He said his name was L.W. Wright, and he may be the greatest sports imposter ever. Here is his story.
This is the first in a three-part series from The Tennessean chronicling the story of L.W. Wright.
The con man parked his Cadillac in front of Coo Coo’s garage.
He was going by the name L.W. Wright in those days, and he strode to that first meeting with the confidence of a cat burglar, a wad of cash ready to dangle and a couple of car racers ready to sucker.
The interaction happened during the last week of April 1982 on the Coo Coo Marlin family farm in Columbia, Tennessee, about an hour south of Nashville, off Interstate 65. The farm had been in Coo Coo’s family since the 1880s. Seven hundred acres, 500 head of cattle and a stable of lickety-split racing cars.
Clifton Burton “Coo Coo” Marlin was a recently retired country stock car legend. Blond as white oak, he made a name for himself on the short tracks of the South in his crime-scene red 1964 Chevrolet Impala with the number 711 emblazoned on its doors.
Coo Coo, though, hadn’t fared so well on the big ovals or in the big time. He had tried, unsuccessfully, 165 times to win a NASCAR Winston Cup race between 1966 and 1980. His last race had been the Winston 500 at Talladega, where he came in 37th out of 41. Coo Coo had finished in the top 10 51 times and accumulated just more than $300,000 in prize money.
It is not a stretch to say, however, he had never been taken for a ride in the manner he was about to be by the con man with the Cadillac.
Coo Coo Marlin wasn’t the only mark. There were a lot of victims who felt the sting of this con man’s crooked game over the years, according to hundreds of pages of police and court documents from states all over the South. In some racing circles, L.W. Wright is an eccentric, fun celebrity like Rosie Ruiz (who faked her way into the Boston Marathon), D.B. Cooper (who escaped justice by jumping out of an airplane) or Frank Abagnale (whose life of cons was depicted in the movie “Catch Me If You Can”).
In other circles, he might be described as a (expletive) piece of (expletive) who tricked a bunch of people whose only mistake was trying to help a guy chase a dream.
The con man’s life story was as elusive as an echo − with one huge highlight in 1982 − until podcaster/NASCAR historian Rick Houston and a Tennessean reporter began looking for him a few years ago.
NASCAR legend Sterling Marlin and Larry Woody discuss L.W. Wright
NASCAR legend Sterling Marlin sits down with Former Tennessean reporter Larry Woody to discuss Marlin’s encounter with con man L.W. Wright
What they uncovered was an audacious tale, kind of sad, about a guy who swung so big and became so small.
In 1982, L.W. Wright was a wiry 33-year-old with sideburns as wide as racing tire’s skid marks. Raised in Virginia, he talked like a good ol’ boy. All gear shifts, crank shafts and gusto. He was fast and interested in going faster. There was this one tiny detail.
He had never, ever, not once, competed on a superspeedway in a race car.
Which is like saying, I have never touched a cobra, but I’d like to give hooded snake-wrangling a try. But more dangerous.
The whole amazing story began to unfold the first time the con man called the Marlin house.
“This is L.W. Wright, and I’d like to go to Talladega,” he said.
Now hold on there, you might be saying to yourself. Talladega? Of all the tracks in all of America, the Alabama International Motor Speedway, as it was called then, or Talladega Superspeedway, as it is called now, is known for its restrictor plates (mandated smaller and less powerful carburetors) and is NOT the place for a first-timer. Remember what happened to Bobby Allison (1987), Rusty Wallace (1993) and 13 cars in “The Big One” (1996)? In 2024, there was a 28-car mangled metallic ballet on that very track.
In the world of NASCAR, Talladega and Daytona, the other most treacherous track, are not places for the inexperienced.
Talladega is 2.66 miles of asphalt foolishness. The banked turns were designed at 33-degree angles, meaning, when you’re turning, your passenger’s window must feel like it’s at the top of Mt. Everest while your driver’s seat must feel like it’s in the depths of hell.
Talladega is crazy.
L.W. Wright was crazier.
All L.W. Wright needed was a car
Sterling Marlin, Coo Coo’s son, was 25 when the con man parked his Cadillac near his daddy’s garage. He was there for that first meeting. (Coo Coo died of lung cancer in 2005, or he’d probably still be talking about L.W. Wright).
Marlin’s comments are from several interviews with The Tennessean including one in which a team of journalists visited him at the Marlin family farm.
Sterling seemed to kind of like the idea of a first-timer trying at Talladega. Marlin remembers telling Wright, “Go ahead, boss. Go get you some.”
Even when you have the guts, the moxie, the right stuff to take a stab at Talladega, there is one more thing you need.
A race car.
“I said, ‘Well, I’ll get a car together,” Sterling Marlin told Wright.
