to his dream. And he says, quote, the race car stayed in the back of the trailer right there at this house where I left it. I didn't even open the door and look in it. I just drove a boy. So he cut to one year later. Okay, the FBI finally catches up with old Dell w Right.

We're done. That was the end of it.

So the thing he'd been running from, the FBI threat that pushed him to risk his life and the life of others at Talladega, upset his family's whole thing and go start his own amateur witness relocation program. That was nothing. It was basically clear pepsi. It was a big nothing. Right, So what does l W. Wright do when he finds out he didn't really need to run his life and uproot his family. If I knew that when I run Dalladega, that would have been a different outcome because I wouldn't

Have claim right.

He takes issue with all the people claiming he owed money all over town, which I don't know how he could do that, but he's like, no, that ain't true. You tell him, come down talk to me and all this right anyway. My favorite thing though, is that he bought the car from Cuckoo Marlin your boy, yeah, and Sterling his son, right, and he'd ask him to paint the race car black and add the number thirty four.

Yeah.

Now, as LW.

Wright said, thirty four come from Wendell Scott. He was the one who already tried to race, but didn't have the means or the money. So I picked up thirty four. Now, Wendell Scott, I loved this. As a former Moonshiner, he was an indep pendant black stock car driver who raced in the fifties. So for the entire decade, NASCAR tracks woudn't let him race. They wouldn't let him on the track,

Yeah.

So I don't know, but perhaps L. W. Wright saw something of himself and the underdog Wendell Scott.

I don't know.

Perhaps being a Southerner, he understood that someone needs to beat these old Southern ways.

I don't know.

I did think this that the journalist Rick Houston, he had the most interesting take on the whole affair and who the real L. W.

Wright is.

And he said, I quote in the grand scheme of things in the rear view mirror, what he did wasn't truly all that bad. And I will say that the story we've all heard all these years, in the story that he tells us now, they are not the same story. Is there closure?

I don't know.

But to sit there and listen to him finally talk about it to a lot of NASCAR fans, that's a day we never thought would come here.

He's just in it for the story.

You know.

Do we know what his real name is?

Yeah, but it doesn't really matter. Yeah, so it was a kid.

Don't want to put it out there, No, no, no domb for so Yeah, olw Right telling the story. This is why it comes at a steep cost. The FBI catches back up with him because now the story is out there and he's bragging on and talking about numbers and stuff.

So yeah.

Also, it is just for everybody else. If you ever doubt yourself, you ever have a moment you're like, I don't know if I can do this, just think of old L. W Right and go, goddamn, I can do this.

So what's our ridiculous takeaway here?

You know what my ridiculous takeaway is that a nineteen eighty one Monte Carlo was at some point a new car.

Yes it was, and it was a bitch in new car. So yeah, that's it. Thank you for asking my ridiculus takeaways, Elizabeth. Once again, I don't have one for you.

So I have a story. You know. That's what I did over here.

You carried the weight on this one, so you can.

You know, you can find us online if you'd like to talk to us about stuff. You can send us messages on Instagram, or you can have messages on Twitter. You can just you know, retweet stuff or like post, you do whatever the heck you want. I'm not here to tell you what to do. It's your social media anyway.

I don't know how you live.

Yeah, I don't care. But we do have the talkbacks in the iHeart app. We like those.

I do like that, enjoy those. Yeah.

Anyway, you can also email us Ridiculous Crime and gmail dot com.

No one checks them we have, I damn sure don't, but we do have the website ridiculous crime dot com.

It's worth a check. Yes, thanks for listening, y'all.

Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zarren Burnett, produced and edited by Dale Earnhardt's driving instructor Dave Kusten. Researches by Marissa Intimidator Brown and Andrea. The Kang song Sharpened Tear, our theme song is by George Jones. Historical re enactors Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. Executive producers are Been the Cracker, Barrel four, twenty Cup Bowland and Noel.

This is why I prefer Formula.

One Ridicus Cry Say It one more time.

Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts from iHeartRadio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.