And boy did he. There happened to be, just sitting there on the Marlin farm, a 1981 Chevy Monte Carlo ready to roll, with enough giddy-up to compete at Talladega. Apparently, the con man had done his homework.
Marlin said he was caught unaware.
“It was kind of crazy,” Marlin said. “Where’s this guy come from? I had never heard of him.”
The car, in this con, was the shiny object. What L.W. Wright was truly after, on that April day in 1982, was the Marlin name. If he could show he had support from the great Coo Coo and his up-and-coming son Sterling Marlin, it was clear sailing to Talladega.
Wright asked Sterling to serve as his pit crew chief at Talladega.
Sterling Marlin may or may not have been qualified for the job − “Probably not,” he said with a laugh − but what the heck?
He took the job.
The car’s cost, including a pit crew chief: $21,700.
Here’s the thing. L.W. Wright told the Marlins he only had $18,000. So he paid the rest of the fee with a $3,700 check. Spoiler alert: That check bounced like a spring-loaded basketball.
And that $18,000? It wasn’t his money.
Forty-some years later, Sterling Marlin said this about L.W. Wright.
If he ever saw him again, “I’d (expletive) kill him.”
Coal country roots
Some things about L.W. Wright were always kind of right. Like his name.
His given name was Larry Ernest Wright, born in Richlands, Virginia on April 17, 1949. How and why he chose “L.W.” instead of just going by “Larry” for his big con is a mystery, as is so much about him.
His backstory is largely dependent on his own retelling, so it could be as true or false as good fiction. Wright had five brothers and two sisters, and his father was a coal miner who broke his back, an injury that rendered his family poor. The Wrights lived in Tazewell County in the mountains of southwest Virginia. In a town of less than 5,000 hearty souls.
If you’ve heard of Tazewell County, it may because of the recent rise of Progressive Massive Fibrosis, or Black Lung Disease. The new Black Lung cases are reminding people of the old days, which produced death-defying kids like Larry Wright.
Wright told Rick Houston, host of the Scene Vault podcast, he never finished seventh grade, and he was running moonshine by the time he was 17 to help his family. Dodging law enforcement had apparently started early for Larry Wright.
The day after Wright turned 19, his brother, Grover Wright Jr., died in Bien Hoa Province, Vietnam.
Grover, two years older than Larry, was an Army infantryman in the Air Cavalry Troop, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. On April 18, 1968, Grover found himself in a Bien Hoa river, swimming in search of a crossing route for his unit. He drowned in the midst of that combat operation, and was awarded the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal and the Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal.
Larry Wright has told numerous stories about what happened after his brother’s death. He said he was prevented from going to Vietnam because of his brother’s plight. He also said he served three tours of duty in the Special Forces, which was not true.
There wasn’t much Wright wouldn’t lie about.
His racing history, for example, appears to be a complete fabrication. Wright said when he was in his 20s and early 30s, he raced short tracks in the NASCAR Busch Grand National Series. He told everyone he had 43 starts. He also said he ran “outlaw” races, those unsanctioned events that are many times the racing equivalent of beer league softball.
It was that lie about his racing background that appeared to launch his Talladega dream.
Who was going to check on his veracity? This all happened in the pre-Google world of 1982. If you don’t remember 1982, here are a few impactful moments. Kelly Clarkson was born in April of 1982 (about six weeks after John Belushi died). It was the first year of The Weather Channel. “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” opened in theaters. The World’s Fair was in Knoxville, where fairgoers could use a touch-screen computer for the first time ever.
By the sheer strength of his storytelling ability, Wright convinced Nashville-based Bernie Terrell, who owned the Space Age Marketing company, to loan him $30,000 to fund the Talladega gambit. With that money in his pocket, Wright registered his team name: “Music City Racing.” And he paid $115 for a NASCAR license.
His team included a bunch of his buddies, which, of course it did. And, sprinkled in for good measure, were country music stars Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard and T.G. Sheppard.
Again, there was a kernel of truth in his connection to those country stars. Wright had worked for a time repairing and cleaning tricked-out tour buses. He may have bumped into Jennings, Haggard and Sheppard while vacuuming their rolling domiciles.
If anybody would know about Music City connections to NASCAR, it would be Gary Baker, who was a former driver on the circuit, and a Nashville lawyer.
And he represented T.G. Sheppard.
“I was his (T.G.’s) tax attorney at the time,” Baker said in a recent interview. “I put together all marketing deals with T.G. and Proctor and Gamble. I would have been the first one to have been in contact with this guy, and I’ve never heard of him.”
Baker said Wright’s lies were impressive.
“You got to hand it to the guy,” Baker said. “He was good at what he did and what he was good at doing was being a con artist. If he applied those same skills and personality traits to legitimate versions of business, the guy would have been an automatic success. It’s just a shame that he chose to go in this direction and conned so many people in so many ways.”
Once he had the money and the car, the con man needed a trailer and a big rig hauler to get the party down to Talladega, Alabama. Wright spent $7,500 for that transport.
There was one more issue. Because Wright was a bit of an artist when it came to cons, he wanted that Monte Carlo painted. Coo Coo Marlin’s cars were always red.
L.W. Wright wanted that sucker painted black, the color of Johnny Cash, pirate flags and daring deeds.
Oh, and make that hood, just the hood, metallic gold, hanging out there like the sun’s tongue.
Wright bought Goodyear tires (about $1,500) and racing jackets (a total of $168) for his crew. Of course, he paid for everything with rubbery checks.
There was one more thing he needed the Marlins to help him with before he could race.
He wanted a number.
It had to be 34.
If L.W. Wright had a racing hero, it was Wendell Scott, a Black man who got his NASCAR license in 1953 in the Jim Crow South, and won in every division NASCAR had despite being banned, disqualified and disrespected more times than you’d want to count.
Scott was from Danville, Virginia, about three and half hours of driving time from the Wright home in Richlands.
There may have been tougher men than Wendell Scott, but not many. At the Dover Motor Speedway, Scott was poisoned by a “fan” who gave him a spiked drink before a race. He was confronted by the Ku Klux Klan. He raced without sponsors and under constant death threats.
Somehow L.W. Wright felt a kinship with Scott, and he wanted to race at Talladega with Scott’s No. 34 on his doors.
Alert the media
Some people, while attempting to pull off the sports con of the century, might try to operate quietly. In the shadows. Under the cover of keeping your dang mouth shut.
Not L.W. Wright.
A couple of days before the Winston 500 at Talladega, Tennessean columnist Larry Woody got involved in the tale.
“I was sitting at my desk one morning, the phone rings, and it’s some guy that says he’s representing a race driver named L.W. Wright who just moved to Nashville to further his racing career,” Woody remembers. “And would I be interested in doing a story? And I said … ‘Coincidentally, I’m doing a racing notes column tomorrow for the next morning’s paper.'”
Woody took some notes and added a couple paragraphs to the bottom of his racing column.
“This driver named L.W. Wright came to town trying to start his racing career,” Woody said. “He was going to be sponsored by Waylon Jennings and T.G. Shepherd and Merle Haggard … T.G. was a big name back then, and so I included that in the story.”
The next morning Gary Baker, the lawyer who represented Shepherd, called Woody.
“So I told Larry at the time, ‘Woodrow, listen, just, this is totally fishy,'” Baker said. “I know that was the word I’d used only because I go back and look at some of those news clippings. It tells me that I used the word fishy, even before I hung up the phone for the very first time hearing his name. So I knew there was something wrong. You just don’t throw a name around, that’s going to sponsor you, when you haven’t even had any contact with them.”
So Woody, being the good journalist he is, got in touch with L.W. Wright.
“I said, L.W., this is Larry Woody from The Tennessean,” Woody remembers. “I did a note about your racing, coming to Nashville in this morning’s paper. And (L.W.) said, ‘Yeah, I appreciate it.’
“I said, ‘Well, there’s a little hitch.’ I said, ‘A friend of mine, Gary Baker, who represents T.G. Shepherd, says he didn’t know anything about the sponsorship. And (L.W.) said, ‘Well, maybe it’s a little premature.’ He said, ‘We’re working on some sponsorship deals with T.G. Sheppard, Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard …’ “
L.W. Wright implied that maybe he may have been “misled” by these big stars.
Woody thinks it was Wright who was doing the misleading.
“I sort of think he exaggerated,” Woody said.
That’s what con men do.
Maybe the con man didn’t appreciate what journalists do.
Because while L.W. Wright was heading south to Talladega, Larry Woody started doing a little digging.
“I did another interview with L.W. on the phone before Talladega,” Woody said. “I called him one more time and to double check on his credentials. And he said he had done a lot of racing in the Virginias, in the Carolinas … He had raced on the Grand National circuit, which is what the top level NASCAR is now.”
Woody called a Grand National source.
“They never heard of him,” Woody said.
All of this could have been just a blip in history, a con man with delusions of grandeur set his sights on a giant NASCAR race. Not much of a story.
Because there was one more obstacle to pulling off the con.
L.W. Wright had to get in Coo Coo’s Monte Carlo and actually qualify for the dang race.
He needed to drive fast enough at one of the most dangerous tracks in America to pull it off.
And he needed to outrun a journalist.
Read the full article here
